People will apparently bid on just about anything at EBAY:

Before reading further, let us first establish if either of the following accurately depicts your current state of being:

• I am planning to produce a TV or Internet game show
• I am a complete TV Game show nut with a Cosmo Kramer-esque zeal for visual memorabilia

To further qualify your interest in this anthropological icon, have you at any point been in love with the following people:

• Richard Dawson
• Wink Martindale
• Bob Barker
• Chuck Woolery
• Bob Eubanks

If you answered yes to the aforementioned questions CONGRATULATIONS!  You are qualified to bid for ownership on this one-of-a-kind masterpiece of

Hollywood

game show lore.  
Channel the glorious personas of Richard Dawson, Ray Combs, and Louis Anderson from pop culture's finest familial battleground.  Use it to produce your own internet or TV game show.

I LOVE THE DISCLAIMER: 

**Please note this is a MASSIVE set.  It takes up approximately 2,500 sq ft.
**Please also note this will cost about $5k to move.

Posted at 09:57 AM in Humor, Television, Web/Tech | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack

This video clip from the South African jungle is quite fascinating, and one can perhaps take some lessons from it for life.

Via Investment Post Cards

Posted at 06:40 AM in Science | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack

Amusing new toy from the Popular British high-street sex shop Ann Summers: The iGasm

COMPUTER giants Apple are really worked up—over an Ann Summers sex toy that hooks up to your iPod.

Women all over Britain are saying yes, yes, yes to the £30 iGasm that plugs into a music player and delivers good vibrations that pulse to the beat.  The neon-pink ads feature a curvaceous girl with wires coming OUT of her MP3 player and INTO her knickers. And it's definitely turned on. The sales guff teases: "Go at it hard and fast with a pounding drum 'n' bass track or chill with ambient classic."

But shocked iPod bosses are iRate—demanding stores take down all posters for the gadget or risk a fight in the iCourt. Apple lawyers claim the poster is a blatant rip-off of their own famous silhouette images used to flog iPods. Their legal letter to the shop chain adds: "We hope this request to remove it immediately will prevent us having to consider further action."

Despite that, Ann Summers boss Jacqueline Gold is saying no, no, no and joked: "Perhaps I can send them an iGasm to put a smile back on their faces!"

Looks like this requires some more study . . .

>

Source:
POD IT AWAY!
By Polly Graham
News of the World, 
http://www.newsoftheworld.co.uk/ipod_1405.shtml   

Posted at 06:08 AM in Web/Tech | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack

Very nicely done (what musical recording accompanies this?)

Leonardo Da Vinci
Raphael
Raffaello
Titian
Tiziano Vecellio
Sandro Botticelli
Giovanni Antonio Boltraffio
Albrecht Dürer
Lucas Cranach the Elder
Antonello da Messina
Pietro Perugino
Hans Memling
El Greco
Hans Holbein
Fyodor Stepanovich Rokotov
Peter Paul Rubens
Gobert
Caspar Netscher
Pierre Mignard
Jean-Marc Nattier
Élisabeth-Louise
Vigée-Le Brun
Sir Joshua Reynolds
Franz Xaver Winterhalter
Alexei Vasilievich Tyranov
Vladimir Lukich Borovikovsky
Alexey Gavrilovich Venetsianov
Antoine-Jean Gros
Orest Adamovich Kiprensky
Amalie
Jean-Baptiste Camille Corot
Édouard Manet
Flatour
Jean Auguste Dominique Ingres
William Clark Wontner
William-Adolphe Bouguereau
Comerre
Leighton
Blaas
Renoir
Millias
Duveneck
Cassat
Weir
Zorn
Alphonse Mucha
Paul Gaugan
Henri Matisse
Picabia
Gustav Klimt
Hawkins
Magritte
Salvador Dali
Malevich
Merrild
Modigliani
Pablo Picasso

Posted at 06:36 AM in Art & Design, Video | Permalink | Comments (2) | TrackBack

Careful on the road this travel weekend!

"In California and across the nation, where some freeway shoulders have come to resemble weekend yard sales, the nature of road debris has changed, and litter anthropologists are now studying the phenomenon. Where “deliberate” litter used to reign — those blithely tossed fast-food wrappers and the like — “unintentional” or “negligent” litter from poorly secured loads is making its presence felt.

Steven R. Stein, a litter analyst for R. W. Beck, a waste-consulting firm in Maryland, attributes the change to more trash-hauling vehicles, including recycling trucks, and the ubiquity of pickup trucks on the country’s highways. In 1986, Mr. Stein said, two-thirds of the debris was deliberate, but surveys now show the litter seesaw balanced.

He said the two most recent surveys indicated a further increase in unintentional litter. In Georgia, which recently quantified its litter, 66 percent of road debris comes from unintentional litter, largely unsecured loads. A study in Tennessee last year showed that 70 percent of the state’s debris was unintentional.

By dint of its climate, size, population, lengthy growing season, increasingly long commutes and, perhaps, its casual lifestyle, California is a road-debris leader. It is also home to the country’s largest number of registered vehicles — 32 million, twice that of No. 2 Texas — and roughly four million pickup trucks, the most of any state, according to the Alliance of Automobile Manufacturers in Washington.

No other state spends more on litter removal, in excess of $55 million, said Christine Flowers-Ewing, the executive director of Keep California Beautiful, a nonprofit environmental education organization.

Motorists in California can be fined if anything other than feathers from live birds or water should escape. (In Nebraska, the exception is corn stalks; in Kentucky, coal.)

