wrong ball, coach

Anyone know if you can really do this?

ante up

Feel like you're paying too much for your cell phone? You might want to try bluffing your way to cheaper service. I remember when I canceled my Verizon contract last year they offered me some deals that I normally would have taken had I not switched to the Treo. Matt Haughey recently experienced the same thing when he tried to cancel his T-mobile contract. Apparently cell providers are quite willing to make a sacrifice for your business, but you've got to "ask" for it.

woo hoooo

In a couple of hours Mary Pat and I are heading up to Tennessee for some fun in the Smokies. We'll be spending days trekking through virgin wilderness, eating berries and wildflowers, slaking our thirst at crystal mountain streams lots of money at the outlet malls near Pigeon Forge. I really do need a completely new wardrobe for work so we're mixing business and pleasure, staying at a rustic little cabin on the mountain behind Gatlinburg. We might even get matching sweatsuits and walk around town holding hands. Country kitsch, here we come.

lyrics of the day

"Robot Rock" -- Daft Punk

Rock, robot rock
Rock, robot rock
Rock, robot rock
Rock, robot rock

Rock, robot rock
Rock, robot rock
Rock, robot rock
Rock, robot rock

Rock, robot rock
Rock, robot rock
Rock, robot rock
Rock, robot rock

Rock, robot rock
Rock, robot rock
Rock, robot rock
Rock, robot rock

Rock, robot rock
Rock, robot rock
Rock, robot rock
Rock, robot rock

Rock, robot rock
Rock, robot rock
Rock, robot rock
Rock, robot rock

Rock, robot rock
Rock, robot rock
Rock, robot rock
Rock, robot rock

Rock, robot rock
Rock, robot rock
Rock, robot rock
Rock, robot rock

Rock, robot rock
Rock, robot rock
Rock, robot rock
Rock, robot rock

Rock, robot rock
Rock, robot rock
Rock, robot rock
Rock, robot rock

Rock, robot rock
Rock, robot rock
Rock, robot rock
Rock, robot rock

Rock, robot rock
Rock, robot rock
Rock, robot rock
Rock, robot rock

Rock, robot rock
Rock, robot rock
Rock, robot rock
Rock, robot rock

lest this post smack of criticism, the authors hereby proclaim their sincere digging and grooving of the Daft Punk scenario.

The man doth protest too much, methinks

Coy Privette, one of the most outspoken Christian opponents of immorality, has been arrested on prostitution-related charges in North Carolina. Mr. Privette has the distinction of the following titles and positions:

• former trustee of the Christian Life Commission (now Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission), the Southern Baptist Convention's moral-watchdog agency
• former trustee chair of the SBC's Southeastern Baptist Theological Seminary in Wake Forest, N.C.
• former president of the Baptist State Convention of North Carolina
• retired pastor
• former state legislator (1984-1992) and county commissioner
• strong opponent of liquor, gambling and illegal immigration
• president of the Christian Action league, which lobbies legislators to consider a Christian perspective in pending legislation
• former member of the National Consultation on Pornography

Not so coy is he.

nice knives

Anything called "Son of Prything" has got to be useful.

watch your speeding in Alabama Aug. 13-17

Alabama Department of Public Safety Director Col. Chris Murphy announced this morning a plan to "Take Back Our Highways" by putting an additional 200 state troopers on state roads in order to show Alabama lawmakers how much safer state highways would be with additional troopers.

they're not joking

Visit the Museum of Bad Art (MOBA)

like puzzles?

Then you'll appreciate Sam Loyd's Cyclopedia of 5000 Puzzles, Tricks, and Conundrums (With Answers).

finally, a beginning

Although I recently took serious issue with the Pope's stance on the primacy of the Catholic faith, I must give him credit for introducing at least a hint of logic and reason to the debate over evolution. While speaking in Italy last week, he stated that evolution and religion can coexist, even calling the debate an "absurdity":

"They are presented as alternatives that exclude each other," the pope said. "This clash is an absurdity because on one hand there is much scientific proof in favor of evolution, which appears as a reality that we must see and which enriches our understanding of life and being as such."

He then pointed out the obvious fact that evolution does not answer all the questions, such as "Where does everything come from?" which is accurate because the theory of evolution does not attempt to answer such an unanswerable question.

