Doggedly searching for the crux of the biscuit.
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I'm on record as having a not-quite-rational hatred of cell phones. To be honest, I don't like any sort of phone, mobile or not, and avoid talking on one as much as I possibly can. But phones that ride around on your body like a noisy, blood-engorged tick give me a special case of the creeping jibblies. I don't have to justify it, people; just accept that I'm right. Anyhow, I have a borderline violent reaction to people driving with one of those little distraction machines held up to their noggins, mostly because they also tend to be sitting still at green lights, or failing to yield, or drifting into my lane, or what have you. I've been called a curmudgeon based on this, and I respond thusly:
People who talk on cell phones while driving, even using "hands-free" devices, are as impaired as drunk drivers, researchers said on Thursday. [...] The researchers used a driving simulation device for their study, published in the summer 2006 issue of Human Factors: The Journal of the Human Factors and Ergonomics Society.
They studied 40 volunteers who used a driving simulator four times—while undistracted, using a handheld cell phone, using a hands-free cell phone and while intoxicated to a 0.08 percent blood-alcohol level—the average legal level of impairment in the United States—after drinking vodka and orange juice.
Three study participants rear-ended the simulated car in front of them. All were talking on cellphones and none was drunk, the researchers said.
Ahem.
Best I can figure, it's an admission requirement for the conservative movement.
Justice Clarence Thomas refers to Justice John Paul Stevens' "unfamiliarity with the realities of warfare" in his dissenting opinion. ACSBlog notes: "Stevens served in the U.S. Navy from 1942 to 1945, during World War II. Thomas's official bio, by contrast, contains no experience of military service."
And one big, steaming cup of STFU for Justice Thomas. This one's on the house, Clarence.
Strangers with Candy is opening nationwide this week, and the TV show was one of my favorite things ever to be beamed across the airwaves. I was completely unaware, however, of the woman who inspired it all, Florrie Fisher. Tons of links to mp3s and videos of the original Jerri Blank are in this fantastic post. Spend a little time with it; you won't be disappointed.
Headline of the Day: Teen Who Cut Off Corpse's Head To Make Bong Sentenced
Do you realize how hard it would be to get a real skull sealed well enough to work as a bong? I'd call him admirably ambitious, but I suspect he just didn't think the logistics through very well. Sheesh, kids today...
Via Chewin in the Chung.
How do you know when a blog post is going to be totally worth your time? When it begins with the following sentence:
Oh, I just remembered — one time I made out with this retarded kid in church.Go on, then.
Go ahead, brush your teeth with cake frosting! Gargle with Mountain Dew! Play hockey! It's all good!
Canadian scientists said they have created the first device able to re-grow teeth and bones. The researchers at the University of Alberta in Edmonton filed patents earlier this month in the United States for the tool based on low-intensity pulsed ultrasound technology after testing it on a dozen dental patients in Canada.
"Right now, we plan to use it to fix fractured or diseased teeth, as well as asymmetric jawbones, but it may also help hockey players or children who had their tooth knocked out," Jie Chen, an engineering professor and nano-circuit design expert, told AFP.
Chen helped create the tiny ultrasound machine that gently massages gums and stimulates tooth growth from the root once inserted into a person's mouth, mounted on braces or a removable plastic crown. The wireless device, smaller than a pea, must be activated for 20 minutes each day for four months to stimulate growth, he said. It can also stimulate jawbone growth to fix a person's crooked smile and may eventually allow people to grow taller by stimulating bone growth, Chen said.
The images in this room are created entirely from mathematical algorithms. If you find them offensive in any way, all I can say is that beauty (or obscenity) is in this case most certainly in the eye of the beholder.
Via Miniver Cheevy.
Thrice-divorced, doctor-shopping drug addict Rush Limbaugh, who has made a career assailing the morals of liberals, gets stopped coming back from a solo trip to one of the world's biggest prostitution markets (and a leading provider of child prostitution) with a jar of Viagra that was prescribed in his doctor's name rather than his own. And then goes on the air and jokes about it.
