Biomes Blog

Entry #779

I'm a Mazda Miata!

You like to soak up the sun, but your tastes are down to earth.  Everyone thinks you're cute.  Life is a winding road, and you like to take the curves in stride.  Let other people compete in the rat race - you're just here to enjoy the ride.

Take the Which Sports Car Are You? quiz.

This is the Joel Stein column that got the irony-impaired's knickers all in knots.

Holy crap.  I heard a little about this guy’s story when he first died a couple of weeks ago, but this is just incredible. RIP Hugh Thompson Jr.  And remember, Bush’s towel-boy and unamerican traitor Colin Powell first achieved notoriety as part of the My Lai (pronounced “my lie”) massacre coverup.  And yes, before his lie-a-thon to the UN in 2003 I actually did have a modicum of respect for this pinhead.

Listen to a few clips of Bill Cosby’s deservedly short singing career.

Entry #778

Nice sarcastic overview from Bob Johnson’s dog.  There’s been a long-time suspicion in the Kos community that “Bob Johnson” is actually Jon Stewart.  I don’t buy it, but his new blog is worth bookmarking nevertheless.

Imagine.  Just imagine how the media and the TV pundits and the wingnutosphere would react if Howard Dean or Hillary Clinton or Bill Maher or Michael Moore or John Kerry or Al Franken said what Ann Coulter said.  Funny lady.  And I use that term loosely.  David Neiwert makes the point better than I ever could.

World’s smallest fish found in Indonesia.

I can’t believe the Challenger disaster was twenty years ago.  I was in college at the Univ. of New Hampshire and one of my best friends had Christa McAuliffe as a teacher in high school.  That is definitely one of those events where you remember exactly where you were when you first heard.  In memoriam.

Bookmark worthy: The endangered species coalition.

Albino Monday: Naomi Watts.

Entry #777

This week's water tower is found in Linstrom, MN. America's "little Sweden".

Dance, Monkeys, Dance.  This is great. Via Blah3.

  Buy your hanging fish pod here.

Read “The Raven”, by Poe.

Yikes. “Pass-thoughts” could soon be the new fingerprints.

"...it [may be] possible to do away with key cards, pin numbers and a litany of other security tools that allow people to retrieve bank money, access computer data or enter restricted building... "A user would simply think their password."

When attending your next anti-fascist protest, don’t forget to protect yourself by wearing the Subversion Suit. 

Cool Site of the Week: The wonderful world of insects.

Trivia Update: The following players are on the board: Shayera with 30 points, Dan with 27, Jim D with 20, Mixter with 8 and mzn with 5.

Trivia (5 Biomes points): Everyone knows that fish can’t blink or close their eyes.  But some species of sharks have a “false eyelid”, basically a translucent shield that can protect the eye while the fish is feeding.  What is this false eyelid called?
[Update: Wayne is on the board with Nictitating Membrane.]

Entry #776

So, I’m traveling on a two-lane highway and there’s this car I’m passing with a hand made sign in the back window which reads “If you really do support the troops you’d take off your yellow ribbon and impeach the man in the White House”.  Doesn’t exactly fit onto a bumper sticker I guess. Anyway, I slowed down beside him and honked.  He swung his head around defensively, so I gave him a smile and a thumbs up.  We don’t have a lot of knuckledraggers in this blue state, but still, brave man, that one.

Watch this video preview of the pResident’s State of the Union address.  (Check out Denny Hastert in the background).

Molly Ivans: Making Incompetence a Reality.

Timewaster of the Week: Some kind of neon cursor toy thingy.

Abandoned railroads by state.

iPod Shuffle, a day late:

1. The Weight (The Band)
2. Dreams (The Cranberries)
3. Midnight Rider (The Allman Brothers Band)
4. Saturday Night (The Eagles)
5. Comin' Back Soon (Crash Test Dummies)
6. Never Been Rocked Enough (Delbert McClinton)
7. Since I Started Drinkin' Again (Dwight Yoakam)
8. Sir Duke (Stevie Wonder)
9. The Joker (Steve Miller Band)
10. Fire Lake (Bob Seger)

Entry #775

Timewaster of the Week: Qlam.

Heart attack.

I don’t care what you think about Greenpeace (if you hate them you are badly misinformed), my hat is off to these volunteers risking their lives to save minke whales from cetacean-killing evildoers.  Watch the video (Warning: it’s disturbing).

Play! Cranky Crabs.

