Let a thousand chickens fry.

This nostalgic tip o' the hat to socialist realism comes from Kentucky Fried Chicken, which is trying to woo the Chinese market with tasty looking mannish fists. I don't know about you, but this really makes me hungry for... er... public self-criticism.

(Post stolen in toto from Neatorama)

Thank God for Alabama.

They make North Carolina look so normal by comparison.

Ever since Ogged mailed me this link, I've been trying to sketch out the decision tree whereby this becomes the most effective means of getting back at your brother. And frankly, I don't even know where to start.

Headline of the day.

Extra anus kills four-legged chick

Forzie the four-legged chicken will cluck no more. The Te Uku-bred Barnevelder chick - hatched at Marlene Dickey's property at the start of last month - has died. But it wasn't the extra legs that led to its death, more likely an extra anus, Mrs Dickey believes.

"He developed two bottoms and I think he got glugged up," she said.

While she was surprised by Forzie's death - he weighed a "good pound of butter" and was gaining feathers slowly - it was not totally unexpected, she said. And it was fun while it lasted.

"He was a bit of a laugh." [...]

He was found dead on Friday and is now in the Dickeys' freezer waiting to be stuffed.

Perfecting the four-legged chicken was Colonel Sanders' great unrealized dream, of course.

"Pornography has changed the South for the better."

Red State Update on the Michael J. Fox and Harold Ford ads.

Oops.

Marijuana makes you forgetful.

Police arrested a Pizza Pit employee after he allegedly deposited his marijuana at the bank last month. [...] Employees at American Bank and Trust told police they found a bag of marijuana in the Pizza Pit deposit bag dropped off in the night deposit box on Sept. 17.

Acting!

In 1984, Director Stanley Kubrick placed ads throughout the U.S. for aspiring young actors to send in audition tapes for Full Metal Jacket. This is one of them.

And in light of his new internet fame, Brian Atene responds.

Wherein I bore the vast majority of my readers.

I'm turning to the accumulated brainpower of the folks here to help me set my lineup for this weekend. Fantasy football has been described to me as Dungeons and Dragons for the failed jock set, and let me just say, touché and congratulations on a clever and completely accurate metaphor.

Anyhow, for those who care, my dilemma is after the cut.

It's a 14-team league and six NFL teams are on bye, so everybody's talent is thin.

Quarterback
Philip Rivers vs St. Louis
Matt Leinart at Green Bay

Leinart looked awful against the Raiders last week and his wife just had a kid this week. I've read columnists who say he will be "inspired," but I wonder if it's not more "distracted and tired." Still, he's facing one of the worst pass defenses in the NFL and the Cardinals can't run at all, so both teams are likely to be heaving the ball all afternoon.

San Diego-St. Louis has all the makings of a shootout, the Rams' defense is beat up, SD has the home crowd, and Rivers is probably the safer choice. But, the Chargers also have the best RB in the game and he tends to get the ball around the end zone.

I've gone back and forth on this one all week.

Running Back
Chester Taylor vs New England
Maurice Jones-Drew at Philadelphia
Reuben Droughns vs. NY Jets
Wali Lundy at Tennessee

Taylor and Jones-Drew are the big performers so far this season, but I'm strongly leaning toward Droughns and Lundy, who are facing the only two teams in the NFL to give up double-digit rushing TDs so far this year. Just seems like if you are ever going to start those guys, this should be the week.

FWIW, the rest of my lineup is Andre Johnson, Berrian, Colston, Scobee, and the Pats defense. The guy I'm playing will be fielding Brad Johnson, Dillon, Barber, Harrison, Bruce, Gonzalez, Gould, and the Bears.

An Elephant Crackup?

This NY Times Magazine article about the breakdown of elephant society and the sudden surge of aggressively violent behavior (elephants are raping and killing rhinoceroses, and are increasingly responsible for killing each other) is one of the most fascinating pieces I have read in quite some time. It's long, too much so to excerpt effectively, so very much worth reading to the end, as it's simply packed with information and powerful stories. I was especially struck by this at the end, about a man who had been fatally gored in an elephant attack:

As Nelson Okello and I sat waiting for the matriarch and her calf to pass, he mentioned to me an odd little detail about the killing two months earlier of the man from the village of Katwe, something that, the more I thought about it, seemed to capture this particularly fraught moment we've arrived at with the elephants. Okello said that after the man's killing, the elephant herd buried him as it would one of its own, carefully covering the body with earth and brush and then standing vigil over it. [...]

