Posted 8/30/2005 05:27:00 PM by Douglas

Like most single women going to New Orleans looking for a party, Katrina blows into town drunk off her ass with her tits flapping in the wind. The 175 mph wind. I can't really say anything that hasn't already been said, so I'll try to summarize:

• Here's the it's bad, no wait, good for the economy story.
• The obligatory those hedonists brought this on themselves/wrath of God story.
• The President Bush had to cut short his 35 day vacation to deal with the story.

And I'm sure countless others. But the real story are the pictures. This is what New Orleans looked like this weekend. Here's a cross section of the City between the Mississippi and Lake Pontchartrian. Notice much farther the city is as compared to the water level that surrounds it.

Imagine that you're out to sea, surrounded on all sides by water. Now one of the sides of your ship gives way, and water is rushing in 100 times faster than you can bail it out. What now?

What the hell do they do now? Of course the initial urge is to rebuild, but back to the sinking ship analogy, you've got to rebuild half of your sinking ship first and, by the way, your bilge pumps are under about 20 feet of water, corpses, sewage, and Britney Spears albums. Is it too late to market New Orleans' tourism destinations as "New Venice?"

This is a particularly damming headline, coming as it does from NOLA

No levees, no New Orleans. Simple as that. Looks like Katrina is more than a drunken whore on Bourbon Street. She's one of those "atlas altering" storms that only come around once every hundred years or so.

Posted 8/29/2005 05:36:00 PM by Douglas

Interesting story about the guy that broke the bank on Press Your Luck in 1983.

In November of 1983, he recorded every episode of Press Your Luck over the course of several weeks. He studied these videotapes, slowed them down, and froze the images to examine randomized tile sequences frame by frame. If you haven't already guessed, Michael Larsen discovered that the Big Board on Press Your Luck was not a randomized display, but an iterative, sequential pattern which gave itself away once you knew what to look for.

Actually there were six patterns, each of which consisted of eighteen elements apiece -- and Michael Larsen had memorized them all. As long as his concentration and hand-eye coordination held out, Larsen would enjoy full control of the Big Board, and nothing would be left to chance. The one and only Whammy he'd received earlier was due to his inexperience with the tactile sensation and reaction time associated with one's plunger triggering the Big Board. When he passed control to other players, they hit Whammies almost instantly, demonstrating that the board was neither broken, nor the victim of adulterous tamperation.

That's pretty funny, and how stupid were the producers to not make it random?

Posted 8/29/2005 05:20:00 PM by Douglas

Interesting blog from NOLA.

Posted 8/29/2005 05:17:00 PM by Douglas

I for one welcome her plight. Not since 1965 has anyone given this much interest to Gus Grissom's pants. [Damn registration: try this one.]

A 15-year-old girl with a Web site, a summer of free time and an astronaut for a hero is trying to solve a 3-year-old dispute over one of NASA's earliest space suits.

The family of pioneering astronaut Gus Grissom has been trying to get NASA to give them his 1961 Mercury space suit. NASA says the suit is government property and an artifact that should be kept at the Astronaut Hall of Fame in Florida.

Enter Amanda Meyer, space enthusiast and co-captain of her school's debate team. She believes she has a compromise and, after launching an Internet petition drive, has spent the summer writing and calling NASA, the Smithsonian Institution, Congress and anyone else she can think of.

Meyer says the government doesn't have to give up its claim to the suit but should loan it to the Gus Grissom Memorial, a museum in his hometown of Mitchell, Ind.

Come on, NASA, give the girl Gus's pants. She's cute:

Besides, who really cares, right? This is going to teach two very distinct lessons. First, it's going to teach NASA that the relics of the golden age of the space race belong in museums, and not where some pointy headed paper pusher decides they'll be. Secondly, it'll teach high school girls everywhere that petitions are ineffective, and a total waste of time.

Posted 8/29/2005 05:15:00 PM by Douglas

Tipping: It's not just a city in China anymore.

Tipping didn’t take hold here until after the Civil War, and even as it spread it met with fervent public opposition from people who considered it a toxic vestige of Old World patronage. Anti-tipping associations were formed; newspapers—including the Times—regularly denounced the custom. Tipping, the activists held, fostered a masterservant relationship that was ill suited to a nation in which people were meant to be social equals.

I guess what's interesting about this article is that is comes as it does from The New Yorker. If ever there was a city dependant on its working class to make a living off tips, it's New York. So why do we do it?

The practice really belongs to what sociologists call a gift economy rather than to a market one. The free market, at least in theory, is all about impersonal exchange—as long as you have goods to sell and I have money to buy them, we can make a deal, regardless of how we feel about each other. But, when it comes to tipping, who we are and how we feel matter a lot, because a tip is essentially a gift, and we give better gifts to people we like than to people we don’t. Tippers aren’t trying to drive hard bargains or maximize their economic interests; they’re trying to demonstrate their status and to reciprocate what they see as good behavior.

That's kinda the way I've looked at it. The obligatory 15% is pretty stupid. The waiter gets less money in tips if my table splits an appetizer and I order a salad instead of a steak? It's the same amount of legwork on his part, either way, right? So why the rift?

William R. Scott, in his 1916 polemic “The Itching Palm,” described the tip as the price that “one American is willing to pay to induce another American to acknowledge inferiority”

That, in essence, is what it boils down to. The tip is the tribute that condescension plays to apathy. The chance of you getting spit in your food from some disaffected waiter has absolutely nothing to do with your tip (exactly like it doesn't at McDonald's). And at the risk of sounding like Mr. Pink, "learn to fucking type, because if you expect me to help out with the bills, you're in for a big surprise."

