Chihuahua Custody Battle in Texas
A mother and daughter are locked in a custody battle in a Galveston County Justice of the Peace court over Noonie, a 2-year-old Chihuahua.
LaCaze claims her daughter sold her the dog in October for $400. Alleman said she can’t be held accountable for giving up the dog because she was drunk at the time.
(link)
Too late
for St Patrick’s Day. And not lettuce-y enough for the Green Knight.
Lookit My Hair
I have been growing my hair out for some time, and since I don’t know if many of you have seen a recent picture of me, here’s this. Sans makeup and “pulling a face” as Sheila might say.
I am so proud of myself for denying the urge to take a pair of scissors to it and give myself a Mia Farrow/Rosemary’s Baby, which is my all-time favourite hair cut. Taking decent pictures of oneself is tremendously difficult, I find. Does anyone else have any recent self-portraits that they are particularly proud of?
The storm is coming…
The National Organization for Marriage is a pressure group set up to protect America from the gays the institution of marriage as currently defined. This is the leaked audition tape for their ad.
For Deron
(via Waxy)
Virus Powered Batteries
The way of the future. The way of the future. The way of the future.
Battery technology is looking brighter (and more futuristic) than ever as researchers at MIT recently announced they have successfully engineered viruses to build both the positively and negatively charged ends of a lithium-ion battery. These virus-built batteries can be created cheaply using an environmentally benign process, tout the same energy capacity as state-of-the-art rechargeable batteries, and may one day be used to power everything from personal electronic devices to hybrid vehicles.
(thanks, Autumn)
from the comments
This is a classic recession feelgood story. Soon there will be stories of Manhattanites swimming the east river to Queens, surviving on baby immigrants, and coping remarkably with life in the wild.
And the inevitable return to Gramercy, and wiggling in the air conditioning.
intellipedia
Rolled out in 2006 to skeptical veterans at CIA headquarters in Langley, Va., Intellipedia has grown to a 900,000-page magnum opus of espionage, handling some 100,000 user accounts and 5,000 page edits a day, according to the CIA and the Office of the Director of National Intelligence.
Tofu Is a Four-Letter Word
The Colorado Division of Motor Vehicles denied a vegan’s request to have this on her license plate :
Dr. Tobias Manhattan
(via my cousin on facebook, not sure where image is from)
Tobias: “I blue myself!”
Michael: “There’s gotta be a better way to say that.”
naming rights
A North Texas legislator suggested Chinese immigrants adopt new names so they would be easier to deal with at polling places.
“Rather than everyone here having to learn Chinese — I understand it’s a rather difficult language — do you think that it would behoove you and your citizens to adopt a name that we could deal with more readily here?” Brown said.
Brown later told Ko: “Can’t you see that this is something that would make it a lot easier for you and the people who are poll workers if you could adopt a name just for identification purposes that’s easier for Americans to deal with?”
“Screwed is Australian for wine”
I knew the cheap Aussy wine thing was spiraling out of control when I saw the Little Penguin come to the market. Mike Steinberger makes an effort to redeem the region by mentioning labels like Penfolds and Grosset, but I suspect the current consumer perspective will haunt Australian wines for the next few years.
However, what was good for Yellow Tail wasn’t so great for the Australian wines as a whole. For one thing, Yellow Tail spawned a legion of imitators, and retail shelves were soon crawling with “critter” labels featuring penguins, crocodiles, and other regional fauna. At the same time, Yellow Tail’s success prompted rival Australian brands to focus even more of their efforts on the budget category. As a result, consumers came to equate Australia with wines that were flavorful but also cheap and frivolous, a perception that became a major liability when those same consumers got interested in more serious stuff; rather than looking to Oz, they turned to Spain, Italy, and France.
For Sheila Ryan
But then, what’s not to like about The Kinks.
the strength of the sun
A new research facility is attempting to use lasers to create nuclear fusion.
The National Ignition Facility has already test-fired all 192 giant lasers at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in California as part of this effort. The lasers will eventually focus their power on compressing and heating a single, pea-sized fuel capsule to more than 180 million degrees Fahrenheit in order to trigger thermonuclear fusion.
“One of the major activities of the NIF is to explore the basics of fusion energy, building a miniature sun on Earth that could supply limitless, safe and carbon-free energy,” said Ed Moses, National Ignition Facility (NIF) program director.