When a group of villagers from Katwe went out to reclaim the man’s body for his family's funeral rites, the elephants refused to budge. Human remains, a number of researchers have observed, are the only other ones that elephants will treat as they do their own. In the end, the villagers resorted to a tactic that has long been etched in the elephant's collective memory, firing volleys of gunfire into the air at close range, finally scaring the mourning herd away.

(via)

Also, no fish drowned today.

Fire breaks out in crematorium, dead man is unharmed.

Quick hits.

I found him!

"He described the Quest program as one that tried to break down the formal barriers between teachers and students." A little too successfully, perhaps.

Cocker spaniel addicted to hallucinogenic toads.

Hey, remember the black and white twin girls from last spring? Here's round 2, this time with boys.

Mars rover beginning to hate Mars.

Unmanned vehicle bored out of its mind:

"Spirit has been displaying some anomalous behavior," said Project Manager John Callas, who noted the rover's unsuccessful attempts to flip itself over and otherwise damage its scientific instruments. "And the thousand or so daily messages of 'STILL NO WATER' really point to a crisis of purpose." [...]

But as the winter lingered, Spirit began producing thousands of pages of sometimes rambling and dubious data, ranging from complaints that the Martian surface was made up almost entirely of the same basalt, to long-winded rants questioning the exorbitant cost and scientific relevance of the mission.

"Granted, Spirit has been extraordinarily useful to our work," Callas said. "Last week, however, we received three straight days of images of the same rock with the message 'HAPPY NOW?'"

Just speaking hypothetically.

Let's say the Democrats take the Vermont, Montana, Rhode Island, Missouri, Ohio, and Pennsylvania Senate races, but Ford loses in Tennessee and Webb loses in Virginia, leaving the next Senate a 50-50 tie. And then let's say a couple of months into the session, Cheney keels over at the breakfast table and dies.

Okay. So. If Bush was feeling cantankerous and nominated a controversial figure, and the Senate locked 50-50 on the nominee, would the vote just fail for lack of a majority, or is there a backup tiebreaker guy in the event the office of vice-president is empty?

I read the news today, oh boy.

"Authorities in northern New Mexico have stumbled onto what appears to be classified information from Los Alamos National Laboratory while arresting a man suspected of domestic violence and dealing methamphetamine from his mobile home."

"A Viennese man cut off his ring finger and presented the digit, still holding his wedding band, to his ex-wife after an acrimonious divorce, Austrian news agency APA reported Tuesday."

"Rock 'n' roll legend Elvis Presley ceded his crown to Nirvana lead singer Kurt Cobain on Forbes.com's list as the top-earning dead celebrity."

"A beer advert that proclaimed 'I love a good session on the Bishops Finger' has been banned. The advert for the Kentish ale in Time Out magazine, pictured a woman in a low-cut medieval costume sitting on a bale of hay."

"His intentions may have been good, but 26-year-old Jason Sansom probably should have asked for permission before painting a Huntington bridge pink."

And finally, today's winner:

"A 44-year-old Saginaw man remains jailed today on charges of bestiality after he was seen engaged in sexual acts with a dead dog, Michigan State Police troopers said. Ronald Kuch was arrested after police searched the area of Midland and Carter roads Friday for a man who ran away from a Bay County Animal Control officer. The entire incident was within view of a nearby day care center. [...] State troopers searched the area and found the man hiding in the attic of a nearby house. Officers determined that the house belonged to the man's girlfriend and later learned that the dog, a black Labrador retriever, also belonged to the girlfriend. The dog had been dead for four or five days."

There can be no more ominous sign.

Robots think we taste like bacon.

So, apparently the guys at NEC thought it would be cool to make a wine-tasting robot. The robot -- pictured above -- fires a beam of light into the wine, and then uses an infrared spectrometer to analyze the reflection. It studies the chemical composition of the wine and delivers an instant verdict about how good it is. It's a neat trick, and it has other health-related skills: It can determine whether an apple is sweet or sour, or could even warn its owner if a food is too salty or fatty.

But the NEC guys decided to show off the robot to the media, and that's when it revealed its morbid secret. As the Associated Press reports:

When a reporter's hand was placed against the robot's taste sensor, it was identified as prosciutto. A cameraman was mistaken for bacon.

We will have to destroy them now, before they begin organizing.