Posted 8/28/2005 02:25:00 PM by Douglas

Must. Buy. Steam engine.

Our largest & most powerful Hobby Line Steam Engine is now available as a miniature power plant!! It features a double acting stationary slide valve cylinder with plenty of low speed torque, 2-1/2 x 6 boiler, reversible, 2 speed pulley and a F-N-R Stephenson link shift lever. Includes 400 watt heater, pop valve, whistle and throttle, all mounted on a beautifully finished wood base. Our new Model # 25G is a wonderful "ressurection" of the very essence of the venerable old Jensen Model #10, which is no longer in production . The Jensen Model # 25G once again answers the call to duty, as our latest new Mini Power Plant Engine offering.

I really can't explain why I'm going to buy this. There's really no place to start, is there? Because if you don't understand now, there's no way to explain why you need to spend $350 to buy a machine that takes electricity from the wall, boils water to power an engine that spins a wheel connected to a generator that creates what? Electricity! Only a whole lot less than you started out with. But hey, you get to see the wheels spin around, and it even has a steam whistle! How cool is that?

Posted 8/28/2005 02:15:00 PM by Douglas

For anyone wondering what would happen to New Orleans in the event of a direct hit of a massive hurricane, they're about to find out. For the past 100 years or so, they've been building up dikes to keep out the water that surrounds it while the city itself sinks deeper and deeper into the silt of the Mississippi. It's not going to be a good day to be in New Orleans tomorrow.

A storm of this magnitude catastrophic for any city, but in New Orleans, it's cataclysmic. The city is about 20 feet under water, and if the dikes on the Mississippi and Lake Pontchartrain are broken, all the water pumps in the world aren't going to stand in the way of the river looking for a shorter route to the Gulf. Found this article after a bit of googling, and it's interesting in that it was written in 2002, not last night.

Why is New Orleans so vulnerable?

Sandwiched between Lake Pontchartrain and the Mississippi River, most of the city lies below sea level. A flood that gushes over shielding levees (earthen walls built in the late 1800s to protect against river overflow) would submerge New Orleans underwater.

Hope everyone is getting the hell out of there. Sadly, the first thing I thought of when I saw Katrina headed for New Orleans was how much more this was going to drive up the cost of gas.

Posted 8/28/2005 01:50:00 PM by Douglas

Does the Attorney General of California have nothing else better to do with his time?

California Attorney General Bill Lockyer has filed a lawsuit to force top makers of potato chips and french fries to warn consumers about a potential cancer-causing chemical found in the popular snacks.

In a complaint filed Friday in Los Angeles Superior Court, Lockyer sought an injunction to stop restaurant chains such as McDonald's Corp. and Wendy's International Inc. from selling french fries without some form of warning.

Are fried taters a significant source of acrylamide? Does acrylamide cause cancer? I have no idea, but I do know that even the least sentient segments of our population (those not elected to public office) realized that chips and fries aren't healthy. So why do we need a warning label?

Posted 8/28/2005 01:36:00 PM by Douglas

I honestly can't believe why the WaPo is making a big deal out of this. Civil War or War Between the States. Yes, the language is important, but what, if anything, is the WaPo trying to extrapolate from Roberts's editing?

A fastidious editor of other people's copy as well as his own, Roberts began with the words "Until about the time of the Civil War." Then, the Indiana native scratched out the words "Civil War" and replaced them with "War Between the States."

While it is true that the Civil War is also known as the War Between the States, the Encyclopedia Americana notes that the term is used mainly by southerners. Sam McSeveney, a history professor emeritus at Vanderbilt University who specialized in the Civil War, said that Roberts's choice of words was significant.

"Many people who are sympathetic to the Confederate position are more comfortable with the idea of a 'War Between the States,' " McSeveney explained. "People opposed to the civil rights movement of the 1960s and 1970s would undoubtedly be more comfortable with the words he chose."

So Roberts is opposed to the civil rights movement? What else could they be implying? It's a mighty fine hair to split, but what about those that refer to the conflict as the Civil War? A civil war is "a war in which the competing parties are segments of the same country or empire," and anyone who passed 4th grade history knows this wasn't the case in America in 1861. "War of Southern Independence" is probably the most accurate term for the conflict, but it's doubtful you'd ever hear it anywhere but here. But if someone doesn't like Roberts as a Supreme Court nominee (and I don't know who that is yet, except maybe Ann Coulter) it's a pretty big jump to go back to the 1860s to find something you don't like about the guy.

Posted 8/28/2005 01:05:00 PM by Douglas

What is it about every story coming out of Iraq now makes me think that Christopher Hitchens is going to see some pretty sleepless nights for the rest of his life?

The great point about Blair's 1999 speech was that it asserted the obvious. Coexistence with aggressive regimes or expansionist, theocratic, and totalitarian ideologies is not in fact possible. One should welcome this conclusion for the additional reason that such coexistence is not desirable, either. If the great effort to remake Iraq as a demilitarized federal and secular democracy should fail or be defeated, I shall lose sleep for the rest of my life in reproaching myself for doing too little. But at least I shall have the comfort of not having offered, so far as I can recall, any word or deed that contributed to a defeat.

