Friday, October 31, 2008

Arrested Developement

Watched the first two seasons over the last week or so, wow are they great.

There is going to be a movie?



Or not?

I'm figuring a couple of years could impact Cera's suitability for the role quite a bit.

Halloween Helicopter Drop

Happy Halloween. It's Helicopter Friday and what better helicopter footage than throwing candy from a helicopter to 1,200 ghosts and goblins!

A Flickr set here:

Gun Voting Guide

via Instapundit this over at NRO.

Halloween Science

Some neat stuff over at SciAm.

Thursday, October 30, 2008

Happy Halloween

Still no explanation:


NYTimes

fails to recognize the Flying Spaghetti Monster, the rest of the Reason post is amusing as well.

Your Keys are not Secure

Really. Your house keys etc. using a photo taken from up to 200 feet away according to this...

Also someone may want to tell Adam that there were two Georges playing in that opening chord to "A Hard Days Night", it seems.

That Al freak looks to be lookin' ill on Adams strengths, but I'm not linking.

Adam will take the high road no doubt. He is probably composing an obit for the Dead's Hal Kant.

Say What You Want

about Alfred. He is a genuinely passionate and thorough resource on Obama, and everyone should peruse his clearinghouse of material (minus anything NSFW) before voting for that cult leader.

Bar Car

It is alive and well.

Director Blue

has some lowdown on the L.A. times tape?

via Transterrestrial Musings

The Director also links to this lovely Li'l Obama cartoon!

It's Almost November




The summer seems like a dream from long ago...

Lady Justice is Blind

Lady government in Mass. is stuffing her bra.

That's Mass. for ya.

Bigfoot

(bumped up top till it's done)

So I was listening to George Noory last night and he mentioned that his friend related a Bigfoot encounter recently and I thought it was rather compelling and may even be quite the trenchant allegory or metaphor.

It seems this gentleman is a duck hunter and was walking along a trail...I don't know where but these Bigfootses things are pretty much all over from the Skunk Ape of the south to anywhere you can think of...so, let's say...Central Park. They definitely have ducks, I've seen them, and these Sasquatch beasts are everywhere, Jay can comment, they certainly must be down there in large numbers also...

So, anyway...

Crap.

Have to get to something, will come back and finish with an update.

Update: As I was saying this individual had been duck hunting and so he had two ducks with him while walking on this trail. I'm not sure what type of ducks, George didn't say. They could have maybe been mallards? I'm pretty sure I've seen them down in Central Park. They definitely were not Baer's Pochards, who aren't doing so well these days, last I heard...

Well, like I said, I really don't know where this fellow was when this occurred, so I suppose I shouldn't entirely rule out even the Laysan teal, though it would have been exceedingly misguided to have been out tramping around Laysan teal hunting, considering their tenuous hold at the moment...

Rats damitall...I'll finish this in another update...

Update: Now...where was I...Oh yes, Laysan teals..Let's just say that whatever ducks the man was bagging...Actually, that's a point also, actually THE point of the story really, that the man had two ducks when he met the Bigfoot. I'm not sure you should exactly say "met" really, but he had two ducks at the time and nothing says he couldn't have bagged two of different species or subspecies, say one a merganser...Those "sweetest..sawbills!" boy can they hold their breath...and the other a long tail, they can dive 200 feet...or a common merganser and a red breasted merganser. On the other hand, they taste fishy, no? I believe that quality is called terrior and the term has moved past wine, I've heard it used for turtles as well...

At any rate this individual had two ducks with him at the time he is walking down this trail when the Bigfoot steps out, right in front of him and they look at one another. I can't even imagine, what can you say? So this sasquatch, I don't know if it was a lady or a male, I'd have to listen again, I think George used the term "he" when relating the anecdote, but from this cooler episode in the link I'd not be surprised based on behavior if it was on the Venus end of the population...or maybe not, the episodes are actually distinctly different and may suggest quite a bit perhaps...or not, again, which is why it may be a good allegory or metaphor but I don't want to stray into anything controversial with today's PC climate as we all know. Hell, that aspect isn't even on the radar for the allegory at all to begin with for that matter...