It is remarkable that the Pope, whose very power and influence stem from the belief that the Bible is the authentic word of God and is historically accurate, would make such an admission. And of course his statements will have little influence over millions of Protestant Americans who insist on the historical legitimacy of the Bible and allow themselves to be threatened by scientific discovery. But it's a start.

Nicholas Gurewitch

If you enjoy reading the offbeat and wacky Perry Bible Fellowship, you'll be pleased to know that you can pre-order your copy of The Trial of Colonel Sweeto and Other Stories now on Amazon.

old, yet still funny, Redneck Haiku

Beauty
Naked in repose
Silvery silhouette girls
Adorn my mudflaps

Remorse
A painful sadness
Can’t fit big screen TV through
Double-wide’s front door

Options
Unemployment’s out.
Hey, maybe I can get on
Disability

Blaze
Distant siren screams
Dumb-ass Verne’s been playing with
Gasoline again

A New Moon
Flashlights pierce darkness
No nightcrawlers to be found
Guess we’ll gig some frogs

Exuberance
Joyous, playful, bright
Trailer park girl rolls in puddle
Of old motor oil

Alone
Seeking solitude
Carl’s ex-wife Tammy files for
Restraining order

Desire
Damn, in that tube-top
You make me almost forget
you are my cousin

Offerings
Tonight we hunger
Grandma sent grocery money
To Jimmy Swaggert

Drama
Set the VCR
Dukes of Hazzard Marathon
At 9 O’Clock

Deprived
In Wal-Mart toy aisle
Wailing boy wants ’rassling doll
Mama whups his ass

No Signal
White noise, buzzing static
Call Earl; satellite dish
needs new descrambler

Impounded
Sixty-five dollars
And cyclone fence keeps me from
My El Camino

Gathering
In early morning mist
Mama searches Circle K for
Moon Pies and Red Man

Pride
Grinning, he displays
The nine hundred beer cans
Filling pickup bed

babel

for the Buddhist who has everything nothing

A timely reminder of the moment at hand

quote of the day

"Bono doesn’t need to tell us that we are poor. We know we are poor. All these concerts come and go and nothing changes in Africa."

-- Femi Kuti, Nigerian music star

magnificent

Top ten spacewalks. With stunning pictures.

extremes

The Google Earth community brings you an updated list of the highest, deepest, strongest, windiest, snowiest, longest, shortest and oldest places on earth. Who knew the tallest man-made structure in the world is a television transmitting mast in North Dakota?

old school

Sing O Muse
Sing to us of the glorious gods
Who ruled the land and sea
And tell us
Of the fair beauty of the goddesses
Who dwell in eternal Olympus

Sing to us, O Muse,
Of ages that have come to past
Of those mighty warriors
Weilding their deadly spears
From the lores
Of our timeless myths.

Yo, get your Classical, Norse, and Celtic Mythology and Arthurian Legends on.

comrade Santa

Interesting article on Russia's attempt to claim the North Pole. Even though the polar region is technically frozen ocean, the terrain below the ice contain billion of tons of oil and natural gas. Under internation law, a country's territorial boundary can be extended if it can prove that the continental shelf into which it wishes to expand is a natural extension of its own territory. So Russian scientists recently spent almost two months researching the "Lomonosov ridge", an underwater ridge which they claim links Russia's Arctic coast to the North Pole. Controversy has, of course, ensued.

religious right

Good list of the World’s Stupidest Fatwas. My favorite: Rashad Hassan Khalil, former dean of Islamic law at al-Azhar University in Cairo, Egypt, ruled in January 2006 that for married couples, "being completely naked during the act of coitus annuls the marriage."

word of the day

Richistan.

And to this I say go dolphins, go.

spectrum

Martin Klimas takes amazing high-speed phtographs. David Doubilet takes amazing slow-speed photographs.

because they're not hard enough to walk in as it is

I love this stuff

Origins of familiar phrases.

Non Causa Pro Causa

I've posted something like this before, but The Taxonomy of Logical Fallacies is a fascinating voyage into the thicket of errors in reasoning. It's actually quite helpful if you can learn to recognize the all-too-common ones. For example, the "Masked Man" fallacy is one that occurs frequently in jury trials. The formula is where a = b, and C is believed to be a, C is also (and erroneously) believed to be b. The popular example is this:

• The masked man is Mr. Hyde.
  
• The witness believes that the masked man committed the crime.
  
• Therefore, the witness believes that Mr. Hyde committed the crime.