I really don't think I understand what he's trying to say here. But he's not the only Neocon that can't sensibly retrace their steps in their road to war.

Posted 8/27/2005 03:26:00 PM by Douglas

All hail the mighty Flying Spaghetti Monster, in all his glory! I wonder what it'd take to get my house certified as an official FSM church so I could get tax-exempt status?

Posted 8/27/2005 02:29:00 PM by Douglas

Just another lazy Saturday morning here in Space City. Not much going on, until the
balloon attack!

Ok, so maybe they weren't attacking, and I think those power lines were doing a fantastic job of defending us from the onslaught. But I wasn't so sure when this one landed across the street from my house:

But I wasn't just standing in my yard gawking at the balloons and sweating my balls off. I had higher aspirations. I was having a garage sale. Is there anything more degrading than stacking piles of crap in your driveway for the great unwashed masses to rummage through? Actually, there is. It's when the unwashed masses show up and rummage through your crap and decide that it's not worth 25¢ to stop being your crap and to become their crap. That means they have better crap than you. Then, there's only one thing to do. Pile all your crap in the driveway, put out this sign . . .

. . . and go back to bed.

Posted 8/26/2005 05:52:00 PM by Douglas

Ever seen a tornado on Mars? You have now.

This movie clip shows several dust devils moving across the plain inside Mars' Gusev Crater. It consists of frames taken by the navigation camera on NASA's Mars Exploration Rover Spirit during the rover's 525th martian day, or sol (June 25, 2005).

Spirit began seeing dust devil activity around the beginning of Mars' spring season. Activity increased as spring continued, but fell off again for about two weeks during a dust storm. As the dust storm faded away, dust devil activity came back. In the mid-afternoons as the summer solstice approached, dust devils were a very common occurrence on the floor of Gusev crater. The early-spring dust devils tended to move southwest-to-northeast, across the dust devil streaks in Gusev seen from orbit. Increasingly as the season progresses, the dust devils are seen moving northwest-to-southeast, in the same direction as the streaks. Scientists are watching for the big dust devils that leave those streaks.

In this clip, contrast has been enhanced for anything in the images that changes from frame to frame, that is, for the dust moved by wind. The total time elapsed during the taking of these frames was 12 minutes, 25 seconds.

NASA should really do more when they try to pass off fake pictures like this. Everyone knows you can't have a tornado without a trailer park.

Posted 8/26/2005 05:18:00 PM by Douglas

Looks like if you're pissed off at the condition of your house, you sue the government to get a better one.

Migrant farmworkers want better housing in Floydada and are suing the local housing authority and the federal government to get it.

The best way to get better housing? Sue. Sue the government. That always works. But it goes on like this:

"They're just deplorable. A shower that I wouldn't step in, or I can tell you I wouldn't want to take my shoes off. When you see these places, it just makes your stomach turn that people are forced to live there."

Forced? Forgive my less than left-leaning bias, but the only people the state forced to live anywhere are incarcerated felons. Even migrant workers have a choice, no? Or is this not still America?

Posted 8/26/2005 04:19:00 PM by Douglas

Overheard at work today:

The Copenhagen interpretation of the Heisenberg uncertainty principle confuses epistemology for ontology.

If you're offended by the Wikipedia links, dude, you're reading the wrong blog.

Posted 8/25/2005 05:24:00 PM by Douglas

Alternate headline for the following:

Whiners get Five Grand
The city of Houston has appealed a jury verdict ordering it to pay $5,000 to an Humble couple who sued over noise from Bush Intercontinental Airport.

Stephen and Deann Simmons also were awarded court costs by jurors in an Humble justice of the peace court. The $5,000 is the maximum award allowed in a small claims court.

"It was never about 'let's break the bank,' " said Stephen Simmons, 57. "We had a quiet house, and we want it to be quiet again."

The couple, who represented themselves during the Tuesday trial, said they will use the money to insulate their home to block airport noise.

I can sort of feel for them, since they lived there before the new runway was built, but come on people. Land around the airport, whether it's under an existing flight approach or not, is cheap for a reason.

Posted 8/25/2005 05:24:00 PM by Douglas

Is this whole Cindy Sheehan thing about ready to blow over yet? Now the Anti-Cindys are packing up and going to Crawford.

All aboard for the anti-Cindy express.

In response to the massive publicity generated by Cindy Sheehan's protest outside President Bush's ranch in Crawford, a group of Bush supporters have been making their way across country for the past few days, presenting a different view.

Before pulling into its final destination in Crawford, though, the "You Don't Speak for Me, Cindy" tour will make a stop in Amarillo to drum up support for the war.

"She (Sheehan) definitely has the right to speak out, and we feel very bad that she lost her son," he said. "But we wanted the other side to get out."

Is their side really that underrepresented? Geez. If you want to show your support for Bush and his war in Iraq, sign up for the Army. Standing on the side of the road in Crawford does nothing constructive.

Posted 8/25/2005 05:17:00 PM by Douglas

Why do movies suck this summer? Apparently the geniuses in Hollywood are scratching their heads trying to figure it out.

Multiples theories for the decline abound: a failure of studio marketing, the rising price of gas, the lure of alternate entertainment, even the prevalence of commercials and pesky cellphones inside once-sacrosanct theaters. But many movie executives and industry experts are beginning to conclude that something more fundamental is at work: Too many Hollywood movies these days, they say, just are not good enough.