Along with mudslides, brush fires and earthquakes, chance encounters with a set of box springs, a chintz cushion or a crate of lettuces are the daily stuff of radio traffic updates, recounted in excruciating detail."

>

Source:
Highway Debris, Long an Eyesore, Grows as Hazard
PATRICIA LEIGH BROWN   
NYT, May 11, 2007
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/05/11/us/11debris.html 

Posted at 06:33 AM in Travel | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack

I'm a Loser
I Want to be Your Man

The Beatles live at Palais du Sport, Paris - 20th June 1965

 click for video

Posted at 06:28 AM in Music, The Beatles, Video | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack

Cool building proposed to be built in Dubai:

In skyscraper-crazy Dubai, tall isn't enough. In a design to be unveiled today in the oil-rich emirate, David Fisher, an Italian-Israeli architect, has dreamed up a 68-story combination hotel, apartment and office tower where the floors would rotate 360 degrees. Each floor would rotate independently, creating a constantly changing architectural form.

Each story of the tower would be shaped like a doughnut and be attached to a center core housing elevators, emergency stairs and other utilities. Wind turbines placed in gaps between the doughnuts would generate electricity.

The doughnuts won't rotate fast enough to give guests upset stomachs. A single rotation would take around 90 minutes. "It's quite slow," says Mr. Fisher.

In a project to be unveiled today, architect David Fisher has dreamed up a 68-story tower where each floor will rotate, causing the building's shape to constantly change.
Mr. Fisher's isn't the first plan for a rotating tower in Dubai. Last year, a local developer showed off plans for a 30-story 200-unit condominium tower that would rotate one revolution per day. Solar panels would drive the rotation mechanism.

It is hard to say whether the plans are simply rotating pies in the sky -- or projects that will actually be erected. But given what has been built in Dubai already, anything seems possible so long as oil prices remain high.

Source:
Dubai Puts a New Spin on Skyscrapers
Planned 68-Story Rotating Tower Part of Massive Construction Spree
ALEX FRANGOS
WSJ, April 11, 2007; Page B1
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB117625795099465923.html

Posted at 06:06 AM in Current Affairs | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBack

Me:

Posted at 06:18 AM in Food and Drink | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack

Funny and sexy, too:

Silverman scores #29 on the Maxim Hot 100 --

What sort of prepubscent 'tards work at Maxim? Any list that scores Lindsay Lohan (#1) over Jessica Alba (#2) and Scarlett Johansson (#3) and Jessica Biel (#5)  must have been assembled by a combination of school girls, gay men and Cher.  puh-leeze,

The full list is after the jump . . .

Maxim Hot 100
1. Lindsay Lohan
2. Jessica Alba
3. Scarlett Johansson
4. Christina Aguilera
5. Jessica Biel
6. Ali Larter
7. Eva Mendez
8. Rihanna
9. Eva Longoria
10. Fergie
11. Sienna Miller
12. Angelina Jolie
13. Beyonce Knowles
14. Katherine Heigl
15. Avril Lavigne
16. Ashlee Simpson
17. Maria Sharapova
18. Megan Fox
19. Cameron Diaz
20. Keira Knightley
21. Kate Beckinsale
22. Nicole Scherzinger
23. Hilary Duff
24. Sophia Bush
25. Elisha Cuthbert
26. Nelly Furtado
27. Kate Hudson
28. Carmen Electra
29. Sarah Silverman
30. Rebecca Romijn
31. Amy Smart
32. Lacey Chabert
33. Roselyn Sanchez
34. Vanessa Minnillo
35. Jennifer Garner
36. Jamie King
37. Ashley Olsen
38. Shakira
39. Rachel Bilson
40. Moon Bloodgood
41. Jessica Simpson
42. Minka Kelly
43. Kate Mara
44. Rose McGowan
45. Bar Refaeli
46. Kristen Bell
47. Katharine McPhee
48. Mandy Moore
49. Mischa Barton
50. Miss Maxim
51. Alessandra Ambrosio
52. Kate Walsh
53. Adriana Lima
54. Missy Peregrym
55. Halle Berry
56. Michele Merkin
57. Tricia Helfer
58. Penelope Cruz
59. Jamie-Lynn Sigler
60. Jessica White
61. Nadine Velazquez
62. Danneel Harris
63. Bianca Kajlich
64. Lena Headey
65. Autumn Reeser
66. Joanna Krupa
67. Gabrielle Union
68. Evangeline Lilly
69. Danica Patrick
70. Stacy Keibler
71. Willa Ford
72. Ciara
73. Mena Suvari
74. Tara Conner
75. April Scott
76. Diora Baird
77. Hilary Burton
78. Joss Stone
79. Adrianne Palecki
80. Abbie Cornish
81. Emmanuelle Chriqui
82. Dita Von Teese
83. Ivanka Trump
84. Hometown Hottie
85. Kelly Ripa
86. Michelle Trachtenberg
87. Padma Lakshmi
88. Raquel Alessi
89. Haylie Duff
90. Salma Hayek
91. Isla Fisher
92. Mary Elizabeth Winstead
93. Christina Milian
94. Kelly Carlson
95. The Avatars of Second Life
96. Shanna Moakler
97. Kim Kardashian
98. Yunjin Kim
99. Mia Maestro
100. Noureen DeWolf

via perezhilton.com

Posted at 06:13 AM in Humor | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack

Chinese pet food ingredients* spiked with a potentially dangerous chemical found their way into U.S.- manufactured pet food - as well as feed for hogs, chicken and farmed fish. After numerous pet deaths were attributed to the chemical, the FDA called for a series of recalls and quarantines beginning in March. Here is how the tainted ingredient spread.

