Shouldn't there be a second trap door below the first one? Now THAT'S a dubm-ass idea.

I actually heard Mayor Koch suggest that to stop vandalism by taggers in the NYC Transit train yards, they should stock the train yards with wolves, as a deterrent. Maybe we could have wolves in the pit below the trap door. Why not?

WOW! Erik Prince just broke the needle on the Irony-ometer! Maybe they'll find a loophole in Shari'a law that allows them to cut his hands off. One can only hope.

A friend of mine had one of those acoustic remotes, and it wasn't silent. It had two buttons, On/Off and Channel Up. Maybe it was an early model. When you pressed one of the buttons, it would activate a little hammer that would strike a piece of metal, making a distinct ding. In fact, if you had it too near the doorbell, sometimes if someone came to the door, it would shut off the TV when they rang the bell. And don't even think of practicing your glockenspiel while watching the Brady Bunch.

Please pardon my appostrophic French, but...

M’F’R’S!

M’F’R’S!

M’F’R’S!

M’F’R’S!

Don’t cry wolf.
Don’t lie to the cops.
They’ll be the ones lying to you.

M’F’R’S!

M’F’R’S!

M’F’R’S!

M’F’R’S!

If nobody else is going to say it, I will.

I kept expecting x and db to press their fists together and say:

Wonder Twin Powers - Activate!

But that's just me.

A friend once told me that the traffic signals in England go Red, Yellow, Green, Yellow, Red, as opposed to the United States, where they go Red, Green, Yellow, Red. This system seems to make a lot of sense, but it would be hard for us to adjust to, I expect.

The other day I was thinking that with LED technology, you could have one signal with all three color LEDs in it, to save space, but then I realized that a potential problem would be that it could be disastrous for color blind people, unless the diodes actually spelled out GO, STOP, and GO VERY FAST. (For those of you who remember the movie Starman.)

Check out the yellow cone at the left side of the photograph. I believe that's the urine collection device. Above it, also yellow, is the cap for the device. It is not, of course, on the device, because, even in space, guys leave the seat up.

Don't panic, dude. It's just Pucca.

http://tv.disney.go.com/jetix/pucca/

The "mickey ears" are her hair. Do a google image search if you don't believe me.

Sheesh.

Wow! This sure sounds like Scientology to me. We know that LRH lifted lots of his stuff from lots of sources, so this could very well be part of, or inspiration for TomKat's couch jumping ideology. Invisible Darts = Thetans?

I ask the question, where has the 6 trillion dollars gone? What, specifically, was it spent on, and who received it. I think, unless the soldiers who deserve it got a hella raise, most of the money is going into the diseased coffers of some little known corporations like Halliburton, KBR, and a beast called Blackwater securities. Oh, I forgot that some of the money is going to Iraqi warlords, to keep them fighting on our side.

Trying to pre-empt FOX network logic is kind of pointless, but we must do it anyway. The logic that sunk Firefly is that they said people weren't watching it, WHEN IT WAS NOT ON. When it was pushed from the schedule by whatever sports they put up against it, they complained that it wasn't pulling in the ratings that the sponsors wanted. Don't try to analyze it. Hopefully, FOX won't put Dollhouse on in a slot where it will be pushed out, this time. Oh , the naive hope of the foolish fan (me). I'm signing up, a loyal browncoat 'til the end.

This has all the earmarks of a typical chain email designed to urge the gullible reader into hating and fearing "the arabs", while looking the other way when American oil executives are doing their very best Scrooge McDuck impersonations while simultaneously testifying before congress whining that they are being picked on for being profitable.

There are several of these emails circulating, one has pictures of a very fancy hotel, claiming that it is the personal home of "an arab prince" and claiming that the reason oil prices are high is because of "those people".

Yes, I attribute most evil on this world to Karl Rove and company, but I can easily see this type of "hate the arabs, and kindly look the other way" chain emai to him, or people who want to be like him.

Here the rant ends.

I think some fetishes are invented to make Furries look just the little bit less weird. Once, while looking for information on quicksand (why, I don't know, but honestly, I wasn't looking for what I found), I happened upon a site devoted to non photoshopped, for the most part, posed pictures of women stuck in quicksand, or at least stuck in mud. Also, on the same page were photoshopped pictures and drawings of women being consumed by huge carnivorous plants. Both had the same feeling of the Flickr set mentioned here. Kurt Vonnegut once said something along the lines of our brains becoming too big for our own good, and I must say that I agree with him. What did we ever do before the internet?

Gee, Mommy, you're so MILFY now! All the little boys from my school say you're HOT! Is that a good thing?

And all it took were three horribly painful, slow to recover from, monstrously expensive surgeries. And I don't mind that I can't actually feel my nose, breasts or belly anymore.

It reminds me of the "Machine" from the highly under-rated movie of Carl Sagan's book "Contact", starring Jodie Foster.

I think it came from either here:

http://www.somethingawful.com/d/photoshop-phriday/misadventures-dick-jane.php

or here:

http://www.somethingawful.com/d/photoshop-phriday/misadventures-dick-jane-2.php

or here:

http://www.somethingawful.com/d/photoshop-phriday/misadventures-dick-jane-3.php

There are so many pages, I couldn't check through them all, but I bet it's in there, somewhere. Have fun.