Gee, ya think? Take a look at the sludge that came out this summer and ask yourself how many $9 tickets you'd buy. At least this guy's got a clue:

Mr. Lynton said he would focus on making "only movies we hope will be really good." At Fox, executives said they are looking to limit marketing costs. At Universal, Mr. Shmuger said he intends to reassert "time and care and passion" in movie production. Some of his own summer movies, he conceded, should never have been made.

He declined to name them.

Wow, what an admission (ha!) Here's my suggestions to get people back in the theater seats.

• A $4 Coke? Really, do you think people can't sit for 90 minutes without something to eat and drink when it's going to cost $15 for two Cokes and a tub of popcorn? That's just beyond ridiculous.
• Hire some writers. Remember when a movie had a story? Yeah, me neither, but there was a time when Hollywood paid professional writers (like Hemmingway and Faulkner) to write stories and dialog for the people on the big screen to say. Now they pay computer geeks to make green-screen monsters throw shit at actors while they scream. Overacting in front of a green wall? I can do that at home.
• Kill the previews. I know some people get there extra early to catch all the trailers, but I'm annoyed and slightly offended that I've paid at least $6 and I have to sit through a minimum of 20 minutes of previews and straight-up commercials. Not to mention the intended audience for most of the previews are 8 year olds with ADHD.
• Enforce the no talking policy. Other than changing the "quiet, please" policy to a more stern "shut the fuck up, or we'll boot you out" policy, I don't know how the theaters could make people be courteous. But sitting in front of someone that thinks they're in their living room at home really makes me want to stay home and watch a movie in mine.

Who knows. Maybe Hollywood is the next industry to get outsourced to India. A four hour movie in Hindi couldn't be any more painfull to sit through than Deuce Bigalow: European Gigolo in English, could it?

Posted 8/24/2005 05:10:00 PM by Douglas

If this was just some random war protester at a Bush speech, it would seem pretty silly. But sitting on the ear of a veteran at a VFW speech, it's pretty damn funny.

Bill Moyer, 73, wears a "Bullshit Protector" flap over his ear while President George W. Bush addresses the Veterans of Foreign Wars. (AP Photo/Douglas C. Pizac)

Obviously, I'm not the only one that finds it a bit ironic that you have to go to the Canadian media to find such a derisive picture.

Posted 8/23/2005 05:29:00 PM by Douglas

Man, what a pussy.

At a time when plastic surgery has become fairly commonplace, some believe the Catman of Whidbey Island may have gone too far.

Dennis Avner, who goes by his American Indian name, Stalking Cat, is known around the world as the Catman. Over the past 25 years, Stalking Cat, 47, has received so many surgical and cosmetic procedures he’s lost count. And he says all of them - from full-face tattoos to fanged dentures to steel implants for detachable "whiskers" - have been done to achieve oneness with what he calls his totem, the tiger.

For the love of god, someone please get him to the Vet to get neutered before he breeds.

Posted 8/23/2005 05:27:00 PM by Douglas

Who Would Jesus Assassinate?

Religious broadcaster Pat Robertson suggested on-air that American operatives assassinate Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez to stop his country from becoming "a launching pad for communist infiltration and Muslim extremism."

"We have the ability to take him out, and I think the time has come that we exercise that ability," Robertson said Monday on the Christian Broadcast Network's The 700 Club.

"We don't need another $200 billion war to get rid of one, you know, strong-arm dictator," he continued. "It's a whole lot easier to have some of the covert operatives do the job and then get it over with."

"You know, I don't know about this doctrine of assassination, but if he thinks we're trying to assassinate him, I think that we really ought to go ahead and do it," Robertson said. "It's a whole lot cheaper than starting a war ... and I don't think any oil shipments will stop."

When it comes to religious guys on TV saving souls and asking for money, I've always thought that Pat Robertson was probably about as tame as they come. But it doesn't seem like it now. Publicly advocating the murder and overthrow of a sovereign nation? Maybe his bible reads differently than any that I've seen, but isn't that the work for a vengeful god, and not a televangelist?

Posted 8/23/2005 05:18:00 PM by Douglas

This case of mistaken identity on a cable bill is really not even offense when compared to this credit card bill.

Officials at JP Morgan Chase have apologized and promised to improve their screening policies, after a credit card solicitation letter sent to a 54-year-old naturalized American citizen came addressed to "Palestinian Bomber."

The form letter for a Visa Platinum card arrived earlier this month at the home of Sami Habbas, a grocery store manager from Corona, Calif. The words "Palestinian Bomber" appear above his address and the salutation reads, "Dear Palestinian Bomber." The document included the signature of Carter Franke, chief marketing officer for Chase Card Services.

Habbas was even more shocked when, on several occasions, he said he called an 800-number for JP Morgan Chase and spoke to operators in an effort to complain. Each time, he says the operators called up his information on a computer but apparently didn't catch on. According to Habbas, "The operators always said, 'Yes, Mr. Palestinian Bomber, how can we help you?' "

Ouch.

Posted 8/23/2005 05:12:00 PM by Douglas

$1.3 TRILLION Dollars! That's a whole bunch of money. Let's just say, for example that it was all spread out in $100 bills in one place. Just for the sake of argument, let's say in my garage. I would have $1.3 TRILLION dollars! But instead, there's a lingering war in Iraq, for seemingly no reason and no way to get out. And why? This opinion seems to be picking up speed (although it's presented here in a manner that's a little more cute than it is factual.) Did Shiite Iranians sell us a bill of goods to take out the enemy that they couldn't? Makes about as much sense as anything else. And after watching the phenomenal documentary on National Geographic about the 9/11 attacks and hearing Iraq mentioned exactly never, it makes even far fetched crack pot conspiracy theories make more sense.