Crap...I will have to finish this in an update...Maybe I should bump it to the top of the page for now...

Wednesday, October 29, 2008

Judge Rules in Ohio

that individuals be allowed to register to vote using park benches and other non-addresses.

"A federal judge in Ohio has ruled that counties must allow homeless voters to list park benches and other locations that aren't buildings as their addresses.

U.S. District Judge Edmund Sargus also ruled that provisional ballots can't be invalidated because of poll worker errors."--this again involving, go figure, Jennifer Brunner, this link leads to her shameless "pay no attention to the man behind the curtain" defense on previous matters.

She should be very concerned over these matters, but she's obviously looking at one hell of an appointment and once Obama's in he can appoint an A.G. to make it all go away with the shameless complicity of the press.

So it's official. I can not shower for a few days and then sign up in as many places as I like with as many identities as I care to make up and vote however many times.

Tar. Feathers.

I suppose, if you really believe that the constitution is flawed for any number of reasons among which being that it limited the governments intrusions (going right for the Rush link on that one;) ) into your life and liberty but did not delineate what the government owes you then the ends justify the means, sooo many people will be changed and filled with hope in the long run.

Park bench link via Boortz

Obama Supporters

(Update: Many Obama supporters frequent this site, in fact I wouldn't doubt that the man himself, BarryHu, is a regular here. I do hope sanity prevails at long last!)

must at least admit that it is an enormous and corrupt organization, knowingly violating federal law if any of the information out there is remotely accurate.

(God knows how Clinton's stewardship of the Lincoln bedroom will be made to look like a prolonged episode of saintly restraint. Politico link via Insty as well)

Rationalize it as being for some supposed greater good perhaps, but it's undeniably corrupt, no?

http://johnbatchelorshow.com/jb/2008/10/what-is-rezko-talking-about/#comments

From Boortz:

"Finally, someone ELSE is talking about his first book.

Now ... first of all. You need to understand that what I'll be talking about in this segment is totally and completely off limits. You're going to read some notes about Barack Obama's past statements and associations .. negative statements and negative associations. You will not read about these associations in the mainstream media. That would be because the mainstream media � and by that I mean the Beltway and New York City media � are totally and completely dedication to the election of Barack Obama as our next president. For the reporters and editors that comprise what used to be our most trusted source for news all pretentions of objectivity have been out the window. The new standards for reporting a news story are who, what, when, where, how and will it hurt Barack Obama. If the story can hurt Obama, and if it can be quietly killed, so it shall be.

Question for you, dear listener. If someone could come up with something that John McCain wrote a book or an article about 20 years ago in which he detailed his attraction to members of the Ku Klux Klan during his college years? Do you think for a minute that this would not be at the top of the front page of every newspaper in the country? Not to mention leading every television newscast.

But what if we have a candidate writing about his attraction to Marxism during his college years? News? Well, if that person is going to be on the presidential ballot on election day, you would think it would be news. Well .. that person IS on the ballot on election day, and it is most certainly NOT news.

Now I've been telling you this for months. But who am I? Just a radio talk show host without a television show. But I read Barack Obama's "Dreams From my Father" several months ago ... and there they were; Barack's expressions of affection for his Marxist and socialist friends and mentor of his college days and before.

Finally, it's becoming news. Well .. news to some outlets like the one liberals just love to hate, Fox News. Here's your link to a story appearing yesterday on FoxNews.com. The title is "Obama Affinity to Marxists Dates Back to College Days."

"To avoid being mistaken for a sellout, I chose my friends carefully," the Democratic presidential candidate wrote in his memoir, "Dreams From My Father." "The more politically active black students. The foreign students. The Chicanos. The Marxist professors and structural feminists." These are the friends that Obama says he "chose carefully." That's carefully?

