Student killed by exploding chewing gum

I kid you not.

Via Warren Ellis (of course).

Hey Google: whatever happened to "don't be evil"?

From boingboing: Google CEO says privacy doesn't matter. Google blacklists CNet for violating CEO's privacy. Disclaimer: This here blog is courtesy of Google's Blogger service. If they were really evil, they wouldn't let me

---[signal lost] ---

While we're on the "cat" theme...

Failed experiment.

Feline dietary preferences

Sure, I can blog about cats. Why? I'm not an old lady. Stop it.


see more Funny Graphs

Alice Cooper setlist - Sept 22, 2009 - Scranton, PA

So it only took me a month to post this:

• School's Out (part only)
• Eighteen
• Wicked Young Man
• Ballad of Dwight Fry
• Go To H*ll
• Guilty
• Welcome To My Nightmare
• Cold Ethyl
• Poison
• The Awakening
• From The Inside
• Nurse Rozetta
• Is It My Body
• Be My Lover
• Only Women Bleed
• I Never Cry
• The Black Widow (instrumental)
• Vengeance Is Mine
• Devil's Food
• Dirty Diamonds
• Billion Dollar Babies
• Killer
• I Love The Dead (part only)
• No More Mr. Nice Guy
• Under My Wheels

Encore:

• Schools Out (full version)

Logan's Run: Last Day covers

The MTV website has a look at all four covers from the new Logan's Run comic being put out by BlueWater. Looks like the release has been pushed back to January.

Some fun sites for today

• Garfield minus Garfield (it's so much funnier without the cat - kind of a weird, existential thing).
• FMyLife - Murphy's Law in a few hundred characters (it's antonym: MyLifeIsAverage).
• GraphJam - "For people who love charts."

My gift to you, InterWeb denizens.

Fun site for graphic designers

Your logo makes me barf. Heh.

Link via the Central Penn Adobe User Group.

The artist behind the Flash, Star Wars, Adam Strange

Here's an interview with comics great Carmine Infantino, a former teacher of mine (really!) and a wonderful artist. I still love his work on Marvel's Star Wars adaptions (with Gene Day inking). He of course also had the great runs on Adam Strange and the Flash.

Health care stories

Health care horror stories collected by a blogger at The Atlantic. The system is in serious need of reform. Hopefully the Obama administration gets it, and doesn't just give in to the insurance companies like they did with the drug companies.

Pencils review?

I recently purchased some Pencils at Staples. Specifically, Staples(R) number 2, Yellow pencils, Dozen. A few days later, Staples sent me an e-mail, thanking me for my purchase of said pencils, maybe I'd be interested in some pink erasers (as if they foresee many mistakes ahead...)? They also wondered if I would care to write a review -- I can even check off such things as "Easy to sharpen" and "Great lead capacity" (what?!).

Shades of Tuscan Whole Milk, 1 Gallon, 128 fl oz...

Google Satellite Captures First Image

Google has a new high-res satellite. It's first pic? Kutztown University.

How Internet Gatekeepers Stifle Progress

Here's a great article by Cory Doctorow on monopolies and copyright, DRM, and the like. Basically, a few "gatekeepers" make the rules, even on the Internet, and once again, the creatives get screwed.

Drug company deal with White House

Does anyone else get the feeling when reading of a deal like this -- where the drug companies are only going to make ten trillion dollars instead of eleven trillion dollars (by overcharging poor people) -- that the drug companies are laughing at us as they get richer and richer while pretending to be good guys? Is everything spin anymore?

New Logan's Run comic!

Bluewater Productions is making a new Logan's Run comic starting this fall. Logan's Run was a novel (first of a trilogy that included Logan's World and Logan's Search, plus a later short story) about a dystopian future where the law proscribed death at 21 (a 70's movie adaption changed that age to 30; a remake has been talked about for years, but doesn't seem to be able to get off the ground).

Word balloons in old ads

Here's a neat article featuring old-time ads that used word balloons to get their message across.

Handling charge for website

DailyINK is a website that offers access to daily comics, among other things such as interactive puzzles, from King Features Syndicate. The annual access cost of $15.00 includes a $3.00 handling charge. Does that strike anyone else as strange -- a handling charge for a website?

Great Simon and Kirby comic: "The Woman in the Tower"

Thanks to boingboing, who reprint a neat Joe Simon and Jack Kirby interpretation of a woman's dream, from the 1950's series Strange World of your Dreams.

Today's topic

Today's topic is
apophenia. Discuss.
I'll be here, waiting.

Frog haiku

Came across this list
of many translations of
frog haiku. Enjoy!

Senator Ben Nelson is angry

Via Mr. Lessig. When public figures, like Senator Nelson from Nebraska, receive a ton of money from special interests, you gotta question their motives, hold them accountable for their actions, and put the pressure on. Remember, government exists to serve the people, not corporations.

Classic XKCD SQL injection

This is a classic XKCD, which despite it's stick figure drawings is one of the funniest web comics out there (but only if you're a computer geek).