He joked about the search on his radio show Tuesday, saying Customs officials didn't believe him when he said he got the pills at the Clinton Library and he was told they were blue M&Ms. He later added, chuckling: "I had a great time in the Dominican Republic. Wish I could tell you about it."
So tell me, what does it take to become a pariah in the conservative movement? Clearly, being the world's biggest hypocrite doesn't cut it.
You have to suffer for your art. Or somebody has to suffer, anyhow. (via Metafilter)
Be sure to catch the artist's monkey portraits as well. Good stuff.
Oh my. Pitchfork's 100 Awesome Music Videos, with YouTube links and everything.
"This is my last chance to touch you."
Clownæsthesiologist sent me a link to this eBay seller, who has a few used videotapes and some small antique tools. Wouldn't be notable in and of itself, except that every item is being modelled by Little Sea Biscuit, Super Model.
Rita, A.K.A., Little Sea Biscuit, Super Model is pictured here. In addition, for a winning bid in excess of $19.00 the winning bidder will also receive a vibrant professional 8X10 Color print of Little Sea Biscuit, Super Model with your item. She will pose, with your purchase. The print will be hand autographed by the Super Model, Little Sea Biscuit, "Created especially for (Your name or a name you request) Love, Little Sea Biscuit, Super Model". The collectable Art Photograph will be created by Dick DeMoulpied, Internationally Known Photographic Artist. This is a very exclusive collection within a collection, which can only add value!
The Super Model Club seems to have relaxed their admittance rules a bit.
Here's a graph of complete tooth loss by state, based on CDC and HHS data. West Virginia is the winner, but North Carolina turns in a decent showing at #8. The top 15 slots? All states that went for Bush. Hmmm. (via BiomesBlog)
Pluto's two small moons that were discovered last October have been given shiny new names to replace the pedestrian S/2005 P 2 and S/2005 P 1 monikers they've carried since the Halloween announcement.
Stern's team picked the names Nix and Hydra—both figures in Greek mythology—to reflect the underworld theme used in naming objects in the dim reaches of the outer solar system. [...] They settled on Nix and Hydra because their initials could stand for New Horizons, the space probe now heading for Pluto, the solar system's last unexplored planet. [...]
Nyx is the Greek goddess of darkness and the mother of the underworld ferryman Charon, which is the name of Pluto's largest moon. Hydra was a nine-headed monster that guarded the underworld. Its nine heads make it a particularly good companion for the ninth planet, Stern says.
Originally, the astronomers proposed "Nyx" as the name for the first moon, but the IAU rejected that spelling because it had already been used to name a small asteroid.
New Horizons, currently about halfway to Jupiter, is scheduled to arrive at Pluto in July 2015.
A little closer to home, Ciclops has released some swell animated clips of moons orbiting Saturn. I found them by way of Matt McIrvin, who notes that Cassini has so far spent most of its time on the night side of Saturn, looking at the rings more or less head-on, but:
Late in July, this phase of the tour is coming to an end and Cassini is going to start looping higher and higher out of the equatorial plane over the coming year, eventually ascending to a high enough latitude that there will be pictures of Saturn suspended in its rings like an oval bullseye. The purpose is to flip the orbit around so that the ellipses point outward on the day side again, and Cassini starts encountering Titan and other moons at a new sun angle. Once that's done, in the fall of 2007, there will be some more moon flybys including a close flyby of the bizarre moon Iapetus that should fill in the remaining blank space on the map [excellent link, btw -'r]. Then, in 2008, in the last phase of the primary mission, Cassini will spiral in closer to Saturn and tilt its orbit to an even higher inclination to get spectacular pictures of the rings.
Everything after that is gravy, a.k.a extended mission, and it's not planned yet. [...] And I see that the last flyby of Enceladus in 2008 has been tweaked so that Cassini gets within 23 km of the surface. That is awesome.