Obama's interest in leftist politics continued after he transferred to Columbia University in New York. He lived on Manhattan's Upper East Side, venturing to the East Village for what he called "the socialist conferences I sometimes attended at Cooper Union."

"At the entrance to the auditorium, two women, one black, one Asian, were selling Marxist literature."

"Sometimes attended" socialist conferences? Oh... and by the way, they were selling Marxist stuff at the entrance. Oh, and another thing, one of my mentors, Frank Marshall Davis, was a Communist. But hey ... I'm clean.

Question to Obama, if you were so careful with your friends in college, why wouldn't you continue to use the same level of judgment when choosing your friends to help you get elected ... i.e. Bill Ayers? Hey, maybe you chose him, and Jeremiah Write just as carefully, right?"

BigFoot

So I was listening to George Noory last night and he mentioned that his friend related a Bigfoot encounter recently and I thought it was rather compelling and may even be quite the trenchant allegory or metaphor.

It seems this gentleman is a duck hunter and was walking along a trail...I don't know where but these Bigfootses things are pretty much all over from the Skunk Ape of the south to anywhere you can think of...so, let's say...Central Park. They definitely have ducks, I've seen them, and these Sasquatch beasts are everywhere, Jay can comment, they certainly must be down there in large numbers also...

So, anyway...

Crap.

Have to get to something, will come back and finish with an update.

Update: As I was saying this individual had been duck hunting and so he had two ducks with him while walking on this trail. I'm not sure what type of ducks, George didn't say. They could have maybe been mallards? I'm pretty sure I've seen them down in Central Park. They definitely were not Baer's Pochards, who aren't doing so well these days, last I heard...

Well, like I said, I really don't know where this fellow was when this occurred, so I suppose I shouldn't entirely rule out even the Laysan teal, though it would have been exceedingly misguided to have been out tramping around Laysan teal hunting, considering their tenuous hold at the moment...

Rats damitall...I'll finish this in another update...

Update: Now...where was I...Oh yes, Laysan teals..Let's just say that whatever ducks the man was bagging...Actually, that's a point also, actually THE point of the story really, that the man had two ducks when he met the Bigfoot. I'm not sure you should exactly say "met" really, but he had two ducks at the time and nothing says he couldn't have bagged two of different species or subspecies, say one a merganser...Those "sweetest..sawbills!" boy can they hold their breath...and the other a long tail, they can dive 200 feet...or a common merganser and a red breasted merganser. On the other hand, they taste fishy, no? I believe that quality is called terrior and the term has moved past wine, I've heard it used for turtles as well...

At any rate this individual had two ducks with him at the time he is walking down this trail when the Bigfoot steps out, right in front of him and they look at one another. I can't even imagine, what can you say? So this sasquatch, I don't know if it was a lady or a male, I'd have to listen again, I think George used the term "he" when relating the anecdote, but from this cooler episode in the link I'd not be surprised based on behavior if it was on the Venus end of the population...or maybe not, the episodes are actually distinctly different and may suggest quite a bit perhaps...or not which is why it may be a good allegory or metaphor but I don't want to stray into anything controversial with today's PC climate as we all know. Hell, that aspect isn't even on the radar for the allegory at all to begin with for that matter...

Crap...I will have to finish this in an update...Maybe I should bump it to the top of the page for now...

Monday, October 27, 2008

Sunday, October 26, 2008

Dead

water.

This one's a sad one.

Much to check out over at neatorama.

Dear God

A public square in France turned up strewn with dead Panda bears.

Heart breaking, but there it is in black and white as it were:



I have been meaning to read this book about Ruth McCombs Harkness for a while. Funny that the panda was as crazy a notion as the chupa cabra, the Loch Ness monster and Sasquatch once.

Oh, and the reptilians and the list goes on...

We will be vindicated. I'm pretty sure that's the deal with those pandas.

Being a Liberal

is all about deciding what is best for others and passing laws to control others.

