Ever get to the point in your pregnancy that you feel like you really do have an alien growing inside of you (Scott? Jeff? Damion? Joshua? ... heh... didn't think so)? Olivia has been moving around so much that I literally have been thinking that I really do have that critter from the movie Aliens inside of me. You know, the one that attaches to your face and puts a creepy-assed thing down your throat? The one that has like 6 legs and stuff? This baby feels like it has more legs and arms than it should have.

And you can see it happening. Through your skin.

My pregnancy calendar keeps saying (for the past 3 weeks) that I am in the 'home stretch'. Ok, the next time I hear 'home stretch' again, I am going to scream. Home stretch means you have a week to go, not nearly 3 months.

You find yourself totally involved in your pregnancy. Almost to the point it literally can consume a good portion of your day. Remember the days of daydreaming of that special guy? Or what color you're going to paint your room? Or what new bedspread you just bought and can't wait to get it on your bed? (Ok, guy translation time: Scott says, "imagine a thirty year old Sophia Loren driving up in a Ferrari and asking if you're busy tonight." Men are pigs.) Yeah, those days are gone.

You become consumed with thinking about 'how much this is really going to hurt when the baby does decide to make it's appearance.' You become consumed with what baby stuff you are going to buy (which we have not done any of yet). Baby shower? (Are those possible with less than 5 friends?)

You keep thinking about how your cats are going to act (Scott laughs out loud at this point and mumbles about "crazy cat lady in waiting"... he's sleeping on the couch tonight). One thing I'm not concerned about is if the cats will lash out aggressively at the baby. My only issue is that Ted and Ajax think of more creative ways to crap in my house.

I've given up on those restrictions of pregnancy, like watching the caffeine you drink. Ooops...guess I should make myself suffer and not drink those 40 oz. Coke slushies anymore (yeah right, take it away and lose a hand). I stopped following my doctor's (aka Santa Clause's) advice of just walking for fitness. I'm sorry, I just don't feel accomplished and apparently I was just having a bad water retention day (I must remember not to lick blocks of salt) since I am no longer ballooning up.

So I'm back to my regular exercise routine. Well, not what I normally would do. But at least there's weight training involved. Denise Austin is too goddamned perky for words. Even with a bowling ball stuck to her belly, she's so cheerful you want to drown her. Too bad my mind is so preoccupied that I actually do need to have the sound on vs. muting it and listening to the radio and just following the tape.

But like the newsletters say, I'm in the home stretch. Again. And again. And again.

June seems a long time away.

Ok, me, I'm one of those people who have no problem whatever making immigrants register, booting ones who cause trouble, holding them in the pokey if we think they know something interesting, etc. Yeah, I know I'm an ugly American that way, but as far as I'm concerned: my house, my rules. And you know what? The vast, and I mean vast majority of other countries act just exactly this way. That's why the state department advises you to contact the US embassy or consulate of your destination whenever you travel abroad. That way they'll at least know who you are if you screw up on someone else's turf.

However, I absolutely and irretrievably draw the line at citizenship. If you're a citizen, you most definitely have rights. Even if you join the wrong side and start shooting at your fellow Americans, if we catch you I absolutely believe in your right to a trial by your own peers with a lawyer provided to you by the state. I may not shed a tear if they strap you to a gurney and give you, as Ellen puts it, the "green juice", but by god you better have had a trial beforehand.

So I just wanted you all to know we got us a concrete case of judiciary abuse going on right now, one in which a citizen is being held in prison for no damned good reason anyone can figure out. C'mon folks, let's get the system working. The whole point of a democracy is ensuring freedom by making it impossible for wacks to take away our rights for any length of time. The best way to kill a fungus like this is to shine a light on it. Let your voice be heard!

Update: Yeah, yeah, yeah, "middle eastern descent." Listen folks, you gotta work your ass off to become a citizen of this country. Takes years sometimes. We make it tough so we can be sure people who become citizens want it with all their heart. The people who become citizens are proud of it in no small part because it's tough. Far as I'm concerned, and I am not joking around here, if you're willing to go to the effort by God you're my equal in the eyes of our laws. If we can let Joe Wacknut spew his nazi-laced hate about white power and the Christian nation and give him police protection while he and his beer-belly buddies wander down main street, we can damned well leave one guy in peace to raise his family and pay his taxes and do everything else you're supposed to do to make it around here, no matter where he was born.

It sickens me to think people would believe otherwise.

Via Skippy.