Posted 8/22/2005 05:43:00 PM by Douglas

Welcome to Houston! Or as I like to call it, Nazi Germany!

The waits at some Houston red lights can seem an eternity, but it won't be nearly that long before cameras start catching motorists who give in to temptation and speed through.

If all goes according to plan, a new red-light camera system could be up at some city intersections — and catching scofflaws — by Thanksgiving, city officials say.

At a mere 31 years of age, I'm already waxing poetic about the halcyon days when the cops actually had to catch you doing something wrong before they could extort their fine from you

Posted 8/22/2005 05:38:00 PM by Douglas

Alternative Headline: Houston Traffic Engineer wants tunnels, smokes crack.

Gonzalo Camacho remains convinced that running 14.5 miles of Interstate 45 under the ground would cost less, be built faster, displace fewer people and businesses, and create less air pollution than any conventional, above-ground road design.

"It's a no-brainer. It would be a large error that would be with us for a long time if the elected officials didn't get behind the tunnel idea," said Camacho, a transportation engineer and the most public proponent of making Houston home to the longest tunnel in the United States.

Is Houston somehow falling behind the nations in the "longest" or "biggest" categories? Why does Mr. Camacho want to make up for all of this with the "biggest flooding fatality" in the United States? Let's take a brief step back and remember Tropical Storm Allison. Which above ground freeways were under water during that storm? Oh yeah. . . . All of them!!!

You may be a brilliant traffic engineer, but this isn't one of your brightest ideas.

Posted 8/21/2005 03:52:00 PM by Douglas

Finally, the search for a renewable energy source has dropped all pretense and focused their attention on what they've been alluding to for decades: bullshit.

Soaring oil prices and government incentives are fueling increased interest in renewable energy sources such as cow manure.

That's how The Panda Group of Dallas plans to fuel a $120 million ethanol plant set to open next year in Hereford. The company said it will realize an energy savings equivalent to 1,000 barrels of oil per day by turning manure and cotton-gin waste into clean-burning fuel to power the plant.

"I see it as a valuable tool in our tool box," John Sweeten, resident director of the Texas Agricultural Experiment Station in Amarillo, said of cattle manure's energy potential.

"Sixty-dollar-a-barrel oil recruits a lot of interest in biomass," Sweeten said. "At $10-a-barrel oil, there's not much interest."

Cattle manure can be used as fuel instead of coal or natural gas to create steam to run turbines, which create electricity.

Wow, what a truly exciting time to be alive! A dung fired ethanol plant. Just imagine the reaction from some of the great minds of the 19th century if they had seen this coming. Something tells me Carnot, the Curies, and Pasteur wouldn't have been so inquisitive if they knew people in the 21st century were going to be burning cow shit to distill government subsidized corn.

Posted 8/21/2005 03:40:00 PM by Douglas

Reasonably interesting article on the conflict between rights and responsibilities. I find it funny because it came from Canada.

At its most obvious there is the usual list of standard demands. The right to marry whomever you want, the right to be ordained a priest when you don't qualify, the right to claim welfare even if it isn't deserved, the right to have sex with anyone and everyone, the right to die, the right to be wrong.

The list goes on: The right to swear, the right to defy righteous authority, the right to be publicly uncouth, the right to insult a cop, the right to hide behind any excuse to escape punishment, the right to never fail, never lose, never have one's self-esteem challenged, the right to be wrong.

Someone a lot smarter than I once said that more freedom increases the need for more responsibility. But what the hell do I know. I'm not even on welfare.

Posted 8/21/2005 01:42:00 PM by Douglas

So Hunter Thompson gets blasted one last time. The "ashes in the fireworks" routine is a bit overwrought ever since Gene Roddenberry went into orbit, but still, it works in this case

With a deafening boom, the ashes of Hunter S. Thompson were blown into the sky amid fireworks late Saturday as relatives and a star-studded crowd bid an irreverent farewell to the founder of "gonzo journalism."

As the ashes erupted from a tower, red, white, blue and green fireworks lit up the sky over Thompson's home near Aspen.

Good for him. I wasn't really a big fan (after foolishly seeing Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas without the assistance of hallucinatory drugs) for it's fitting for him. And how could you not respect any man that has a quote like this in his obit from a random mourner:

"We just threw a gallon of Wild Turkey in the back and headed west," said Kevin Coy of Chester, W.Va., who drove more than 1,500 miles with a friend in hopes of seeing the celebration. "We came to pay our respects."

Shine on, you crazy diamond.

Posted 8/20/2005 05:08:00 PM by Douglas

I'm gonna guess that you know very little about the history of the odometer, much less about the Antikythera mechanism, the world's first computer. (Roadtrip to Bozeman, anyone?)

Boy, this is really going to piss off Charles Babbage.

Labels: Antikythera Mechanism

Posted 8/20/2005 05:02:00 PM by Douglas

From the insult to injury department. Let's say the supreme court says that you have to give your private property to another private entity, all for the sake of eminent domain. After fighting it for several years and losing, the town that won doesn't just take your land from you with a smile, but they charge you for back rent. On your own land. That they stole from you.