They never intend for these policies to hamper themselves personally.

Jimmy has an excellent post on Sarbanes-Oxley and the Obama campaign.

Saturday, October 25, 2008

More Ayers

Too much politics...las pol link for a spell.

McCain



"How out of f#cking out of touch are you in the media? The guy is in a god damned POW camp, all shot up in the 1960's and he dares to have a cigarette?!"


It would seem that others have become agitated over the media's posture as well, that via the great Canadian site Small Dead Animals.

Someone at work mentioned the anecdote about McCain calling his wife a foul term and "why didn't that get more attention?"

I responded with something in the manner of "That is disturbing. You mean the Naval carrier pilot and war vet who spent 5 and a half years having his ass kicked and ended up permanently maimed in a Vietnamese POW camp can speak up a blue streak? That is not just disturbing, but quite a surprise."

My delivery was unappreciated.

I have profound disagreements with McCain policy but sheesh...

Friendly Security Guards?

Who wouldn't make an effort to clarify matters for the poor confused souls?

China%20prostitute.jpg

Not Surprised

Instapundit links to a confession of sorts:

"But worst of all, for the last couple weeks, I’ve begun — for the first time in my adult life — to be embarrassed to admit what I do for a living. A few days ago, when asked by a new acquaintance what I did for a living, I replied that I was “a writer”, because I couldn’t bring myself to admit to a stranger that I’m a journalist."

It seemed obvious to me. Notice that the individual expresses embarrassment, which is indeed suitable, but not fear. They'll drive the bus over that cliff and then blame ignorant backwards Americans when they do...

God I wish I had some manner of Editor detecting spectacles to wear on the train...Mr. Malone is, however, wrong to suggest that the current landscape is all that new...

Friday, October 24, 2008

Instapundit

has this quote:

"So let’s get this straight: we are going to see more than $4 trillion in new spending, have a big tax increase, and defund our military — while certain to face international challenges where 'it’s not gonna be apparent that we’re right.' And this is what Democrats are saying?"

Let me point out that even those that want something for nothing or for the U.S. to be substantially if not entirely weakened on the world stage are expressing a global and human patriotism...so don't criticize them or in any way threaten their ascendancy, or you're a bigot and part of the problem.

And never question their efficiency, or aspirations to efficiency, for the reasons stated above.

Also, well just read Gatewaypundit.

Anyone who pretends they did not know he was corrupt and owed favors when they pulled the lever has little to back up the claim.

"Glenn:

It's the exact opposite of 'buying' the White House, and it's far worse. It's "selling" the White House, mortgaging it to a crazy quilt of private greed and power-grabbing. Obama is accumulating a long list of undisclosed debts to interest groups and indivduals, that he is supposed to pay off with government money and regulatory manipulation once in power. These debts are concealed from the public, and for good reason -- the public's benefit is not the purpose of these future reckonings. McCain has foresworn going into the White House with a secret agenda -- Obama may win BECAUSE he has such a secret agenda. If McCain's campaign does not make this point in ads on the TV channels hosting Obama's half-hour pre-election special, before and after that half-hour, it's another reason he deserves to lose. That the mainstream media declines to point this out on their own air time is -- well, to be expected.

Glenn, please don't use my name, only (if you can) identify me as a major news media employee whose company is facing major budget cuts, who doesn't want to give grounds for being one item on the budget cut list."

Gingerman

The Gingerman restaurant has wifi. That's nice, to have so many choices while reading the news. I'm having a Bluepoint cask conditioned ale.

Go and check out Jimmy's Beer lab, I hear he is making a special trip in the a.m.

Update: Shhhh...I'm pretending I have money. I just lucked out and got half of a glass of Allagash Interlude for free 'cause the keg kicked. (Attention, or just to rub it in, that means "on draft!" Yipee!) It is delicious, and ten dollars a glass...

Captain Lawrence Gingerman ale.

