Category Archives: Uncategorized

We only have eight planets now.

Light blogging this morning possibly picking up this afternoon.

It all started yesterday when I went to Walmart to pick up a notebook. A little note-sized notebook. They didn’t have what I wanted, so I had to search through the entire back-to-school section to confirm this. Then today I’m wearing my new pants, which is quite an event, given that I hate spending money on clothes. I really feel like I’m going back to school. I loved the first week of school. Then the teachers started assigning homework and it was all downhill from there.

And that squirrel that was darting in and out of the road this morning as I drove to work, not really awake, and nearly killed you? Curse you, you vile vermin.

Musical discovery of the day: Muse

I want the whole set.

“We” are healing the ozone layer. Well, it’s not getting any worse anyway. Hurray!

I bet aggressive racoons wouldn’t be a problem on the eastern side of the state. They act all hoity-toity towards Idaho, but everybody knows Spokanites are hicks and someone would take care of the problem through the judicious application of firearms.

It’s the why back in my day list. Oddly though, some of them are true of me and I’m way older than college freshmen.

Of course we didn’t have coolio video podcasts when I was in school.

Some scientists say they found proof of dark matter.

“The kinetic energy of this collision is…enough to completely evaporate and pulverise planet Earth ten trillion trillion times over,” said team member Maxim Markevitch of the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics in Cambridge, US.

I need this explained in Volkswagons or atomic bombs to truly grasp it.

The gaming industry, they just aren’t catering to my needs.

Stargate SG-1 is officially cancelled on SciFi.

Which doesn’t bother me at all because I will only watch the first 8 seasons.

Bacon Snack Bars. Let me know if it’s good.

via Fark

Let’s see how I’m feeling tomorrow though, being the end of the world as we know it and all. Not being Muslim though, I am unclear on whether it is a day of reckoning for me personally, or just Muslims, or the world.

I hope he is wrong.

Nitwit Democrats think anything that can be passed off as a failure in Iraq will somehow diminish only Bush and the neocons. In reality — a concept with which Democrats seem only dimly acquainted — it would diminish the nation, and all but certainly end the American moment. In late September 2001 the administration succeeded in teaching a critical lesson to tough hombres like Musharraf and Putin: In a scary world, America can be scarier. But it’s all a long time ago now.

Luckily the article answers the question we were all really asking.

The accident involved dark chocolate.

Inspired by this and in a mostly successful effort to avoid pulling up fenceposts in my yard, I’m photoblogging my Sunday dinner.

It all started last night watching Feasting on Asphalt. Watching the fry bread part and seeing the burrito inspired me to stop by the grocery store, pick up some chuck and some peppers and toss them in the crockpot. This morning I had some lovely shredded beef.

Which I thought about all morning because I was hungry and due to a series of very unfortunate events I had no leftovers at church. A cup of coffee does not a meal make. Not even three cups of coffee makes a meal. With all this time to think about it, I determined that it needed beans to go with the lovely shredded beef.

In order to heat the beans I had to find the pot. It was in the fridge. With rice in it.

A fortuitious circumstance. I decided to add the rice to the mix. Having liberated my pot from the rice, I grew, picked, dried, soaked and cooked the beans. Or possibly, I dumped the can in the pot and heated until hot.

I needed something to hold it all together. The obvious choice was tortillas. And desperately not wanting to a. drive to the store and b. spend money I busted out some oddly shaped bread products.

Put it all together and hold it too close to the camera and you get this yummy meal.

It’s not roast beef and mashed potatoes, but it was still a darned fine Sunday dinner.

And now, fortified by this meal, I’m off to dig holes and wrestle with fences.

You know how you look back and realize some of the most cherished truths of your youth are not entirely accurate?

Continue reading →

Victoria Principal. In space.

Dang, I’m jealous.

Er, Picture.

Love the new Mustangs. They look fabulous. But not in white. Well, white is okay, if it has the stripes. I saw one today and without the stripes, it just doesn’t work for me. In case you were thinking of getting me one for my birthday.

