Cubing Watermelon

This video speaks for itself.



31 July 2014

Best Sentences of the Week

Best sentence I've read this week:  “Weather is not climate, you willfully ignorant f**ksticks.”

The close runner-up: "Axon declined to answer questions about specifics in the suit, including whether the man had a penis when he left the hospital."

Ouch!

31 July 2014

"Homophonia"

The world is a weird, mixed-up place.  Getting fired for this is crazy.  I feel sorry for this guy.

That said, "homophonia" is an A+ word.

31 July 2014

Horror & Shame

Take your pick.  Both describe my feelings about the wealth gap in America across racial, gender, & marital status.

31 July 2014

The Notorious R.B.G.

How had I not heard of this?  Background at TPM. Link to the Notorious R.B.G. site here.

Pure win.

31 July 2014

Sheldon Whitehouse - Climate Change

From Paige Lavender at The Huffington Post:

Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse (D-R.I.) didn't hold back while schooling his colleague, Sen. Jim Inhofe (R-Ok.), about the reality of climate change. 

Inhofe, who has previously stated he thinks climate change is "laughable" and a "hoax," blocked a Senate resolution acknowledging climate change is real on Tuesday. As ThinkProgress points out, that's when Whitehouse jumped in to give Inhofe a lesson in science.

“I appreciate very much having had the opportunity to hear those words, from what I can only describe as an alternate reality, from the one that I inhabit anyway," Whitehouse said after Inhofe's remarks.

As usual, I can't seem to embed video from AOL, so please use the Huffington Post link above to see it.

30 July 2014

Yorkie Tricks

Okay, this is pretty cute.  However, that dog's person must have some serious free time on his or her hands!



30 July 2014

Homemade Ketchup

NPR had a story that I heard last week -- although it appears that it might have actually be produced last year -- on homemade ketchup.  Here is a link to the story at NPR.com.  The story mentioned a Hudson Valley Food blog called LocalKitchenBlog.  Its author, Kaela Porter, helped with recipe advice for a "fruit butter."  (How awesome does that sound btw?)  I think that this sounds like a fun project, so I wanted to make sure to capture it.

29 July 2014

Addition:  Continuing on this topic, I also wanted to link an associated blog by Marisa McClellan, the author on two books on small-batch canning.  It is FoodInJars.com.  Enjoy.

Comic Con Game of Thrones Panel

I just wanted to save this to watch later!



29 July 2014

"One Fast Cat" Wheel

Our cat Finnegan would love this thing.  Kickstarter here.

29 July 2014

Puppies Rolling Down Hills

Because...



And just because again.

28 July 2014

Cheeky Dogs in Cars

The Huffington Post linked vines involving dogs airing themselves out in the car.  Very LOL funny, but I do wonder where the inevitable saliva is ending up?!?

Sorry, can't seem to embed the video here.

And were our Finnegan a dog, he'd totally be doing this!

24 July 2014

Holy Solar Storm Crap!

Apparently, we dodged a giant, planet-wide bullet in 2012.  You have got to read this story.  And here is the kicker from Caitlin Macneal at TPM:

Perhaps the most terrifying takeaway is that a solar storm could hit Earth in the next ten years. According to an analysis by Predictive Science Inc. physicist Pete Riley, there is a 12 percent chance that a solar storm as powerful as the Carrington event could hit Earth in the next ten years. 

"Initially, I was quite surprised that the odds were so high, but the statistics appear to be correct," Riley told NASA. "It is a sobering figure."

NASA has video that explains the storm.

Talk about screwing with your retirement savings!

24 July 2014

Obamacare DC Ruling & Fallout

Here is all you -- currently! -- need to know about the two court rulings on the Affordable Care Act that were handed down yesterday in both the Fourth Circuit and the DC Court of Appeals.

• The blow dealt to the ACA
• Why it is a big deal
• The root issue in the ACA language
• State-by-state impact
• A blow to the legal system?
• Halbig v. Burwell Dissent
• Will the Supreme Court follow suit?
• Supreme Court number two
• Possible fix?
• Political gift to Democrats?
• Democrats, part 2

Stay informed out there.  Your health is at stake.

