the word is out

you'll regret it

Do not click here.

it's friday

not bad

Whether you believe Barak Obama is qualified to lead this nation or not, you've got to admit it's impressive for anybody to quit smoking during a prolonged and stressful presidential campaign.

want

Coolest bookshelves ever.

always wondered

I have a question related to the post below:

When Meatloaf sings that he would do anything for love but he won't do that, what exactly has he been asked to do?

song charts!

check out a whole set of them here. This one is probably my favorite.

i just lost The Game

Rule 1: You are playing The Game.
Rule 2: Whenever you think about The Game, you lose.
Rule 3: Loss must be announced.

best headline ever

not again

I hope this isn't a tinfoil hat story, but there are reports that in some areas of Alabama last night the 60 Minutes special on the political witchhunt of former Governor Don Siegelman was blacked out on Channel 19. From the article: "Channel 19 is owned by Oak Hill Capital Partners, who can be contacted through Rhonda Barnat, 212-371-5999 or rb@abmac.com . Oak Hill Partners represents interests of the Bass family, which contribute heavily to the Republican Party. Viewers displeased about the channel’s decision to censor the broadcast should express their views directly to the station management or to the owners."

potentially useful

"Did you receive a call but the caller did not leave a message and the Caller ID says "Unavailable"? Type the phone number in the box below and click "Get Details" to find out who is using this phone number."

mad soccer skills

here's the beef

If you have fallen prey to the inaccurate soundbytes out there suggesting that Barak Obama makes "eloquent but empty" promises and that he has "little experience" in the political realm, I direct your attention to this excellent article on exactly what Barak has done as a junior Senator.

free the hops this session!

I pass on this message to all readers in Alabama:

Members and supporters of Free the Hops,

As some of you already know, our House ABV Bill - HB196 - came out of committee yesterday. The companion Senate Bill, SB116, came out of committee today.

These bills are intended to increase the allowable alcohol in beer to 13.9% ABV in the state. The next step for our bills is to be voted on in the House and the Senate, which could be as early as this Tuesday but probably won't happen until mid-March. I will be sure to update everyone once we know the date.

For an overview of where we are with all of our bills, please take a look at: http://www.freethehops.org/featuredcontent/thesteps.php

How you can help pass our House ABV bill

Please visit the Alabama legislature web site:

http://www.legislature.state.al.us/

there is a box on the left hand side of the screen where you can type in your ZIP code, which will tell you who your House Representative and Senator are. Please call your Representative to let them know you support the bill and would like to see it pass in the House. A telephone call is *the* most effective way to let them know how much you care about the bill!

How you can help pass our Senate ABV and Home Brewing bills

Please call your Senator (see link above) and let them know you support SB116 (the Senate ABV Bill) and SB355 (the Home Brewing Bill), and that you would like your Senator to help pass these bills. Again, a telephone call is *the* most effective way to let them know how much you care about the bill!

I cannot stress this enough: if you, personally, call your House Rep about HB196 (the Gourmet Beer Bill), AND call your Senator about SB116 (Gourmet Beer Bill) and SB355 (Home Brewing Bill), we will free the hops this year! If you are unable to call your Representative or Senator, you can also email or write to them via the Legislature.

Stuart Carter
President
Free the Hops | Alabamians for Specialty Beer

parallax

This is what the eclipse looked like from the moon.

coolest staircase ever

for your hidden library.

lies

Ok, so I'm glad the Pentagon was able to blast the dying satellite out of the sky. And yes, I'm sure it has some "dangerous" fuel in it, nasty toxic chemical stuff. But don't they all? Why don't we blast all falling debris from the sky? It is so obvious that 1) this was a spy satellite and we wouldn't want anyone getting their hands on it, and 2) we are exhibiting our ability to blast incoming objects (traveling several thousands of miles per hour, no less) from the sky whenever we wish. The way they keep harping on the "toxic rocket fuel" hazard is embarassing. I realize that it's probably a wise political move, but the obvious lies sicken me.

truth of the day

"The more I carry the more I like camping, the less I carry the more I like hiking."

- SGT Rock

law of the day

While doing some research on the Alabama Constitution of 1901 I came across this gem:

Article IV Legislative Department
SECTION 86 Suppression of dueling

The legislature shall pass such penal laws as it may deem expedient to suppress the evil practice of dueling.

;

Praised be the semicolon.

everything is perfect

before, after

wow

for those days when whiskey and cycling go together

you need a flask holster.

for the sucker born every minute

The 5 ballsiest con artists of all time.

I had a dream

fail.

a problem with fundamentalism

Here we go again.