For one trying to convince you (erroneously or not) that Mr. Hyde committed the crime, this inference is highly desirable. The opponent would need to expose the fallacy by proving that there could have been another masked man on the scene. Understanding this distinction can be crucial.

Other fallacies aren't necessarily logical per se. Another common one is the "Appeal to Nature" fallacy which plays on the (natural) supposition that anything natural is good and anything unnatural is bad. The best example is on food labels. Everything is "all-natural" these days, even though it is clear that the word natural has a very specific meaning when it appears on a label. It think it's safe to say that most of these fallacies appear in or on advertisements every day of our lives. Read the list, get hip. Or better yet, buy a book:

tragedy

Earthquake Sets Japan Back To 2147.

um

No. Well maybe. Nah.

poem of the day

History of the Night

Throughout the course of the generations
men constructed the night.
At first she was blindness;
thorns raking bare feet,
fear of wolves.
We shall never know who forged the word
for the interval of shadow
dividing the two twilights;
we shall never know in what age it came to mean
the starry hours.
Others created the myth.
They made her the mother of the unruffled Fates
that spin our destiny,
thev sacrificed black ewes to her, and the cock
who crows his own death.
The Chaldeans assigned to her twelve houses;
to Zeno, infinite words.
She took shape from Latin hexameters
and the terror of Pascal.
Luis de Leon saw in her the homeland
of his stricken soul.
Now we feel her to be inexhuastible
like an ancient wine
and no one can gaze on her without vertigo
and time has charged her with eternity.

And to think that she wouldn't exist
except for those fragile instruments, the eyes.

- Jorge Luis Borges

well done, sir

Famous Poems Rewritten as Limericks

Do Not Go Gentle Into That Good Night
There was an old father of Dylan
Who was seriously, mortally illin'
"I want," Dylan said
"You to bitch till you're dead.
"I'll be cheesed if you kick it while chillin'."

quote of the day presidentiary

"The budget should be balanced; the treasury should be refilled; public debt should be reduced; and the arrogance of public officials should be controlled."

wait for it..







- Cicero. 106-43 B.C.

good question

Wasn't Jesus a liberal?

you are here

Flash Earth is by far the best mapping site on the Interwebs, integrating instantaneous map zooming and multiple hosts such as Google Maps, Yahoo Maps, and Nasa Terra. The speed and resolution are stunning. Now if I could just get this on my Treo..

hahaha

best new phrase:

"security theater."

Brittorrent

Not sure if anyone has read the book Sarum by Edward Rutherfurd, but it's a fascinating piece of historical fiction, spanning 10,000 years and the lives of five families in high Michener style. What I've never forgotten about the book is its opening chapter, which follows a Stone Age man as he watches a massively huge flood pour down the valley separating what are today England and France. The flood is so cataclysmically huge that it creates the English channel--not an inauspicious start for a novel. Well, it turns out that Rutherfurd wasn't merely embellishing. Scientists have recently studied sonar scans of the channel and confirmed that Britain became separated from Europe after a catastrophic flood over 200,000 years ago.

light speed

Engineers at Brigham Young University have developed a bike frame made from carbon fiber intertwined with Kevlar string, producing a cage-like, open tubular lattice that seriously reduces the bike's weight. Doesn't look too shabby, either.

illogic

The Two Switches puzzle is driving me crazy. Help.

The warden meets with 23 new prisoners when they arrive. He tells them, "You may meet today and plan a strategy. But after today, you will be in isolated cells and will have no communication with one another.

"In the prison is a switch room, which contains two light switches labeled A and B, each of which can be in either the 'on' or the 'off' position. I am not telling you their present positions. The switches are not connected to anything.

"After today, from time to time whenever I feel so inclined, I will select one prisoner at random and escort him to the switch room. This prisoner will select one of the two switches and reverse its position. He must move one, but only one of the switches. He can't move both but he can't move none either. Then he'll be led back to his cell.

"No one else will enter the switch room until I lead the next prisoner there, and he'll be instructed to do the same thing. I'm going to choose prisoners at random. I may choose the same guy three times in a row, or I may jump around and come back.

"But, given enough time, everyone will eventually visit the switch room as many times as everyone else. At any time anyone of you may declare to me, 'we have all visited the switch room' and be 100% sure.

"If it is true, then you will all be set free. If it is false, and somebody has not yet visited the switch room, you will be fed to the alligators."

What is the strategy they come up with so that they can be free?

(the answer is here but I don't want to read it.)

clever

I have no idea what its about, but this is one of the better designed sites I've seen.