How to win at Monopoly. I’m embittered against the game because, a. I never win and b. once I’m out I have to wait for hours for everyone else to finish up. Risk is where it’s at.

via digg

There’s an ongoing conversation on God and conservatism over in The Corner. Scroll down and read it all, but this quote is deserves a mention.

Now, of course, ever since the Enlightenment we’ve been trying see how many of the religious bricks we can pull out without making the whole thing collapse. This game of metaphysical Jenga is far from over, but the damage from it is pretty obvious in all sorts of areas.

There’s a woot-off going on at woot.com. Buy stuff you don’t really need because the prices are so so low.

TV numbs the pain.

Warp Factor Love.

I’d laugh if it weren’t so disturbing.

via Wil Wheaton

I realize population sample is skewed to the nerd, but holy cow, the RIAA is more hated than the IRS. By far.

Oh, that’s some bad news. Maybe I should ask for a raise.

Or, I’ll just pretend to be 27. I seem to remember that as a good year. Who knows though, my memory probably isn’t what it used to be.

A well turned phrase by Inoperable Terran.

Good news, all. The most complete cow genome evar is ready.

When they can make a cow that’s entirely rib-eye steaks, then I’ll understand why this is important.

Coffee spills.

I like the “they didn’t give me an insulating sleeve” part. Like you can’t ask for one. And if you get coffee daily, you really should be familiar with whether you need one or not. The story is also very unclear on why she needed a sleeve if the barista sliding the drink across the counter caused it to spill on her foot.

Just the fact that the headline includes the words “Round and Orbity” makes this an awesome article.

I liked it back when planets meant something other than it’s round,” said Brown, who has discovered 15 objects that appear to qualify as planets under the new definition, which might make him history’s most prolific planet hunter.

Jon Stewart interviews Samuel L. Jackson. Hilarity ensues.

As the 80’s fashion creeps back into our culture, let’s look back and reflect on whether we really want to go there.

via The Manolo

Get Fuzzy is particularly amusing today.

/Calvin & Hobbes 4eva

Religious profiling in airports. So wacky it just might work. Until the terrorist get tired of the airplane thing and try something new, which if I were them I would have done already, but I’m not, so there you have it.

Scrappleface on the Hezbollah-Israeli cease fire.

These cease fires will cause significant delays in the radical Muslims’ plan to rule the world. It’s a major hassle for them that sends a clear signal.

Iran’s president has a blog now.

Oh, ouch.

Do you ever wonder at the fact that we have the money, time, technology, and energy to support a vast entertainment network. Our society provides millions of people with time and money—should we choose—to sit around watching TV and movies. We have electricity, we have televisions, we have the money to pay an entire industry to make stuff for us to watch. It’s amazing. Or, I should lay off the cat’s pain killers.*

*not actually hooked on the cat’s pain killers

I saw a couple of meteors tonight, despite the moon and the clouds and the streetlights and only watching for 15 minutes. I think I’ll go buy some lottery tickets while my luck is running high.

Interesting Penn Radio podcast (direct audio link) with Norman Borlaug, winner of the Nobel Peace Prize in 1970.

via Reason

How to be a hit on YouTube.

Everyone needs their 15 minutes. Although with our modern short attention spans I think that can safely be slimmed down to 5 minutes.

I bet the terrorists were paid off by Rove to get arrested yesterday in order to help Bush cover up whatever he is covering up this week. Nothing could be more obvious.

So far: 155135

After seeing the moon out my window at 2:00am or so the last few months, it has finally dawned on me that I have trouble sleeping when there is a full moon. Am I secretly a were-being?

I’m making radio programs for SEPTEMBER. SEPTEMBER! I am still having trouble remembering to write 2006 instead of 2005 and it’s almost SEPTEMBER.

I wonder how my sister’s flight from Khartoum to London is going. heh.

Governments are the biggest threat to privacy! Who knew?

Window shopping for real. That’s really cool.

James Van Allen has died. RIP.

Poor Isis. Fever, infection, surgery. She should be under the knife now.

She better be darn cute for the rest of her hopefully long life to even out the cost to benefit ratio.

UPDATE: Surgery was sucessful, she should be coming home tomorrow. Yay!