I'm all for freedom of religion, but like with any freedom, a line must be drawn when religion spills over into fundamentalism, when narrow viewpoints are forced upon people against their wishes. I understand that not all fundamentalism is bad, but I would argue that in general fundamentalism causes more division and rancor than any other aspect of religion. After all, that is the point of holding a fundamentalist view--to promote a particular viewpoint to the exclusion of all others in the sincere conviction that you are right and that everyone else, unless they agree with you, is wrong. The misguided zeal and lust for power that usually accompany such views has caused more death and suffering throughout history than the bubonic plague.

Although I've tried to tone down the religious gab on this blog because it tends to peeve the (one) reader(s) and is boring and usually negative, I've got to say that I'm appalled at the recent reports of violent crimes being committed against Muslim women by fundamentalist Islamic men because of alleged violations of Islamic "laws." You've heard about it before--citing the Koran and other "teachings," these men torture and mutilate women for not wearing headscarves or for wearing makeup. They are convinced that makeup is a social evil that justifies hundreds of rapes, beheadings and abductions. It goes without saying that this sort of arbitrary social oppression is disgusting and barbaric and any man who endorses it should be thrown in jail for the rest of his miserable life.

I know what some of you may be thinking. It's the Muslims. The problem is with their religion. But that would be wrong. The problem occurs when a society tolerates a fundamental religious viewpoint and allows it to circumvent or ignore basic civil liberties. I realize that the society first has to recognize civil liberties and be able to enforce them, which isn't the case in Iraq. But this sort of heinous zealotry must be recognized as a product of fundamentalist religious teachings, and its continued existence can only be explained by social tolerance.

In my opinion, and to cite an argument others have made far more eloquently, the burden of reform in this regard is on the moderate believers. People like yourselves. People who go to the church/mosque and say prayers and live normal, decent lives. The burden of reform is on you for a number of reasons, but the main reason is that you share the same beliefs with the fundamentalist crazies. While you may lack the strength of conviction or anger or zealotry or whatever it is that separates you from them, you agree with their ultimate cosmological explanation, more or less. Since a fundamentalist usually doesn't take seriously people who disagree with their views, it is this unity of perspective that makes you particularly suited to exert social pressure on them. No one else can. They will at least listen to you. They may violently disagree with you, but as long as they are treated as a fringe element by their own community of believers they will lack power.

Therefore, whether you are a Christian in America, a Muslim in Iraq, or a Jew in Israel, if you consider yourself a moderate, everyday sort of believer you cannot sit back and marvel at how crazy the fundamentalists are within your religion. Their ability to get away with oppressive, unjust actions is dependant on you. If their own community of believers doesn’t object, they feel justified. Put in another way, the silence of the majority is tacit approval of the actions of the minority.

>>>steps down from soapbox<<<<

word of the day

Awesomegasm

a real pageturner

Sharon just sent me this delightful entry in a recent Sotheby’s catalogue for the sale of an old book:

LOT 4141

MIDDLETON, CHRISTOPHER.

"A REJOINDER TO MR. DOBB’S REPLY TO CAPTAIN MIDDLETON; IN WHICH IS EXPOS’D, BOTH HIS WILFUL AND REAL IGNORANCE OF TIDES; &C. HIS JESUITICAL PREVARICATIONS, EVASIONS, FALSITIES, AND FALSE REASONING; HIS AVOIDING TAKING NOTICE OF FACTS, FORMERLY DETECTED AND CHARGED UPON HIM AS INVENTIONS OF HIS OR HIS WITNESSES; THE CHARACTER OF THE LATTER, AND THE PRESENT VIEWS OF THE FORMER, WHICH GAVE RISE TO THE PRESENT DISPUTE. IN A WORD, AN UNPARALELLED DISINGENUITY, AND (TO MAKE USE OF A VERODOBBSICAL FLOWER OF RHETORIC) A GLARING IMPUDENCE, ARE SET IN A FAIR LIGHT."

LONDON: M. COOPER, G. BRETT, R. AMEY, 1745

(thanks Sharon!)

the basic plan

"2 - 6 women to have 2 - 15 children by me. The preferred situation tends toward the higher numbers."

wow

THE RUBBER BALL IS EVIL AND IT MUST DIE.

Sagan all my love for you

More scientist valentine's day cards. In reference to this.

bad bad bad idea. bad

The Easy Reader.

haha

Atheist Sees Image of Big Bang in Piece of Toast.

slogan of the day I hope doesn't end on every bumper sticker in America

"Politics is like driving. To go backward, put it in R. To go forward, put it in D."

"Let the great world spin for ever down the ringing grooves of change."

Mike meets Derek on the street, gets schooled.
(quote by Tennyson)

John F. Kennedy at NASA, 1962

alt tile: CONCENTRATION

It was only a matter of time

Digital computer tattoo interface.

benjamins

How the $170 billion tax rebate plan will affect you.