Diversity

"A coil of teeth caps the lower jaw of a sculpture of a 13-foot (4-meter) whorl-tooth shark, or Helicoprion, a fish genus that lived about 250 million years ago. Artist Gary Staab depicts the animal's jaw as something of a spiral conveyor belt, in which new teeth would advance to replace old ones (concealed here by skin). But the true arrangement and purpose of the teeth remains a mystery. Some scientists suggest that it may have operated like a spiked whip, possibly curled underneath the lower jaw like a weaponized elephant trunk."

"The shark adds bite to 'Bizarre Beasts, Past and Present,' a new exhibition of Staab's sculptures at the National Geographic Museum in Washington, D.C. (through February 2, 2007). The animals depicted are, or were, all real—testaments to the twists, turns, and blind alleys of evolution."

Three other photographs from the exhibit are here and lots more stuff at the artist's website.

ALF = Amazingly Lame Front

Do not despair, noble creature! We have come to libera-- Goddamn, would you look at the teeth on that thing?

Campaigners from the Swiss faction of the Animal Liberation Front had earlier told Circus Royal director Oliver Skreinig they planned to steal the Siberian tiger and hand him to a zoo. But when they broke into the circus enclosure and saw the animal they changed their minds - and stole a rabbit instead.

The liberationists then posted pictures of themselves online wearing black army uniforms and balaclavas and holding the rabbit.

Skreinig said: "The pet rabbit was not even in the show, it belonged to our clown's six-year-old daughter."

Impressive.

A course is a course.

Of course, of course.

He was for staying the course before he was against it, see. Just, y'know, the ol' memory banks ain't what they used to be. That would be the charitable interpretation, anyway.

Maiden name shifts poll data.

I'm not quite sure what to make of some results from this Opinion Research poll matching Hillary Clinton against McCain and Giuliani. Or should I say Hillary Rodham Clinton? Because it seems to make a difference.

Hillary Rodham Clinton 51%
John McCain 44%

Hillary Clinton 47%
John McCain 48%

Hillary Clinton 50%
Rudy Giuliani 46%

Hillary Rodham Clinton 48%
Rudy Giuliani 47%

Weird, ain't it?

Quick hits.

You run 26 miles, beat the entire rest of the field competing, then right at the finish line...

Ten things you didn't know about Kim Jong Il.

Jewish holidays for hipsters.

Perhaps not the toughest football player out there.

Palm Beach Post police blotter: "A man knocked on a door in the 900 block of Dogwood Drive and told the homeowner that he was gorgeous and did not talk to ugly people. The man, who was a stranger to the homeowner, then got in his car and left."

National Geographic's Best Wildlife Photos of 2006.

Pretty cool optical trick.

Robotic chair falls apart and re-assembles itself, then questions the point of it all.

Mmmmmm, boiled duck fetus.

Rocks.

The 15th largest diamond ever found, the 603-carat Lesotho Promise, was sold in Belgium last week for $12.36 million. The giant raw diamond will be cut into several smaller ones, expected to have a cumulative value of around $20 million. I was curious what the largest diamonds on record are, so I went a-searchin'. The largest diamond ever found was the Cullinan, dug up in South Africa in 1905 that weighed in at 3106.75 carats uncut—more than a pound! It was cut into several chunks and two of them are the second and fourth largest cut diamonds in the world, at 530.2 and 317.4 carats. After that whopper, the second place stone, the Excelsior, drops all the way down to 995.2 carats. The guy who found it, in South Africa in 1893, turned it over to the mine manager and got a reward, including a horse and a saddle, which seems totally fair. It has been cut into 21 gems. The rest of the list:

The Star of Sierra Leone
Discovered in Sierra Leone in 1972, weighing 968.8 carats. It was eventually divided into 17 stones, six of which were set in the Star of Sierra Leone Brooch.

The Incomparable
A yellowish gem weighing 890 carats, the Incomparable was discovered in central Africa in the 1980s. It was cut into 15 gems; the largest weighs 407.48 carats.

The Great Mogul
The diamond, discovered in 1650 in India, weighed 793 carats and carries the name of Shah Jehan, builder of the Taj Mahal. Its whereabouts are no longer known.

The Woyie River
Found in 1945 in the Sierra Leone, this 770-carat diamond is the largest ever found in river sediments.

The De Beers Millennium Star
Found in South Africa in the 1990s, weighing 777 carats uncut, this blue-white diamond is considered one of the most flawless stones ever discovered. The pear-shaped stone weighs 203 carats.