Take a look at this incredible gallery of photos from a new Volkswagon “transparent factory” in Germany.  I’m not really into cars and manufacturing stuff, but this is amazing.

After two terms of the most incompetent, corrupt, dishonest, malicious and inept president this country has ever seen, I agree with nyceve about what I expect from our next leader.  Is it 2008 yet?

Movie Rating: Office Space.
I find most so-called “comedies” pretty lame (unless they’re created by Rob Reiner or Christopher Guest), so I was skeptical about this one.  I was pleasantly surprised.  It wasn’t great but it gave me a few laughs. My favorite character was Merlin. I believe you have my stapler. 3.8 starfish out of 5.

Why did Bush break the law regarding wiretapping citizens?
Email from The Daily Brew, in the extended post below. But to be more accurate, substitute "Bush" for "Rove", since the pResident isn't bright enough to think beyond his next meal.  (For evidence, as if you needed it by now, see this pathetic performance. Good god, what an idiot.)

Entry #774

"Why should I care about posterity? What's posterity ever done for me?"  --Groucho Marx

Mother and daughter bonding in the great outdoors.  Isn’t this adorable?

William Shatner sold his kidney stone for 25 grand.  But it was for a good cause.  And that photo explains why I’m running again.

Pet Corner: Visit the Red Dog Ranch.

My advice for playing blackjack, which you should take with a grain of salt the size of a sugar cube because this was my first real casino experience:
Start with what you can afford to lose.  Say a hundred bucks.  If you find yourself up fifty or sixty bucks, take a hundred dollars worth of chips and put them in your pocket.  Play with what’s left.  If you lose it, leave.  If you continue to win, every so often take half your winnings and pocket them.  Lather, rinse, repeat.  Blackjack seems to go in streaks.  When you start losing, pick up your chips and walk to the cashier.  Later on, try again.  Never, ever try to make up losses by betting big.  You’ll lose.  Also, always assume the house’s down hand is a ten.  And if they’re nice, tip the dealers.  They’ll be more patient with you.

  The animal diversity web.

On Saving This Government, written by a patriot.

Trivia (15 Biomes points):  What is the world’s shortest longest word? I need the word, the language and what it means. 5 points for each part of the answer.

Entry #773

A total stranger asked me if I was a “Yuppie” as I got out of my car at the supermarket the other day. She was nice about it, but it was an odd thing to say out of the blue.  Someone needs to learn the definition, I think.

"An example would be the "yuppie" stereotype for those with a love for microbrewed and imported beer. In particular this can apply to their stocks, luxury automobiles (e.g. BMW, Lexus, Mercedes-Benz), sport utility vehicles, development houses, and technological gadgets, particularly cell phones."

Ok, so I’ll give them the microbrew and the fact that I love tech gadgets and only use a cell phone (none of which I can program without my son’s help, though).  I drive an inexpensive hybrid car, both because it makes me feel a little more environmentally responsible, but also because I couldn’t find even a half-decent used minivan for what I got the Prius for.  SUV? You couldn’t make me drive one if you put a gun to my head.  My house is in town and was built in the 1885; it's not a “development house”.  And before that I lived on a farm (a real one, not a fake ranch with no animals) in a house built before the Revolutionary War (circa 1765).  Want to see my stock portfolio?  You’d laugh.

“Maintaining their way of life is mentally exhausting. Sometimes, they will move every few years to where their job goes, straining their family.”

My way of life is about as mentally unexhausting as they come (except for the damn dog, who I do love, but still) and as an adult I’ve never moved for a job and have lived in the same tri-town area for 25 years.

“Heavily influenced by a competitive corporate environment, "yuppies" often value those behaviors that they have found useful in gaining upward mobility and hence income and status.”

Never even had a job, other than my small three-person business.  Want to see my income and “status”?  Again, like with my stock holdings, you’d laugh.  And I honestly couldn't care less.  I love what I do.

And the kicker:

“Yuppies are sometimes stereotyped as wearing white shirts, blue ties, and black pants.”

Wear them? Honest to god, I don’t even own a single one of these items.  Jeebus, I don't even shave.  I do have a beautiful girlfriend, but since she wasn't with me at the time, that couldn't have been part of the assumption.

Yuppie.  Give me a break.

Entry #772

Stuff You Should Know: How Blackjack works.