Lord, what fools these mortals be.. - Shakespeare

This is by far the world's most dangerous swimming pool.

bird's eye view

Amazing (and amazingly huge) photo of San Francisco on May 28, 1906 after a massive earthquake destroyed the city.

behold the architecture of gullibility

In case you've been wondering what all this scientology nonsense is about, you may be interested in this Gradation and Awareness Chart of Scientology Levels and Certificates.

happy Darwintine's day

ahahaha

not really so different after all

quotememe of the day

"Without music, life would be a mistake." -- Friedrich Nietzsche

"Without life, music would be a mistake." -- me

"Without mistakes, a life would be music." -- This Guy

concepts of the day

Clarke's three laws:

1. When a distinguished but elderly scientist states that something is possible, he is almost certainly right. When he states that something is impossible, he is very probably wrong.
2. The only way of discovering the limits of the possible is to venture a little way past them into the impossible.
3. Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.

not a bad lineup this year

wait... Metallica?

all of it

This is London. And this is Paris at Night.

quote of the day

"Men occasionally stumble over the truth, but most of them pick themselves up and hurry off as if nothing ever happened."

-- Sir Winston Churchill

cannonball!!

(so fake but so good)

in an ideal world

If banner ads were forced to be truthful. (warning: contains some indelicate language)

mwuaha ha ha, mwuaha ha ha ha

Stupid plot tricks.

If I Ever Become the Evil Overlord

Section A: The Bad Guy

1. My Legions of Terror will have helmets with clear plexiglass visors, not face-concealing ones.

2. My ventilation ducts will be too small to crawl through.

3. My noble half-brother whose throne I usurped will be killed, not kept anonymously imprisoned in a forgotten cell of my dungeon.

4. Shooting is not too good for my enemies.

5. The artifact which is the source of my power will not be kept on the Mountain of Despair beyond the River of Fire guarded by the Dragons of Eternity. It will be in my safe-deposit box. The same applies to the object which is my one weakness.

6. I will not gloat over my enemies' predicament before killing them.

7. When I've captured my adversary and he says, "Look, before you kill me, will you at least tell me what this is about?" I'll say, "No." and shoot him. No, on second thought I'll shoot him then say "No."

8. After I kidnap the beautiful princess, we will be married immediately in a quiet civil ceremony, not a lavish spectacle in three weeks' time during which the final phase of my plan will be carried out.

...

not your typical watering hole

The H.R. Giger bar is too cool for this world.

childhood revisited

I must say, the new Star Wars: The Force Unleashed looks pretty interesting. Or it may be more silliness.

lines alive

pointlessly captivating.

"The stars, every 23 hours and 56 minutes...go around a stationary Earth."

Religious zealots say the darnedest things.

Rare shark spotted 3280 ft. below the surface

I love hearing scientists getting excited.

the children of Iraq

President Bush recently stated that a Republican must win the presidential election or the "peace and prosperity" of the nation are at stake. John McCain apparently intends to secure that peace and prosperity by staying in Iraq for a hundred years if necessary. The next generation of Iraqis may have a serious problem with this plan.

quote of the day

"Common sense and a sense of humor are the same thing, moving at different speeds. A sense of humor is just common sense, dancing."

-- William James

good morning

found here. I also like this:

light

This photographer understands it.

the plan

A recent article in Scientific American outlines a plan where the U.S., for about $10 billion a year for 40 years, can become energy independent and reduce its carbon emissions 62 percent with solar power as its prime source. You may be thinking, $400 billion? Turns out that's what we've spent in Iraq already.

This is may be your world

This image may appear to be a simple spirograph, but according to a recent paper written by this surfer it may provide a critical clue to understanding the structure of the universe. The eight-dimensional 248-point pattern, first discovered in 1887, is called simply "E8" and it is embedded in many principles of physics.

quote of the day

"Every word she writes is a lie, including 'and' and 'the'."

  -- author Mary McCarthy, speaking of playwright Lillian Hellman

Is your cartography radical?

I didn't think so.

Thoreau's Journal: Jan. 24, 1856

On this day of democracy, it is good and well to remember the trees.