23 July 2014

Addition 24 July: A Yale Law School professor, Abbe R. Gluck, has noted indications about how the Supreme Court may lean on this issue based on previous court writings.  Note, however, that the dissent of the conservative justices in question is not binding in any way going forward.  And certainly don't count on consistency from this court!  Original Politico piece here.

Okay, this speaks to the nerd in me...

Poking around YouTube earlier, I found this parody.


The Lucas "shoulder roll" is what slays me.

22 July 2014

Ingrid Michaelson - Girls Chase Boys

Girls Chase Boys



And yes, I'm always late to the party.

22 July 2014

Addition:  I have heard her songs before, Maybe and Be OK.





She has also done a quiet cover of Goyte's Somebody That I Used to Know.



29 July Addition:  One more I knew, The Way I Am.



.

Sara Bareilles - I Choose You

Always a sucker for romance.



22 July 2014

Barn Cat, Horse Play

Who doesn't like a kiss?



22 July 2014

Where Everybody Knows Your Name

Cheers!

21 July 2014

Wildlife Visitors in New Mexico

My folks in New Mexico first had a dove family nest in one of the vines near their breakfast patio this summer.  Two chicks, plus the parents.

They then had a masked visitor over this past weekend, again peeking out at them while they ate.  My father said the raccoon later hauled itself up into their birdbath for a drink-and-splash.

While we've had both bobcats and foxes at our house this year, there have been no bears.  Lot's of bears at work have helped make up for that, however!

21 July 2014

"the debt disaster that wasn’t"

From Paul Krugman at the New York Times.

21 July 2014

Open Table: Best BBQ

This list of the 30 best BBQ joints in America according to Open Table seems too light on the South.  Perhaps that reflect the demographics of Open Table more than anything else.  Still, as a lover of BBQ, I like having places to try and more options in the Northeast works for me.

21 July 2014

True Facts About...

A colleague sent me this video about owls.  Hilarious.  And while the owls are cute and/or beautiful, not all of the commentary may be appropriate for smaller kids.



It seems that this is a series.  Here are a few more samples.

CuttleFish



Aye Aye



Morgan Freeman



The creator of these videos, Ze Frank, did a TED talk, What's So Funny About the Web?



His YouTube channel can be found here.

18 July 2014

Choosing Inexpensive Wine

The Huffington Post linked a video from Jamie Oliver's Drink Tube today on selecting inexpensive wines.  One of its chief suggests is searching out wines from Spain and Portugal.  The video is only about 3.5 minutes long.



17 July 2014

Post Office Banking

Interesting article from Salon.com.  What is the norm in many parts of the world may be making a comeback in the United States.

17 July 2014

Underwater Dreams

On my way to work this morning, NPR had an interview with Jeb Bush Jr.  He is an executive producer on a new documentary film, Underwater Dreams, about four undocumented immigrant children who enter one of the nations most prestigious robotics competitions.  It was a nice interview and it sounds like a fun film.  Currently, it is in limited release around the country.  However, on July 20, it will be broadcast on both MSNBC and Telemundo.





15 May 2014

Spellbinding Flowers

Amazing timelapse footage.


14 July 2014

A Dog's Final Day

The wonderful, sad, and happy tale of a dog's final day on earth.

 /smile
/sob

I really hope there are animals in heaven.  Of course, would it be heaven if there were not?

14 July 2014

Good Bat News

Maybe the tragedy of White-Nose Syndrome is starting to end?  Hope so!  I love bats and we surely need them.  Working in our yard all weekend, I commented to my wife that I wish we had about 1,000 living behind our home.  I needed the relief from the mosquitoes!

See this story at The Huffington Post for details.

14 July 2014

Earth's Magnetic Field Flipping

This article from The Huffington Post about the earth's magnetic field flipping north-to-south is quite interesting.  One day -- relatively -- soon, a compass will point south!

11 July 2014

Ma'am, There is a Lemur on Your Baby

The pictures on The Huffington Post will explain.  LOL.

14 July 2014

We Should All Be So Lucky

Playing for the one you love and dancing in return.

Video.


10 July 2014

Not-so-immanent Demise of Obamacare thru Libertarian Eyes

Jonathan Chait of New York Magazine has a great piece about on a libertarian pundit's continued claims that the demise of Obamacare is just about to happen even while his changing discourse makes the opposite argument.  Chait sets this up perfectly, using the pundits own words over time against him.  Classic.  Why I enjoy Chait and this magazine.