The Golden Jubilee
At 545.67 carats, the Golden Jubilee is the world's largest cut diamond. Originally known only as "the Unnamed Brown," it was given to the King of Thailand in 1997 on the 50th anniversary of his coronation.

There might be a lot more talk about diamonds soon, thanks to this movie, and deBeers doesn't like that not one bit.

Detecting the indetectable proves nearly inscrutable.

New Scientist started putting lots of their articles behind a subscriber wall, so I don't go by much any more. But I wandered through recently and came across this teaser.

Atomic jitters hint at quantum spume

It seems that certain properties of space-time predicted by "theories of everything" may have already influenced experiments without anyone noticing. One big problem with theories of everything is that their predictions of how space-time behaves at the smallest scales are way beyond the reach of our experiments. At least, that is the common wisdom. Now it seems that certain properties of space-time predicted by these theories may have already influenced experiments without anyone noticing.

The challenge for a theory of everything is to unify Einstein's description of gravity with quantum mechanics into a successful theory of quantum gravity. There are many candidate theories that predict that space-time fluctuates rapidly on so-called Planck scales of about 10-35 metres, but that's too small to be probed directly. "To smash our way down to these scales in a particle accelerator would take inconceivable amounts of energy," says Charles Wang, of the University of Aberdeen, UK.

Despite this, there may yet be a way to measure these space-time fluctuations indirectly, say Wang and teammates.

And it ends there, which made me laugh. As did the title, which sounds like physics porn. So I went looking and didn't find the rest of the article anywhere, but I did find this story on the same topic at CERN's website. Very interesting stuff. Or, at least, the parts of it that I could follow. Not exactly layman physics.

Crustbugs

Strange bacteria that derive all their energy from the decay of radioactive rock have been found thriving two miles beneath the earth's surface, holding out the possibility that subsurface life could exist on other planets with barren surfaces.

The self-sustaining bacterial community, which thrives in nutrient-rich groundwater found near a South African gold mine, has been isolated from the Earth's surface for several million years. It represents the first group of microbes known to depend exclusively on geologically produced hydrogen and sulfur compounds for nourishment. [...]

"These bacteria are truly unique, in the purest sense of the word," said Lin, now at National Taiwan University. "We know how isolated the bacteria have been because analyses of the water that they live in showed that it's very old and hasn't been diluted by surface water. In addition, we found that the hydrocarbons in the environment did not come from living organisms, as is usual, and that the source of the hydrogen needed for their respiration comes from the decomposition of water by radioactive decay of uranium, thorium and potassium."

Because the groundwater the team sampled to find the bacteria comes from several different sources, it remains difficult to determine specifically how long the bacteria have been isolated. The team estimates the time frame to be somewhere between three and 25 million years. [...]

"These bacteria are probably close to the base of the tree for the bacterial domain of life," he said. "They might be genealogically quite ancient. To find out, we will need to compare them to other organisms such as Firmicutes and other such heat-loving creatures from deep sea vents or hot springs."

The research team is building a small laboratory 3.8 kilometers beneath the surface in the Witwatersrand region of South Africa to conduct further study of the newly discovered ecosystem, said Onstott, who hopes the findings will be of use when future space probes are sent to seek life on other planets.

The bacteria cannot survive exposure to oxygen.

Peek-a-boo!

An invisibility cloak was successfully tested right here in Durham.

Well, sort of.

Things to see.

A beautiful car commercial that never shows the car. (via)

Warning signs of the future.

I don't condone vigilante violence, but this video of Fred Phelps' little piggies running for their lives after picketing a soldier's funeral just makes me feel all warm and fuzzy inside.

Margi Geerlink's photos are creepy and very cool. Page through them all.

The inner life of a cell. (via)

Not worth a billion dollars.

So Google went and bought YouTube and everybody's got a different opinion on what it all means, whether it's good or bad, how much stuff will disappear from YouTube, and I don't really know what to make of it all. In times of great confusion like this, I turn to Red State Update for enlightenment.

The Willie Nelson one cracks me up too.

Shortbus

After Hedwig and the Angry Inch, I'd line up to see just about anything John Cameron Mitchell decided he wanted to make. His latest film, Shortbus, has just opened, and even the trailer is totally, completely not safe for work. But I'm intrigued.

Decorative shingles.

Eek.

An Austrian workman who slipped while working on a house nailed his own testicle to the roof with a nail gun. August Voegl, 59, from Jennersdorf, shot the four-inch nail into his left testicle with the compressed air nail gun. He was unable to extract it or pull himself away from the roof. Emergency medics were called in to separate the man from the roof after which he was airlifted to a nearby hospital where he is reportedly recovering well after surgery.

