I understand there's some kind of voting thingy happening next week somewhere near some corn... or something like that. But who wants to hear from the candidates about how they'll give you everything you want as long as the other guy pays for it? Let's talk to the people who really matter: the stars of viral videos. Stars like the Obama Girl and, and, ... oh yeah! Chad Vader!
When it's cold and windy on your ride, what to do? Climb hills, six times! 1400 feet in 9 miles will keep you warm, until you have to go downhill again and deal with the windchill...
Only in Los Angeles, can you visit your friend in South Pasadena, run into a movie shoot, notice the Trans Am from Smokey and the Bandit in a car dealership called "Selleck Motors," notice that James Brolin is on the set, say "Dude! That's James Brolin!", and then get shushed by a production assistant.
Update: The location appears to be for this movie: The Goods: The Don Ready Story.
I hope everyone has a very Merry Christmas. And even if your bankai makes you super-fast, the presents still can't come fast enough.
Nothing like pulling semi-dried worm guts out of fork bases! But I had to clean the bike before the brand new tires got installed. Mmmm, new kevlar lined Vredestein Fortezzas, mmmm....
Update: New tires feel like riding on rails (drool, wipe).
If you ever played turn-based role-playing games from the 1990's, you might appreciate the writing, pacing, and gameplay for the Fantasy Halo series. Me? I like the cheesy music and sound effects!
So, this guy has some itchy skin, and instead of seeing a doctor about it, he takes some quack home remedy, whose known side effects are turning dermal cells blue-grey. Surprise, surprise, his skin turns blue, and HE'S STILL TAKING THE QUACK ELIXIR! I don't even know what to say to that, except to ask, "How's the itch?"
It's rainy and a slow news day, so what shall we do around here? I know! Let's Ask a Ninja! It's also that time of year when the great Ninja Claus and his Pain Deer strike terror into the hears of milk and cookies everywhere. Actually, this year, they seem to be going after the zombie snow man, Frosty. Vengeance shall be theirs!
I just had to say it: Rodents Of Unusual Size found in Indonesia.
“The giant rat is about five times the size of a typical city rat,” said Kristofer Helgen, a scientist with the Smithsonian Institution in Washington, D.C. “With no fear of humans, it apparently came into the camp several times during the trip.”
Now, the question comes, was there a fire swamp anywhere nearby?
So, you think that at the top of every urban climb in Southern California there should be a pretty view? Well, sometimes, all you get is a reminder you climbed 600 feet and now it's time to turn around. At least I got some birds singing as I looked at the dead end signs. Oh, and usually, when you hear rustling in the bushes by the side of the road, you expect it to be a small mammal of some sort, that will rustle the brush away from you after you startle it. I didn't expect to almost collide with a red-tail hawk as it came jumping out the bush. And, I scared her again on my way down. Thankfully, she didn't take off the second time around, because I wouldn't even know how to explain that crash.
"Well, you see, I startled this bird, and it came shooting out of the brush, but it turned out to be a hawk, and its talons got caught in my helmet, and I had this big bird of prey trying to pry my head off my shoulders, and as I tried to release my helmet from my head, I went down, and I lost my helmet. ... Yes, it had large talons."
Remember watching the Roadrunner cartoons and hoping that Wile E. Coyote, just once, wouldn't get run over by one of his devices, wouldn't fall off a cliff, wouldn't have a boulder squash him, so that he could get that pesky flightless bird? Well, relive that anticipation, Helmety Goodness style!
Bonus video: I was able to host my own file of the Mac vs. PC commercial, Halo Edition, so check it out here. Looks like Macolyte purists don't even want to consider their computers running Windows.
When Tailwind Sports disbanded earlier this year, it left Trek bikes totally unrepresented in the three Grand Tours for next year. Trek has really branded itself as the American bike for the American team, but now comes news that Trek is staying loyal to Johan Bruyneel, and becoming the official bike for Team Astana, the Kazakh team. I guess this is good news for Levi Leipheimer, but he really needs to win a Grand Tour for his Astana version bike to sell well here in the States. I have a feeling that by 2009, Trek will go the route of Cannondale, and choose to be the official bike supplier for several teams. The one team, one bike concept, with all the close development work, really helped sell the bikes when it was Lance Armstrong riding the product. But with no purely American team racing internationally (Slipstream needs a few years to go to build a solid reputation for European cycling), Trek will have to change its marketing strategies.
Whenever I visit one of my friends after a ride, his dog Mia, a little shiba inu, will go through three stages of greeting me. First will be the bashful sniffing and hand-licking. Second, she will totally forget she just met me, and treat me like a burglar. Seriously. There's lots of barking, running out of the room, barking over there, running back into the room, stopping three feet away from me, and barking again. Finally, comes stage three: leg-licking. Not kidding. She loves the taste of sweaty legs. I'm okay with that, since dogs' tongues are cleaner than people's anyway, but then she finds the motherlode, the back of the knee. I'm not usually a ticklish person, but there's only so much a man can take!
Here's another reason that Peak Oil worriers should just go back to worrying about the other discredited humanity hating motivation of some environmental movements, the Population Bomb: symbiotic bacteria discovered which can break down heavy crude into methane. Two microbes work together to form methane, where one actually produces hydrogen and carbon dioxide before the other turns those byproducts into methane. There seems to be a lot of potential for new energy sources in those older, used-up oil fields.
w00t! Techie language like l33t speak and lolcat syntax slowly enters the mainstream pop-culture. G4m3r5 rejoice and can haz cheezburger!
For those who worry how well climate models can predict the next hundred years, you should be more worried about how well those 22 models used to predict dire consequences of the presence of man-made sources of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere can "predict" the last 30 years. Uh, they can't.
According to the new study by David Douglass, he took the models used by the IPCC, which won the Nobel Peace Prize along with Al Gore, and asked them to predict the temperature trend in the troposphere from 1979 onwards. According to the models, there should be significantly more warming in that part of the atmosphere compared to the surface temperature, and that there should be even more warming in the tropic latitudes. Remember, the models are based on the theory that the carbon based gases are the main forcing for recent warming. Unfortunately, satellite data from the last 30 years shows that the troposphere has been warming at the same rate or less than the surface. That's all 22 models being wrong. An earlier study of 19 of the IPCC models concluded there must be something wrong with the data, but that team used flawed statistics. "Who are you going to believe? Our wonderful little computer programs, or your lying satellites?" I think I'm paraphrasing that...
Here in California, under Proposition 65, we are required to slap warning labels on any products or containers which have chemicals known to cause cancer or reproductive harm. Now, because some review board doesn't understand the difference between correlation and cause, caffeine has been added to this year's list of chemicals under review. The panel claims that natural sources, such as coffee or tea, would not require the label, because they're considering caffeine as an additive in energy drinks, but if you drink a quadruple espresso everyday, I think you may be in the same ballpark as Monster or Red Bull. According to some nutritionist, caffeine at high doses has been linked to "reduced birthweight, miscarriages, and infertility." I guess men don't have to worry about the extra caffeine in Excedrin, huh?
Just what we need, more warning labels, even on something that most obstetricians already warn pregnant women about: reducing your caffeine intake to keep your blood pressure down. It's not the caffeine specifically, it's any kind of stimulant that makes your heart race. Are pregnant women going to be really this stupid, where they won't drink coffee, but they'll down Red Bull any chance they get? Puhlease. Including caffeine in this round of chemical reviews seems to be reactionary to all the recent alarmism on how much of these energy drinks kids seem to be slugging down. Well, with the first increase in teen pregnancy since 1991, I guess we have to do something. For the children, you see...
In a setback for multicultural paternalists who worry about baby Jesus offending other faiths, but really use that concern as a mask for anti-Christian agendas, those other faiths have spoken out: "We're not offended. We love Christmas!"
