If my kids are ever in a school where any form of stealth creationism (such as "Intelligent Design") is given validity in a science class, I'd put them in one of these shirts for each day of the week.

Assuming the 14% statistic is correct, that makes roughly one in seven Americans.

Suppose you were the sales manager of Keiffe and Sons, and one of your sales staff told every seventh customer, "Fuck off. We don't want your business."

If you had any sense, you'd fire the idiot. However, if you were to approve an ad like that one, you'd be the idiot.

Damn you, Cory.

I shouldn't tell you this, but your incessant self promotion wore me down. I bought your damn book last weekend, and am making my way through it. Worse still: I will probably blog about it when I'm done.

Bastard.

#6 It's quite easy to use.

Here is a video demonstration.

#32 babasikander

This solution is only meant to protect minors from drugs. How stupid, huh?!

Hmm... Do they really give a damn if minors buy booze? I doubt it. I think this solution is probably designed to protect Budgens from prosecution. Just guessing here, but Budgens' lawyers and accountants probably cooked up this idea as a way of mitigating liability.

Still guessing: Britain has some pretty draconian penalties for selling alcohol to minors. Budgens cost-benefit analysis concludes that it's potentially cheaper to treat all customers like criminals. This is the logical conclusion of a stupid public policy.

Set me straight, Brits.

Off Topic:
#30 Takuan: I'm back in Flagstaff, and am determined to find a photo of that bicycle with beer kegs for wheels!

tsdguy (#6),

I just got a sampler of Dave's sauces a couple of days ago. I have a pretty high tolerance for hot sauce, but the Suicide Sauce definitely lived up to its name.

I've found that most hot sauce makers just create intimidating product names to give consumers a false sense of sauce machismo. This was the real thing. I was hurting for about 10 minutes from just a few drops.

Takuan (@31), I saw a bike at Tour de Fat that was almost a steamroller--but the wheels were beer kegs. Sorry I couldn't find a picture of it.

I love art bikes, and might take up welding just so I can make one.

ROSSINDETROIT (@38), Thank you. I only type this if I mean it: LOL

Antinous (@13), You're right. If Boing Boing were as inane and self-referential as my blog, I'd probably leave and never come back. I suppose I expect a different caliber from Boing Boing--which is awesome 2/3 of the time, and that's pretty good. I'm just saying a little less narcissim and self promotion could bring up their rating on the TedJohnson measure of awesomeness. Cory is hands-down my favorite here, but the more this place seems like a Cory (Xeni, Mark, etc.) fan club, the less I like it.

I had the opportunity to ride a shoe-bike and a few others last year at the Tour De Fat when it came through Flagstaff.

It was a kick in the butt, and less bumpy than the one in this picture and related video.

I think THIS is the bike I rode.

@#2 f t's tr tht Bng Bng dtrs "wrt bt thngs tht thy thmslvs fnd ntrstng," thn thy mst fnd thmslvs ttrly fscntng. f cld twk th blnd, 'd tk bt mr nws, nd gd dl lss slf prmtn nd/r nrcsssm. Bt tht's jst m, nd myb Bng Bng sn't wrttn fr m thr.

@105, Thank you for that video.

Jacob Bronowski at Auschwitz:

When people believe that they have absolute knowledge, with no test in reality, this is how they behave. This is what men do when they aspire to the knowledge of gods.

If you missed it: Here is the URL: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8mIfatdNqBA

If seeing that clip wouldn't make Ben Stein recant his entire stupid film, I don't know what would.

@102, ID is nothing more than creationism dressed up in a cheap Halloween costume of a scientist.

The famously debated book Of Pandas and People was found to have been a creationists manuscript, but with creationism removed using a search-and-replace command: New term for creationists: “cdesign proponentsists”

@#8

Mr. Stein, please kindly stop driving, taking medicine...and anything else science has brought you.

@#68

I propose taking Mr Stein, stripping him of all products of science

I've felt the same sentiment about creationists for years. I recently put the thoughts down after encountering a commercial pilot reading a creationist book.

Should Creationists Pilot Planes:
http://www.halfheartedfanatic.com/2008/03/should-creationists-pilot-planes.html

Thanks, #3, for the link.

In the early 80's, I saw Robert Fripp on his solo Frippertronics tour in a small auditorium at Arizona State University. He presented a fascinating lecture on history and art, interspersed with personal anecdotes. And of course he played a state-of-the-art MIDI guitar through the Frippertronics setup--two reel-to-reel tape decks set about six feet apart.

Fripp opened the floor for questions. After so much erudition and virtuosity, the first question from the audience was "What's David Bowie like?"

I remember in the 70s on a TV game show "To Tell the Truth" (or maybe it was "What's My Line") an episode where they brought out a prototype of an LED watch--and all it did was show the time. They guy showing the watch was accompanied by an armed guard, on camera, because the watch was so valuable.

The ukulele was the gateway drug for me.

I got a uke from my grandma for Christmas when I was five or six years old. But I never really tried to learn to play it, or any instrument until I was 15.

It was 1977, and I wanted to be in a Punk band. The uke was the only instrument I had around the house, so I started Punking out, playing Sex Pistols and Buzzcocks songs.

Re. Cell phones #5 #37.

Recently we were driving home and our 12-year-old wanted to stop to buy some candy at the corner store, about a half mile from our house. We're sort of anti-candy at our house, but we said Fine, but we're not waiting for you, spend your own money and walk home.