Ayer's "Prairie Fire"

This is a must over at Zombietime regarding Ayer's book.

Post at The Corner

I liked this post at National Review's The Corner and so I am going to copy and paste the thing with it's link below.

"Patriotism for Kids [Lisa Schiffren]

Even though I kind of hate it when writers and politicians use their children's cute little utterances to illustrate points — I am going to do it here. James Gimpel gives a data-backed defense of Sarah Palin's comments about some places and people being more patriotic than others, here. He writes,

Also, rural areas are more Republican, and the University of Michigan survey shows a significant partisan difference in patriotism. Democrats are considerably less likely to express strong love of country than Republicans are, and less likely to think being an American is important. Of those who claimed to be “Strong Democrats,” only around half expressed extremely strong love of country, compared to three-fourths of the “Strong Republicans.” A sizable share of (but by no means all) committed Democrats are apparently embarrassed about their country and about being American.

So, last weekend, in a beautiful town in rural Vermont, my 10 year old, Sarah, looked at a purple painted house festooned with peace signs, and said — "Look. Obama voters." We had seen plenty of Obama lawn signs — and an equal number of McCain ones as it happens — but this house didn't have one. "How do you know they're Obama voters," I asked. (Not that I doubted it. I just wanted to understand how she made the connection.) She rolled her baby blues at me and said, "Mom. A peace sign. What do you think?" So I asked, "What sign would tell you that people are McCain voters?" Sarah and her 9 year old sister simultaneously and without hesitating said, "An American flag."

I have, in fact, refused to buy them clothing or accessories with peace signs on them — which are popular at the moment. I have explained many times that peace is good, but the peace sign is about walking away from a job we need to finish. Mostly they roll their eyes at the lecture added to the "no." I try not to discuss support for the war in terms of parties.

I'm glad someone at the University of Michigan went to the trouble of quantifying these fundamentally self-evident associations. It is both sad and a little amusing that, the minute anyone (Palin, that is) uttered an unfiltered comment expressing the same observation, she was slapped down, and had to apologize. I wonder if the speech police will soon require parents to explain to their children that, while one side in the culture war is always criticizing their country's actions, its essential nature and its "meanness," that does not in any way mean that that side loves its country any less than the side where people say they love their country and leave it at that. And if you tell your kid that, and she accepts it, wouldn't you worry that she wasn't very bright?

Zombies

Stanford University considers the matter:

"7. Conclusion

There is not always a meeting of minds in this debate. Some physicalists believe the zombie idea and its relatives exert an irrational grip on anti-physicalist thinking, so that

… it is tempting to regard anti-physicalist arguments as rationalizations of an intuition whose independent force masks their tendentiousness (Loar 1997, 598).

Correspondingly, some anti-physicalists believe their opponents’ commitment results in turning a blind eye to the difficulties:

Some may be led to deny the possibility [of zombies] in order to make some theory come out right, but the justification of such theories should ride on the question of possibility, rather than the other way round (Chalmers 1996, 96).

Regardless of whether those pessimistic readings of the debate are correct, and of whether the zombie idea itself is sound or incoherent, it continues to stimulate fruitful work on consciousness, physicalism, phenomenal concepts, and the relations between imaginability, conceivability, and possibility."



I'll just boil that down for everyone:

It means they are real!

So there.

More here and here. Oh, and here. Oh, and here.

Maybe It's a Helicopter

It's helicopter Friday.

This trip was cut short, that from a page with much material, the Alexis Park Inn.

This ship incident goes quite badly.

It would have been cheaper and easier for all involved if these boaters had just used Seatow:



Maybe it would work with cars though:

This

funny cartoon has been making the rounds...

image

Boortz links to that cartoon and also this Tancredo piece on what seems to be a despicable referendum gambit in Arizona.

More Animal

Talent.

surfing mouse

Thursday, October 23, 2008

I'm Suing

Scotch tape emits x-rays when peeled.

A lot of x-rays.