Keep a couple of babies around the house to absorb the smoke residue.

via Tim Blair

In case you’re just too optimistic about the state of the war on terror, here’s a downer for you.

I agree this will probably be long and drawn out and we don’t dare give it up lest it fester and grow worse, but I am catiously optimistic that once change starts it will be over quickly. And I really hope that breaking point will happen sooner rather than later, preferably before someone does something stupid with a nuclear weapon.

I rely on the kindness of others for my espresso, not willing to fork over the cash for a home machine, but this is hardcore.

My birthday is coming up in a few months. Start saving now.

No one knows where the original Apollo 11 video tapes are.

Originally stored at Goddard, the tapes were moved in 1970 to the US National Archives. No one knows why, but in 1984 about 700 boxes of space flight tapes there were returned to Goddard.

“We have the documents to say they were withdrawn, but no one knows exactly where they went,” Mr Sarkissian said.

I bet the Greys took them.

BTW, the movie The Dish. Fabulous.

by Kristin Hoppe

So, I’m doing sound for this funeral today because I work at a church and people like to have funerals at churches. I don’t know why. Anyway, as I try to avoid but it’s a funeral so it came up, I got to thinking about my own mortality and how there’s stuff that I couldn’t do once I was dead, presumably. And the one thing that concerned me the most today was that I wouldn’t be able to listen to Shotgun Angel or better, The Revelation, again.

At first I thought, have them play it at my memorial service, but it is so not funeral music and trust me, just because it’s your favorite song and it reminds everyone of you is not a good reason to play it at a funeral. I have had to play some funerally inappropriate songs in my day. Those songs, play them at the wake. (BTW, when I die assuming anyone cares, just have a wake. None of this funeral/memorial service stuff. Have a nice party and mention my name once in a while.)

So back to my point, I figured I had better just listen to it now while I have the opportunity. It’s been a while and gosh darn it, that’s a great album. So, go out and listen to something you like.

So deep.

I hate that word, meme. I don’t have a better one, though, so I’ll use it. But that’s neither here nor there.

No TIVO too.

Start saving now. Chocolate-dipped Altoids are coming. Yum.

I admit the idea of curiously strong ginger worries me.

It’s a Dafur metaphor.

Lileks makes a good point that starts out like this:

I am not a gloom & doom person, except when it comes to myself, and I am still optimistic in general, since I learned long ago that depending on a US-USSR thermonuclear exchange eventually disappoints and promotes bad savings habits.

It’s your own personal blimp.

Why not make and display more publically accessible art? Just a thought.

Mark Steyn

In America, terrorism is like dentistry and hairdressing: It doesn’t count unless you’re officially credentialed.

also:

The head of America’s most prominent Jewish organization will talk about nothing else for days on end, he and the media too tied up dealing with Mel Gibson’s ruminations on “f—ing Jews” to bother with footling peripheral stories about actual f—ing Jews murdered for no other reason than because they’re f—ing Jews.

via Inoperable Terran

I’ll be gone all day Friday. And by gone I mean not at my computer. If you’re in the area come out to the Kootenai County Fairgrounds, 7pm, I’ll be there. Actually, I’ll be there all day, but nothing very exciting will be happening until 7pm. Well, the jalepeno corndogs will be happening around 5pm, and that’s really why I’m there, but 7pm is fine, the corndogs will still be available then.

If you’re not in the area, you’re on your own. Good luck.

UPDATE: The sound, not so much; but I had the finest jalepeno corn dog I have ever had tonight. So it all balances out.

And then we bomb you into the ground.

I heart high fructose corn syrup but unfortunately it looks like eating a balanced, moderate diet is the best way to stay healthy.

Oh, YouTube, what did we do before you brought us important videos like this?

And mostly unrelated, but Best of Both Worlds was probably the finest cliff-hanger season ending I have ever seen. I clearly remember yelling at my TV when the first half ended. It was a long summer.

I don’t know what this is all about, something about growing creative eggs or something, but that is an awesome looking website.

Lawn mowing: front and back: 14:08

Made easier by the fact that several sections were, er, brown and required no mowing.