The June 23 Supreme Court ruling in Kelo v. City of New London gave the town the approval to seize the residents' homes and transfer them to a private party for development of an office complex. In the highly controversial decision, the justices ruled 5-4 that the economic development resulting from the eminent domain action qualified as "public use" under the Fifth Amendment of the Constitution.

The city now says that since it won the case, the homeowners actually have been living on city property since 2000 when it first began condemnation procedures against them, so they must pay back rent – to the tune of hundreds of thousands of dollars.

This is sickening. Not only are you going to lose your land, but you're going to be charged rent while you fight someone stealing it. Funny, really. I thought I woke up in America.

Obviously not.

Posted 8/18/2005 05:36:00 PM by Douglas

Random pictures from last week's travels.

My, that's a mighty fine porch ya got there. Is it new?

And here's Annie, the world's luckiest feral cat:

Sometimes you just gotta take care of business even if you're in the front yard.

The next few pictures were taken the way a small town should be toured: from the back of a moving pick-up. So they're a bit blurry.
Here's the tallest structure in town: a defunct water tower slightly obfuscated by a big red barn.

The Courthouse, with its Christmas star on top that's there year-round.

The Depot, and quite possibly the only surviving rail road tacks in the county.

This shop has seen better days, but the randomness of the pealing exterior looks less and less random the more I stared at it.

Jim, how's the tire business going? OK, I guess

And although probably not unique, I took this one because it's the only place I know of where there's a firework stand, a Sno-cone stand and a Dairy Queen within 25 feet from each other.

And finally, this one was from the way home. One of the many places the water was over the road.

Ironically, this is the detour TxDOT forced me onto after US287 was closed due to flooding. This one wasn't that bad, since the water wasn't so deep you couldn't see the center stripe.

Posted 8/18/2005 04:48:00 PM by Douglas

Lighten up and pay your stupid cable bill, bitch dog.

LaChania Govan said she got bounced around by her cable company when she called to complain. She made dozens of calls and was even transferred to a person who spoke Spanish — a language she doesn't understand.

But when she got her August bill from Comcast she had no trouble understanding she'd made somebody mad. It was addressed to "Bitch Dog."

"I was like you got to be freaking kidding me," said Govan, 25. "I was so mad I couldn't even cuss."

It would have really been funny if Jefferoy Barnes' nickname really was "scrotum bag."

Posted 8/18/2005 04:45:00 PM by Douglas

Shamelessly pilfered from the agitator, this really makes me laugh. Typical liberal lefty outlook on taxes:

For now, I'd start off taking just about any tax hike I can get.

So is there an example of a bad tax? Sure there is. It's a tax he has to pay:

On the other hand, suppose I do write an article about Iceland, does that mean I get to deduct the whole trip as a business expense from my taxes?

Oh the irony. But that's one of the fundamental tenets a good socialized democracy: Getting other people to pay for your government programs.

Posted 8/18/2005 04:31:00 PM by Douglas

What a nice little "Fuck You" to a veteran returning to Texas from Iraq.

A decorated Marine enrolling in college was surprised to learn his Texas driver's license, car registration and bank records weren't enough to qualify him for the lower-priced state resident tuition.

Carl Basham said officials at Austin Community College told him that his two tours of duty in Iraq kept him out of the state too long to qualify for Texas resident tuition.

So were is he a resident? Is he a Louisiana resident since that's where he signed up for the Marines? Also, what the hell does he care what his tuition is? Not like he's going to be paying for it anyway.

Posted 8/17/2005 02:39:00 PM by Douglas

Before today, I had never given any thought to the prospect that Shakespeare worked on the King James bible, but Lileks has a theory:

Take out the Selahs. Count 46 words from the start, and you get “Shake.” Then count 46 words from the end. You get “Spear.” The KJV was published in 1611; Shakespeare turned 46 in 1610.

Coincidence? Probably not, but who really knows? Or cares.

Posted 8/13/2005 02:44:00 PM by Douglas

Now that I’m a minority, I wonder how easy it’d be for me to get on welfare?

Texas has become the fourth state where minorities account for most of the population, the U.S. Census Bureau said Thursday, a trend driven by a surging number of Latinos moving to the state.

According to the population estimates based on the 2000 Census, about 50.2 percent of Texans are now minorities. In the 2000 Census, minorities made up about 47 percent of the population in the second-largest state.

Texas joins California, New Mexico and Hawaii as states with majority-minority populations -- with Latinos the largest group in every one of those states except for Hawaii, where it is Asian-Americans.

Only in America would the term “minority majority” make any damn sense.

Posted 8/09/2005 05:39:00 PM by Douglas

A long-time reader would like to point out that the Coke Vs. Pop debate has been going on for some time now, and it's not any closer to being resolved than any number of vast, pronunciationiacal debats. Chiefly, the "doing donuts or whippin' shities" debate. But since almost 7% of the survey's respondents came from Texas, I think it might be just a bit biased.

Posted 8/09/2005 05:11:00 PM by Douglas

Looks like another year of a massive peanut surplus. Bad new for peanut farmers and taxpayers alike, but good news for SouthWest Airlines.

Despite recent growth in peanut consumption, Americans use only about 1.6 million tons a year and another 300,000 to 400,000 tons are exported.

That leaves a surplus of about 485,000 tons.