How awesome? This great picture of Enceladus was snapped from a distance of 119,000 km.
DefenseTech: "On Tuesday morning, a retired Catholic priest and two veterans put on clown suits, busted into a nuclear missile launch facility, and began beating the silo cover with hammers, in an attempt to take the Minuteman III missile off-line. Seriously."
A very young Stevie Wonder flat-out rippin' shit up on Sesame Street. Via b-wo.
Over at Unfogged, we were talking about personality disorders and I felt these two comments were worth highlighting.
Eventually, "being an asshole" will itself become a medical condition, which would be a good thing if there were only a treatment for it.
Scene from an Assholes Anonymous meeting.
"Hello, my name is Rob, and I am an asshole."
Rest of the room: "Fuck you, Rob."
Rob: "Fuck you, everyone. I'm unrepentant but I want to stop being an asshole so everyone will stop blaming me for their stupidity."
British graffiti artist/prankster Banksy painted this on the side of a sexual health clinic in Bristol.
The Bristol City Council is now soliciting feedback from citizens on whether to keep it or remove it.
Man with 10-year erection awarded $400,000
"He said he could no longer hug people, ride a bike, swim or wear bathing trunks because of the pain and embarrassment. He has become a recluse and is uncomfortable being around his grandchildren, his lawyer said."
Poor William Gay of Washington, NC. The retired pastor is so upset that homos have "stolen" the word "gay," that he submitted a motion at the recent Southern Baptist Convention (SBC) annual meeting to prevent his fellow pastors from using it (via Good As You):
Stop using the word "gay" when referring to homosexuals in sermons, publications and the media. The motion, presented by retired pastor William Gay of Washington, N.C., also asked other pastors to stop referring to homosexuals as "gay" in their sermons and publications.
Allan Blume, chairman of the convention's order-of-business committee rejected it, saying the motion was not in order — "it is beyond the scope of the convention's authority to direct churches to use a specific vocabulary."
No word yet on the fate of Rev. Anthony Postoptranny's similar motion, but I'll let you know as soon as I hear something.
I can't imagine the horror of losing a child, and people have the right to deal with their grief in whatever way brings them the greatest comfort, but this is kinda creepy.
AP: "The government agency charged with fighting identity theft said Thursday it had lost two government laptops containing sensitive personal data, the latest in a series of breaches encompassing millions of people."
I just received a spam email that begins: "Let's make our ejaculation like steel." Uh, no thanks. That sounds like it might be unpleasant for everybody involved.
[bumped back to the top of the page due to the update]
Less than a week after voting themselves a seventh straight cost of living pay increase, the GOP House scuttled an attempt to raise the minimum wage for the first time in a decade. Meanwhile, the GOP Senate killed a bill that would have created a committee to investigate and oversee the awarding of contracts in Iraq and Afghanistan, a process that is riddled with fraud and incompetence. They have raised the US debt ceiling four times in the past five years, and it now stands at roughly nine trillion dollars, of which nearly half a trillion can be attributed directly to occupying Middle Eastern countries. And, of course, the lobbying/bribery scandals just continue piling up, while the use of pork-delivering earmarks expands faster than ever.
Remember that $300 tax rebate Bush gave you back in 2001? How's that working out for you?
Update: A few facts by way of Farber.
For shame, Republicans. For shame.
It could have been a scene out of "The Omen" at Bayonne's St. Vincent de Paul Church on Sunday, when congregants making the sign of the cross saw their clothes stained where they had placed their fingers to their chests. But it wasn't the wrath of God - it was bleach in the holy water. [...] The Rev. James Manos, the church's pastor, said he didn't think it was a deliberate fouling of the holy water, but rather a worker had inadvertently left a mixture of bleach and water in the font after cleaning it.
Via Obscure Store.
Sending in the clowns can significantly increase the chances that fertility treatment will be a success, Israeli researchers have found. The team looked at women undergoing embryo transfers, where an IVF embryo is put into the womb. [...] The team studied 186 women aged 25 to 40 over 10 months, all of whom were undergoing embryo transfer treatment.
Half were simply given the treatment and nothing else. However, the other group were entertained by a clown for up to 15 minutes as they recuperated in bed after the treatment. Of the 93 who did not receive the "clown-treatment", just 18 fell pregnant, compared to 33 of the 93 who did.
The phrase "receive the clown-treatment" in this context is disturbing. Please say he wasn't pulling rabbits out of anywhere.
RudePundit: "As the frothing right madly pounces on any intimation that the United States should get the fuck out of Iraq before it engulfs us into a swirl of dusty insanity, screaming 'Cut and run' with all the pathetic force of 'flip-flop' before it, it would do us well to remind the right that they are, essentially, saying that Ronald Reagan was a big pussy."
Similarly, the brilliant Bush doctrine of "we don't negotiate with tyrants" has produced such ringing successes in preventing nuclear programs in Iran and North Korea that we're preparing to negotiate with both. So it's probably also worth noting that once upon a time we did negotiate with the mighty Soviet Union and still refuse to do so with Castro's tiny Cuba. Might be a good time to contrast and compare the current situations of each.
Just sayin'.
Yeah, yeah, I know there hasn't been a real post in many days, but I've been very busy.
[¿O, RLMENTE? -ed.]
Sí, rlmente.
Back up your data and traumatize your kids in one easy step.
"Search and rescue officials abandoned their search Monday afternoon for a man who apparently floated to sea the day before on an inner tube."
That meteorite that hit Norway last week has been downgraded from Hiroshima to "a powerful conventional bomb." However, Knut Jørgen Røed Ødegaard still insists "the brightness must have been exceptional." So there.
Landmark houses. I totally dig the orchid house.
And I quote: Ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha.
Eavesdropping Fringe-lipped Bats Spread Culture Through Sound
"This is one joke we really want to fight for."
Not even the US embassy can pretend that Iraq is anything but a disaster now. The actual cable is here.
To boldly go where no man has gone before. Well, not really.
"My Neighbor, Larry Shrock, House on Left up on Hill (arrow) Shot My Dog, Then Burned It."
The Testicle Festival comes to Mormon country.
In a preemptive attack against the gathering threat of avian flu, President Bush has bombed the Canary Islands...
He says that while he will seek a diplomatic solution first, he will not rule out military action against Turkey, by US forces alone if need be.
Tips to B, W, and the R's
Starts out like any other gruesome car crash story:
The severed head of a man's wife flew from his pickup truck Thursday when he crashed into an oncoming car, killing the driver and her child, police said.
Sure, head-on crashes can be terribly destructive events for the folks in the vehicles. Except:
The head, which landed on the roadway after the crash early Thursday, is unrelated to the accident. [...] Police interviewed Alofa Time, who was not injured, and then obtained a search warrant for his home that he shared with his wife, where they found the headless body of his wife, 47-year-old Theresa N. Time. Police said she likely had been dead for several hours.
I'm not sure, but this may be the first time I've ever given President Bush a thumbs up. This is a very, very good thing.
People drinking one cup of coffee per day were, on average, 20% less likely to develop alcoholic cirrhosis. For people drinking two or three cups the reduction was 40%, and for those drinking four or more cups of coffee a day the reduction in risk was 80%. Among those who had their blood drawn, liver enzyme levels were higher in individuals who drank more alcohol, indicating liver disease or damage. However, those who drank both alcohol and coffee had lower levels than those who drank alcohol but did not drink coffee.
Interestingly, tea drinkers did not show the same protective effect.
One of the biggest challenges in treating neurological conditions such as Parkinson's and Alzheimer's disease is finding safe and non-invasive ways to enable drugs to penetrate the brain's natural defense -- the blood-brain barrier. Now scientists have developed a way to temporarily open a very small part of that barrier using focused ultrasound. They hope this precise targeting will allow drugs to enter specific parts of the brain -- without exposing the rest of the brain and without damaging the barrier or surrounding neuronal tissue in the process. [...]
The blood-brain barrier protects the brain, which is why it can be difficult for drugs to penetrate it. The barrier consists of endothelial cells that line the small blood vessels in the brain. These cells are tightly packed to create a wall between most parts of the brain and the rest of the circulatory system, blocking bacteria and all but the smallest molecules.
Focused ultrasound works by directing sound waves toward a point in space. Individually, the waves are not powerful enough to affect the tissue, but when targeted, their collective intensity is much greater. High-intensity focused ultrasound (HIFU), which applies more intense sound waves, has been used to destroy tumors through heating, a process known as ablation. When targeting the brain, though, Konofagou's team used much lower-intensity levels, similar to those applied in diagnostic ultrasound, the technology used during a pregnancy sonogram. While researchers don't know exactly how this technique is able to open the barrier, they say it's not through heating.
Unlike tumor ablation --and this distinction is key -- Konofagou's technique appears to be reversible. Using an MRI contrast agent, she was able to show that the barrier closed up after about four hours. [...]
It is important to start applying this technique to animal models that simulate specific diseases, he says, just as Konofagou is doing, although he adds that the skulls of mice are extremely thin, unlike those of humans. Konofagou says she's now working on using higher-frequency ultrasound waves, which she believes will be able to penetrate human skulls.
Des Moines Register poll of likely Iowa Democratic caucus voters.
Pretty much the first poll anywhere that doesn't have Hillary Clinton in front.
Arlen Specter sucks. Absolutely sucks.
And here are the Democrats that ought to be punished.
Groovy, one-room, self-contained hotel.
"Three elderly people spen[t] three days driving lost around Miami until a police officer came to their rescue."
"A large meteorite struck in northern Norway this week, landing with an impact an astronomer compared to the atomic bomb used at Hiroshima."
Dwarf dinosaurs discovered in northern Germany.
The world's oldest surviving condom, dating to 1640, is on display in Austria, along with its original user's manual in Latin.
Barbara O'Brien on the right-wing Culture of Death.
A new class of HIV drugs called maturation inhibitors are taking a novel and promising approach to defeating the virus.
"If carbon-rich worlds are forming in Beta Pictoris, they might be covered with tar and smog, with mountains made of giant diamonds."
Katherine Jean Lopez defeats her own argument time and time again.
A PhD student from East Carolina University has found the world's leggiest millipede 80 years after its first and only sighting.
Illacme plenipes has up to 750 legs and is found in a tiny area of San Benito County in California, US. Of the 10,000 species of millipede described, I. plenipes comes the closest to possessing the 1,000 legs that its name would suggest.
The critter also has tiny bristles on its back that secrete silk, for no reason that the researchers have yet discovered.
The Ténéré wastelands of northeastern Niger were once populated by a forest of trees. By the 20th century, desertification had wiped out all but one solitary acacia. The Tree of Ténéré, as it came to be called, had no companions for 400 km in every direction. Its roots reached nearly 40 m deep into the sand. In 1973, the tree was knocked over by a drunken Libyan truck driver. It has been replaced by a simple metal sculpture.
1. That's one ugly-ass sculpture.
2. How drunk do you have to be to hit the only tree in a 400-km radius?
(via boingboing)
A Russian cosmonaut is aiming to drive a golf ball two billion miles in space. Mikhail Tyurin will launch his ball using a gold-plated six iron from a special tee attached to a platform on the International Space Station.
Scientists say the ball will circle the Earth for up to four years at a speed of five miles a second before falling from orbit and burning up in the atmosphere. American space scientists were said to be worried that the ball would be bouncing off satellites as it rocketed into golfing history.
Last month, I posted a brief note wishing Ogged well after doctors (practically by accident) discovered cancer in one kidney. The tumor had been found early enough that the treatment is simply removing the kidney, without the hell of radiation or chemotherapy. As "you've got cancer" news goes, that's pretty good news. But, sometimes life gives you lemons and you make lemonade, only to find out that the lemons had been sprayed with paraquat. Accordingly, he has now been diagnosed with a separate, unrelated cancer in his stomach, though still in a very early stage. Treatment? Out with the stomach!