Well, we're off to Atlantic City for the Ri-Ra U.S. pub trivia championships, where my team is representing Rhode Island.  As mentioned last week, they only allow four-person teams for this event so I'm driving down just to watch my teammates.  My son suggested I try liveblogging the tournament, so I figure what the hell, why not?  This is assuming a) Mary can get a signal on her laptop's aircard in the pub, and b) I can figure out how to remotely access my typepad account (a big assumption).  The games start at eight p.m. est, but I should know by seven or so if I can connect.  Should be fun.  At the very least I'll update on how much money I lost at the blackjack tables afterwards.

(Update, 4:00 pm):  No luck.  The pub and casino doesn't allow laptops in.  Who'd a thunk it?

(Update, 2:00 am): First place, baby.  Free trip to London for four.  Other teams hailed from Charlotte, SC, Burlington, VT, Augusta, ME, Atlantic City, NJ and someplace else I can't remember.  And I won $340 at the blackjack tables.

Entry #771

Yes, this is significant. And Grover Norquist is about as sane as Pat Robertson.  If flightsuit boy is losing this chump, he’s in really bad shape.

Fungiphoto has tons of gorgeous pictures of mushrooms.

Movie Rating: Murderball.
It’s supposed to focus on this paraplegic with a big goatee (Zupan), but the guy who looks like Robert Duvall (Joe) seems to be the main attraction.  In any case, this documentary is well worth seeing. The ending has team USA working with disabled vets of the Iraq war.  Although non-political, it even has a short clip of our idiot-in-chief making a total ass out of himself, but what else is new? 4.0 starfish out of 5.

Read the Preamble of the Declaration of Independence.

Buy your ice-and-slice trays here.

Google has kept track of their Britney Spears queries and have compiled a list of a few misspellings.

Check out the Nevada Shoe Tree. 

Albino Monday: Giraffe.

Entry #770

This week's water tower is in Ohio City, OH.

Here’s a sample question of a MENSA Intelligence Test. I managed to get 27 out of 33.  (I was especially proud when I got #19.)  And how smart are these people really when the accepted answer for # 24 is grammatically incorrect. Two Biomes points per item to anyone who gets the the ones I couldn't figure out: #’s 14, 17, 28, 30, 31 and 33. I think #31 has something to do with the game of cricket, but I don’t know anything about it other than it had a prominent role in the Hitchhiker’s trilogy.  No googling. [Update: We got them all.  Point distribution in comments.]

  Chocolate covered pork fat. It’s what’s for dinner.

This is pretty funny.  It’s from what looks like an Irish Daily Show. Someone enlighten me.

A bottle-nosed whale swam up the Thames River and has been drawing crowds in central London. [Update: It died. Damn.]

Cool Site of the Week: Flying Manta Rays.

Entry #769

I think John at Americablog deserves some major kudos for this development. (via Mary)

PZ Myers has a great post called “True Christians tm (pretend that’s a superscript cause I don’t know how to do it) don’t do science”, where he argues that the black and white idea that people who believe in evolution can’t believe in god is just plain silly.  Although Myers is an atheist, his thesis is very similar to that often made by the late Stephen J. Gould, an evolutionary biologist who happened to be a religious man as well.  I say “believe” in evolution because I’m too inarticulate to describe it any other way, and I normally object to this description.  “Believing” in evolution is no different than “believing” in snails, herring or the moon.  It’s there, we know it’s true, and although there are gaps in our knowledge of all of them, that in itself doesn’t cause them to be in doubt.  Anyway, just go read.

Via The Sideshow, Jesus sings “I will Survive”. Very funny.

The “liberal media” in action.

Timewaster of the Week: Type in any sentence and the email blender will create an anagram of your words.
For example, the results of the above sentence came out as:

Eminently cheapened tasty inane. Damnable, nice, arrogant farewell. Our drowsy.

Entry #768

Dept. of Educashun:  All about Alcatraz Island.

The Ark Is Burning.  A rundown of imminent extinctions and some efforts to prevent them.

I like to consider myself an optimist (although that’s probably not true), so I have to believe that it can only get better once these criminals running the country are booted and the 51% of clueless voters have a very real awakening about the damage they've helped do to this country. Here's a list of over 500 of Bush’s “Pioneers”and “Rangers” . A quick scan shows not a single Rhode Islander.

Another reason not to shop at Walmart.