There must be an x-ray vision secretary joke buried in there somewhere.

Snowball the Dancing Bird

This freak is definitely dancing. Well enough to intrigue scientists.

Wednesday, October 22, 2008

Legacy Media

Hmmmm.....

that via instapundit today

Hmmmm
.....

Hmmmm....

losing wifi...hmmm...

This is a sad work in progress, feel free to add your own nugget. I am losing my connection for the moment..

Zimbabwe

here is an article via opfor.

This Is Zimbabwe blog.

and another http://zimpundit.blogspot.com/

and some here.

Make Your Dog Famous

submit a photo to National Geographic!

Seawayblog

As usual Seawayblog has too much neat stuff to link to individually, just make it a regular stop.

There are far too many nice photos to even snip one, and the penguins are traveling far afield.

Penguins have somehow been previously mentioned. As have animals far from home.

I'm out on a limb here but I like animals.

penguins in brazil
AFP/Getty Images

Tuesday, October 21, 2008

Ayers

and the Weather Underground. You know, the group that discussed killing 25 million Americans?

Obama and Ayers worked in this building for several years (on the same floor) but didn't know one another...


Obama

Just lost a couple of votes.

They were probably "canvasing" and were misunderstood.

20,000

visit shortly. I still need to get Jay's prizes to him for the page view celebration.

VISITS

Total19,987
Average Per Day62
Average Visit Length3:11
Last Hour5
Today25
This Week431

PAGE VIEWS

Total53,217
Average Per Day132
Average Per Visit2.1
Last Hour6
Today42
This Week922

Obama and Biden

are already begging support for failure in a crisis.

Should I suspect his ham-fisted foreshadow is a result of this?

I can understand not voting this time, but voting for those clowns is downright dangerous.

Monday, October 20, 2008

Playing the Banjo

while you're having open brain surgery...creepy enough for this set of Halloween posts. via Althouse:

Just 'cause


I like the geometry.

Yacht Club


Jack-O-Lantern.

To think it started with Satan misjudging his competition and a turnip.

"The Legend of Stingy Jack

Legend has it, that there was a farmer, Stingy Jack, who had a reputation of being a drunk and a gambler, that played a trick on the devil.

One night, he was at his usual haunt, the alehouse, but had run out of money to buy any more booze. He persuaded the devil to turn himself into a sixpence so he could buy one last drink.

However, once the devil changed himself into a coin. Rather than paying for his drink with this coin, Stingy Jack put the sixpence (remember this is the devil in disguise) into his pocket.

Also in his pocket was a silver cross. This silver cross prevented the devil being able to change back from the coin to himself. Of course the devil was not happy.

Eventually Stingy Jack and the devil struck a deal. Jack would remove the cross so the devil could change back only if he promised to leave Jack alone for one year, and that when he died Satan would not claim Jack's soul.

After a year the devil came back to bother Jack. This time Jack tricked the devil into climbing an apple tree to collect the largest apple, where Jack trapped him by carving a cross on the tree bark.

They struck another deal, this time Jack would let the devil go if he promised not to bother him for 10 years.

Of course, when he eventually died, Heaven did not want him because he was such a bad character, but he could not go to hell either as the devil, true to his word, would not claim his soul.

The devil sent him away with a piece of burning coal, that Jack placed in a carved out turnip.

With the turnip as a lamp he roamed the earth for the rest of eternity. He was referred to as Jack of the Lantern, eventually Jack O' Lantern."

I assert that what I was lazy enough to copy and paste above is 1000 percent true in the literal sense and, furthermore, because the above photo is from a fancy schmancy yacht club (as is clearly evident in the accomodations,) in the littoral sense as well. Also, while I do not advocate laziness, I always root against the debil

(seen here:


) er, sorry about that. I meant the Devil, so good for Jack!

A Couple of Moon Shots







for Halloween, they are all similar yet different. On one 'puter screen some look better, etc., so here they are, I hope one looks nice on whatever spooky device you use.