We gave him one of our cell phones--just for good measure. Fifteen minutes later, sure enough, he called us and wanted a ride home. He said there were some dogs on the sidewalk that looked kind of vicious, and he didn't want to walk past them. Right.

Next time: No cell phone.

In the 1980's, Political Science Professor Mark Reader at Arizona State announce that his lectures were copyrighted--but not because he objected to for-profit note takers. It was because Accuracy in Academia was sending its McCarthyist goons to spy on professors suspected of being too leftist. This was during the Reagan years (pre deification), and ASU was one of several campuses where Reagan Youth were running amok.

Reader was trying to prevent A.I.A. from recording and/or republishing his lectures in their witch-hunting materials. One of those A.I.A. goons was Matthew Scully, who later became a speech writer for George W Bush.

If academic freedom is the motive, does that change the calculation here?

I'll post more background at http://www.halfheartedfanatic.com

I didn't even watch the entire video, but it literally gave me a nightmare last night:

I went to a movie with my mom, my grandma, and Xeni. Xeni misunderstood and thought she was on a date with me. She was seeking attention by bouncing around and trying to act cute (as in this video). I was mortified.

I struggled for a face-saving way of explaining to Xeni that I'm not interested or available, explaining to my mom that I don't even know Xeni, and explaining to my grandmother that she's supposed to be dead.

Relief came when two large bulls came crashing into the theater pursued by cowboys. Everyone in the theater scrambled for the exits. I took the opportunity to just ditch Xeni in the mayhem and confusion.

A happy ending to a bad dream.

#32 I think I agree with you about the education system. Those here with a deeper familiarity with Germany (#'s 22, 29, 33) seem to find less irony and schadenfreude in this post than the rest of us.

I was wondering, by way of analogy, what if there had been a segregationist version of The Star Spangled Banner, would it have permanently caused disrepute on the original version once restored?

I couldn't take the thought experiment very far, but I found this, about a racist hit song, "Jump Jim Crow":

[I]n 1841 the USA ambassador to Central America, John Lloyd Stephens, wrote that upon his arrival in Mérida, Yucatán, the local brass band played "Jump Jim Crow" under the mistaken impression that it was the USA's national anthem.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jump_Jim_Crow

Just in case I'm not the only ignoramus here:

I didn't get it, and it bugged me enough to go figure it out--albeit a very low threshold.

In German, "above all" is "uber alles"--as in "Deutschland über alles"--as in the German national anthem.

It's worth noting that this anthem predates Nazi Germany--just as the USA's national anthem predates several regrettable periods on our history, and was written and adopted while slavery was still constitutional.

The Nazis kept the first stanza, which begins Deutschland, Deutschland über alles, but continued after that with new racist ones.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deutschland_uber_alles
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Horst-Wessel-Lied

"Above All" isn't necessarily original, but it shouldn't be associates with Nazi Germany.

Xeni reminded me of Max Headroom, which made me think of an unkind comment I could post, which sent me to Google Images looking for a picture of Max Headroom (to reinforce my nasty comment), which led me to this totally awesome, but unrelated Web site:

http://www.businessbibs.com/

It's a parody site, that features bibs that look like business suits--so telecommuters like me can appear to be professionally dressed from the waste up.

Which made me completely forget about poking fun Xeni.

I have a 20 cent coin from Zimbabwe from my trip there in 2000. Today I reckon it's worth about $0.000006 US, but I wouldn't trade it for anything.

Humorous, though I can't help but notice that all of the Obama ones are positive, while Clinton's are negatives.

I think the difference is that the Hillary site accepts submissions from the public, and the Barack site doesn't.

I think a person can prove he's a kook for less than $60,000--but it does tend to remove any doubt.

Seriously, Mark. By his behavior, Officer Rivieri has provided plenty of justification for criticism, ridicule, and litigation. Commenting on his shorts--his uniform--is needless, nay, petty.

Echoing the comments of the "form follows function" faction, let me direct you to this:
http://www.stevendwilliams.com/expeditions/around.htm

Steven D. Williams actually built a bike-on-rails system to get him across a desert leg of his transect of Africa. He hadn't planned for it in advance either. What he built was improvised in some Sudanese town on the edge of the desert.

Art was the last thing on his mind.

Per my 12-year-old: "This post totally rocks, and I want every one of those sets."

Sadly, it's lost on me. Legos were the province of my younger brothers.

Holy Clusterflux! Look at all the discussion.

Put me down in the "likes it" column.

There is definitely strategy in Flux, and your strategy may have to shift suddenly when the rules or goal have changed.

Anyone who got turned off on it the first time probably never played it long enough to figure out how to play it strategically. (Do I hold this keeper, or play it now? How well have you memorized the various Keepers, and what Keepers are your opponents showing.)

I particularly like playing Family Flux with kids. The kids have to read each card, for one thing. And there's enough randomness in it to balance the odds between kids and adults.

Yet another mirror:
http://www.tedjohnson.us/pages/NIS_Options_Analysis_Outcome.pdf

There's a lot of interesting commentary on this at the destination URL.

To me there's no difference between "Biblical" and "mythological." I'd like to see these side-by-side with the further works the artist plans.

Although they aren't ferries, there are vehicles like this down in Cholla Bay, Mexico. The tide is so extreme there (up to 20 feet), that there is no pier long enough to reach out to navigable water at all times. Instead people beach their boats at low tide, and walk into town. Later when the tide is in, they use a vehicle on stilts like this (but without the cool tank treads) to take them back to their boat, now floating.


I can't seem to find a picture of one of these, so you'll just have to trust me on this.