Check out the Deep-Sea News Blog.

iPod Shuffle:

1. Oh, Marion (Paul Simon)
2. Hasten Down The Wind (Warrren Zevon)
3. Small Town (John Mellencamp)
4. Mr. Jones (Counting Crows)
5. Graceland (Paul Simon)
6. Black Diamond Bay (Bob Dylan)
7. Everybody Has A Dream (Billy Joel)
8. I Was Only Joking (Rod Stewart)
9. I Can't Love You Anymore (Lyle Lovett)
10. Not The Only One (Bonnie Raitt)

Entry #767

Whoa. Yesterday this Blog had almost 1000 hits.  I’ve never even come close to that.

Road trip. Atlantic City, Baby.  Provided the vet will take my dog (no kennel will accept her), our trivia team is heading for the Ri-Ra U.S. trivia championships next Tuesday night.  That pub only allows four-person teams and I bowed out, so Mary and I will be going just to support my team.  Send good vibes to Kurt, Anthony, Molly and Eric.  If they win the prize is a free trip to London.  Any readers in that area, we’ll be at the Ri-Ra pub in the Tropicana Hotel from five o’clock on.

Buy your $550,000 ex-military sub here.

Pet Corner: Hymns & Hounds.  The dog-friendly church.

Who the hell netsearches “hillary duff with shoes”? What’s wrong with you people?

Klong is like a security blanket for kids.  Watch their unsettling viral ad.

Trivia (15 Biomes points): This flag represents Romania.

What does this flag represent?

[Update: Dan jumps to the lead with the answer.  It's the flag of Mars.]

Entry #766

Animal of the Week: Zombie worms that live off of whale bones.

So I’m reading about this state of the art, space-age ant farm you can purchase, when I notice that the kit comes with an ant torturing device. 

What the heck is this thing growing on the bathroom ceiling of a New York City apartment?

Countdown to Pluto.

Movie Rating: Windtalkers.
It stars Nicholas Cage, so you can expect either a complete dog like “8mm” or a work of art like “Leaving Las Vegas”.  It’s directed by John Woo, so the action will be good, you can count on that.  But this film’s topic of embedded marine Navahos, who were used to provide the U.S. with an unbreakable code against the Japanese during WWII, was completely overshadowed by the most insane death count of any film I’ve ever seen.  And I’ve seen a lot.  3.4 starfish out of 5.

Now we’re cookin’: A pictoral guide to sausages.

Trivia reminder and update: Once someone reaches 100 biomes points, that person will send me an email or leave a comment with a link to their favorite charity or candidate and I will donate $25.  If a candidate, it must be a Democrat since there is no way I will give a penny to a Republican.  That person will start back at zero but everyone else will keep their points. There isn’t a particular day of the week the trivia questions appear.  I’ll post them whenever I feel like it.  For each hint I give the points are halved, rounded up. So far the following readers are on the board: Jim D with 20 bp, Shayera with 13, Dan with 10 and mzn with 5. 

Oh, and after two years off and 20 lbs heavier, I started running again yesterday.  If I miss 2 days in a row everyone gets a bonus point.  You’ll just have to trust me on this I guess, but in the case of rain or snow, or if the bike path has ice on it, I’ll use the Nordic Track, which counts.  Weight as of today is 198.  My goal is 175.  I’ll keep you posted.

Ngazi was so excited about getting out for a run again that she promptly seizured when we got back and caused me to miss my weekly trivia tournament.  Damn dog.

Entry #765

Read Al Gore's MLK Day speech.

“An executive who arrogates to himself the power to ignore the legitimate legislative directives of the Congress or to act free of the check of the judiciary becomes the central threat that the Founders sought to nullify in the Constitution - an all-powerful executive too reminiscent of the King from whom they had broken free. In the words of James Madison, ‘the accumulation of all powers, legislative, executive, and judiciary, in the same hands, whether of one, a few, or many, and whether hereditary, self-appointed, or elective, may justly be pronounced the very definition of tyranny.’"

Madison, in other words, was warning us not to elect arrogant, self-indulgent and petulant incompetents to office, which we stupidly did.  Twice.
[Update: Just watched the speech on C-SPAN’s website and it was fantastic.  And again, once the speech gets rolling he does not look at his notes once.  Caution Bush voters: have a dictionary handy because he uses words that are more than two syllables.  Looking for a more permanent link now.]
[Update II: Cut and paste this into realplayer. rtsp://video.c-span.org/project/ter/ter011606_gore.rm]

  Lego spiderman (big file).

Trivia Hint from Saturday (scroll down): He's responsible for one of the links on the right.  Now worth 5 Bp.