Unlike nuclear fission reactions that split apart atoms inside existing power plants, fusion reactions create energy from atoms fusing together to form heavier atoms. The reaction normally only takes place within intensely hot environments, such as the heart of a star, but researchers have attempted to recreate fusion in a way that would produce more energy than it takes to start the reaction.
sophie tucker lives
A dog lost overboard north of Queensland four months ago and thought dead swam five miles to St. Bees Island and survived on feral goats.
“We called the dog and she started whimpering and banging the cage and they let her out and she just about flattened us,” Griffith told the national AAP news agency.
“She wriggled around like a mad thing.”
Griffith said that when the dog was first spotted on the island she had been in poor condition.
“And then all of a sudden she started to look good and it was when the rangers had found baby goat carcasses so she’d started eating baby goats,” she said.
Sophie Tucker, a member of the Australian cattle dog breed, had been quick to readjust to the comforts of home, complete with airconditioning, Griffiths said.
“She surprised us all. She was a house dog and look what she’s done, she’s swum over five nautical miles, she’s managed to live off the land all on her own,” Griffiths said.
“We wish she could talk, we truly do.”
900 numbers from the 80s and 90s
Crying Hotline, Creep Line, Secret Confessions, Dial an Insult, and Santa Raps, complete with video.
For Cooper Renner
Boom bip-bip boom bip-bip yeah.
The late (and beautiful) Arthur Lee.
I politely decline
Not that I wouldn’t talk to any of y’all.
Ordinary Beauty
Bulk Storage In Blue. Cedar Bridge Road, Winterset, Iowa 52073. (Phil Bebbington. 2009.)
Shot in that corner of Iowa known for the (celebrated) (and not unappealing) (covered) bridges of Madison County.
clusterflock friend Phil Bebbington’s current series of images shot in the midwestern United States might correct your vision.
Here’s what I mean.
Read more
Latchkey by N.C. Winters
From Idiot Box Artwork
graffiti castle
I wasn’t quite sure what to expect visiting Kelburn Castle and the graffiti project where the Earl of Glasgow has asked some Brazilian graffiti artists to cover a few walls.
I heard about it over the innerweb but seeing it close up, the quality of the artwork is incredible and is fun in the true tradition of eccentric aristocrats doing ridiculous things.
Here’s a timelapse vid of the graffiti artists painting the castle
Charts, Data, and Design
*Gasp* You mean some designers might not be treating the visualization of data properly! Frankly, I am as shocked as I am disappointed.
Newer visualizations can have these defects and more. Ian Spence, a psychologist at the University of Toronto, recalls a pair of tag clouds from the third US presidential debates, each showing the frequency of words used throughout. This conveyed which buzzwords each candidate used, but the impression of the relative quality of either side was entirely lost. Designers frequently violate the perceptual-task hierarchy. Popular charts like bubble charts and Wordles use the task of area comparison (a black mark in the perceptual psychologist’s book), and both use meaning- less colors and arrangement, complicating the display without adding data. They seem to convey information, but the design stifles the transmission. They are fuzzy charts.
Some of the most confusing new visualizations are the popular network diagrams, which are intended to show connections between nodes and invite inferences about the forces that govern the connections. Numerous groups have produced maps of social networks, internet traffic, and other complicated phenomena, but the impression one gets is merely of connectivity, rather than of any of the patterns the visualization purports to convey. Few obey the principles of perception-informed design or Edward Tufte’s rules for graphical integrity, which state that graphics should make viewers think about the subject matter, not design.
Admittedly, I may have over-snarked here.
from Roger Ebert’s letter to Bill O’Reilly
Bill, I am concerned that you have been losing touch with reality recently. Did you really say you are more powerful than any politician?
That reminds me of the famous story about Squeaky the Chicago Mouse. It seems that Squeaky was floating on his back along the Chicago River one day. Approaching the Michigan Avenue lift bridge, he called out: Raise the bridge! I have an erection!
and lord, we just ask that . . .
A Tunisian pilot who paused to pray instead of taking emergency measures before crash-landing his plane, killing 16 people, has been sentenced to 10 years in jail by an Italian court along with his co-pilot.
you might be a former billionaire if
From an interview with former billionaire and accused financial swindler, Sir Allen Stanford.
I always lived very frugally. I flew around on a private jet. I had a boat. But I always lived very frugally. I’m not a high-fallutin guy.
After the government took away his fleet of six private jets, he had to fly commercial:
They make you take your shoes off and everything, it’s terrible.
What people have always said about me is that I’m more in touch with the valet and the maitre d’ than I am with the president and CEO.
Effing right I’m gonna fight.
