Helen Thomas
An internet effort to send journalist Helen Thomas flowers for having the balls to ask Dana Perino direct questions about torture policies.
Hornussen
A rather odd version of baseball, played in the German-speaking regions of Switzerland, sent to me by a good friend of mine who actually lives there. I’ll take there funny sports and scary language if I don’t have to put up with W anymore.
Supersonic VTOL
Remember the scene in Live Free or Die Hard where the fighter jet chasing John McClain suddenly pulls an optimus prime, switches to a hover configuration and continues to shoot at the hero? Well unlike many other bits in The Die Hard series, that particular model of fighter jet can actually pull that off. Here’s a bit from the guy who invented it.
Even better, the whole thing was sketched on a napkin (proving my dad correct (again) that it’s better to put pen to paper (or rather mechanical pencil to graph paper) when it comes to design).
The Unforseen
Germ turned me on to this one – a documentary about Austin’s struggles for smart growth, with the Barton Springs caught in the middle. Parts of this made me so damn proud to live here (the all-night city council hearing where they shut down the initial development) while others damn near had me throwing my beer at the screen (Rick ‘big-hair’ Perry speaking at the take back Texas rally). Regardless of your political leanings, take a look if you get the chance – hopefully it’ll make you think.
Methane Rocket
New NASA rocket, powered by cow farts.
Time Warner
“Sir, it appears you’re experiencing massive packet loss.”
No, actually what I’m experiencing an icy cold and itchy rage. Itchy, because through some fucked-up comedy of errors I’ve managed to contract shingles something you usually don’t get till your 65. Icy because I’m currently reclining on my couch with two bottles of fresh-from-the-freezer vodka strategically positioned on the pillows to bring some relief, until the icepacks freeze up again.
What I would like to be experiencing instead of icy-itchy rage and packet loss is the mindlessness of playing Halo on the Xbox. But no. You guys have decided to fry my internet today, the one day it would be socially acceptable for me to sit on my ass and do nothing but shoot at pixelated people.
I’m a bit suspicious that this just happened to occur the same week that I canceled my fancy cable package. I’m sure its just a coincidence, because your customer service has been so awesome in the past– like the time your technician called saying they’d arrive in 30 minutes and then showed up at my house three hours later. Or the time you double billed me because you neglected to turn off my old account after three separate notices. Yeah, you guys are winners. I’m so looking forward to the say (and this may be like the flying car, but whatever) that I can pull a high-speed network connection out of the air, and never have to pay you another damn cent.
Mapping Mars
ESA satellite uses radar mapping on sample the Martian subsurface. Still no word on finding the lost colony of the first 100.
Wonkette
The D.C. insider gossip blog is being spun out of Gawker.
Reimer's Ranch Race
“If you’re going to walk out, I think you need to go that way, “ said the hippy race volunteer, pointing to the right.
“Really?” asked Tim, “Are you sure you have the map turned the right way?”
“Oh huh. Right,” she spins the map around,” Yeah, I guess you go that way,” pointing to the left.
Needless to say some of did not have the best race Sunday. Germ took some unscheduled stops on some sandy turns (although still managed to beat me by two minutes) and Tim managed to get a flat at the perfect spot on the trail–as far as you can get from the start or the finish. Before the race we’d checked in with them and finding out Tim only had a pump with which to change a flat we said, hey dude, take this CO2 canister, if something does go wrong, you’ll be able to get back in the race faster. Or, maybe not.
As somebody said we took away the device that Tim was fully familiar with (a small pump) and gave him a new fangled thing that neither he, nor apparently anybody on the trail knew how to use, and thus was unable to inflate the tube once he got it changed. There’s a usability study there. Needless to say chaos ensued, Tim actually ended up doing a kind of triathlon where he rode seven miles, reversed and walked back up the trail another three (for the second event), and finished up with a creative-explicative event (that replaced the normal swimming part of the tri – he excelled in it, apparently).
In the end, we all lived. I also have to say, despite their reputation for building excessively windy trails, Austin Ridge Riders did a heluva job putting this thing together, the first race to happen in a Travis County park in many a year–hopefully the first of many.