Farmers won't lose because their government crop program guarantees them $355 per ton. The losers could be federal taxpayers who pay the difference between the guaranteed price and the actual market value of the peanuts.

Low peanut prices increase government costs, while higher prices reduce government costs.

Last year's 2.1 million ton crop peanut crop has already cost the government $320 million, said Spearman, who spoke Friday at the Georgia Peanut Producers Association's annual buying point meeting. The 416 buying points stretching from New Mexico to Virginia buy peanuts from the farmer and grade them before shipping them to shelling plants or storage warehouses.

No one's gonna win as long as the government is paying people to produce things they can't sell. Farmers are no different.

Chambliss, noting that he'd been given a golf shirt made from corn the day before in Minnesota, urged the industry to "get creative" and increase peanut demand.

Then, reflecting on potential uses of peanuts, he said, "I don't know if we can make golf shirts out of it."

I don't know, I think a peanut shirt would be kinda cool. Sounds like someone needs to summon the spirit of Mr. Carver.

In other peanut-related news, if you're teetering on the brink of suicide, listen to this song for 15 seconds and see if it doesn't put you over the edge.

Posted 8/08/2005 05:58:00 PM by Douglas

Oh please.

Land that sucker!

Posted 8/05/2005 05:56:00 PM by Douglas

Southwest flight given the terrorist two-step in Houston:

All 136 passengers aboard Southwest Airlines Flight 21 have been released after an investigation at Hobby Airport this afternoon of a bomb threat on the plane, which was bound for Corpus Christi.

The plane was isolated at the airport after a written bomb threat was found on board by a passenger on the Dallas-to-Corpus Christi flight.

Southwest Flight 21, carrying 136 passengers and five crew members, reported the discovery of the threat about 12:30 p.m., when the craft was about five miles out from Hobby, said Houston Airport Systems spokesman Roger Smith.

An FBI spokesman told CNN that the note was not a terrorist threat and termed the incident as insignificant.

Let's put this in perspective, shall we? All terrorist's threats are insignificant, except when they're not. Then they're a pretty damn big deal. I don't know if we'll ever find out what happened on Flight 21, because the way Southwest herds passengers in and out of their planes, a smartass' note that says "there's a bomb on board" could sit in the seat-back pouch for several days before someone gets bored enough to flip through the current issue of SkyMall, as is clear with the following:

It was unclear whether the note was written on that flight or had been left there by a passenger on a previous flight, Tribble said.

The bigger question is why it took over an hour to get the passengers off the plane after it landed:

"When we landed, they told us there was a bomb on the plane," Leger said. "It was like a bubblegum wrapper where somebody wrote there was bomb on the plane. What kind of disturbed me was, they thought there was a bomb on the plane and they left us sitting there for about an hour. Nobody seemed to have a procedure in place for when something like this happens. So that kind of worried me quite a bit."

Ok, I get "worried a bit" when they run out of peanuts. If I'm sitting on the tarmac in my 737 sarcophagus with 135 of my new closet friends, I'm going to get a bit more than worried. I'm going to make a bee line to the emergency exit aisle like Carnie Wilson to an all you can eat ribs buffet after her stomach staple fell out.

But this isn't the first time a random note left on a plane led to such drastic diversions.

About 40 minutes into the flight, a note saying, "Bomb, bomb, bomb ... meet the parents," was found on a crumpled napkin with a wad of chewing gum in it.

The pilot was informed of the note and the plane returned to the airport, where it was met by the bomb squad from the Broward County Sheriff's Office.

After a sweep of the plane and questioning, the 176 passengers were returned to the terminal at about 11 p.m.

The note could be a reference to the 2000 movie "Meet the Parents," which starred Ben Stiller and Robert De Niro.

In the film, Stiller's character rejects a flight attendant's efforts to check his bag.

Kinda makes the "Hi, Jack" joke look like nothing.

Posted 8/05/2005 05:36:00 PM by Douglas

Interesting map of how Americans describe soft drinks. Perhaps I find it more interesting than most because I've had the debate with an ex- Michiganian about how all soft drinks are "Coke" in the South. This maps proves it. Deal with it and drink your Coke. Oh yeah, what kind of Coke do you want?

Posted 8/05/2005 05:30:00 PM by Douglas

An actual conversation earlier today with the wife:

• Wife: Is that a burned out bulb in the ceiling fan?
• Me: Yeah, you said it was too bright with all three bulbs, so I put a burned out bulb in the other socket so we wouldn't stick our fingers in the hot socket reaching for the pull-chain.
• Wife: So why is that other socket empty then?
• Me: Yeah, you need to be careful with that one.

Even through her hysterical laughter, this made perfect sense to me. I just hadn't got around to finding a burned out bulb to stick in there yet.

Maybe in the fall.

Posted 8/05/2005 05:18:00 PM by Douglas

Did a misguided fringe of the environmental movement cause the Colombia Disaster? There seems to be a lot of evidence here to claim that they did, but as the site's banner is the "Jawa Report" and they repeatedly quote Rush as their source of facts, I'm going to hold off on judgment on this one. Although there are a lot of links here backing up their case.

I blame Al Gore, and the rest of the Left Wing.

Posted 8/04/2005 05:31:00 PM by Douglas

What can you do about your citizens complaining about how long the line is to get a driver's license? Remove the clocks in the BMV building, of course.

Did you happen to see a report this week about the Bureau of Motor Vehicles banning clocks at its branches?