Previous time.

The Japanese are planning to build a lunar station. I bet it’ll have all those cool robots and gadgets we never get over here.

I have no idea where Featherville, ID is. Or that there were ever Basques there. I did know that Idaho has a lot of trees.

via Fark

Canada, Spock, and taxes.

Real invisibility may possibly be possible, someday.

Matt is helping out Uganda’s night commuters.

On the one hand they are children stuck in abject poverty with practically no clean water, no latrines, depending on the NGOs for food, clothing and education and living in fear of being kidnapped or shot daily. It is horrific and no matter how bad we feel, we cannot relate. On the other hand, they’re just kids that need to hear that someone in the world cares about them and Jesus loves them, so help out if you can because it will make a difference.

Not to take away from Matt’s thing, but I would also recommend donating to Far Reaching Ministries.

Gold, Jonah, gold.

These are the accommodating Westerners — many of them intellectuals — all too willing to take the word of totalitarians and even more eager to believe that the champions of democracy are in the wrong. Some social scientists call these people “French,� but that is too limiting. For there are plenty of them in America, too.

It’s hard to be the privileged political class in America. There’s just no respect for position anymore.

C’mon, everyone knows they’re moving NORAD to make more room for Stargate Command.

/ the only winning move is not to play

This has gone on long enough now. Depeche Mode has been forced to cancel their Tel Aviv concert.

via The Corner

North Korea wants some attention.

Castro steps aside to have surgery. Hopefully the change is permanent and ends up for the better.

So, the government has been trying to create a easily transmittable version of the bird flu. They failed. It’s a good news/bad news/duh sort of thing.

Also, ferrets are involved.

IDF hacks Lebanon’s TV station and taunts them.

Soon singing Zip-a-dee-doo-dah will be racist.

The Blues Are Still Blue – Belle & Sebastian

Ack! All I can picture is any number of episodes of Data acting in an effort to become more human.

I know I learned something.

I love Fark, they make me laugh every day. CNN quoting farkers? Bizarre. Can you say, running out of news to report?

Hiding in the Iranian embassy. This won’t cause an escalation at all. Thanks dude.

So, you’re playing a video game and just getting too wound up. Luckily, there’s a new game for you. Why you wouldn’t just turn on Food Network or something is beyond me.

So I was forced to watch CNN while I was shuffling along at the gym last night. Forced because the TV in front of the only available treadmill was on CNN and the channel buttons were missing so I couldn’t change it after my neighbors left. And I remembered why I watch SciFi channel instead of the news on TV. Cause it makes me mad and I start talking out loud to the TV, even in public. I had to get a little sarcastic with it, matter of fact.

One of the little segments was talking about the history of the Hezbollah, Anderson Cooper, I think. The Hezbollah has killed over 800 people since 1980, but they provide free health care and help people rebuild their houses after Israel knocks them down because the Hezbollah did something stupid again. Oh, well then, they are quite the upstanding organization. Practically Mother Theresa. So Freaking What? Their purpose for existence is still to destroy Israel and kill/kidnap civilians to create terror. Buying Lebanonese love with good works doesn’t mitigate that, at all.

Now, if the Hezbollah would disavow terrorism, condemn suicide bombers, stop paying suicide bombers, stop launching rockets at Israel and become a purely political party, then great, go for it. But don’t be acting like you’re helping the Lebonese people out of the kindness of your hearts. You’re buying their support. And don’t be reporting it like it all balances out somehow. Sure, they cause the trouble, but they help fix it! La-tee-fricking-da.

I would have thought that automakers were already trying to make alternative energy cars that weren’t hideously ugly—failing, but trying—but I guess I could be wrong.

via Instapundit

Gosh, it’s slow on the internets today.

Sometimes the ridiculousness of politics isn’t funny.

Iran’s upset we aren’t paying enough attention to it right now. North Korea ought to be along any day now to join in the complaining. Look guys, it’s summer. We got shark attacks, heat waves, and now Lebanon, our news attention span is spread thin. Get back to us in, say, October.

