No Words
A music blog called “No Words”, with strange and wonderful etchings. Definitely worth a look.
Love Update
I am still in love with a drunken raccoon.
But this is the only photo you will see of him. I can’t bring myself to blind the little guy again.
Ain’t he cute?
The Waldo Ultimatum
(via Coudal)
Achewood on NPR
Achewood creator Chris Onstad talks about Achewood and ”the relatively unproven concept of making a living off of a web-comic.” (I see Austin Kleon enjoyed it, too).
clusterflock open thread, 19
Putin’s ugly head.
artificial noses
Scientists at MIT have mass-replicated smell receptors in the lab.
Artificial noses could one day replace dogs that sniff out drugs and explosives, and could have numerous medical applications including identifying diseases that have distinct odors, according to Shuguang Zhang, associate director of MIT’s Center for Biomedical Engineering and senior author of a study on the subject.
“Smell is perhaps one of the oldest and most primitive senses, but nobody really understands how it works,” said Zhang.
“It still remains a tantalizing enigma.”
Yves Behar mockup used to represent possible new Apple laptop
The invisible woman
Jana: hey. i’m online, i’m just INVISIBLE.
Mike: wow, you are.
i’d better put on some pants.
Jana: it’s great. i spent the day listening to my students’ conversations when they thought they were alone, and stealing office supplies.
Mike: they didn’t notice the floating post-it pads?
Jana: i took transparency sheets.
Today’s tea leaves
- TIME Magazine: “Let em fail!”
- The Wall Street Journal quotes Eliot: “This is how the world ends…”
- Bush and Obama are urging passage of the same bill.
- At this hour, the Dow is up sharply.
I can’t even pretend to understand this stuff anymore.
dear clusterflock
Any suggestions for a drinking game for the Biden / Palin debate?
network
Telephone pole, street light, and locust tree on Alder Street in Pittsburgh.
clouds on mars
wow! (it’s a big file, so I put it below the fold.)
Read more
snow on mars
The Phoenix lander has been in operation for 120 Martian days, or sols, and has detected snow.
The Phoenix lander already has operated far longer than expected when it was dropped onto the Martian surface in May, and its controllers said they would squeeze every drop of life they could out of the solar-powered lander.
Scheduled to last just 90 Martian days, known as sols, the lander has already operated for more than 120.
But soon the sun will dip below the horizon until next April. Already the lander is getting less power, after a summer of light-filled days that resemble the months of daylight enjoyed at the Earth’s poles in the summer.
Mars weatherman Jim Whiteway of York University in Toronto, Canada, said the lander has seen snow, frost and clouds forming as the atmosphere cools, although the snow is vaporizing before reaching the ground.
“Nothing like this view has ever been seen on Mars,” Whiteway said. “We’ll be looking for signs that the snow may even reach the ground.”
Diesel Viral XXX SFW Porn Video
(thanks, Aaron. via the very chronicles)
I would not have imputed such pettiness to them
I saw
a big SUV with a window sticker: not McCain/Palin, but just Sarah.
Dear Clusterflock
Have you adopted any clusterflockisms–turns of phrase or funny lines that originated here, and that you now use in conversation?
This came to mind this weekend, as I remembered Aaron’s observation that a particular cooking show seems “two Christmases away from blowing its head off.” This is a clusterflockism of the highest form, one that I find to be very useful.
solitary bees, 70
What’s a person supposed to do with all this stuff after they’re gone?
Do you have sisters?
No.
It would be easier if you had sisters…. Do you know how to play?
No.
She picks up a piece, looks at him.
Read more
musical interlude
Bruce Springsteen and the E Street Band will play this year’s Super Bowl half-time show.
clusterflock open thread, 18
Taste smell the glove.
Slacker Uprising
Michael Moore’s new film is available as a free download.
“Slacker Uprising” takes place in the wake of “Fahrenheit 9/11,” during the run-up to the 2004 election, as I traveled for 42 days across America, visiting 62 cities in a failed attempt to remove George W. Bush from office. My goal was to help turn out a record number of young voters and others who had never voted before. (That part was a success. Young adults voted in greater numbers than in any election since 18-year-olds were given the right to vote. And the youth vote was the only age group that John Kerry won.)
(thanks, Maggie)
Lower Stories: Brandon in Baghdad
Brandon had a troubled adolescence. He was always in trouble and partied too much. He fought with his bipolar stepfather, and his mother would stop the ruckus by calling the police. Brandon barely graduated from high school.
He joined the Marines and was assigned to a mortar squad. Brandon carried the mortar. When he got to Iraq his job was changed to military intelligence, where he worked on encryption.
Brandon came home this summer and can’t wait for his next deployment. It will be in Afghanistan. He’s looking forward to killing someone there.
Weekly Picture 129
Mae’s Backyard Project Table, Austin, TX 9.26.2008
Weekly Picture 128
Mural, The Nature Center, Austin, TX, 9.9.2008
GIMPS
UCLA mathematicians have found a thirteen-million digit prime number.
“We’re delighted,” said UCLA’s Edson Smith, the leader of the effort. “Now we’re looking for the next one, despite the odds.”
It’s the eighth Mersenne prime discovered at UCLA.
Mersenne primes — named for their discoverer, 17th century French mathematician Marin Mersenne — are expressed as 2P-1, or two to the power of “P” minus one. P is itself a prime number. For the new prime, P is 43,112,609.
Thousands of people around the world have been participating in the Great Internet Mersenne Prime Search, or GIMPS, a cooperative system in which underused computing power is harnessed to perform the calculations needed to find and verify Mersenne primes.