In what has to join the list of Most Bizarre Government Policies Ever, BMV bosses have decided that hiding clocks is a great way to make long waits seem shorter. Without clocks to watch, people standing in long lines supposedly won't be able to complain about just how long they've been waiting.

Sadly, this didn't come from The Onion.

Posted 8/04/2005 05:10:00 PM by Douglas

Airplane courtesy. An oxymoron of the 21st century.

"You wouldn't believe what people watch," said Mimi Rodriguez, a flight attendant with America West. She says it is not uncommon for people to watch pornography on board; if a passenger complains, she asks the offending party to step into the galley and tells him that his film choice is making some fellow travelers uncomfortable.

"But it's not a violation of regulations," she says. "We usually ask them to turn it off or turn the screen so it can't be seen." Most comply, she adds.

Two questions. Why would you want to watch a porn movie on your laptop on an airplane?

And where would you rather sit? Beside a creepy bald guy watching a porn movie on his laptop, or in front of a screaming toddler kicking the back of your seat?

If you have to think about that, you should take the bus.

Posted 8/04/2005 05:05:00 PM by Douglas

Ya know that sound your stomach makes at 12:30 when you haven't eaten since you got up? Did you know it had a name? Me neither, but Wikipedia did. I'm going to try to use borborygmus as often as possible.

Posted 8/03/2005 05:18:00 PM by Douglas

You don't have to be a mom to be a glamourmom because any woman that's going to go out of her way to wear clothing with easy access to her boobies is OK in my book.

Posted 8/03/2005 02:04:00 PM by Douglas

It's been a year and Generalissima Gatisima is still dead. I guess that should be expected, but we still don't miss her any less. We learned a lot from her, and even more after she left, but if I could hit on the single biggest lesson I learned from her it'd be this:

Leave me the fuck alone!

Think of all the trouble we'd stay out of if we just left cranky people alone?

Anyhoo, here's one of her last pictures, before she knew how sick she really was. We were watching President Reagan's funeral on TV, and she looked remarkably normal, but that was before we saw the urine stain under her butt. Poor girl.

I hope the mice are as slow as you want them to be, and the tuna cans are never empty.

Labels: gatisima

Posted 8/02/2005 05:17:00 PM by Douglas

Google, the pedometer.

Further proof google is going to take over the world.

Posted 8/02/2005 05:15:00 PM by Douglas

Making fun of President Bush's extemporaneous speaking is like laughing at a cripple, and while you might not stare, you have to take at least one look. Such was the case this morning when he addressed the crew of STS-114 onboard Discovery.

THE PRESIDENT: Well, listen, I want to thank you, Commander, and thank your fellow astronauts there. I agree with you -- I think what you're doing is really important. And you've got a strong supporter for your mission here in the White House. I will tell you Laura went down and watched the launch in Florida, with my little brother, Jeb, and came back all excited about the energy that -- there on the East Coast of Florida. But we're with you, and wish you all the very best. Thanks for taking my phone call. Now get back to work.

I guess he was trying to be funny, but why did he make is sound like he was going to dock their pay if they didn't get busy? It could have been worse. He could have called them "spacial entrepreneurs." I'm pretty sure he meant "spatial," but I'm not sure why.

I wonder if he knows they can't see him?

Posted 8/02/2005 05:04:00 PM by Douglas

the Wit (60% dark, 30% spontaneous, 22% vulgar)

your humor style: CLEAN | COMPLEX | DARK You like things edgy, subtle, and smart. I guess that means you're probably an intellectual, but don't take that to mean you're pretentious. You realize 'dumb' can be witty--after all isn't that the Simpsons' philosophy?--but rudeness for its own sake, 'gross-out' humor and most other things found in a fraternity leave you totally flat. I guess you just have a more cerebral approach than most. You have the perfect mindset for a joke writer or staff writer. Your sense of humor takes the most effort to appreciate, but it's also the best, in my opinion. PEOPLE LIKE YOU: Jon Stewart - Woody Allen - Ricky Gervais AND FINALLY -- after you rate my test with a sweet, sweet '5' -- you must take this test next: The Genghis Khan Genetic Fitness Test. It's not mine, but it rocks.

My test tracked 3 variables How you compared to other people your age and gender: You scored higher than 54% on dark You scored higher than 0% on spontaneous You scored higher than 9% on vulgar

Link: The 3 Variable Funny Test written by jason_bateman on OkCupid Free Online Dating

Posted 8/01/2005 04:44:00 PM by Douglas

This space shuttle has seen better days.

Posted 8/01/2005 04:44:00 PM by Douglas

Can't make it to the soccer riot nearest you? Don't worry. You can always start your own.

Five men suffered knife wounds when a fight broke out while they were watching a soccer game on television at a northwest Houston apartment Sunday night, police said.

The fight happened about 11 p.m. at an apartment on Long Point near Campbell. It is unknown whether the fight was over the soccer game.

Boredom. Sheer boredom.

Posted 8/01/2005 04:42:00 PM by Douglas

Kind of an interesting article about hwy cell-phones suck so bad here in America, but doesn't really get to the point.

But, here in the U.S. we’re far behind in total cell phone data use. Catching up will take awhile. Most users here stay with their provider for years and years, accepting what they’re offered without taking the time to shop around for improved services -– not just price. And consumers not going to purchase voice services from one place, data services and overseas roaming from others.

But boy, does it suck.