Shouldn't the address be 420?

word of the day

supercalifragilisticexpialidocious. Read the wikipedia entry here.

tomorrow

I'd like to go here.

acme

Remember all those great Road Runner and Wile E. Coyote carttons? You can watch them all here.

the Dance of the Helicopter

This guy can handle a remote control like nobody else.

Coyote Buttes, Arizona

More photos of this magical place here.

mortal combat

the coolest wedding ring I've seen

Made by this guy.

joke of the day

Why did the chicken cross the Möbius Strip?

To get to the same side.

more jokes at Math for Laughs.

cutty sark

The Isle of Sark in the Channel Islands off the cost of Normandy seems like a fascinating place, where the only vehicles allowed are horse-drawn vehicles, bicycles, and tractors. It was first inhabited by the French pirate "Eustace the Monk," is actually the last feudal state in Europe, and was the site of the moderately famous Operation Basalt during WWII. I want to go.

priceless

so true

What I imagined the people around me were saying when I was eleven.

ain't life grand?

Pizza Hut patron leaves her nice waitress a $10,000 tip.

I like

Mion footwear.

two words that should never be uttered in the same sentence:

The thermonuclear "oops" list.

how about some dischord, divisiveness and bigotry?

Pope Benedict XVI has reasserted the universal primacy of the Roman Catholic Church, approving a document released Tuesday that says Orthodox churches were defective and that other Christian denominations were not true churches.

I'll take one

What do you get when you cross a whitewater kayak/playboat with a high-powered jet ski engine? Only Shaun Baker knows.

cloud surfing

"The Morning Glory cloud is one of the most spectacular meteorological phenomena in the world. It is quite rare as it is usually only observed in Northern Australia's Gulf of Carpentaria. A Morning Glory cloud can best be described as a roll cloud that can be up to 1000 kilometers long, 1 to 2 kilometers high, and can move at speeds up to 40 kilometers per hour. The morning glory is often accompanied by sudden wind squalls, intense low-level wind shear, a rapid increase in the vertical displacement of air parcels, and a sharp pressure jump at the surface. In the front of the cloud, there is strong vertical motion that transports air up through the cloud and creates the rolling appearance, while the air in the middle and rear of the cloud becomes turbulent and sinks. The cloud can also be described as a Solitary wave or a Soliton, which is a wave that has a single crest and moves without changing speed or shape."

uh oh

Daniel's been thinking again. Run

tragic calm

(taken by this fella)

macro art

People as pixels.

nice

You can now download the beta version of the Safari browser for Windows here.

oh mycology

Now that's a big mushroom.

oh dear

Speaking of science, it appears that a cultural crisis is looming in America. This New York Times article states that while scientific literacy has doubled over the past two decades, only 20 to 25 percent of Americans are "scientifically savvy and alert," acording to Northwestern science professor Jon D. Miller. Most of the rest "don't have a clue," he said. The scariest part? One adult American in five thinks the Sun revolves around the Earth, an idea science had abandoned by the 17th century.

Who are these people? Where do they live? Why have they not been shunned from society?

zoom out, tune in

One of my favorite new sites is Earth Observatory, which engages in macro-level earth science based on satellite images. For a glimpse of what that means, check out the Image of the Day archive. Yesterday we learned that scientists estimate that more surface area is devoted to lawns than to any other single irrigated crop in the country. For example, American lawns appear to cover more than three times the number of acres that irrigated corn covers. Wow.

And if you're into satellite imaging, why not track them online in real time?

twist knobs, break beats

Make some noise here.

inspiration in 3d

Virtual Parks is "The product of eleven years of hiking, exploring, and VR photography . . . successful proof of a concept that showed high quality panoramas could excite people about our wild places." (Quicktime required to view these amazing photographs)

The Music

I hear the music
The music is playing
The music is soft
The music is now fading
The music is gone
Which means so is my life
No music means no life
The music is gone
Come back to me music
The Music is begining
I have a life
The music is pretty
The Music is wonderful
Oh no
The music is fading again
I love the music
The music is gone
Good bye music

Kathryn Thompson

a long way

Great story about the fiasco that was the 1904 Olympics in St. Louis. Best line: As he took his place in the starting crowd, Carvajal found himself in an odd group to be running the first Olympic marathon in America. In addition to legitimate distance runners such as Sam Mellor, John Lordon, and Michael Spring, each of whom had won the Boston Marathon, there were a professional strikebreaker from Chicago and two Zulu tribesmen, named Lentauw and Yamasani, who were at the fair as part of the Boer War exhibit and thought they would take the afternoon off to run.

handsoap

literally.

cruisin'

Table family.

htmhell

For the website designers out here, you may find this tutorial on How to Make Square Corners with CSS quite handy.

tiny sculptures

of little people.

want the skinny on the iPhone?

here it is.

hehee

A letter to Optimus Prime from his Geico insurance agent.