Is Anyone Minding the Store at the Federal Reserve?

This is verrrry scary. The Federal Reserve has been looted, and the level of incompetence displayed by the Federal Reserve Inspector General is shocking. Spread this far and wide. Every person in this country who isn't distracted by Britney, Paris, and whatever other diversions are being thrown your way: someone is stealing from you. Our government is evidently colluding with thieves; I'm not sure how else to explain it. Why this isn't the top story on every news station and newspaper in this country, I'm at a loss to explain.

The Big Takeover: Why We're Screwed

This Rolling Stone article has already made the rounds of the blogosphere but is definitely worth a read for those of you who want to understand how we got into this bailout mess. Warning: you will be outraged after reading this.

Another great explanation of the scenarios that caused the crisis can be found in a PBS This American Life show from May 2008 called The Giant Pool of Money.

1 in 50 U.S. children face homelessness

Key quote: "As we bail out the rest of our nation, it is also time to come to their aid." Link.

George Thorogood and the Destroyers setlist - House of Blues, Atlantic City - March 21, 2009

The usual overpriced drinks and some annoying drunks, but overall a good show. Setlist follows:

• House of Blue Lights
• Who Do You Love?
• The Fixer
• Night Time
• I Drink Alone
• One Bourbon, One Scotch, One Beer
• Born Lover
• Bad to the Bone
• Gear Jammer
• Move It On Over

Encore I:

• What a Price
• You Talk Too Much

Encore II:

• Treat Her Right
• Madison Blues

They could have at least called it "es-ef"...

The Sci-Fi channel is renaming itself Syfy.

Morons.

From the mouth of a child...

Watch. Listen.

Prelude to the Road Warrior scenario

There's an interesting post over at boingboing entitled "How are you coping with collapse-anxiety?" We live in interesting times (like the old Chinese curse says) and it is an anxiety-ridden moment in history. How did we get here? Did the military-industrial complex spiral out of control, much too large for any one person, group, or country to manage? Or was it simply the bad policies of George Bush post-9/11, when he took an enormous amount of political momentum and used it to run the country into the ground, looting the treasury for his buddies on the way out the door?

Sorry if I sound cynical. Hopefully Mr. Obama can use his political momentum to take us in the other direction, but the critical mass of extremism in Washington looks to be a serious impediment to real progress.

Does Visual Studio rot the mind?

If you're not a programmer, stop reading now.

Everyone who's still with me, this article, while a little dated, is a fascinating read. The premise is how some tools dictate how you approach a problem (like the old adage "When all you have is a hammer, everything looks like a nail"). Taken a step further, if you learn to think a certain way because you've been using a certain tool for a long time, it can change your way of thinking so that you can't see other ways of tackling the problem. And that's dangerous.

State of the Union

"The New Hampshire state legislature took an unbelievably bold step Monday by introducing a resolution to declare certain actions by the federal government ... totally void and warning that certain future acts will be viewed as a 'breach of peace' with the states themselves that risks 'nullifying the Constitution.'" link (via digg).

As for the latest bailout: Let the Wall St. "Talent" Walk.

Evidently the universe may be a hologram

Evidently the universe may be a hologram. Huh. And I thought we were living in the Matrix (or is it the same thing)?

The myth of "clean coal"

The disingenuously-named American Coalition for Clean Coal Electricity spent $45 million last year touting "clean coal," while in just nine months, coal and energy companies spent $125 million lobbying against federal regulations promoting clean energy. Something doesn't pass the smell test. More....

Would big pharmaceutical companies choose profits over human lives?

A scientist believed he'd found a possible cure for Diabetes and asked pharmaceutical companies to sponsor clinical trials. From the article:

One example is Weissman’s mid-’90s research on type I diabetes, in which he demonstrated the ability to fully cure type I diabetes in mice using stem cells ... Weissman implied that the pharmaceutical companies had put profit over principle, preferring to keep diabetes sufferers dependent on costly insulin than to cure them once and for all.

Via digg.

Fascinating Adobe Illustrator demo

Via boingboing.

Notes From the Chairman, in the High Life

Reading Bono's guest column for the New York times entitled Notes from the Chairman. Am struck by Bono's observation on listening to two versions of My Way: one, recorded when Sinatra was a younger man, full of bravado, the spit and vinegar of youth, "embodying all the machismo a man can muster about the mistakes he’s made on the way from here to everywhere." And then the version recorded when Sinatra was much older, now a song of defeat, and the duality this implies.

It made me remember Steve Winwood's Back in the High Life Again, a song brimming with optimism. A few years back, Warren Zevon did a cover of High Life on his Life'll Kill Ya album. Zevon turned this wildly optimistic song into a moving dirge by a defeated man. I'm still amazed that this song can go through these extremes, from optimism to defeat without changing a lyric. That's the brilliance of these artists, bringing that duality to the song.

Geek proof

This may prove that I'm a geek, but I found this hilarious.