I'm not familiar with the workman's comp situation in Austria, but there's an injury you can safely assume wasn't purposefully self-inflicted for the disability check.

Not your father's extraterrestrial rover.

NASA's next generation of rovers will boldly go where no rover has gone before by being drunk and amoeboid.

Instead of driving, walking, or rolling around like other vehicles designed to traverse distant, rugged landscapes, the new rover changes its shape and topples along, veering a bit from side to side as it moves ahead. "We call it the drunken-sailor walk," says Pamela Clark, one of the designers of the project at Goddard and a professor at Catholic University of America.

The minimalist device consists of an adjustable frame joined together at key points called nodes. The thin struts connect to the round nodes to form a tetrahedral shape, with another "payload node" at the center to hold the computer systems and sensors. The robot moves by extending or contracting its struts to change its configuration and shift its center of gravity until it tumbles over, then begins the process again. Depending on the terrain, its overall shape can change from tetrahedral to cubic to nearly spherical or flattened out. Ultimately, it should be able to negotiate its way across deep crevasses and climb steep cliffs by shifting its shape as needed. [...]

Now the main focus will be on developing a variety of "gaits" that the device can use to negotiate different kinds of surfaces, terrains, and slopes. This involves figuring out how far each strut should extend and in what order. Clark has just worked out a control sequence for what she calls an amoeboid gait, which makes the device look as though it's slithering across a surface. "We set out to make the most efficient, low-to-the-ground gait we could," Clark said. "An amoeba moves by trying to extend itself horizontally, with not very much fighting of gravity, which turns out to be very important in this." [...]

The team has designed versions for both lunar and Mars exploration in hopes that they will be able to crawl into narrow cracks and around, over, and under obstacles that a wheeled rover can't negotiate. More-advanced versions could even "chimney" up a space between vertical cliff faces. (This technique was developed by rock climbers to enable them to ascend a narrow vertical space: they lean against one wall with their legs against the other and gradually inch upward.) And since there's inherently no risk of the device falling over and it is unlikely to get stuck, the vehicles could take more chances in exploring the difficult nooks and crannies that might be of great interest geologically and biologically.

Working in conjunction with conventional wheeled rovers, the two kinds of vehicles could form an effective team: the wheeled vehicles would be able to cross long flat distances and serve as a base, while the "tets" could scurry around as scouts, looking for the most interesting places and retrieving samples.

Also, incredible pictures from the Hubble telescope of two galaxies colliding and a prize-winning radio telescope image of a giant gas bubble about 30,000 light-years across the Milky Way from us.

There's something about Condi.

Heh heh heh.

I am he as you are he as you are me...

Check out this very interesting photography project by Francois Brunelle called "I'm not a look-alike!" None of the pairs in the pictures are related to one another. The artist's site is here, but the first link above has more examples. If you have already found your look-alike, Brunelle is still working on the project and is taking applications.

I'm sure the fetish sites will appear shortly.

Toshiba's giant bubble helmet makes your TV or computer monitor appear to be broadcasting in 360° surround vision. Which would be pretty cool, I suppose, but in looking at the picture, I can see a potential drawback.

Via waxy.

Thy vinyl shall be my vinyl.

The history of the Jews in America has been spelled out in books and dramatized on the big screen. But it has never been told through LP covers. Until now. (via)

King of the world.

John Murtha: "The administration's 'stay-the-course' strategy is not a plan for victory. It's not even a plan. All we have is a new military blueprint to keep 140,000 troops in Iraq through 2010."

Via Juan Cole.

Beauty in the deep.

PZ's Friday cephalopod is a total looker.

Why we still fight.

William Lind:

At least 32 American troops have been killed in Iraq this month. Approximately 300 have been wounded. The "battle for Baghdad" is going nowhere. A Marine friend just back from Ramadi said to me, "It didn't get any better while I was there, and it's not going to get better." Virtually everyone in Washington, except the people in the White House, knows that is true for all of Iraq.

Actually, I think the White House knows it too. Why then does it insist on "staying the course" at a casualty rate of more than one thousand Americans per month? The answer is breathtaking in its cynicism: so the retreat from Iraq happens on the next president's watch. That is why we still fight.

Yep, it's now all about George. Anyone who thinks that is too low, too mean, too despicable even for this bunch does not understand the meaning of the adjective "Rovian." Would they let thousands more young Americans get killed or wounded just so George W. does not have to face the consequences of his own folly? In a heartbeat.

Meanwhile, over in Afghanistan, it's almost enough to make a fellow enlist: "Canadian troops fighting Taliban militants in Afghanistan have stumbled across an unexpected and potent enemy -- almost impenetrable forests of marijuana plants 10 feet tall."

The Story of the 101st Fighting Keyboarders

Via just about everybody, this is great.

Quick hits.

Five short films from the NY Film Festival. (via)

"During an unprecedented opportunity, with the sun poised behind Saturn, Cassini scientists discovered two new rings and confirmed the presence of two others. The new rings are associated with one or more small moons and share their orbits with the moons, while scientists suspect a moon is lurking near a third ring."

Also, this swank infrared photo of Saturn.

Freedom offers America democracy. A for effort.

"Officials are trying to track down the origins of a mummified human skeleton that a Michigan woman tried to sell on eBay." (with picture!)

Vacuum cleaner music.

Rock, paper, scissors, etc.

Cow beats taser, taser beats goat. But the analogy ends there, because goats don't beat cows.

No integrity left anywhere in his body.

Fuck. You. John McCain.

Let me make this perfectly clear: I'd rather take another four years of Bush than to have that lying, hypocritical sack of shit as my president.

Update: Again, from ThinkProgress. McCain knows all this, and Mr. Bipartisan is lying through his teeth.

North Korea's bombs are built with plutonium. They produce their plutonium in a reactor they built during the Reagan presidency, starting around 1984. They separated enough plutonium for perhaps two bombs during the first Bush presidency.

When they tried to make more plutonium under President Bill Clinton, he said he would go to war to stop them. He had plans prepared for the attack. The North Koreans backed down.

Bill Clinton froze the program in its tracks. North Korea did not separate a gram of plutonium while Bill Clinton was in office. He also stopped their missile tests.

George Bush walked away from the deal in his first months in office. In March 2001, Secretary of State Colin Powell said he wanted "to continue the process begun under Clinton." Bush cut him down.

U.S. intelligence had detected signs near the end of the Clinton years that the North Koreans were trying to evade the freeze by beginning a uranium program. When confronted with the evidence in 2002, the North Koreans admitted it and offered to put that program on the table as part of a comprehensive deal. Bush used it as an excuse to walk away from negotiations. He thought he did not need to talk to the North Koreans. He thought he could overthrow the regime.

He failed. He issued threats and drew lines in the sand. The North Koreans walked right past them. They threw out the IAEA inspectors in December 2002, while Bush was preparing to invade Iraq. The month after the invasion, they withdrew from the Non-Proliferation Treaty. In 2005, they reprocessed plutonium from the fuel rods Clinton had made them keep in pools under IAEA inspection. They took another load of fuel out of the reactor and processed more plutonium. They reloaded the reactor to make even more plutonium. They tested missiles, they made bombs, now they have tested a bomb.

Bush did nothing.

This is Bush's Bomb. All the plutonium made for these bombs was made either during his presidency or his father's. To blame his failure on Bill Clinton should not be allowed to stand. Senator McCain should be ashamed.

He should be ashamed, except he has demonstrated over and over during his Senate career that shame is an utterly foreign concept to him. You can't trust a word that comes out of his mouth. He will say anything, and his whole "Straight Talk Express" is a sick joke. As I said in the comments to this post, McCain is the only serious candidate for president that could make me enthusiastic about Hillary Clinton.

The competition is fierce.

General Tommy Franks famously called Bush's former Undersecretary for Defense Doug Feith "the fucking stupidest guy on the face of the earth." Not without good reason, of course, but time waits for no man and there is always a younger and hungrier challenger ready to take a champion's belt. Ladies and gentlemen, fighting out of the red corner, Canada's contribution to neoconservativism : David "No, I'm the fucking stupidest guy on the face of the earth" Frum!

There is also this unintentionally hilarious bit from Frum:

"(n)ot only would the nuclearization of Japan be a punishment of China and North Korea, but it would go far to meet our goal of dissuading Iran — it would show Tehran that the United States and its friends will aggressively seek to correct any attempt by rogue states to unsettle any regional nuclear balance..."

