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Stuff You Should Know: Gogreen Charleston has a visual guide to what those recycling numbers refer to on your plastic stuff.
Welcome to the Jedi church.
Cool Site of the Week: Man, when Dawkins puts a website together he doesn’t fool around.
It sounds gross, but toilet-to-tap programs could really help to conserve water supplies.
Manterns are candles made just for men. I think I’d like the one that is bacon cheeseburger scented.
Albino Monday: Moose.
This week's Green Thing is a polar bear in Singapore. The color is caused by algae growing in the hollow hair shafts. To learn more about bear fur, you can read my essay on why polar bears aren't really white.
The official world population clock.
Percy Harrison Fawcett, the real Indiana Jones.
The Boy and I finally got to see Indian Jones IV yesterday afternoon.
I loved every minute of it, but if you're not a fan of the franchise you probably will come away a bit disappointed. A lot of it was a bit silly and inconsistent. The Russians needed a giant jungle-chewing machine to get through the rain forest, but once that was blown up there were suddenly smooth and parallel dirt roads for trucks to speed along on for the rest of the scene. And the vehicles never seemed to run out of gas out there in the middle of the Amazon. But like a fundamentalist or a Republican, a true Indy fan will just ignore reason and common sense. Back in High School I fell in love with Marion, and twenty-five years later Karen Allen is still looking great. 4.5 starfish out 5.
The Boy's thoughts are here.
Remember “Curveball”, the Iraqi spy who provided Bushco with all the evidence they needed to dupe the public and the press into supporting an illegal invasion of a sovereign nation? This story would be funny if so many people hadn’t died for it.
Join the National Organization for Legislation Against Fun (NOLAF).
Ilunga is considered to be the foreign word hardest to translate. It refers to a person who forgives an abuse the first time, tolerates it a second time but not a third time.
Here's a collection of refaced legal tender.
This observation about the future of the Supreme Court is scary, and probably the most important reason why it is essential that the next two elections go to the Dems.
Ten nasty and ugly fish. The one they couldn’t name (#9) is a monkfish.
Today’s slide show is of the winners of the 1988 “small world” microphotography contest (click on “slide show” to view).
Stuff You Should Know: How to control your food cravings.
This kid has room for one more spoon over his right eye.
HBO has been playing non-stop Carlin the past few late-nights. Watch him doing the hippy-dippy weatherman on the Tonight Show when I was two-years-old. He's barely recognizable.
“Scratch any cynic and you’ll find a disappointed idealist.” --George Carlin
This article by Carl Zimmer about octopus intelligence is fascinating (via Queen).
Pet Corner: In 1936 your dog could ride safely on your car's running boards in this sack.
Cool Site of the Week: Quit Doing It Labs.
The nothing grinder.
Yesterday was the day I realized that in 43 years I've never actually seen a hail stone. I've heard of them, new how they formed and have seen some pretty good-sized icy sleet (which I assumed was like hail). New England is known for its variety of seasonal weather, but we never really experience any good (in the scientifically interesting way) weather phenomena.
Sure, we get the occasional over-hyped hurricane, but in my lifetime those of us along the coast just move inland for a day or so and watch the wind and rain blow branches down. The blizzard of '78 was pretty impressive, but I was too young to really appreciate that one. It just meant a week out of school.
Today Graham came to a school up in Seekonk, MA to help me remove some of our animals from a classroom for the summer and it started to downpour. They let me back the car right up to the door and as I got out I began being pelted with ice balls. The Boy grabbed his iPhone and took some shots as we all took cover in the foyer. As always, click the images to embiggen.
It only lasted around twenty minutes, but after a few minutes I went out to grab a handful to check them out more closely. Below is just from scooping up a small pile of stones that were blown against the building.
Some of those big ones kind of stung a bit. It seemed very localized since they were no longer seen by the side of the road just a quarter mile away when we left. Here are some melting by my tire after it was all over.
Tuesday coonhound blogging: Not supposed to be on the new couch.
Balloons in pop culture. Ha, get it?
A stray African Grey parrot talks its way back to its owners.
How cool is it that butterflies can remember things from their caterpillar days?
Obama’s Fight the Smears page is a wise move. Although Mike Doonesbury does have a point.
Losing George Carlin at 71 really hurts.
Watch his "Modern Man" routine.
You are not being rickrolled, but here are things Rick Astley would never do to you.
Meet the Angel Oak Tree, one of the oldest living things east of the Mississippi.
Stuff You Should Know: How to de-stress in mere minutes.
I know I'm way behind in my marine life series entries, but the essay on starfish pedicellaria is coming up soon. I'm just waiting for some photos to be uploaded.
Kevin has a sobering prediction (based on EIA estimates) about the effects on oil prices if ANWAR is opened for drilling. Bottom line, no effect in the short term, but by the year 2025 it could reduce the cost of a barrel of oil (that’s barrel, not gallon) by 75 cents. And destroy a huge fragile ecosystem in the process.
Today’s slide show is about a bunch of very colorful nudibranchs.
Sure, he could use a few paragraph breaks here and there, but the fallacy of the young nation is some good reading.
Fifteen simple ways to save money.
Markos is going nuts with state-by-state polling data showing Obama leading in one state after another, with trends almost universally going his way.
Kenneth Miller on Stephen Colbert’s show. I mention this because my ex-wife (The Boy’s mom) has been his genetics lab coordinator at Brown University for nearly twenty years.
I’m voting Republican because...
An unlikely missing link in whale evolution has been discovered. It’s a deer-like animal about the size of a raccoon.
Stuff You Should Know: How to keep a bagel fresh.
Buy your half-life to headcrab hat here.
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Cool Site of the Week: Hottest to Coldest continuously updates a list of world capitals in order of air temperature.
Zimbabwe’s 10 million dollar note is worth a paltry $4.
Japanese bug fights. This just isn’t right.
Tuesday coonhound blogging: Creole reading blogs.
Flightsuit Boy, and the clueless 28%ers that still support him, think that history will vindicate his presidency. This will more likely be his legacy.
Behold, Google Sky!
The Father, the Son and the Holy Joe.
I suppose it’s good that ruining the environment is now considered a mortal sin by the Vatican.