Dear Mr. Prime,

We have received your accident-claim reports for the month of June—they total 27. I regret to inform you that GEICO will not be able to reimburse you for any of those repairs. I feel that I have sent the same letter to you once a month for the last six months, and I am now sending it again.

Since becoming a GEICO customer in January of this year, you have reported 131 accidents, requesting reimbursement for repairs necessitated by each one. You have claimed not to be responsible in any of them, usually listing the cause of the accident as either "Sneak attack by Decepticons" or "Unavoidable damage caused by protecting freedom for all sentient beings..."

paper trail

Richard Sweeney makes incredible origami.

amazing underwater camouflage

the road home

New York Times editorial: "It is time for the United States to leave Iraq, without any more delay than the Pentagon needs to organize an orderly exit."

yes

100 days that changed music.

hedonist

Now that's quite an obituary.

Neg's urban sports

This is hilarious. According the rules of 'urban sprinting,' you must first find a shop with a security guard and an alarm system, preferably in a mall. Then you grab a security tag (no merchandise) and walk out the door, setting off the alarm. When the guard chases you, you must evade him. Your time stops when you reach the nearest burger joint.

Also check out Knock and dont run, Burger Bowl Off, and Big Stranger Rodeo.

retro

Incredible story about the fishermen of Lamalera, a village on Lembata island, Indonesia, who hunt - and kill - whales with primitive spears and knives.

whoa, chief

This attorney is positively scary.

oh. my.

I would do this in a heartbeat.

cyclopedic

The Encyclopedia of Alabama is a "comprehensive online reference work on the state’s history, culture, geography, and natural environment" which will be available in 2008. A rather dauting task, but I look forward to seeing the result.

Who knows what movie you saw this painting in?

big and bad

Impressive yacht.

where's the burnt umber?

Download this game: Crayon physics. It's harder than it looks.

Earth to pup to Earth

We've all been there.

flow

This is one of the coolest website designs I have seen.

where's Snuffalufagus?

The Goof Gallery is dedicated to the art of misconception when it comes to identifying animals throughout history.

rows and columns

Photographs of the mathematics of living.

oh technology

Nice stereoviews from WWII pictures.

indeed

Word of the day: iPerbole.

(I also like their take on girls)

such a card

Nedd a clever business card to impress those clients/dates/movie producers/pimps? Try some of these ideas.

roger, roger

If you like airports and airplane stuff, you'll get a kick out of this site. The videos at the bottom are enlightening/frightening.

checkmate, please

Now you can have your chess set and eat it too.

fyi

Everyone should know exactly where your tax dollars are going. Whether we should revolt now or later is another issue.

quote of the day

"Good friends, good books and a sleepy conscience: this is the ideal life."

-- Mark Twain

ten-four

• 20 amazing coincidences
• 301 useless facts
• 7 Little Known Ways To Drastically Improve Your Learning
• 1/2 of a car
• 120 days of Sodom (warning: authored by the Marquis de Sade)
• First photo taken from space

anthropomorphization

capitol grid

This is an interesting site documenting the location of the boundary stones around Washington D.C. placed in 1791 and 1792.

random

I love Google image search. You can learn so much, inadvertantly. I just found out that there is a flower actaully named after the band Pink Floyd. The best part is the flower's botantical name: Hippeastrum.

Incidentally, for you Floyd fans out there, be sure and support the boys by wearing your Pink Floyd sandals, underwear, club shirts, and of course bicycle jerseys.

not an incentive to drive green at all

In an ironic turn of events, a provision in the tax code that allowed farmers and small-business owners to recover the cost of buying trucks and heavy-duty working vehicles has become a tax break for luxury SUVs and Hummers. To the tune of $25,000. Luckily some legislators have wised up and are trying to change this.

hardcore

There is such a thing as too much carbon fiber.

This is rather silly too.

brilliant

Introducing the DVD Rewinder