Always about Iran with these guys, eh? But, let me understand: the way to dissuade Iran from getting the bomb is to push Japan to go nuclear, as that showcases that we "will aggressively seek to correct any attempt by rogue states to unsettle any regional nuclear balance". Tell me David, who would we enlist to do so with Iran? Israel already has nukes, so I take it you'll be cheerleading getting Turkey, Saudi Arabia and Egypt to go nuclear if Iran does, per your prescription of having North Korea's nuclear capability balanced by a Japanese bomb? Nah, that can't be right. Frum: "The analogue for Iran, of course, would be the threat of American aid to improve Israel's capacity to hit targets with nuclear weapons". But of course. As if Israel doesn't already have such capacity in spades, friend--and as if ratcheting up an Israeli-Iranian stand-off in such fashion is in any way a convincing way to disincentivize the Iranians from going nuclear. Quite the opposite, I'd think. Shorter Frum: roll the dice and see where the chips fall. But we tried that in Iraq David, and it has proven a disaster. It's time to grow-up, and get serious now, I'm afraid--not upset the apple carts further by stoking a crisis with the Chinese and, with grotesque recklessness, chomp at the bit to re-militarize Japan come what may.

Remember, that's one of the leading "intellectuals" of the conservative movement, advocating fighting nuclear proliferation by way of a nuclear arms race.

Your baby wants Marlboros.

Not exactly a disinterested third party, but still:

Scientists connected with [India's] Central Tobacco Research Station [...] believe that tobacco has people-friendly uses too - as a high protein diet supplement for patients convalescing after surgeries and treatment of burns and other ailments.

The key is tobacco food protein, which is extracted from the leaves and during tobacco processing.

The absence of potassium and sodium in the protein will reduce the frequency of dialysis by 50 per cent and it can also be used as a hypoallergenic infant formula. The proteins in tobacco are well balanced with all 21 amino acids and are nutritionally good for health.

Amazing Martian photography.

The Mars Orbiter sent back this picture of Victoria Crater with the Opportunity rover perched on the lip of it. Pretty swank, considering the orbiter was about 168 miles up.

Ig Nobel

The 2006 Ig Nobel Prizes were awarded last night, and I must say, I'm intrigued by the hiccup cure. The list of winners:

ORNITHOLOGY _ The late Philip R.A. May and Ivan R. Schwab for exploring and explaining why woodpeckers don't get headaches.

NUTRITION — Wasmia Al-Houty and Faten Al-Mussalam, for showing that dung beetles are finicky about the dung.

PEACE — Howard Stapleton, for inventing a teenager repellent, an electronic device that makes annoying noise designed to be audible to teenagers but not adults. The same technology is used to make telephone ringtones audible to teens, but not teachers.

ACOUSTICS — D. Lynn Halpern, Randolph Blake and James Hillenbrand for their experiments to learn why people dislike the sound of fingernails on a chalkboard.

MATHEMATICS — Nic Svenson and Piers Barnes, for calculating the number of photographs you must take to ensure that nobody in a group photo will have their eyes closed.

LITERATURE — Daniel Oppenheimer, for his report "Consequences of Erudite Vernacular Utilized Irrespective of Necessity: Problems with Using Long Words Needlessly."

MEDICINE — Francis Fesmire, for his medical case report "Termination of Intractable Hiccups with Digital Rectal Massage"; and Majed Odeh, Harry Bassan, and Arie Oliven for their subsequent medical case report.

PHYSICS — Basile Audoly and Sebastien Neukirch, for their insights into why dry spaghetti often breaks into more than two pieces when bent.

CHEMISTRY — Antonio Mulet, Jose Javier Benedito, Jose Bon and Carmen Rossello, for their study "Ultrasonic Velocity in Cheddar Cheese as Affected by Temperature."

BIOLOGY — Bart Knols and Ruurd de Jong, for showing that female malaria mosquitoes are attracted equally to the smell of Limburger cheese and to the smell of human feet.

Past winners are here.

Yikes.

There has been an explosion and a fire is still burning at a hazardous waste plant in the next county over, and they've evacuated half the town of Apex—about 16,000 people.

Bending over pages.

Kriston tagged me with a book meme, and while I'm going to attempt to answer it, the shameful truth is that I have kind of fallen out of the habit of reading books. I used to read them all the time, and I still always enjoy it when I do, but the vast majority of my reading takes place on the computer these days. So, with that uncomfortable confession out of the way...

1. One book that's changed your life.

The instruction manual to Sid Meier's Alpha Centauri. Seriously, that game has probably taken ten years off my life expectancy due to lack of sleep.