Dried apples preserved with a cancer-causing chemical.

Frozen catfish laden with banned antibiotics.

Scallops and sardines coated with putrefying bacteria.

Mushrooms laced with illegal pesticides.

"For years, U.S. inspection records show, China has flooded the United States with foods unfit for human consumption. And for years, FDA inspectors have simply returned to Chinese importers the small portion of those products they caught -- many of which turned up at U.S. borders again, making a second or third attempt at entry.

Now the confluence of two events -- the highly publicized contamination of U.S. chicken, pork and fish with tainted Chinese pet food ingredients and this week's resumption of high-level economic and trade talks with China -- has activists and members of Congress demanding that the United States tell China it is fed up.

Dead pets and melamine-tainted food notwithstanding, change will prove difficult, policy experts say, in large part because U.S. companies have become so dependent on the Chinese economy that tighter rules on imports stand to harm the U.S. economy, too.

"So many U.S. companies are directly or indirectly involved in China now, the commercial interest of the United States these days has become to allow imports to come in as quickly and smoothly as possible," said Robert B. Cassidy, a former assistant U.S. trade representative for China and now director of international trade and services for Kelley Drye Collier Shannon, a Washington law firm."

>

Source:
Tainted Chinese Imports Common
In Four Months, FDA Refused 298 Shipments
Rick Weiss
Washington Post , Sunday, May 20, 2007; Page A01
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/05/19/AR2007051901273.html

Posted at 06:22 AM in Finance, Food and Drink, Politics, Travel | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack

Judy goes postal on an eBay scammer:

Posted at 06:51 AM in Web/Tech | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack

"Yet the ministry building’s design also debunks many of the standard clichés we hold about late Soviet architecture. Rising on an incline between two highways, the building’s heavy cantilevered forms reflect the Soviet-era penchant for heroic scale. Yet they also relate sensitively to their context, celebrating the natural landscape that flows directly underneath the building.

The composition of interlocking forms, conceived as a series of bridges, brings to mind the work of the Japanese Metabolists of the late ’60s and early ’70s, proof that Soviet architects weren’t working in an intellectual vacuum.

Similarly, the Druzhba (Friendship) Sanitarium in Yalta, Ukraine, designed by Igor Vasilevsky and completed in 1986, is an object lesson in bold architectural strokes. The resort building’s cylindrical form stands on a hill overlooking a beach in what was then an exclusive resort town. To enter, visitors cross a bridge encased in a glass tube and then descend into the complex, which is supported on massive legs housing the elevators and stairs. Conceived as a “social condenser,” the building’s core is occupied by a cinema, dance hall, swimming pool and cafe. Circling this core are the guest rooms, arrayed in a dazzling saw-tooth facade orienting each room toward the water and sunlight, while giving the structure an eerie science-fiction quality. (Think Stanley Kubrick’s “2001: A Space Odyssey.”)

But what’s refreshing about this exhibition is its lack of an ideological agenda: it is open to all sorts of possibilities. The Gaudiesque romanticism of a sanitarium in Druskininkai, Lithuania, for example, spins the aesthetic off in yet another direction. Built as a series of interlocking cylinders, its forms are lifted slightly off the ground to create the illusion of lightness. Decorative concrete ribbons spill out over the facade; columns for draining rainwater splay open at the bottom. The building looks as though it’s unraveling, a blend of creativity and madness spilling out into full view.

In another project, a sports complex and opera house in the Armenian capital, Yerevan, an open-air terrace steps down into the earth, flanked by a pair of immense concrete walls and narrow staircases that evoke the excavation of some forgotten futurist city — not a bad metaphor for the entire show."

Source:
Soviet Architects and Their Edifice Complex
NICOLAI OUROUSSOFF
NYT, May 16, 2007
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/05/16/arts/design/16cold.html

Posted at 06:34 AM in Art & Design, Design | Permalink | Comments (3) | TrackBack

Ticket to Ride
Cant Buy Me Love

The Beatles live at Palais du Sport, Paris - 20th June 1965 

 click for video

~~~

Posted at 06:23 AM in Music, The Beatles, Video | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack

Too funny

Posted at 06:56 AM in Humor | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack

Yet another talented UK vocalist taking her cues from the past, but with a modern twist: Amy Winehouse. Winehouse's 2nd album, Back to Black, freshens up the classic soul albums with original songs done in the style of the 1950/60's girl groups.

New Yorker Magazine got it just right -- "a fierce English performer whose voice combines the smoky depths of a jazz chanteuse with the heated passion of a soul singer." I hate when people compare a new performer with the greats, but you can say that stylistically, she falls between Billie Holiday and Ronnie Spector.

This is the fourth musician we've spotlighted, who have gone retro -- delving into an older genre and freshening it up (Bitter:Sweet, James Hunter and Joss Stone were the first three). Except for Bitter:Sweet, they all seem to hail from England.

There's a good interview here and 4 videos of acoustic versions of her songs after the jump (I cannot link to AOL's DL as its a terribly annoying site)

~~~

Here's a stripped down acoustic version of Valerie, that does a nice job showing off her voice:

She gives the same treatment to the big single Rehab

and to You Know I'm No Good

(Studio video for You Know I'm No Good video)

and Love is a Losing Game

The title song, Back to Black and Tears Dry on Their Own   

Posted at 06:01 AM in Music | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBack

I am gearing up for the post-Soprano, post Entourage summer months. One of the items that will be filling  the HBO void is Not Just the Best of the Larry Sanders Show.

I know that some people were disappointed that the entire show isn't on DVD. But of the television shows I have on disc (Seinfeld, Coupling, etc.) I never watch the full run of episodes. Just don't have time. And, I find the extra material is what makes the sets so much fun. The outtakes from Seindfeld alone are worth the price of admission.

This came in the mail last week, and I cannot wait to watch it.

If it rains all Memorial Day weekend, at least I know what I will be doing . . .

Click for video

Posted at 06:13 AM in Humor, Television | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack

Rev Jerry Falwell
Founder of The Moral Majority, a precursor to the Christian Coalition

If you're not a born-again Christian, you're a failure as a human being.
-- Rev Jerry Falwell (attributed: source unknown)

This is probably as bad a day as the court has had on social issues since "Roe v Wade."
-- Rev Jerry Falwell, reacting to the Supreme Court's ruling in the Texas sodomy case, "Lawrence v. Texas," wherein the high court upheld an individual's (or a couple's) right to privacy; "It is a promise of the Constitution that there is a realm of personal liberty which the government may not enter," said Justice Anthony M Kennedy, for the majority in an opinion "as broad in its constitutional vision as any ever issued by the court," wrote Charles Lane for The Washington Post; in his dissent, Justice Antonin Scalia, an extremist Evangelical Christian, complained that the justices voting to uphold the right to privacy were creating a new constitutional right, that they were not upholding the Constitution, quoted from "Planned Parenthood Federal Action Report" (July, 2003) ††

I had a student ask me, "Could the savior you believe in save Osama bin Laden?" Of course, we know the blood of Jesus Christ can save him, and then he must be executed.
-- Rev Jerry Falwell, cited in Cary McMullen, "Falwell: Now Is the Time for Gospel," in the Lakeland (Florida) Ledger (November 12, 2001), quoted from Randy Cassingham, This is True (18 November 2001). Falwell added: "We visit prisoners on death row, and some of them are saved, but we believe their sentences should be carried out because they have a debt to society."

God continues to lift the curtain and allow the enemies of America to give us probably what we deserve.
-- Rev Jerry Falwell, blaming civil libertarians, feminists, homosexuals, and abortion rights supporters for the terrorist attacks of Tuesday, September 11, 2001, to which Rev Pat Robertson agreed, quoted from John F Harris, "God Gave US 'What We Deserve,' Falwell Says," The Washington Post (September 14, 2001)

The ACLU's got to take a lot of blame for this.
-- Rev Jerry Falwell, blaming civil libertarians for the terrorist attacks of Tuesday, September 11, 2001, to which Rev Pat Robertson again agreed, quoted from AANEWS #958 by American Atheists (September 14, 2001)

And, I know that I'll hear from them for this. But, throwing God out successfully with the help of the federal court system, throwing God out of the public square, out of the schools. The abortionists have got to bear some burden for this because God will not be mocked. And when we destroy 40 million little innocent babies, we make God mad. I really believe that the pagans, and the abortionists, and the feminists, and the gays and the lesbians who are actively trying to make that an alternative lifestyle, the ACLU, People for the American Way -- all of them who have tried to secularize America -- I point the finger in their face and say, "You helped this happen."
-- Rev Jerry Falwell, blaming civil libertarians, feminists, homosexuals, and abortion rights supporters for the terrorist attacks of Tuesday, September 11, 2001, quoted from John F Harris, "God Gave US 'What We Deserve,' Falwell Says," The Washington Post (September 14, 2001)

I sincerely believe that the collective efforts of many secularists during the past generation, resulting in the expulsion from our schools and from the public square, has left us vulnerable.
-- Rev Jerry Falwell, after the 700 Club broadcast wherein he had blamed civil libertarians, feminists, homosexuals, and abortion rights supporters for the terrorist attacks of Tuesday, September 11, 2001, speaking to The New York Times, quoted from Dick Meyer, "Holy Smoke," CBS News (September 15, 2001)

I put all the blame legally and morally on the actions of the terrorist, [but America's] secular and anti-Christian environment left us open to our Lord's [decision] not to protect. When a nation deserts God and expels God from the culture ... the result is not good.
-- Rev Jerry Falwell, backpedaling amidst criticism of his statement blaming civil libertarians, feminists, homosexuals, and abortion rights supporters for the terrorist attacks of Tuesday, September 11, 2001, quoted from John F Harris, "God Gave US 'What We Deserve,' Falwell Says," The Washington Post (September 14, 2001)

Pat, did you notice yesterday the ACLU, and all the Christ-haters, People For the American Way, NOW, etc. were totally disregarded by the Democrats and the Republicans in both houses of Congress as they went out on the steps and called out on to God in prayer and sang "God Bless America" and said "let the ACLU be hanged"? In other words, when the nation is on its knees, the only normal and natural and spiritual thing to do is what we ought to be doing all the time -- calling upon God.
-- Rev Jerry Falwell, justifying the breech of Constitutional Separation of Religion from Government while blaming civil libertarians for the terrorist attacks of Tuesday, September 11, 2001, to which Rev Pat Robertson again agreed, quoted from AANEWS #958 by American Atheists (September 14, 2001)

I hope I live to see the day when, as in the early days of our country, we won't have any public schools. The churches will have taken them over again and Christians will be running them. What a happy day that will be!
-- Rev Jerry Falwell, America Can Be Saved, 1979 pp. 52-53, from Albert J Menendez and Edd Doerr, The Great Quotations on Religious Freedom

AIDS is not just God's punishment for homosexuals; it is God's punishment for the society that tolerates homosexuals.
-- Jerry Falwell (attributed: source unknown)

The idea that religion and politics don't mix was invented by the Devil to keep Christians from running their own country.
-- Rev Jerry Falwell, Sermon, July 4, 1976

If we are going to save America and evangelize the world, we cannot accommodate secular philosophies that are diametrically opposed to Christian truth ... We need to pull out all the stops to recruit and train 25 million Americans to become informed pro-moral activists whose voices can be heard in the halls of Congress.
     I am convinced that America can be turned around if we will all get serious about the Master's business. It may be late, but it is never too late to do what is right. We need an old-fashioned, God-honoring, Christ-exalting revival to turn American back to God. America can be saved!
-- Jerry Falwell, "Moral Majority Report" for September, 1984

It appears that America's anti-Biblical feminist movement is at last dying, thank God, and is possibly being replaced by a Christ-centered men's movement which may become the foundation for a desperately needed national spiritual awakening.
-- Jerry Falwell (attributed: source unknown)

There is no separation of church and state. Modern US Supreme Courts have raped the Constitution and raped the Christian faith and raped the churches by misinterpreting what the Founders had in mind in the First Amendment to the Constitution.
-- Jerry Falwell (attributed: source unknown)

The Bible is the inerrant ... word of the living God. It is absolutely infallible,without error in all matters pertaining to faith and practice, as well as in areas such as geography, science, history, etc.
-- Jerry Falwell, Finding Inner Peace and Strength

But these things speak evil of those things, verse 10 [reading from Jude] which they know not: but what they know naturally, as brute beasts, in those things they corrupt themselves. Look at the Metropolitan Community Church today, the gay church, almost accepted into the World Council of Churches. Almost, the vote was against them. But they will try again and again until they get in, and the tragedy is that they would get one vote. Because they are spoken of here in Jude as being brute beasts, that is going to the baser lust of the flesh to live immorally, and so Jude describes this as apostasy. But thank God this vile and satanic system will one day be utterly annihilated and there'll be a celebration in heaven.
-- Rev Jerry Falwell, "Old Time Gospel Hour" broadcast, March 11, 1984, quoted by Rev Jerry Sloan, "Is Jerry Falwell a liar?" Freedom Writer, September, 1994

The Jews are returning to their land of unbelief. They are spiritually blind and desperately in need of their Messiah and Savior.
-- Jerry Falwell, Listen, America!

Grown men should not be having sex with prostitutes unless they are married to them.
-- Jerry Falwell, on CNN's Crossfire, May 17, 1997

I do not believe the homosexual community deserves minority status. One's misbehavior does not qualify him or her for minority status. Blacks, Hispanics, women, etc., are God-ordained minorities who do indeed deserve minority status.
-- Rev Jerry Falwell, USA Today Chat, quoted from The Religious Freedom Coalition, "The Two faces of Jerry Falwell"

Dan Moldea, the lead investigator for Larry Flynt's ongoing quest to uncover sexual indiscretions of Republican congressional members, has now admitted he was hired by the law firm defending President Clinton.
-- Rev Jerry Falwell, from "The Bizarre Flynt-Clinton Connection," in the January 15, 1999, "Falwell Confidential" fax report to 162,000 members, referring to the firm Williams & Connolly. Dan Moldea responded, "This entire statement is false and misleading, reckless and malicious. It is a complete fabrication." However, the San Diego Union-Tribune picked up the fabrication and ran it as fact. Quoted from The Religious Freedom Coalition, "The Two faces of Jerry Falwell."

We're fighting against humanism, we're fighting against liberalism ... we are fighting against all the systems of Satan that are destroying our nation today ... our battle is with Satan himself.
-- Rev Jerry Falwell (attributed: source unknown)

Billy Graham is the chief servant of Satan.
-- Rev Jerry Falwell (attributed: source unknown)

The ACLU is to Christians what the American Nazi party is to Jews.
-- Rev Jerry Falwell (attributed: source unknown)

AIDS is the wrath of a just God against homosexuals. To oppose it would be like an Israelite jumping in the Red Sea to save one of Pharoah's chariotters.
-- Rev Jerry Falwell (attributed: source unknown)

You'll be riding along in an automobile. You'll be the driver perhaps. You're a Christian. There'll be several people in the automobile with you, maybe someone who is not a Christian. When the trumpet sounds you and the other born-again believers in that automobile will be instantly caught away -- you will disappear, leaving behind only your clothes and physical things that cannot inherit eternal life. That unsaved person or persons in the automobile will suddenly be startled to find the car suddenly somewhere crashes.... Other cars on the highway driven by believers will suddenly be out of control and stark pandemonium will occur on ... every highway in the world where Christians are caught away from the drivers wheel.
-- Rev Jerry Falwell, in his pamphlet, "Nuclear War and the Second Coming of Christ," quoted from Ronnie Dugger,"Does Reagan Expect a Nuclear Armageddon?" in Washington Post Outlook (April 8, 1984)

Source: Positive Atheism

Posted at 06:25 AM in Humor, Philosophy, Religion | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBack

Hysterical:

Wu Tang Financial

Posted at 06:53 AM in Finance, Humor, Television | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBack

Contractor: FN Manufacturing

Cost per item: about $4,000

Size of 2007 contract: $48.3 million

The Army’s primary machine gun can spit 850 bullets per minute. FN Herstal developed the gun in the early 1980s for the Pentagon, which wanted a lightweight automatic weapon (the one here is 17 pounds). The Belgian company’s South Carolina factory makes about 550 a month for the Army.

Full article is here:

Weapons of Mass Production
John Hockenberry 
Portfolio, May 2007 Issue
http://www.portfolio.com/news-markets/international-news/
portfolio/2007/03/29/Weapons-of-Mass-Production

Posted at 06:18 AM in Design, War/Defense | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack

Beatles Live in Paris: Part I

Twist & Shout
She's a Woman

The Beatles live at Palais du Sport, Paris - 20th June 1965

 click for video

Posted at 08:19 AM in Music, The Beatles, Video | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack

The seeds of a sunflower, the spines of a cactus, and the bracts of a pine cone all grow in whirling spiral patterns. Remarkable for their complexity and beauty, they also show consistent mathematical patterns that scientists have been striving to understand:

Source:
The Mathematical Lives of Plants
Julie J. Rehmeyer   
Science News, May 5, 2007; Vol. 171, No. 18
http://www.sciencenews.org/articles/20070505/mathtrek.asp

Posted at 07:40 AM in Design, Science | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBack

FNJ has a guest DJ tonite: BondDaddy is in the house!

Dexter Gordon is one of the greatest tenor sax players. He had a strong tone and incredible sense of melody. Some players like Sonny Rollins and Joe Henderson had a slippery sense of time; their phrases speed up and slow down, moving within the rythm section's accompaniment. Not Dexter. Dex's time was rock solid, never wavering. The rythm section had to accompany his time.

His playing is incredibly melodic, easily followed by the listener. Ideas naturally morphed from one to the other, always following a logical pattern. However, he was also able to surprise listeners with a run into upper chordal extensions.

His playing provides a logical link between Parker and Coltrane. Dex used many ideas from Parker, but played them with a tone that was deep, bold and soulful.  His tone provides the link to Coltrane, who also favored a deep and rich tenor tone.

Gordon swung -- and swung hard. If your feet are not tapping within 8 bars of his starting to play, you're just not listening.

Homecoming: Live at the Village Vanguard. Dex lived in Amsterdam for about 10 years, and this was the album be made when he came back. Very cool set. Woody Shaw is on Trumpet, and the two work really well together. THis is Dexter at the very top of his game (and probably one of the top 25 live jazz albums of all time).

He also starred in the Round Midnight, probably the best jazz movie ever made

Our Man in Paris: This be-bop session is a meeting between three of the most influential musicians of the forties. The rhythms crackle, the solos fly; Our Man In Paris is essential Dexter. A nice compilation of standards.

Go:  Its been widely reported Gordon himself considered this his greatest achievement. Brimming with conviction and poise, Gordon's gentle-giant sax carries itself with a sort of graceful edge that is difficult to emulate. Never has anyone made the diminished scale sound so musical.