Colbert vs. Morning News Shows.

via Huffington Post

For some reason, here in rugged northern Idaho we don’t have a lot of blackouts or emergencies or even much potential for them, but it’s always good to be prepared.

The carpet can tell your age, sex, and weight. Freaky.

There is a woeful lack of explanation in this article on global warming destroying the national parks. Like why is the temperature rising twice as fast on the western half of the country? How can global warming hurt Death Valley? Do they even have national parks on the East Coast?

Anybody have $35 million I could borrow? And by “borrow” I mean “have”.

UPDATE: Um, could you make it $70 million? Thanks.

Somehow Kerry knows the Hezbollah would not have attacked Israel, were he president.

Apparently he has access to the alternate timeline universes. That’s the most plausible explanation I can come up with, anyway.

I wonder if George Bush has a goatee in that universe?

Rube Goldberg thingy in HL2. Someone has too much time on their hands, but it’s still cool.

via MAKE

Mark Steyn

Suppose this were true — that terrorists blew up Oz honeymooners and Scandinavian stoners in Balinese nightclubs because of “the Palestinian question.” Doesn’t this suggest that these people are, at a certain level, nuts?

The good news is our lives are so comfortable that we have nothing better to worry about than that summer is hot. The bad news is our lives are so comfortable we have nothing better to worry about than that summer is hot.

This article makes a few important points concerning the effect of Saddam’s fall.

While the success of Iraq’s democracy hangs in the balance from an operational perspective, the strategic advantages created by the invasion of Iraq are working very favorably for the US in the current Israeli-Lebanon crisis in very tangible ways.

…

The leading Arab League states, Saudi Arabia, Jordan, and Egypt, call Hezbollah’s actions “inappropriate and irresponsible.” This lessens the urgency of calls from the international community, whether the G8, UN, or EU, for a ceasefire. That lessened urgency creates something very precious indeed: a moment in time and space wherein Israel has the most fleeting of opportunities for decisive action against Hezbollah, an avowed foe, a terrorist organization, and a constant threat to the security of its populace.

Decisive action is what has traditionally been missing from the wars of the Middle East. Land changes hands, blows are exchanged, and peace eventually is negotiated. But the underlying dynamic never changes because the sides are rarely faced with a decisive defeat, the only condition that can force the most avowed of men to abandon the ideas they hold dear.

Mark Steyn.

James Lileks.

Victor Davis Hanson.

It’s a brilliant idea. I heart the internet.

/I still miss Joel

via Inoperable Terran

Scott, he’s so witty.

It looks like Bush loves babies until they grow up to be Senators. Now, with the November elections looming, many of us are asking, ‘Where do I go to get my backbone back?’�

Iranians? In North Korea? At the missile tests? That’s like a double dog dare.

Marvin available for purchase.

posted just for the HHGTTG ref. Cause that’s the kind of person I am.

He did it! I didn’t think he had it in him.

Interesting Slashdot replies to the whole Netflix-has-too-much-to-choose-from article yesterday.

That’s a big joystick.

And the discussion it will foster will be along the lines of, “left, left, GO LEFT!”
via MAKE.

A handy comparison chart of the new browsers.

Helen and Tony. Or more appropriately, Tony and Helen.

Need to know what the weather will be like in 2027? Japan will know. Guaranteed to be as accurate as your local weatherman.

So, Discovery landed safely. Good job, kids. So much for the BushRovian conspiracy to kill them all in order to better the poll numbers.

Didn’t everyone vote for Olmert cause he was the feel-good, non-violent type? Not that I have a problem with what he’s doing, I just thought it was interesting how circumstances alter everything.

Instapundit nails my objection to the paying-people-to-vote plan.

And I am willing to catagorically state that it is theologically unsound.

So, it’s not finished yet, but if I wait for that WordPress 3.5 will be out by then, and I’m tired of teh Kubrick, so here’s the new theme. So far.

Google, making the world a better place one complaint at a time.

Bush goes piratical.

I admit the iNike is cool. So, whoever out there is going to buy me that Macbook I have my eye on, could you pick me up one of those sets too. Size 10. Thanks.