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: