Please don't make me go to the park, mommy!

I love Dark Roasted Blend's continuing series of nightmare playgrounds.

These creepy masterpieces of sculpture and landscaping can be found in playgrounds not only in Russia (even though this is where the majority of photos come from) but also in China, East European Countries, and even in the US - anywhere the grass-roots creativity goes bad and the bad taste gets promoted, often unintentionally.

Don't get me wrong, I'm all for the bizarre stuff for kids, and some of the sculptures here are downright fascinating; but others are... well, ugly as hell. Not only kids, but some more impressionable adults are in danger to become psychologically scarred from thinking too much about these monsters and letting them into their dreams.

Part One

Part Two

and the newly posted Part Three, featuring the ever popular Polish Penis Train.

Ride my stool, baby.

The best part is not having to pay for parking at the bar.

On March 4, Officer Michael Trotter, one of the two members of the traffic unit, responded to the 500 block of Kelley Lane to assist Newark fire with a man who had sustained injuries from a crash. Subsequent investigation revealed the man had been operating the motorized bar stool on Kelley Lane when he crashed it while trying to make a turn, the report states.

The man claimed the bar stool could reach speeds of 38 mph on its five-horsepower engine but that he was traveling at about 20 mph when he crashed it at 5:40 p.m., according to Trotter's report. The man allegedly admitted to drinking about 15 beers during an interview with Trotter at Licking Memorial Hospital, where he was taken after the crash.

Ah, good old American ingenuity. What doesn't seem like a good idea after fifteen beers?

The Party of Underpants Gnomes

So, the Republicans released their alternative budget the other day and nobody could accuse them of not thinking outside the box. Because instead of, you know, numbers and stuff that most people expect a budget to contain, it has a few diagrams with platitudes in circles instead, along with umpteen restatements of their core budgetary principle, namely, that Democrats are lame. Think I'm exaggerating? Look for yourself. In fact, just about the only actual proposed number anywhere in the 19-page glossy pamphlet is to return the top tax rate to where it was on the eve of the Great Depression. I shit you not.

Anyhow, it got linked on Fark, which resulted in this spot-on exchange:

I don't trust white people or their budgets.

then you'll love the republican party. it's led by a black guy and an indian, and instead of a budget they have a crayon drawing of a bald eagle high-fiving jesus.

Followed by one of the funniest threads I've ever read there, chock full of new platitudes-in-circles charts.

You can't make an omelet without breaking eggs.

From today's Krugman op-ed:

Much discussion of the toxic-asset plan has focused on the details and the arithmetic, and rightly so. Beyond that, however, what's striking is the vision expressed both in the content of the financial plan and in statements by administration officials. In essence, the administration seems to believe that once investors calm down, securitization — and the business of finance — can resume where it left off a year or two ago.

To be fair, officials are calling for more regulation. Indeed, on Thursday Tim Geithner, the Treasury secretary, laid out plans for enhanced regulation that would have been considered radical not long ago. But the underlying vision remains that of a financial system more or less the same as it was two years ago, albeit somewhat tamed by new rules.

As you can guess, I don't share that vision. I don't think this is just a financial panic; I believe that it represents the failure of a whole model of banking, of an overgrown financial sector that did more harm than good. I don't think the Obama administration can bring securitization back to life, and I don't believe it should try.

However, there's only so much that can be squeezed into an 800-word editorial. The real must read is a piece in the upcoming Atlantic Monthly, "The Quiet Coup" by Simon Johnson, a professor at MIT's Sloan School of Management and the chief economist at the International Monetary Fund during 2007 and 2008. It's long, but very, very much worth your time. Can't recommend it highly enough. The short version: nothing will get fixed until we bust up the financial sector oligarchy that currently holds the government by the short and curlies.

E is for epidermis.

Skin font.

Interesting, but not as pretty as the last version. Both via ectomo.

The flying car has arrived.

Mostly.