10 July 2014

Failure of Republican Governors

Interesting piece at TPM on the hard-right moves by Republican governors, often combined with state legislatures, and their resulting failure to achieve any of their stated economic goals.  Kansas, Louisiana, North Carolina, Texas, and Wisconsin are detailed.  I would point out again that the policies of the right don't work, but as the author Seth D. Michaels notes, perhaps they are working as intended.

Of course, judging all of these policies against their promised impact — Sam Brownback’s state revenues, North Carolina’s unemployment picture, Scott Walker’s jobs record — is just begging the question. Don’t look at what their experiments are supposed to produce, because you’re bound to be disappointed. 

The advocates of the right-wing ideological agenda use job growth and higher revenues as a selling point, but it’s not actually relevant to their goals. The goal is to have government do less stuff for people on the lower end of the economic spectrum, and stay out of the way of the people on the higher end. That’s what they want to build in the laboratories of democracy.

10 July 2014

Fun 3-D Painting

I found this on The Huffington Post.  From the article by Katherine Brooks with video to follow:

This is a painting. 

Within the painting, are several other paintings. Keith Haring, Roy Lichtenstein, Damien Hirst. 

But, tilt your head and the paintings move from within their fixed position inside the canvas. Perspectives run amok and you feel as though you're traipsing through an M.C. Escher-designed art gallery.

9 July 2014

God Help Kentucky

This level of ignorance takes real effort.  Two quotes from a TPM story by Caitlin Macneal below.  The first involves a claim from a state Republican lawmaker.

A Republican Kentucky state lawmaker and owner of a coal company last week used dubious claims about Mars to question the reality of climate change.

"I don't want get into the debate about climate change," state Sen. Brandon Smith said, according to Louisville NPR affiliate WFPL. "But I’ll simply point out that I think in academia we all agree that the temperature on Mars is exactly as it is here. Nobody will dispute that. Yet there are no coal mines on Mars. There’s no factories on Mars that I'm aware of."

And lest you think that the crazy is confined to Republicans in Kentucky...

During the discussion, Democratic Rep. Kevin Sinnette assured everyone that the Earth will be fine since dinosaurs went extinct. 

"The dinosaurs died, and we don’t know why, but the world adjusted. And to say that this is what’s going to cause detriment to people, I just don’t think it’s out there," he said, according to WFPL.

God help us all.

9 July 2014

More Hedgehog Cuteness

These little guys are seriously cute.  Seriously.

More from Marutaro the Hedgehog here.

8 July 2014

Corporate Tax Inversion

If Fortune Magazine feels this way about a corporate tax dodge, it really has to be dodgy!

7 July 2014

Mists of Pandaria Trailer... Plus

While the next World of Warcraft expansion is approaching, Blizzard released a bit of "found footage" expanding the trailer for the current expansion.  It is pretty funny, so I'm going to post both parts here.  I've enjoyed Mists and am very much looking forward to Warlords.  Now, if I can only knock out my challenge modes before 6.0 hits!

Trailer



Found Footage



7 July 2014

Global Warming, Dying Oceans

Newsweek -- yes, it still exists -- has an article on the acidification of the oceans.  Global warming is often harming life in the water even more rapidly than it is on land.  Imagine oceans virtually without fish, perhaps as early as 2100.  Now imagine the politics of that, especially given the changes taking place on land and with water availability during this same time frame.  If you want a recipe for war, this seems like its most basic ingredients.

I'll be long gone by then.  Lucky me.

3 July 2014

Tea Party Ascendant

Talking Points Memo has a great article on why the Tea Party is in firm control of today's Republican party.  The civil war that you keep hearing about in the media is -- at least on the national level -- effectively over.

If this doesn't shake your confidence in advance of the July 4 holiday, what will?

3 July 2014

Ethics: Congress Does it Again

Check out House Secretly Kills Disclosure Of Junkets By Congress Members by Dylan Scott at TPM.  The opener:

The House Ethics Committee has quietly done away with the requirement that lawmakers disclose their all-expense-paid trips on annual financial forms, National Journal reported on Monday.

The whole writing is short... and sour.  On the heels of the Supreme Court truly screwing the country last month, what is one more kick in the nads of democracy?  Right?

1 July 2014