Them photons is pricey. No way 'round it. The worst part is that 5 years more down the road, there's going to be a completely different solution. Brighter, clearer, better, you know, everything to piss us all off in every way. Remeber how cool dot-matrix printers were?

Yes, these imaginary beasties are real, and the only real way to treat them is with imaginary medicine, acupuncture or homeopathic remedies. What could be more effective against non-existent maladies than treatments that either block or unblock the non-existent "Chi" flowing through the body, or "medicine" with the "active ingredient" reduced to a level far below trace element status.

Quick story. When Nixon went to China, he was shown a patient being operated on, with only acupuncture for anesthesia. Mao was trying to show the superiority of Chinese medicine. This incident was at least partly responsible for the popularity of acupuncture in the west. Years later, Mao's physician defected, and said that the patient was actually pumped full of morphine. No big surprise to me.

Good to have confirmation of what we've all known for many years now.

What a bunch of scumbags.

The name is from Homestar Runner, specifically from the Stinko Man series. 1-UP says it to Stinko Man, who replies "No way! You're just a kid!"

One of the Apollo astronauts (I forget which one) said that when the lunar module capsule pressurized, and they were able to take off their suits, the capsule interior smelled like cordite, which I have been told is sort of like a mix of gunpowder and alcohol or maybe gasoline. He said this was what the lunar dust that they carried in on their suits smelled like. I'll take that as a difinitive source on what the moon smells like.

Thanks for not flaming me. Where I recall hearing about automated planes, I think, was after 9/11, and there being systems in development that would make it possible to remove control of a plane from hijackers, and to fly the plane to an airport and land it automatically, basically an upgrade from the systems in place now. I heard this on NPR's Talk of the Nation, if I recall correctly. The main point was that planes "almost" fly themselves right now, and that a few years down the road the role of pilots would be greatly reduced. Think about the autonomous drone aircraft like some versions of the Predator. Some of those are mostly autonomous, I think. Skynet, anyone?

This being true would not surprise me in the least, but I'd expect it more on long flights than short ones. Modern aircraft electronics do most of the work today anyway. Takeoff and landing are almost completely automated. (I actually think that landing is completely automated. Somebody find out for sure.) And once the destination is dialed into the flight computer, most of the cruising is automated. Pilots are highly paid because the job used to be incredibly stressful and, let's face it, dangerous. But today, most of the hard work is done by electronics, with the flight crew acting basically as a "when everything else fails at once" backup system. Don't get me wrong, I appreciate them greatly, and I wouldn't fly without them, but I can't see a world in a hundred years where aircraft aren't completely autonomous. Oh, I know I'm going to catch hell for this one. I'm wearing my flame-proof vest. Fire away!

Wow! The top one looks an awful lot like Hellboy's new gun "Big Baby" from the upcoming movie "Hellboy: The Golden Army" Check it out at the site:
hellboymovie.com

Once an idea is out there, or in this case REALLY out there, it is nearly impossible to kill. Years ago, I worked at the Field Museum, and every year, around Columbus Day, we would get phone calls, asking why we weren't displaying the bell and anchor from the Santa Maria. Apparently, some obscure book on Columbus claimed that the artifacts in question were housed at the museum, and every year someone working on a report on Columbus would find this reference, take it as fact, and start a minor uproar. This also occasionally happened in reference to the beard of the Sphinx, also referenced in a book, wrongly, and a source of occasional headaches for the museum staff. So the phenomenon of "If it's on the internet, it must be true" goes back way further than the internet.

What is the AAU/USA, and why should I care that they Approved this torture device?

Boys, boys, cut Cory some slack! Kvetching isn't the spirit of Hannukah, now is it. Go play dreidel, and play nice.

I know that there are more than ashes in ashes, I just think that ashes itself is a euphemism enough, and that a Madison Avenue word like cremains is just crude, and not any more respectful than calling them ashes.

What worries me is that now this will be copycatted (sp?) at many different spots in the parks. The water rides could be direly affected. Then again, Small World? One shudders to think of someone wanting their ashes scattered THERE.
By the way, they are ashes. Ashes ashes ashes. Cremains is the worst euphemism EVER. And while a memorial garden inside the park seems like a good idea, to stop this from happening, it would quickly spiral out of control, believe me.

Oh No! We forgot to ask the new attorney general what he thought about COOKIEBOARDING!!!!

This article is a clear call for homeland security to investigate the author. Not only that, it has probably already happened. It's like when Colbert makes reference to a nonexistent website, and within minutes, it actually exists, at least in some small way. Thanks to 9/11 we all live under a microscope, and the tiniest variation from "the norm" is seen as threatening. I say that on 9/11 we as a nation, collectively wet ourselves, and most of the country continues to wet themselves, which only serves to distract them from taking any real, constructive action. For christ's sake, we have made people afraid of WATER!

Much of the same material is covered in Bill Bryson's Book "A Short History of Nearly Everything" chapter 20, "Small World". I highly recommend the book for general purposes, but especially this chapter. You'll never think of yourself as alone again, once you start to understand your relationship with the life that isn't you, that exists inside of you. As good as the Harvard article is, Bryson's writing style is much more engaging and entertaining.