Update: I had finished that post with a colon but then saw that they preceded the text. "Mess" is in the banner for a reason. The ISO on my camera is 800, so I am surprised I had something nice, but I did work at it with a tripod and limited patience. They could not convey how gorgeous that evening with the wind and clarity and swift clouds last week had been, but I printed one up and sent it to PJ who has been bronc' busting and tearin' it up all over for the harvest season!

Dave K.


Sent over this fine photo of a Dominican Walmart. Actually I asked for it. Several other of his photos don't seem to have made the journey so I will ask him to re-send them. I am wearing a fantastic shirt he brought back, thank you sir!

His phone takes a much better photo than mine does, I am quite impressed. Especially as it is almost the same phone type, I must check the settings on mine.

Looking

for Jan Michael-Vincent.

It doesn't sound like he's living "...on his ranch..."

Boston.com

has had a couple of very interesting photo galleries.

One of the sun and one of North Korea. via LGF and Haha respectively.


17


30

Haha also links to stunning images of Scotland by Steve Carter

Rannoch Moor


@ haha.nu

haha also links to the famous San Fransisco image from after the earthquake which is quite detailed.

Apod has this image of a solar eclipse taken in Mongolia. via American Digest:

See Explanation.  Clicking on the picture will download  the highest resolution version available.
A Darkened Sky
(Brno University of Technology), Peter Aniol, Vojtech Rusin



Nice Snack

That Michelle, bless her heart.

Go and read Atlas Shrugs, there is too much to link.

Hotheaded Naked Ice Borers

That's bizaare, I had never heard of this species. I am pasting the entire text from a 1995 issue of discover magazine:

'April Pazzo was about to call it a day when she noticed that the penquins she was observing seemed strangely agitated. Pazzo, a wildlife biologist, was in Antarctica studying penguins at a remote, poorly explored area along the coast of the Ross Sea. “I was getting ready to release a penguin I had tagged when I heard a lot of squawking,” says Pazzo. “When I looked up, the whole flock had sort of stampeded. They were waddling away faster than I’d ever seen them move.”

Pazzo waded through the panicked birds to find out what was wrong. She found one penguin that hadn’t fled. “It was sinking into the ice as if into quicksand,” she says. Somehow the ice beneath the bird had melted; the penguin was waist deep in slush. Pazzo tried to help the struggling penguin. She grabbed its wings and pulled. With a heave she freed the bird. But the penguin wasn’t the only thing she hauled from the slush. About a dozen small, hairless pink molelike creatures had clamped their jaws onto the penguin’s lower body. Pazzo managed to capture one of the creatures—the others quickly released their grip and vanished into the slush.

Over the next few months Pazzo caught several of the animals and watched others in the wild. She calls the strange new species hotheaded naked ice borers. “They’re repulsive,” says Pazzo. Adults are about six inches long, weigh a few ounces, have a very high metabolic rate—their body temperature is 110 degrees—and live in labyrinthine tunnels carved in the ice.

Perhaps their most fascinating feature is a bony plate on their forehead. Innumerable blood vessels line the skin covering the plate. The animals radiate tremendous amounts of body heat through their “hot plates,” which they use to melt their tunnels in ice and to hunt their favorite prey: penguins.

A pack of ice borers will cluster under a penguin and melt the ice and snow it’s standing on. When the hapless bird sinks into the slush, the ice borers attack, dispatching it with bites of their sharp incisors. They then carve it up and carry its flesh back to their burrows, leaving behind only webbed feet, a beak, and some feathers. “They travel through the ice at surprisingly high speeds,” says Pazzo, “much faster than a penguin can waddle.”

Pazzo’s discovery may also help solve a long-standing Antarctic mystery: What happened to the heroic polar explorer Phillipe Poisson, who disappeared in Antarctica without a trace in 1837? “I wouldn’t rule out the possibility that a big pack of ice borers got him,” says Pazzo. “I’ve seen what these things do to emporer penguins—it isn’t pretty—and emporers can be as much as four feet tall. Poisson was about 5 foot 6. To the ice borers, he would have looked like a big penguin.'