Ballads: This is a compilation of his ballads (duh), and he could play just beautifully on these. Gordon delivers his almost sleepy and smoke-filled solos with real grace. Some of the most romantic playing you will every hear.

~~~

Incidentally, there are tons of videos of Dexter posted; Here are a few:

I Guess I'll Hang My Tears Out To Dry

Loose Walk

More Than You Know

Thanks to Hale "Bond Dad" Stewart for tonite's FNJ

Posted at 09:03 AM in Music | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack

Most dinosaur hatchlings never made it through the early-life hoops of predation, cannibalism and starvation. But the reward for surviving the first two years was a childhood of sunny prospect, a new study suggests, with the best years of a dinosaur’s life usually lasting up to the age of sexual maturity at about 14.

Puberty for dinosaurs held mortal risks, not just adolescent angst. The females probably suffered from the stresses and physiological demands of egg production and periods of fasting while nesting. The males often died in lusty combat with rivals for mates.

At the crest of desire and its fulfillment, death rates of maturing dinosaurs shot up to more than 23 percent a year. Only the rare tyrannosaur reached old age — about 28.

“Love was a dangerous game for these animals,” said Gregory M. Erickson of Florida State University, the leader of the research team that just completed a study of the life histories of the well-known predatory tyrannosaurs.

In the first detailed research of mortality rates of these dinosaurs, the paleontologists found that 70 percent of the dinosaurs that survived the first two dismal years were still alive at 13. But few of them would enjoy long reproductive life spans; their average life expectancy was estimated to be 16.6 years.

This was new evidence, the scientists concluded, that the tyrannosaurs as a group had life patterns closer to that of wild populations of long-lived birds and large mammals than their fellow reptiles. But the exceptionally low mortality of juveniles appeared to be unmatched by that of many modern vertebrates, humans excepted.

“By age 2, most tyrannosaurs were as large or larger than all other predators in their realm,” Dr. Erickson said. The juveniles started at lengths of 6 feet and reached 20 feet by maturity.

The research into the lives and deaths of four tyrannosaur species was reported in the current issue of the journal Science by two dinosaur paleontologists, Dr. Erickson and Philip J. Currie of the University of Alberta, and two population biologists at Florida State, Brian D. Inouye and Alice A. Winn.

Richard Lane, director of earth science programs at the National Science Foundation, which supported the research, called the findings “a breakthrough in unraveling these dinosaurs’ life cycles.”

Other paleontologists not involved in the work said the results laid the foundation for understanding the vicissitudes of dinosaurian life. The species studied lived 70 million years ago, in the closing era of dinosaur dominance on earth.

In their investigation, the scientists examined 22 individual fossils of Albertosaurus from a site near the Red Deer River 120 miles northeast of Calgary. Nine of the skeletons were collected a century ago by the famous fossil hunter Barnum Brown of the American Museum of Natural History. Starting in 1997, Dr. Currie and teams from the Royal Tyrrell Museum of Paleontology, in Alberta, re-excavated the site for the rest of the specimens.

The researchers counted growth lines in the limb and foot bones to determine ages at death. Then they drew a “survivorship curve” based on the proportions of individuals that died during each life stage.

“Ideally, you would like to have a larger sample,” Dr. Erickson said in a telephone interview. “But if you randomly selected 22 out of 10,000 animals, that would be a large enough sample to have a 90 percent confidence that the pattern you’re getting is significant.”To test their interpretation, the scientists examined the age at death of 70 more tyrannosaur skeletons at museums in Canada and the United States. The specimens included Gorgosaurus, Daspletosaurus and the mighty Tyrannosaurus rex.

It was no surprise that hatchlings were absent in the primary study sample. Their fragile bones were not likely to survive to fossilization. In preparing the survival curve, scientists assumed the mortality rate of the very young to be similar to that of modern vertebrates like birds and crocodiles — up to 80 percent.

At the other end of the life spectrum, the Red Deer deposit contained only one Albertosaurus that attained the probable maximum size and age for the species, 30 feet and 28 years. The oldest known T-rex died at 28, a giant apparently enfeebled by arthritis, fungal infections and other afflictions of aging.

The few juveniles in the sample may have cleared up a mystery: why are they so scarce in the fossil record? Some paleontologists speculated that tyrannosaurs grew to adult size in such a brief time that they left no detectable fossil traces of their juvenile period of transition.

“However, this notion is inconsistent with our growth curve,” Dr. Erickson and colleagues wrote in Science. “Instead, we suggest that these young animals simply had low mortality, just like older juveniles and subadults of most large terrestrial mammals today.”

Source:
For Tyrannosaurs, Puberty Meant the End of the Good Life
JOHN NOBLE WILFORD
NYTimes,  July 18, 2006
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/07/18/science/18rex.html

Posted at 06:49 AM in Science | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack

Last week, we looked at a diagram of Star Wars characters.

Today, we have a little more fun:

via starwars.com

Posted at 06:52 AM in Design, Film, Humor, Science | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack

frickin hysterical:   

Is Your Mouth Your Money?

via kottke

Posted at 06:43 AM in Humor, Politics, Television, War/Defense | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack

via Threetwoone.org

Posted at 06:22 AM in Art & Design, Film | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack

Another new live version

Posted at 07:18 AM in Music | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack

At three minutes and four seconds after 2 AM on the 6th of May this year,
The time and date will be

02:03:04 05/06/07.

The same thing occurs 12 hours later (PM) -- then This will never quite repeat exactly again.

Posted at 02:03 AM in Current Affairs, Science | Permalink | Comments (2) | TrackBack

An updated version of our prior look at famous opinions:

"Man will never reach the moon regardless of all future scientific  advances."
-Dr. Lee DeForest, "Father of Radio & Grandfather of Television."

"The  Atomic bomb will never go off. I speak as an expert in explosives."
-Admiral William Leahy, US Atomic Bomb Project

"There is no likelihood man can ever tap the power of the atom."
-Robert Millikan, Nobel Prize in Physics, 1923

"Computers in the future may weigh no more than 1.5 tons."
-Popular Mechanics, forecasting the relentless march of science, 1949

"I think there is a world market for maybe five computers ."
-Thomas Watson, chairman of IBM, 1943

"I have traveled the length and breadth of this country and talked  with the best people, and I can assure you that data processing is a fad that won't last out the year."
-The editor in charge of business books for Prentice Hall, 1957