2. One book that you have read more than once.

Hesse's Siddhartha, several times over when I was a teenager. I very rarely re-read any books, but was kinda fixated on that one as a youngster. And it's short, which helped. Bonus: Pill Buddha.

3. One book you would want on a desert island.

Probably this one. Seriously though, The Boomer Bible likely tops the list because it's dense and packed with in-jokes if you're willing to follow every link in the concordance.

4. One book that made you cry.

Tadeusz Borowski's This Way for the Gas, Ladies and Gentlemen.

5. One book that made you laugh.

Christopher Moore's Lamb: The Gospel According to Biff, Christ's Childhood Pal. Also, Robertson Davies' The Salterton Trilogy.

6. One book you wish had been written.

2000 Man: A Look Back at President Albert Gore's First Term.

7. One book you wish had never been written.

[Fill in the blank] by Ayn Rand.

8. One book you are currently reading.

I'm not in the middle of a book at the moment. See what I mean?

9. One book you've been meaning to read.

Geez, the books I've been meaning to read and never gotten around to would fill more than one library. Pynchon's Mason & Dixon probably holds the record for most times I've started a book without finishing it, so let's go with that one.

Urban coyotes.

I wasn't aware that almost every urban area in the United States has coyotes.

Expanding beyond the rural West over the past century—despite efforts early on by farmers and ranchers, with federal help, to exterminate them—coyotes now reside in every state except Hawaii. Their infiltration into cities and suburbs in recent decades, Gompper says, is simply a side effect of their overall range expansion. "At this point, all cities have them. Urban coyotes are probably much more common than people realize." No one knows how many coyotes live in urban areas. Their total U.S. population could be anywhere from one to ten million.

Turns out urban and suburban environments are more or less ideal habitats for them.

Who has conquered the Middle East?

Just about everybody. Five thousand years condensed into 90 seconds, with pretty colors. (via)

Bodies, bodies everywhere.

Bonanza!

A "bonanza" of new planets has been found at the heart of our galaxy, NASA astronomers announced today. Sixteen potential planets have been detected in the region known as the Galactic Bulge, the mass of stars and hot gas at the center of the Milky Way some 26,000 light-years away. This makes the newfound planets the most distant worlds ever discovered.

Of the 16 newly detected bodies, 7 have been deemed likely planets, with the remaining 9 awaiting confirmation. If all 16 are confirmed, the find would constitute the largest number of new planets detected in a single observation. A team of astronomers discovered the planets during a seven-day survey of the constellation Sagittarius using the Hubble Space Telescope in February 2004.

There have been many announcements of planets discovered outside of our solar system recently, but this one brings some new twists. First, given the bodies' location, it implies that planet formation is spread all across the galaxy, meaning that literally billions of planets are likely to exist just in our galaxy alone. Also, five of the new planets make a full orbit of their stars in less than 24 hours, on in just ten hours. This makes them the fastest ever found and creates a new class of "ultrashort period" planets.

Sweetshirts.

Twice the fabric and half the dignity. Also a great stocking stuffer for the conjoined twins in your family.

Be sure to page through the menus on the left to see the rest of the plural clothing.

Buggies of mourners.

All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy.All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy.All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy.All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy.All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy.All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy.All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy.All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy.All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy.

(h/t: Lenhart)

Bad dog! Bad dog!

Now that's a crappy day.

A 21-year-old Vallejo woman was mauled by her pet pit bull Tuesday, and authorities responding to the emergency discovered about 100 marijuana plants inside her home, police said. The woman, who was not identified, was flown by air ambulance to a hospital after receiving bites on her legs and arms and losing a large amount of blood. She underwent surgery and was listed in serious condition, police Lt. Kevin Kelly said.

The dog attacked the woman shortly before noon as the woman was trying to feed it in the backyard of her home on the 5300 block of Chenin Blanc Place, Kelly said. Police arrived at the residence and found the marijuana plants as they searched the house for the dog. The plants have an estimated street value of about $400,000, Kelly said. It was unclear whether the woman will face charges for having marijuana plants.

A hundred-plant operation and it's "unclear" whether charges will be filed? She sure isn't living in North Carolina. (via)

The gods will punish your evil by making you sick.

Just got back from taking Keegan to DC for a couple of days, which was fun, but my feet hurt. And clearing out the backlog at work (that's not a euphemism, thanks) is going to be brutal over the next couple of weeks. So, just popping in mid-hiatus to wish Froz a late happy birthday and point out that while I was gone, somebody left the best comment ever.