Friday, October 17, 2008

Who

has the photos or video of David Brooks?

He now writes columns that fit perfectly into the NYTimes and look as if they were written by the man in the photo which is no compliment.

"When Bob Schieffer asked him tough questions during the debate Wednesday night..."

ugh

WSJ

with some unpleasant thoughts on the coming election. They leave out the disgrace we will see regarding illegal immigration and I'm sure we could all add a few bits and pieces here and there.

Whoa

last second correction for this individual on helicopter Friday.



Here is a fancy landing:



and a spinning ascent:

Helicopter Friday

This video of a helicopter exploding is particularly disturbing. I would not invest my time in watching it through...

Read Orwell's

Diary posts a day at a time from 70 years ago.

Cool

Solar prominence photo:

See Explanation.  Clicking on the picture will download  the highest resolution version available.

Last Titanic Survivor

selling off mementos to pay for nursing costs. Sad.

RAF

pilot recovers body of co-pilot in this interesting article.

via In From The Cold

Obama

and extremist Islam in Kenya.

Also at Atlas Shrugs is this information on the bias of Campbell Brown. Our political and media classes...what to say?

Thursday, October 16, 2008

Links

I am noticing links at the old site that I have never transferred.

Adam

Has always been an intensely rich resource in obscure musical matters as well as more popular ones and between upstate NY boy and downstate NY boy (the intensely, richly musical Jay) I have been quite fortunate and count my blessings.

Adam showed me
this Roy Harper song quite some time ago and I will link to Adam but also reprint it in Adam's entirety because I believe it is very important


"I'm sick to the teeth of the news on the screen
of hisbullah scum and jihad the obscene
whose men plant the bombs and then live feeling free
to watch women and children be killed on T.V.
which satan delivers a child a death curse
in the name of a worn out collection of verse
I've not read the book so I cannot recite
but I'd bet Salman Rushdie is just about right
underneath The Black Cloud Of Islam
What kind of publicity needs so much blood
that's not for some sad diabolical god
selling himself as a two-bit Macbeth
as the expert in sentencing cousins to death
and what kind of god can this be anyway
that you gotta prostrate to him five times a day
with hate in your heart and a gun in your hand
is force the only thing to understand
underneath the black cloud of islam?
and the butchers who've got all this blood on their hands
are the ones who need god to be stood where he stands
blessing this kidnapping, murder and war
with books written hundreds of ages before
and women in veils walking paces behind
doesn't sit easy in my kind of mind
it speaks of oppression and no other choice
that rigid compliance with the loudest voice
underneath the black cloud of islam
You can put a lead bullet clean through this guitar
'cos I'm not overjoyed with the story so far
sharing a world with the nutters of god
is as good as being six feet under the sod
words that are written are all here to stay
and these are the latest there are anyway
and I am the prophet so don't believe me
I'm the same as the old ones except that I'm free
to give you a piece of my mind which is this
you're the worst of jehovas blind witlessnesses
with your feet in the door of the deepest abyss
which is underneath, which is underneath, which is underneath
the black cloud of Islam"

FWIW: What I could find from the sites...I never cleaned up the "Messes"

The Press and the Anger

This comment by Instapundit sums it up well: "They've done more investigations into Joe the Plumber in 24 hours than they've done on Barack Obama in two years . . . ."

I found myself mentioning today that if I were a "journalist" who took the train into Manhattan for work everyday I might find myself really uncomfortable with the notion of people knowing my occupation. Not just reluctant to get into personal talk on the train, but fearful of everyone knowing "who I am."

They are indeed too stupid and arrogant to know what they have wrought, to the detriment of us all, frankly it scares me.

That

...is so damned true!

Although "used" on this item seems a little odd...(link perishable as well)

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