"It's time to stop being daft about Christmas. It's fine to celebrate and it's fine for Christ to be star of the show," said Trevor Phillips, chairman of the Equality and Human Rights Commission.
"Let's stop being silly about a Christian Christmas," he said, referring to a tendency to play down the traditional celebrations of the birth of Christ for fear of offending minorities in multicultural Britain.
Even the British Muslim Council wants more Nativity scenes in the public square. So, those closet anti-Christian bigots will have to find another excuse to gnash their teeth against a publically accepted religious holiday.
If you get the flu, don't keep chickens and pigs in your house. Weird advice? Okay, how about this? Keep your home as well humidified as you can, since the flu and rhinoviruses, which cause the common cold, increase their chances of air-borne transmission in hot, arid conditions. So, if you do get sick, and you don't want to infect everyone in the house, stay warm with blankets and place a humidifier next to your head. Oh, and the chickens and pigs thing? Not kidding, especially about the chickens part.
Pretty much doing anything in the Halo universe is fraught with peril, unless, of course, you're the one making the peril. For example, the talk show in game space, This Spartan Life, recently switched over to Halo 3, but they still haven't found a stage for their production. Needless to say, location scouting isn't just a walk in the park when energy weapons, armor, and weaponized transports are involved.
Apparently, Microsoft's Santa text bot was a little too naughty. Commercial text bots are supposed to keep exchanges PG rated, but when Santa thinks that eating pizza is what the kids are calling oral sex these days, and then calls you a "dirty bastard," well, obviously it's time to retool the algorithm.
On December 5th, 1933, the 21st Amendment was ratified, ending Prohibition. Of course, there's only one way to really honor this great anniversary...
I just love these stories about the Chinese government forcing its citizens to learn how to cheer, queue, care about spelling, not to spit, and not to distract athletes at the wrong time. But don't forget, this is a totalitarian regime:
Dozens of closed-circuit cameras will dot each Olympic venue, many looking down on the crowd from the ceiling. Organizers say they may dress police and soldiers in volunteer uniforms to help ensure order.
So, when someone cusses at the soccer referee, how exactly is a "volunteer" going to "ensure order?" Last I checked, police and soldiers over there prefer heavy wooden sticks to tasers. "Don't whack my back, bro!"
If you liked yesterday's video of the major food poisoning bugs, you can watch the other 10 videos here. What's funny, besides the cute little microbes, is the tag I put on this post: culture. Double meaning there...
The Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals ruled that Google's use of itty-bitty pictures of copyrighted material constituted fair use, not infringement, stinging Perfect 10's lawsuit. Question for Perfect 10: why don't you use the search engine to go after those sites displaying your copyrighted pictures, or are you too cheap to find the operators of each one? Meanwhile, free porn enthusiasts the world over rejoice...
After the news came out that most dentists are opting out of the British healthcare system, it just makes more sense to actually put fluoride into the water system. Now there's even more proof that fluoride is good for those famous british smiles: fluoride in tapwater helps seniors more than children. The Brits just do not drink enough tea to make up for the fluoride deficit.
Speaking of food poisoning, here's a little video introducing the top five bacteria responsible for food poisoning in Asia. You've got bad fish, dysentery, cholera, salmonella, and the fresh water runs. Hmm, doesn't a big ol' glass of red wine sound just great right about now?
An Olympic sprinter joined a two week long binge drinking study, and immediately got ill, really ill. Katharine Merry, a bronze medalist in the 2000 Sydney Olympics, had to drink the equivalent of 2 wine bottles every three days, and after only four days, suffered a bacterial infection, blotchy skin, and lethargy. The story also says she gained two inches around the middle, but I think that's more attributable to the curtailing of her normal fitness regime, in which the study limited her to 5,000 steps a day. That's not a lot of calorie burn-off there. So, for all those downing a little bit too much of the "peanut nachos," watch out for those side effects besides the hangover, er, um, "food poisoning".