"But what is it good for?"
-Engineer at the Advanced ComputingSystems Division of IBM, 1968, commenting on the microchip.

"640K ought to be enough for anybody."
-Bill Gates, 1981

"This 'telephone' has too many shortcomings to be seriously considered as a means of communication. The device is inherently of no value to us,"
-Western Union internal memo, 1876

"The wireless music box has no imaginable commercial value. Who would pay for a message sent to nobody in particular?"
-David Sarnoff's associates in response to his urgings for investment in the radio in the 1920s.

"The concept is interesting and well-formed, but in order to earn better than a 'C,' the idea must be feasible,"
-A Yale University management professor in response to Fred Smith's paper proposing reliable overnight delivery service. (Smith went on to found Federal Express Corp.)

"I'm just glad it'll be Clark Gable who's falling on his face and not Gary Cooper,"
-Gary Cooper on his decision not to take the leading role in "Gone With The Wind."

"A cookie store is a bad idea. Besides, the market research reports say America likes crispy cookies, not soft and chewy cookies like you make,"
-Response to Debbi Fields' idea of starting Mrs. Fields' Cookies.

"We don't like their sound, and guitar music is on the way out,"
-Decca Recording Co. rejecting the Beatles, 1962.

"Heavier-than-air flying machines are impossible,"
-Lord Kelvin, president, Royal Society, 1895.

"If I had thought about it, I wouldn't have done the experiment. The literature was full of examples that said you can't do this,"
-Spencer Silver on the work that led to the unique adhesives for 3-M "Post-It" Notepads.

"Drill for oil? You mean drill into the ground to try and find oil? You're crazy,"
-Drillers who Edwin L. Drake tried to enlist to his project to drill for oil in 1859.

"Stocks have reached what looks like a permanently high plateau."
-Irving Fisher, Professor of Economics, Yale University, 1929.

"Airplanes are interesting toys but of no military value,"
-Marechal Ferdinand Foch, Professor of Strategy, Ecole Superieure de Guerre, France.

"Everything that can be invented has been invented,"
-Charles H. Duell, Commissioner, US Office of Patents, 1899.

"The super computer is technologically impossible. It would take all of the water that flows over Niagara Falls to cool the heat generated by the number of vacuum tubes required."
-Professor of Electrical Engineering, New York University

"I don't know what use any one could find for a machine that would make copies of documents. It certainly couldn't be a feasible business by itself."
-the head of IBM, refusing to back the idea, forcing the inventor to found Xerox.

"Louis Pasteur's theory of germs is ridiculous fiction."
-Pierre Pachet, Professor of Physiology at Toulouse, 1872

"The abdomen, the chest, and the brain will forever be shut from the intrusion of the wise and humane surgeon,"
-Sir John Eric Ericksen, British surgeon, appointed Surgeon-Extraordinary to Queen Victoria 1873.

And last but not least...

"There is no reason anyone would want a computer in their home."
-Ken Olson, president, chairman and founder of Digital Equipment Corp., 1977

Posted at 06:54 AM in Philosophy, Science | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack

click for larger map

via XKCD

Posted at 09:59 AM in Humor, Web/Tech, Weblogs | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBack

In case you are sleeping Saturday night, at three minutes and four seconds after 2 AM on the 6th of May this year, the time and date will be :

02:03:04 05/06/07.

This will happen twice today, and then never precisely again (although there will be many many variations on the theme).

Posted at 06:10 AM in Science | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack

Most relationships in Hollywood fizzle after a couple months; Hollywood has been going steady with Philip K. Dick for 25 years. Tinseltown's appetite for his trademark paranoid-futuristic vibe is bottomless, and there seems to be no end to the number of his works that get the big-screen treatment.

The streak began with 1982's "Blade Runner" and included "Total Recall" (1990), "Screamers" (1996), "Minority Report" (2002), "Paycheck" (2003) and last year's "A Scanner Darkly." His work has also served as the basis for a play, an opera and a video game.

This Firday's release of "Next," (starring Nicolas Cage) is about a man who can glimpse the future.

"Adjustment Team"

Published: 1954

Riffing on Dick's favorite theme, the fungible nature of reality, real estate salesman Ed Fletcher discovers that the world is nothing more than a giant soundstage controlled by mysterious guardians. Hmm, perhaps Jim Carrey will star.

"Time Out of Joint"

Published: 1959

Ragle Gumm believes he's living in an idyllic town in 1959, but comes to realize he actually lives in the future and that his reality is a fake, created to shield citizens from the truth: that the Earth is engaged in a nuclear war with colonists on the moon.

"Flow My Tears, the Policeman Said"

Published: 1974

Jason Taverner, who lives in a futuristic police state, awakes in a hotel room to find his ID missing. After a few inquiries, he discovers that his entire identity has been erased and even his closest friends don't recognize him.

"Valis"

Published: 1981

After receiving communion in the form of a blast of laser light, Horselover Fat goes on a quest for God, and finds Him in the form of a 2-year-old named Sophia, who confirms that God is actually a reality-controlling satellite orbiting the Earth.

"Radio Free Albermuth"

Published: 1985

In an America ruled by a corrupt president, record executive Nicholas Brady begins receiving transmissions from a mysterious, all-powerful satellite that orders him to organize a movement to overthrow the government.

Posted at 06:33 AM in Books, Film, SciFi | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack

Nicely done CG animation about a Nazi war robot that wreaks havoc on the Allies.

Part I

Part II

Posted at 06:21 AM in Film, War/Defense | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack

Also hysterical:

Posted at 06:36 AM in Humor, Television, Video | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack

Uh-oh:  Looks like the lawyers are going to get involved:

COMPUTER giants Apple are really worked up—over an Ann Summers sex toy that hooks up to your iPod. Women all over Britain are saying yes, yes, yes to the £30 iGasm that plugs into a music player and delivers good vibrations that pulse to the beat.

But shocked iPod bosses are iRate—demanding stores take down all posters for the gadget or risk a fight in the iCourt.

The neon-pink ads feature a curvaceous girl with wires coming OUT of her MP3 player and INTO her knickers. And it's definitely turned on.

The sales guff teases: "Go at it hard and fast with a pounding drum 'n' bass track or chill with ambient classic."

But Apple lawyers claim the poster is a blatant rip-off of their own famous silhouette images used to flog iPods.

Their haughty legal letter to the shop chain adds: "We hope this request to remove it immediately will prevent us having to consider further action."

Despite that, Ann Summers boss Jacqueline Gold is saying no, no, no and joked: "Perhaps I can send them an iGasm to put a smile back on their faces!"

Source:
POD IT AWAY!
News of the World
http://www.newsoftheworld.co.uk/ipod_1405.shtml

Posted at 06:29 AM in Web/Tech | Permalink<