"I have seen many a collection of stately elms which better deserved to be represented at the General Court than the manikins beneath,—than the barroom and victualling cellar and groceries they overshadowed. When I see their magnificent domes, miles away in the horizon, over intervening valleys and forests, they suggest a village, a community, there. But, after all, it is a secondary consideration whether there are human dwellings beneath them; these may have long since passed away. I find that into my idea of the village has entered more of the elm than of the human being. They are worth many a political borough. They constitute a borough. The poor human representative of his party sent out from beneath their shade will not suggest a tithe of the dignity, the true nobleness and comprehensiveness of the view, the sturdiness and independence, and the serene beneficence that they do. They look from township to township. A fragment of their bark is worth the backs of all the politicians in the union. They are free-soilers in their own broad sense. They send their roots north and south and east into many a conservative’s Kansas and Carolina, who does not suspect such underground railroads,—they improve the subsoil he has never disturbed,—and many times their length, if the support of their principles requires it. They battle with the tempests of a century. See what scars they bear, what limbs they lost before we were born! Yet they never adjourn; they steadily vote for their principles, and send their roots further and wider from the same centre. They die at their posts, and they leave a tough butt for the choppers to exercise themselves about, and a stump which serves for their monument. They attend no caucus, they make no compromise, they use no policy. Their one principle is growth. They combine a true radicalism with a true conservatism. Their radicalism is not cutting away of roots, but an infinite multiplication and extension of them under all surrounding institutions. They take a firmer hold on the earth that they may rise higher into the heavens. Their conservative heartwood, in which no sap longer flows, does not impoverish their growth, but is a firm column to support it; and when their expanding trunks no longer require it, it utterly decays. Their conservatism is a dead but solid heart-wood, which is the pivot and firm column of support to all this growth, appropriating nothing to itself, but forever by its support assisting to extend the area of their radicalism. Half a century after they are dead at the core, they are preserved by radical reforms. They do not, like men, from radicals turn conservative. Their conservative part dies out first; their radical and growing part survives. They acquire new States and Territories, while the old dominions decay, and become the habitation of bears and owls and coons."

Speaking of: Thoreau Inspires High School in the Woods

I had no idea so many people speak Gujarathi

This language map provided by the Modern Language Society is fascinating.

"This site is real."

Oh, the Flat Earth Society is always so amusing.

animator v. animation

The animator always wins.

yes

This message is fully endorsed by the proprietors of this blog. As is this one.

waterfill

It was with increasing horror and dread that I read about the Great Pacific Garbage Patch last night. A massive eddy in the Pacific Ocean known as the North Pacific Gyre sits there drawing material into itself. The result is an immense accumulation of trash and debris. There's no official measurement of the cloud of filth, but by some estimates it could be twice the size of Texas. Oh dear.

no, really. oh dear.

on that note, I present the poem of the day:

Turning and turning in the widening gyre
The falcon cannot hear the falconer;
Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,
The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere
The ceremony of innocence is drowned;
The best lack all conviction, while the worst
Are full of passionate intensity.

Surely some revelation is at hand;
Surely the Second Coming is at hand.
The Second Coming! Hardly are those words out
When a vast image out of Spiritus Mundi
Troubles my sight: somewhere in sands of the desert
A shape with lion body and the head of a man,
A gaze blank and pitiless as the sun,
Is moving its slow thighs, while all about it
Reel shadows of the indignant desert birds.
The darkness drops again; but now I know
That twenty centuries of stony sleep
Were vexed to nightmare by a rocking cradle,
And what rough beast, its hour come round at last,
Slouches towards Bethlehem to be born?

-- WB Yeats, The Second Coming

Republicans for Obama

Hi. I'm McDowell Crook and I fully endorse this message.

quote of the day

"Most of the big shore places were closed now and there were hardly any lights except the shadowy, moving glow of a ferryboat across the Sound. And as the moon rose higher the inessential houses began to melt away until gradually I became aware of the old island here that flowered once for Dutch sailors' eyes - a fresh, green breast of the new world. Its vanished trees, the trees that had made way for Gatsby's house, had once pandered in whispers to the last and greatest of all human dreams; for a transitory enchanted moment man must have held his breath in the presence of this continent, compelled into an aesthetic contemplation he neither understood nor desired, face to face for the last time in history with something commensurate to his capacity for wonder."

-- F. Scott Fitzgerald, The Great Gatsby

yes, yes it does.

alas, poor Yollick

100,000 year old skull found in China.

that is indeed one fly geyser

Check out this photograph.

steady

John Tracy has posted at his most excellent blog a great link from Instructables. It's a simple, easy tripod for your camera made of a screw and a piece of string. It's not perfect, but what a cool idea. I've long wanted to get one of these hiking pole tripods, but I think the string would work better. Or at least be easier to take on vacation.

$1 Image Stabilizer For Any Camera - Lose The Tripod - The funniest movie is here. Find it

thanks dave

Dave Campbell has alerted me to an item that actually made my stomach turn when I saw it. The cheeseburger in a can. It's lunchtime right now, but I'm no longer hungry.

Update: this guy bought one and ate it. He said it wasn't all that bad, actually!

for Shel Silverstein

figures

Ever since reading Freakonomics a few months ago I have been variously interested in economics and incentive structures. I was an English major, however, so these topics are still very arcane and obscure to me. That's why articles like Ten Recurring Economic Fallacies, 1774–2004 are so great.

for tight spots

Club Littlegun is my favorite new website. Learn about odd little guns like the mysterious handcannon:

and the subtle ring pistol: