Harvest

Somewhere between my solid reliance on the rational, scientific approach to understanding the cosmos and my intuitive grasp of the inexplicable shadows that animate it lies a fear that the wrong words at the wrong time can challenge the fates to deliver disaster. I'm never comfortable with this vanity but have had beautifully constructed environments evaporate in front of me in the blink of an eye enough times that I accept it as part of an internal mechanism to keep me grateful for the fortune I enjoy. So when I heard tale of how surprisingly trouble-free harvest had turned out, I jumped at the opportunity (obligation) to point out that the truck was still loaded, still parked in front of the barn, and hadn't been trusted to the blacktop in 12 months, much less climbed 30 miles and 2000 feet to the winery, then safely returned. I've been on that truck when the brakes failed and I take nothing for granted.

When I got up that morning, I had headed out to pick earlier than normal. I did ostensibly because at that point having enough tiring hands and aching backs to cover the acreage was looking uncertain; we needed to cover some serious ground. But in reality I was replaying a troublesome conversation with a dear person and needed the diversion that a task like picking grapes offers. It isn't exactly mindless; you need to exercise care with a sharp knife, navigate your progress across a numbingly repetitive grid of vines, and manage the evasiveness that so is Zinfandel (desiccated raisins and green berries on the same vine - sometimes the same bunch) mindful of the winemaker's desires.

Keeping the conscious mind tuned into these requirements is at first made difficult by the sensory indulgence of a vine into which you must literally sink your face and body. The smells of the vine are enveloping, the sun's morning light is shearing. The weeds prick you and juice your arms and jeans with tarry resin. But with rhythmic repetition comes a convergence of the analytical mind and the self that is only aware of immediate sensory input. Perhaps ancient masters had a word for it. Perhaps modern masters titled books with it and sold many copies at health food stores. I used it to cover ground, dropping to my knees and plunging into each vine, coaxing fruit out by my fingers with grace and ease.

When the remainder of my crew joined me, my trance was broken but I felt very satisfied. We appraised our status and strategy and each took a row. After just a few minutes: "Whoa!! Froz, is that a rattler?" Coiled at the base of a vine not two rows from where my sensual abandon had ended was a sleepy but awake, 7 - button rattler about 4 feet long. Someone almost stepped on it. I would have knelt on it.

I am grateful for many things. Avoiding snakebites is one of them. Another is that apostropher invited me to contribute to this here documentary. I have been unable to contribute all I would like to, nor all I used to be able to, surely disappointing his apostroness. But in short order I shall appease him by inebriating him with copious red wine and provisioning him ample pork products, especially bacon.

Speedy and uneventful travel to you, my friend.

But aside from that, how was your birthday party?

Kids Watch as Clown Is Crushed to Death

Sorry there hasn't been much here of late, but I've been frantically scrambling to get stuff wrapped up at work because at 6:00 am tomorrow, I'm getting on a plane and flying clear across the country to visit Froz and his family. Enjoy the cross-country flight with my tired and cranky toddler, fellow passengers!

This will be the first time we've seen each other since he loaded up the truck and moved to California two years ago (which might mean that we're technically no longer platonic life partners), we've both got new sons the other has never met, and, you know, wine country. So it's all very exciting, but there likely won't be much here for another week or so. Though you never know.

In the meantime, you can kill some time with this.

Idiots rule.

All signs indicate that the Cheney administration is champing at the bit to go to war with Iran, despite the fact that everybody with two brain cells to rub together (a category which, unfortunately, excludes most of the administration) understands that there are no good military options regarding Iran. Jim Henley presents an excellent rundown of exactly why any military action against Iran is doomed to failure, concluding with the following:

We'll make a big noise, break a lot of crockery and kill a bunch of people. The plans to do this will be entertained with utmost seriousness. Later on, the same people will promise that the next war will solve the problems caused by this one.

Lather, rinse, repeat. One of my favorite quotes is from the endlessly quotable H.L. Mencken: "Democracy is the theory that the common people know what they want, and deserve to get it good and hard." The sentiment seems truer than ever today, but unfortunately, we seem intent on doing even worse to others first.

Hang up and drive.

Chris Clarke waxes eloquent on one of my biggest pet peeves.

Shake it more gently.

Deep in the bowels of the Mineshaft, I was pointed to a pretty sweet acoustic indie version of Outkast's "Hey Ya" by Obadiah Parker. I'd not heard of the band previously, but I stopped being hip somewhere around 1994 so no surprise there. The video is here and links to the mp3 are here.

Israeli Stoners Against Hezbollah

Dude, those rocket attacks are, like, totally bogus.

Forward, a Jewish publication based in New York, had one of these "aren't we cool, look what we are writing about" items last week, informing its readers of an Israeli "phenomenon". Apparently, "activists" have decided to boycott hashish originating from Lebanon, in order to avoid indirect sponsorship of Hizbullah, who are believed to be involved in smuggling the drug over the Israeli border.

This news originated in the blog of a well-meaning bloke calling himself Anarchist Orthodox, who announced his intention to stop buying Lebanese hash, "effective immediately". This act of selflessness is obviously aimed at making Sheikh Nasrallah and his ilk think twice before messing with Israel. Furthermore, Anarchist Orthodox called for the legalisation of marijuana, which, he explained, would cut our dependency on imported goods.

One needn't be a Middle East expert to recognise the holes in this idea.

Yeah, that'll show 'em. Here's the original post.

Bring me your finest weenie-tini.

And make it dry. NCProsecutor sent me a link to this thing of, well, not beauty exactly, but...something.

eGullet member Andrew Fenton recently posted about his current success with making what he calls Weeniecello, vodka infused with hot dogs. Apparently the Hebrew National all-beef franks were treated to a five-week soak in 100-proof Smirnoff. The vodka was then strained and used in a Weenie-Tini, Fenton's blend of Weeniecello, dry vermouth and sauerkraut brine. Fenton says the cocktail has "a richness and subtle beefiness not to be found in traditional vegetarian cocktails." One eGulleteer pointed out another page with more pork martinis.

Oh yes, the links contain pictures. And it raises the question of who is the bigger hero: the bold and imaginative inventor of the weenie-tini or the undisputed syrup-chugging champion? It's a hard call, but I think Andrew gets the nod.

Hail to the queef.

Remember way back in 2000, when the Bush camp smugly proclaimed that we all could relax because, with the passing of the oh-so-juvenile Clinton administration, now "the adults are in charge"?

The store which still cannot be named.

Robust McManlyPants reprises last summer's trip to the Land that Taste Forgot and finds that Jesus has left the building (mostly). Still yields a bunch of entertaining pictures, though.

All hail our new insect overlords!

Something strange is happening with yellowjackets in Alabama.

To the bafflement of insect experts, gigantic yellow jacket nests have started turning up in old barns, unoccupied houses, cars and underground cavities across the southern two-thirds of Alabama. Specialists say it could be the result of a mild winter and drought conditions, or multiple queens forcing worker yellow jackets to enlarge their quarters so the queens will be in separate areas. But experts haven't determined exactly what's behind the surprisingly large nests.

Auburn University entomologists, who say they've never seen the nests so large, have been fielding calls about the huge nests from property owners from Dothan up to Sylacauga and over into west-central Alabama's Black Belt. At one site in Barbour County, the nest was as large as a Volkswagen Beetle. [...]

The largest nest Ray has inspected this year filled the interior of a weathered 1955 Chevrolet parked in a rural Elmore County barn. That nest was about the size of a tire in the rear floor seven weeks ago, but quickly spread to fill the entire vehicle, the property owner, Harry Coker, said. Four satellite nests around it have gotten into the eaves of the barn, about 300 yards from his home. [...]In previous years, a yellow jacket nest was no larger than a basketball, Ray said. It would contain about 3,000 workers and one queen. These gigantic nests may have as many as 100,000 workers and multiple queens. [...]

"We're not really sure how this multiple queen thing works," Ray said. "It could be that the daughters of the original queen don't leave the nest or that the queens have developed some way to cooperate." Ray examined a collected nest from Macon County to count the queens in it. "We found 12 queens so far, so that's definitely a factor."

Via The Anomalist.

Grim

Seven facts you might not know about the Iraq war.

Trap-jaw ants.

SNAP!

Scientists have discovered the fastest bite in the world, one so explosive it can be used to send the Latin American ant that performs it flying through the air to escape predators. [...] Suarez and Fisher, along with University of California at Berkeley researchers Sheila Patek and Joseph Baio, found the ant's jaws accelerate at 100,000 times the force of gravity. This means they can snap shut 2,300 times faster than a blink of the eye to reach speeds up to 145 mph, exerting forces 300 to 500 times the ant's body weight.

"Until recently, cameras were simply not fast enough to capture the movement of the mandibles," Suarez said. He and his colleagues had to use high-speed video cameras capable of taking up to 250,000 frames per second to film the ant jaws, roughly 10,000 faster than speeds movies are usually shot at. [...]

In attacks against intruders, dubbed "bouncer defenses," the ants slam their mandibles against their targets—in experiments, thin strips of plastic or metal—presumably to injure them or bounce them away. Coincidentally, this can also catapult the ants up to 15 inches away. This distance, translated for a 5-foot-6-inch tall person, roughly equates to a record-shattering Olympic long jump of 132 feet.

When the researchers introduced predators such as spiders, the trap-jaw ants at times used so-called "escape jumps," directing their jaws toward the ground, launching themselves up to 3 inches in the air. For our 5-foot-6-inch Olympian, that's 44 feet. The world record in the high jump is just slightly over 8 feet.

The trap-jaw ants' mandibles are now the fastest-moving body part of any animal known, by a wide margin, closing in just over a tenth of a millisecond.

Ask them to put their money where their mouths are.

I'll second Jon Alter's proposal (via TPM):

In July, 37 senators and 193 members of the House backed Bush and voted against allowing even surplus embryos headed for the trash bin to be used in federally funded research. If they have any moxie, their opponents this year will show up at debates (or press conferences in contests with no debates) andchallenge the incumbents who voted with Bush to promise that they will never use any treatments derived from embryonic-stem-cell research. In other words, to put their own health where their votes are.

The actual written pledge (patterned on Norquist's) could include language something like this: "Because of my strong opposition to embryonic-stem-cell research, I hereby pledge that should I, at any point in the future, develop diabetes, cancer, spinal-cord injuries or Parkinson's, among other diseases, I will refuse any and all treatments derived from such research, at home or abroad, even if it costs me my life. Signed, ______"

Ouch. But hey, if you believe it so strongly, then you won't hesitate to put some weight behind your convictions, right? In North Carolina, the no votes were Elizabeth Dole in the Senate and Representatives Jones, Foxx, McIntyre, Hayes, Myrick, McHenry, and Taylor. McIntyre is the one Democrat in the bunch. Senator Burr and Rep. Coble were the only NC Republicans voting to override.

You can check the House votes here and the Senate votes here.

Did you ever look at your quills?

I mean really look at them?

"At this point, I would say Shrub is acting like a hedgehog on hallucinogens."

Quick hits.

The British Army performs poorly when given LSD.

I have doubts about this snack bar recipe. Ingredients: sugar, corn syrup, peanut butter, bacon, Tang, and Honey Bunches of Oats.

Almost always a bad idea: forehead tattoos.

Toddler t-shirt slogans. I'm still partial to this one.

Moebius table.

Six icky parasites. You're welcome.

Dark clouds on the horizon.

An article by bonddad at The Agonist argues that even if the Democrats take back Congress this fall, they will be facing an economy in shambles within six months, with no ability to pump money into it to help cushion the downturn.

Increased government spending is the standard method of ameliorating an economic downturn. However, the Republicans have seriously hampered this ability. Although they are claiming they will halve the deficit by 2009, total debt issuance from the Bureau of Public Debt tells a far different story:

In 2002, the total deficit was $157 billion. Yet total debt outstanding increased from $5.807 trillion to $6.228 trillion, or $421 billion.

In 2003, the total deficit was $377 billion, yet total debt outstanding increased from $6.228 trillion to $6.783 trillion, or $555 billion.

In 2004, the total deficit was $412 billion, yet total debt outstanding increased from $6.783 trillion to $7.379 trillion, or $596 billion.

In 2005, the total deficit was $318 billion, yet total debt outstanding increased from $7.379 trillion to $7.932 trillion or $553 billion.

The US has already issued $568 billion in new debt for fiscal 2006.

In other words, the amount of debt the US Treasury is issuing indicates THE DEFICIT IS NOT UNDER CONTROL IN ANY MEANINGFUL WAY.

Suppose a Democratic majority in the House wants to increase federal domestic spending to either stimulate the economy or mitigate the negative impact of an economic downturn. There isn't any money to do this. The debt/GDP ratio has increased from the upper 50s percent range to the lower 60's over the last 5 years. Currently international interest rate arbitrage is the only major factor preventing the currency traders from selling dollars because of fiscal mismanagement. However, the Federal Reserve is near the end of its interest rate increases while other central banks are increasing their respective rates (although the jury is still out on Japan's current policy direction). These two factors - the US halting its interest rate increases plus other countries increasing their interest rates - will make the dollar vulnerable. An increase in deficit spending will increase the possibility of a dollar sell-off because currency traders will wonder if the US will ever get its fiscal house in order. A dollar sell-off will increase inflationary import pressures, forcing the Federal Reserve to raise interest rates to protect the dollar. Increasing interest rates will slow the economy at a time while it needs economic stimulus.

Increasing the dollars vulnerability is the composition of international purchases of US Treasury debt. Over the last few years, foreign individuals are responsible for the bulk of US Treasury purchases; foreign official institutions (such as central banks) have backed away from the US Treasury market. Foreign central banks are less prone to sell assets in bulk; they are more likely to by "buy and hold" investors. Not so with individuals. If the investment isn't returning a certain amount each year, individuals will seek higher return elsewhere. Considering China, India and Russia are all growing faster than the US and have a far better international account position, moving assets to these countries is a strong possibility. In addition, all three of these countries will probably be willing to cut very beneficial deals for new foreign inflows. In short, an increase in deficit spending may spook foreign private money away from the US market, sending US market-based interest rates higher, adding to downward economic pressure.

There's quite a bit more at the link, if you can stomach it.

Keeping Satan out of their bunk beds.

Bonus: the innovative pants design keeps 'em from touching themselves. Also, you'll never have to take the little bastards to more than one sleepover per house ever.

I'm so disappointed they don't come in adult sizes.

The Vader Sessions

"Your mama's goin' on a date. Can you dig that? A date."

So awesome.

The song of the Australian lyrebird.

Holy moly.

Yuan to take it outside?

Of all the nerve.

The United States should "shut up" with its concerns about China's growing military spending because the increase is no threat, a Chinese ambassador said Thursday. Sha Zukang, China's ambassador to the United Nations in Geneva, told British Broadcasting Corp. radio that American concerns about his country's growing military might were misguided.

"It's better for the U.S. to shut up," Sha said. "Keep quiet. It's much, much better."

Why, that is just outrageous. Somebody ought to tell Ambassador Sha that--

US military spending: $522 billion
Rest of the world combined: $561 billion
Chinese military spending: $62.5 billion

I, uh, I mean, uh... Okay, so maybe he has a point.

Searching the searches.

As you probably know, AOL had a major security breach and created the most entertaining online activity ever, all in one fell swoop.

Out of more than 36 million search queries that hundreds of thousands of AOL users typed into AOL's Internet search engine from March to May, here is the term most queried: Google.

That so many customers would use one search engine to find another is among the odd truths being mined from AOL's public release of search data. The company last week called the incident involving 658,000 users' queries a "screw-up" and apologized. But for better or worse, the data offer the first widespread public glimpse of how people search the Internet, of what they are interested in. Of how people think.

In just a week, the breach has spawned a cottage industry of Web sites and online commentary devoted to analyzing and parsing the data, which include Social Security numbers and potentially embarrassing searches, such as "bad breath could it be an infection in one of my teeth."

While acknowledging concerns about privacy, researchers said it is an opportunity to study how people search for information in a limitless universe of data.

And how. Dontdelete.com is a great place to do your own spelunking, and just hitting the random button really will keep you entertained for a long, long time. However, if you'd like a more directed approach, the Poor Man notes that entering user ID 711391 produces "the greatest character study in literary history." Also, a commenter on that thread notices that user 317966 has a very close relationship with his mother-in-law. Or wants one, anyway. Also of note is this SomethingAwful thread that distills some winners down a bit.

Martian polar geysers.

Another mystery solved.

Every spring brings violent eruptions to the south polar ice cap of Mars, according to researchers interpreting new observations by NASA's Mars Odyssey orbiter.

Jets of carbon dioxide gas erupting from the ice cap as it warms in the spring carry dark sand and dust high aloft. The dark material falls back to the surface, creating dark patches on the ice cap which have long puzzled scientists. Deducing the eruptions of carbon dioxide gas from under the warming ice cap solves the riddle of the spots. It also reveals that this part of Mars is much more dynamically active than had been expected for any part of the planet.

"If you were there, you'd be standing on a slab of carbon-dioxide ice," said Phil Christensen of Arizona State University, Tempe, principal investigator for Odyssey's camera. "All around you, roaring jets of carbon dioxide gas are throwing sand and dust a couple hundred feet into the air."

You'd also feel vibration through your spacesuit boots, he said. "The ice slab you're standing on is levitated above the ground by the pressure of gas at the base of the ice."

Is Bush an idiot?

I know, I know, it's a trick question. Idiot would be a promotion for Bush and I marvel that he's gotten this far without getting his head stuck in a pickle jar. However, now even former-GOP-Congressman-turned-conservative-newsguy Joe Scarborough is asking the question and wincingly saying, "Yeah, you know, he is."

Crooks and Liars has the video.

Great octopus story.

I don't have much to add, but this Washington Post article is definitely worth a read. Very, very intelligent animals.

And plutons make twelve.

Cool.

A new kind of planet, the "pluton", could soon be taking its place in the Solar System. Astronomers have agreed on a draft proposal for redefining what constitutes a planet. If approved at a meeting underway in the Czech capital, Prague, school science text books will have to be re-written.

The new definition would mean there are 12, not nine planets, and more could be added to the list in the future. They include eight "classic" planets - Mercury, Venus, Earth, Mars, Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus and Neptune - Ceres, currently considered an asteroid, and three "plutons," one of which is Pluto. The other plutons are Charon, currently described as a moon of Pluto, and the newly-discovered object 2003 UB313, which has not been named officially, but is nicknamed Xena.

The International Astronomical Union will vote next Thursday on the reclassification, and are eyeing up to a dozen more bodies. Plutons are bodies with enough mass to form spheres, but with tilted, elliptical orbits of 200 years or more.

Presidentin' is hard work.

A bit of unintentional truthtelling from professional liar Tony Snow:

"Let me get back to my other point, which was that the president -- look, he gets up every day. He gets assessments of how scary the world really is."

There you have it, the Bush presidency in a nutshell. He gets up every. single. day. Not like you lazy good-for-nothings. And then, scary assessments.

Three months 'til basketball season tips off.

Heh.

Beirut, Louisiana.

I've posted several dispatches from my friend Andy in New Orleans previously (here, here, here, and here). Now I'd like to point you to an article she has written about Lebanon, "Searching for the truth under the rubble".

More recently I made another friend through my work with Meena, a bilingual Arabic/English literary magazine I co-edit with Egyptian poet Khaled Hegazzi. Rasha was in New Orleans to visit friends. She visited with us, drinking hibiscus tea and chatting. She had just been on the "destruction tour" that locals give to visitors, showing them all the places that were destroyed and, nearly a year on, have not been rebuilt.

"You know, we do the same thing?" she said. "In Beirut, we take people around to look at the destruction." She said it is a mixture of evoking pity from the visitor, of taking pride in surviving, of needing others to witness it, to see first-hand what has happened. Knowing that there was another place that did the same thing, that this macabre ritual was enacted by another city that had been doing it longer than we had, somehow comforted me. We also talked about the politics of rebuilding the city, of trying to preserve its cultural integrity and how the citizens sometimes become the living memory for their demolished history. [...]

The most difficult part of hearing what is happening is the fact that I am a citizen of a country that is part of the consensus, that it seems the United States is the only voice that objected to the cease fire called during the original meeting in Rome, and that it supports the war to the extent of supplying the actual missiles. I read a quote by an Israeli official the other day: "Between God and us is the U.S.," and I once again recoiled from the power my country has usurped from its people and the power it exerts over the world.

I am also disgusted by the way in which western media portray this conflict, by their ignorance of the culture and history of the entire Middle East, of the way they conflate all resistance to power with "terror," of their complicity in continuing the belief that the quality of Arab blood and brown skin is somehow inferior. I am sickened by the way they spin the chronology of the conflict, the way they ignore the bombings on the beach in Gaza last month, which contributed to this escalation, and of the way they have made the deaths of hundreds of civilians somehow equivalent to the capture of two Israeli soldiers.

I found it difficult to excerpt the article effectively, so please do read it all. Meena's website is here.

The Time Fountain

I suppose when three different people send me a link, I ought to post it. So, here it is.

Something something new something overlords.

MSNBC reports on a study that indicates babies can detect mathematical errors as early as six months of age. While that's interesting enough on its own, what mostly caught my attention was the picture accompanying the article.

Sweet.

Inflammatory headline of the day.

I have to admit that I'm appalled at Israel's deliberate razing of Lebanon, but I try to be even-keeled about it. Our buddies in Kuwait, though, not so much.

Inspirational posters you can't hang at work.

Entry #1.

(via Pandagon)

Tent caterpillars attack!

They will eat your bicycles. (thanks, Kriston)

He's a minister of sobriety.

Candypants.

"I just want to hurdle your girdle and do slam dunks in your swimming trunks."

Vitamin K to the rescue!

Ketamine has been used in medicine as an anaesthetic and in dorm rooms and dance clubs as a psychedelic blast-off. My experience with it as a paid volunteer in a government-funded study was overwhelmingly mindbending, but also completely euphoric and pleasant. Now, apparently, researchers are finding that ketamine also shows promise as a magic bullet against depression, acting several orders of magnitude faster than traditional anti-depressants.

In the study, 18 patients were injected with a drug called ketamine, which has long been used as an anesthetic. Patients briefly experienced a well-known side effect of the drug — a mild feeling of dissociation, where they felt disconnected or found it difficult to put thoughts into words. Ketamine is a controlled substance and can produce mild euphoria.

But the dissociative symptoms disappeared within a couple of hours, and shortly afterward, patients and physicians reported a dramatic improvement in mood. Half the patients had a 50 percent decline in depression symptoms, and by the end of the first day, 71 percent reported a similar improvement. More than a third continued to report such a benefit after seven days, and nearly a third reported a complete end of symptoms. Conventional antidepressants approach those kinds of numbers only after eight to 10 weeks of treatment.

I don't know what sort of doses they were administering to the subjects in that study, but "mild" dissociation and euphoria would be a gross understatement if my experience is any measuring stick. I found IV ketamine a bit like being shot out of a cannon into Loopyland. The most powerful effects were pretty short-lived, though; after about thirty minutes, I was able to run through their questionnaire effortlessly, where initially it went something like this:

Q: On a scale of 0 to 4, how nervous do you feel?
'r: [blank stare] What's the scale again?
Q: 0, not at all; 1, mildly; 2, moderately; 3, heavily; 4, completely.
'r: Okay, got it. [pause] What was the question again?
Q: On a scale of 0 to 4, how nervous do you feel?
'r: Right, right. Nervous, nervous, nervous... That's a funny word. Nnnneeeeerrrvoussss. Ner-ruh-ruh-ruh-vous.
Q: On a scale of 0 to 4?
'r: On a scale of 0 to 4 what?
Q: How nervous do you feel?
'r: You mean right now?
Q: Yes, right now, on a scale of 0 to 4, how nervous do you feel?
'r: I think zero, but what's the scale again? Hey, I'm pretty sure I have to pee.

Anyhow, I'll be interested to see what further studies reveal. Those initial results are pretty impressive.

I'm used to hearing idiocies from our president...

...and you are too, but this may take the cake.

My attitude is that a young democracy has been born quite quickly. And I think the Iraqi government has shown remarkable progress on the political front. And that is is that they developed a modern constitution that was ratified by the people and then 12 million people voted for a government.

Which gives me confidence about the future in Iraq, by the way. You know, I hear people say, Well, civil war this, civil war that. The Iraqi people decided against civil war when they went to the ballot box. And a unity government is working to respond to the will of the people. And, frankly, it's quite a remarkable achievement on the political front.

And the security front is where there has been troubles.

Christ on a cracker. The daily death toll in Iraq far outstrips that of the bombers and rockets war between Israel and Lebanon. What does it take to qualify as a civil war? General Lee rising from his grave to lead the Sunnis? I hear all the time from the pro-war camp what a stunning achievement and badge of success the Iraqi elections were. And I said back then and I repeat now: big friggin' deal. Elections are only as good as the government they produce, and elections that produce a wholly impotent government are as good as no elections at all.

"Civil war this, civil war that," how about this: voter turnout for the 1860 presidential election was 81.2%, second-highest in all of American history. Maybe you recall from history classes that a certain unpleasantness broke out the following year. Not that I expect President C-Plus Augustus to know that. Honestly, I've reached the point where every time he opens his mouth, I just feel embarrassed for him.

How to survive a mugging.

One day I will understand the Japanese, but that day has not yet arrived.

Coverup

Math inaugurates Science. Science grows technology. Technology, in turn, rediscovers math.

Lost works by the ancient scholar Archimedes have been recovered from a much battered medieval manuscript using technology from atom smashers and NASA satellites. Physicists scanning a book known as the Archimedes Palimpsest today unveiled a new page from the mathematician's On Floating Bodies. Previously, the work was known only from an incomplete Latin translation

The 10th century manuscript, recorded in Constantinople, contained 3 treatises: 2 previously lost and a third known incompletely. On Floating Bodies, the 'Eureka!' treatise, is this third one although no drawings of Archimedes running through the Streets of Alexandria naked have been discovered in the text yet. Researchers hope to settle this long-standing controversy.

In 1204, upon the sacking of Constantinople in the crusades, the parchment pages were scraped of their writings and a prayer book made from them. Knowledge clearly being unnecessary - even dangerous - when compared to inspiring the fear of God.

Medieval manuscripts are constructed like a whole series of newspaper. So each leaf has its conjoint, just as the front page of a news paper is attached to the back page. One should therefore imagine the leaves of the 5 manuscripts as double-sheets, lying in a pile, without any text. To make the prayer book, these leaves were split down the middle, rotated ninety degrees, and than refolded to make further double sheets that were half the size. The scribes then added their prayer book text, which is at ninety degrees to the now almost indecipherable erased writings.

What you see when you open the Archimedes palimpsest therefore, is not a mathematical text, or even a piece of Greek oratory, but a prayer book. Only occasionally can one just discern, at right angles to the prayer book text, the erased writings that the current project is attempting to recover.

The second link is to the project's website and is filled with history and images from the scanning (all made immediately public for scholars - free of charge). It's well worth an extended visit.

Connecting the dots.

I've said several times that the only reason we're in Iraq is to pre-position ourselves for an attack on Iran. I've said plenty of contradictory things as well, but bear with me here. Guessing motivations is tricky business. Anyhow, that scenario is looking decreasingly insane. That is to say, it's still completely insane, but if you'd like a peek into one possible mindset that would make it look sensible to a bunch of power-mad, bloodythirsty plutocrats like, say, the folks currently running our government, here it is. And it even accounts for why we have stood back and allowed Israel to destroy Lebanon.

Is it true? Well, we're all just guessing now, aren't we? Who can say what goes on inside Dick Cheney's fevered little brain? But it certainly does tie up a lot of loose ends.

DIY universe.

Playing God, take one.

A radical new project could permit human beings to create a "baby universe" in a laboratory in Japan. While it sounds like a dangerous undertaking, the physicists involved believe that if the project is successful, the space-time around a tiny point within our universe will be distorted in such a way that it will begin to form a new superfluid space, and eventually break off, separate in all respects from our experience of space and time, causing no harm to the fabric of our universe. [...]

[T]he baby universe has its own space-time and, as this inflates, the pressure from the true vacuum outside its walls continues to constrain it. As these forces compete, the growing baby universe is forced to bubble out from our space-time until its only connection to us is through a narrow space-time tunnel called a wormhole..."

Eventually, the "umbilical" connection between our space-time and the baby universe would be effectively cut, and the baby universe would enter into its own unique process of unending expansion. From our perspective, it would be lost inside a microscopic "black hole", which will not appear to expand into our space-time. Hawking radiation will be emitted and the tiny black hole will "evaporate", sealing the separation between the two universes.

Ultimately, this evaporation is what makes the project possible, but is also, perhaps, its most serious obstacle. It is expected that the separation between our space-time and the baby universe would occur so quickly, it might be impossible —within the limitations of our physical universe— to observe its having been created.

Read the article. The physics are less theoretical than they sound. (via jwz)

I've got this sharp pain in my stomach...

...but I'm ten pounds richer, bitches.

Serb Ratko Dankovic, 23, had been drinking Rakia with mates while watching a magician perform a sword swallowing trick on the television. They then started arguing over how the trick was done, and when Dankovic told mates that sword swallowing was easy and anyone could do it - they challenged him to prove it.

But he had to be rushed to the local hospital after swallowing a knife with an eight inch blade, eight nails, two spoons and a couple of clothes pegs to win the ten pound bet. [...]

Dankovic who is still being kept in hospital, said: "I don't remember a thing until I woke up here in hospital with a sore throat and 30 stitches on a cut on my abdomen."

Just how drunk would you have to be?

Teh weird x 5

DFL over at The Stinging Nettle tagged me with one o' them web thingies wherein you list five weird things about yourself. Conveniently timed, too, since I've been too busy to do any real blogging. Narrowing the list to five was, as you might imagine, a bit of a challenge, but here goes.

1. I have never owned a cell phone, and fully intend to be buried never having owned one. I don't like talking on the phone in general, and knowing that I could be reached any time, any place gives me the creeping jibblies.

2. I was in a coed literary fraternity at UNC. So was my first wife. And my current wife. And her ex-husband. And his current wife. Yes, all at the same time and yes, I know we should all probably get out more.

3. In the late '80s, I looked like this and still managed to get laid. I know. It doesn't make any sense to me either.

4. I like both burgers and pork chops rare, which seems to freak some folks right on out. But I figure my people evolved alongside the common livestock parasites and, frankly, they don't scare me. Might even be a symbiotic relationship at this point. All I know is it tastes better that way. Mmmm, bloody meat.

5. I average about four to five hours of sleep a night. This has been the case for about twenty years now. You might think I'd get more done than those eight to nine hour people, but you'd be mistaken.

I guess I'm supposed to pass this on to other people, but I'm feeling lazy about that. Worn out from lack of sleep and intestinal worms, probably. You know whether these things interest you, so consider yourself tagged if it tickles your fancy.

Best of luck with that legal strategy.

Points awarded for chutzpah, but I see orange jumpsuits in Phil's future.

A suburban Cleveland man accused of sexually assaulting nine disabled boys told a judge Wednesday that his apartment was a religious sanctuary where smoking marijuana and having sex with children are sacred rituals protected by civil rights laws. The admitted pedophile offered a surprising defense Wednesday to 74 charges of rape, drugs and pandering obscenity to minors.

Appearing in an Ohio court for a pretrial hearing, Phillip Distasio, 34, of Rocky River, Ohio, said he was a pedophile. He told the judge, "I'm a pedophile. I've been a pedophile for 20 years. The only reason I'm charged with rape is that no one believes a child can consent to sex. The role of my ministry is to get these cases out of the courtrooms."

Distasio, a self-professed pagan friar, is representing himself on 74 charges. He said he's the leader of a church called Arcadian Fields Ministries, and that some of his congregants are among the victims in his case. [...] Distasio was arrested on charges he molested two disabled boys he was tutoring at his home. He's also accused of raping seven other autistic children at a Cleveland school for special-needs students, The Plain Dealer reported. All but one of the boys was under 13, which carries a mandatory life-in-prison sentence if he is convicted, the paper reported.

(via Obscure Store)

Vicarious blogging.

I've been too busy to do much surfing, but luckily, people just mail me strange stuff unbidden.

This meatcake is one of the most beautiful things I have ever seen. Thanks, mcmc.

One gigantic hole, and totally work-safe to boot. Thanks, Jeremy.

The Freeway Blogger spots the ballsiest impeach sign yet.

And finally, the Dogone Dog Gas Neutralizing Pad will leave your dog smelling fresh, but seriously bereft of dignity. Luckily dogs give not a damn about such things. Oh, and for the laydeez, "total crotch odor control." I'm sure that Gaijin Biker would want you to know that he only emailed me the dog link, and not the other one.

The heat beneath our feet.

The article is maddeningly vague about the specific technologies involved, so caveat lector, but it certainly sounds promising.

The answer to the world's energy needs may have been under our feet all this time, according to Jefferson Tester, professor of chemical engineering at the MIT Laboratory for Energy and the Environment. Tester says heat generated deep within the earth by the decay of naturally occurring isotopes has the potential to supply a tremendous amount of power -- thousands of times more than we now consume each year.

So far, we've been able to harvest only a tiny fraction of geothermal energy resources, taking advantage of places where local geology brings hot water and steam near the surface, such as in Iceland or California, where such phenomena have long been used to produce electricity. But new oil-field stimulation technology, developed for extracting oil from sources such as shale, makes it possible to harvest much more of this energy by allowing engineers to create artificial geothermal reservoirs many kilometers underground.

Tester calls it "universal geothermal" energy because the reservoirs could be located wherever they're needed, such as near power-hungry cities worldwide.

When asked about the environmental impact, Tester is again vague ("This is not a free lunch, but there's virtually no carbon dioxide"). Anybody with links to more enlightening articles, please leave them in the comments.