Oof. The doctors are sticking with no chemo or radiation in the forecast, but still. Oof. Ogged and I are roughly the same age—much too young to be hearing the word cancer—and both lost our fathers to cancer at about our current ages, so it's a frightening hand to be holding, no matter how "good" the prognosis. As I told him privately, any more parts come out of him and they're going to have to stuff him with packing peanuts.
Of course, my previous well wishes go double and I'll repeat my request to send your good mojo or prayers or whatever spiritual currency you use his way, which for the time being is Chicago. He's set up a blog to recount his experiences entitled Expendable Organ, and the writing is just stellar (for example), bouyed by his unflappable sense of humor. Start at the bottom of the page and work your way up.
Get better soon, old friend, and all of us here hope to see you wearing one of these in short order.
Update: No stomach cancer! False positive! Hooray!
"A woman stripped naked and sprinted into Downtown traffic Thursday morning after trying to shoplift a bag of peanuts from the Smithfield News, police said."
Seamless pictures and tiny art.
202 liters of Diet Coke, 523 Mentos, and two guys with a lot of time on their hands.
Could a physicist in India have discovered microbes from outer space?
In April, Louis, a solid-state physicist at Mahatma Gandhi University, published a paper in the prestigious peer-reviewed journal Astrophysics and Space Science in which he hypothesizes that the samples -- water taken from the mysterious blood-colored showers that fell sporadically across Louis's home state of Kerala in the summer of 2001 -- contain microbes from outer space.
Specifically, Louis has isolated strange, thick-walled, red-tinted cell-like structures about 10 microns in size. Stranger still, dozens of his experiments suggest that the particles may lack DNA yet still reproduce plentifully, even in water superheated to nearly 600 degrees Fahrenheit . (The known upper limit for life in water is about 250 degrees Fahrenheit .)
So how to explain them? Louis speculates that the particles could be extraterrestrial bacteria adapted to the harsh conditions of space and that the microbes hitched a ride on a comet or meteorite that later broke apart in the upper atmosphere and mixed with rain clouds above India.
Killer crater discovered under Antarctica.
Planetary scientists have found evidence of a meteor impact much larger and earlier than the one that killed the dinosaurs -- an impact that they believe caused the biggest mass extinction in Earth's history. The 300-mile-wide crater lies hidden more than a mile beneath the East Antarctic Ice Sheet. And the gravity measurements that reveal its existence suggest that it could date back about 250 million years -- the time of the Permian-Triassic extinction, when almost all animal life on Earth died out. Its size and location -- in the Wilkes Land region of East Antarctica, south of Australia -- also suggest that it could have begun the breakup of the Gondwana supercontinent by creating the tectonic rift that pushed Australia northward.
Meanwhile, American researchers have discovered a huge, folded up chunk of what was once ocean floor about halfway to the center of the earth, shedding new light on the processes that drive the movement of tectonic plates.
One of the anti-evolutionists' favorite tropes is that we have never seen evolution in action, where one species has become another. And like nearly all the other arguments, they're about to lose this one too, thanks to African electric fish that appear to be splitting into two different species.
Opportunity is stuck in soft Martian sand, and a Japanese probe has sent back unprecedented photos of a near-Earth asteroid, though it remains unclear whether the landing to collect a surface sample was successful.
Carl Zimmer runs down the latest for and against evidence on the Indonesian hobbits, including the tools found with the skeletons.
And German scientists have, for the first time, connected brain tissue to a computer chip.
I only barely understand the physics involved (and the comments are entirely over my head), but the story of the Screwy Universe is pretty fascinating all the same.
Also, a smoking octopus.
You'll be less than shocked to learn that this story is from Florida.
Two grandparents in Lake County, Fla