On March 5, at Plattsburgh International Airport in upstate New York, a "roadable aircraft" called Transition took flight for the first time. The flight lasted just 37 seconds (see video below), and according to the pilot, Phil Meteer, a retired U.S. Air Force colonel, it was merely a brief, wheels-up test along the runway. Transition made six more test flights between March 5 and 7. The flights were approved by the Federal Aviation Agency, which inspected Transition prior to takeoff. [...]

The aircraft is designed to be driven on public roads: its wings fold up in 30 seconds, and it operates in front-wheel drive and uses 27 miles per gallon. Transition also fits in a standard garage. In the air, it can reach speeds of 115 miles per hour on flights of 450 miles or less at 30 miles per gallon.

Video at the link.

Lion versus orca, who wins?

The question was posed and, of course, it was immediately pointed out that home field advantage would be decisive. Which leaves only one avenue for deciding this evergreen question once and for all: a rap battle. And it's on.

Mycopanky is complicated.

As in certain fungi have literally tens of thousands of different sexes. What I learned today:

It doesn't sound very romantic in a Valentine's Day month, but sex in fungi primarily involves getting the two parental nuclei into the same cytoplasm. Many fungi, like Schizophyllum, don't even have differentiated sex organs! Wherever they touch they can exchange nuclei. There are genetic controls over which individual a fungus may "choose" for its mate. Many of the more primitive fungi have only two sexes. In some cases we can distinguish male from female gametes or gametangia, but in most cases they are morphologically identical. In these cases we must call them + and -, or A and a, or 1 and 2. Thus any spore from one mating will be sexually compatible with half of its siblings or half of the population. The mating type is determined in this case by a single genetic locus with two alleles.

Some species of fungi (and probably some slime molds) have gone one step farther, having multiple alleles at this single locus. For example in a population, a fungus may have three alleles at a locus, designated A1, A2, and A3. Any given spore would still be compatible with half its siblings, but compatible with 2/3 of the population in general. This encourages a spore not to mate with its siblings, or encourages outbreeding in a population. These numbers would change as the number of alleles at that locus increases in the population.

Another advancement has taken place in some fungi-- using two genetic loci to determine mating type. These are designated as the A and B loci (pretty clever, those geneticists...). Let's assume for the sake of discussion that there are two alleles at each locus and let's assume that two haploids are coming together for a mating. (dim the lights please...) We'll designate the first parental strain as A1B1 and the second as A2B2. As long as the mating types differ at both alleles, a mating can take place.

A1B1 X A2B2

Since the A and B loci are genetically unlinked (on different chromosomes), independent assortment takes place during meiosis, and the haploid offspring of this mating would have one of the following mating types.

A1B1, A2B2 and the new combinations A1B2 and A2B1.

Thus any of the offspring would be compatible with only 1/4 of its siblings, a significant improvement over the single locus system. In reality there are usually more than two alleles at any one locus. Each individual is compatible with any individual that is different at both loci. In Schizophyllum commune there are more than 300 alleles at the A locus and more than 90 known for the B locus. Thus there are more than 28,000 different combinations of A and B, or 28,000 different sexes! Each individual is compatible with 27,997 of the others in the worldwide population (99.98% outbreeding) compared with being compatible with only 1/4 of its siblings. Thus the enormous number of sexes in fungi is meant to encourage non-sibling mating and non-relative mating, which ensures genetic diversity in the population.

And I learned it in a comment thread to a post nominally about conservative hip-hop.

Kutiman mixes Youtube.

I'd seen this linked here and there, and thought to myself, "Self, you should go check that out." Which means, of course, that I promptly forgot all about it until Sifu Tweety emailed and reminded me. So, I went to check it out like a good doobie and sweet greasy Jesus, is it impressive. And massively funky.

The most important journalist in America.

Everybody and their brother is linking Jon Stewart's demolition of CNBC last night. So I'll just join in, in case you're one of the five people who still hasn't seen it.

Jesus. The last time I saw an ass-kicking that brutal, Wanderlei Silva was rape-choking Keith Jardine.