At least one correspondent is taking a cue from US sports broadcasting by broadcasting "live" war reports from a broom closet while reading wire dispatches. I wonder if he's got a guy standing behind him banging on stuff when he needs sound affects?

Sad thing is, his reporting was probably just as good as our own monkeys!

I love Italy! Where else would a city set aside a parking garage specifically for making woopie?

The Tuscan town of Vinci, more commonly known for its Renaissance artist son Leonardo, is renovating a car park complete with soft lighting and special trash bins for condoms.

l'Italia lungamente in tensione!
(did that via google, so it probably is making every Italian double over in laughter... in theory it says "Long live Italy!" Correct translations welcome!)

The reviews I've read say "Journey to the Core" is fun as long as you don't think at it too much (not nessesarily a bad thing), but the movie certainly has brought out a lot of speculation about what's going on in the middle of our planet. BBCnews is carrying this article summarizing the most recent scientific discoveries.

Human nature being what it is, believing that a dog gave birth to kittens via witchcraft is much more popular than, say, a farmer looking for some attention getting kittens to nurse off a lactating dog. Makes for a good story though, unfortunately too many people will believe it.

Instapundit linked up this editorial about what an arab intellectual thinks might be a good starting point for the reconstruction of Iraq. At least as interesting was his summary of why everything went so wrong in the Middle East: the puppet governments set up to protect colonial interests after WWI became self-justifying murderous oppressors founding a new dictatorial ruling caste. Fundamentalism arose as a reaction to this local phenomena, although it, too, is rapidly losing legitimacy. Fascinating stuff.

Well, it doesn't function exactly like the "real thing", but this attempt at a for-real replica of the Delorean from Back to the Future is pretty cool nonetheless. With pictures!

Slashdot featured this article detailing a new technique scientists have discovered for telling the difference between a type of fossile made by life, and one made by weird natural processes. How? They take a picture and then use a common file compression utility on the digital result. The more the file compresses, the more likely it is to have been created by life.

Now we have Japanese cat hats. Note: Site is in Japanese, and may not show up properly at all depending on what font set you have installed. However, the pictures are cute.

Don't feel like dumping fido on a roadside? Worried a shelter might kill him because you don't want him anymore? Now, apparently, you can have someone else dump them on a deserted island for you.

I think these people have their heart in the right place, but it seems to be not much more than abandoning a dog, which is never good.

Wall perches by Katwallks.

Cool cat gifts by Here-Kitty Kitty

Awsome cat litter boxes shaped as cottages!

Yeah, all I can say is 'who the hell thinks of this stuff' ?

Now you can have the perfect dildo for that holy moment.

Thanks to the Reverend Heathen at The City Morgue for the *inspiration*.

I'm sure this happens at other stores too.

Stories of psychopathic boyfriends and girlfriends.

Rather funny site. Check it out!

Just like Elf Bowling, except you get to play with a monkey !

(Well, ok, one hand-axe, but it made a good headline) BBCnews brings us this report detailing what could be the earliest evidence of funerary rights in ancient humans ever found.

Remember the opening scene in Blade Runner (at least I think it's the opening scene... anyway...), when the replicant is being grilled by a the psychologist? Well, turns out the weapon he used is actually a for-real gun. This is probably no surprise to anyone who's a monster-fan of BR, but it was news to me!

Yah know what? I can only let this one speak for itself:

A fish heading for slaughter in a New York market shouted warnings about the end of the world before it was killed, two fish cutters have claimed.
...
A disbelieving Mr Rosen then rushed to the back of the store, only to hear the fish identifying itself as the soul of a local Hasidic man who had died the previous year.

It instructed him to pray and study the Torah, but Mr Rosen admitted that in a state of panic he attempted to kill the fish, injuring himself in the process and ending up in hospital.

The fish was eventually killed by Mr Nivelo and sold.
...
Many members of the city's Jewish community are now certain that God, troubled by the prospect of war in Iraq, has revealed Himself in fish form.

Rabbi Blogman(stein), what could this possibly mean?!?

BBCnews is carrying this summary of the discovery of a new fossil bed containing the earliest known examples of salamanders. Before, the earliest "only" went back 65 million years. These new finds go back 100 million more.

Always read the comments. I found this very nice Columbia FAQ trolling slashdot. Everything you wanted to know (that anyone else knows) but didn't know who to ask.

Just in time for April Fools, we have this summary of new and used hoaxes for your prank protection. After my mom got bit by the SULFNBK.EXE hoax, I think she's a little more critical, but it never hurts to be sure.

You want to know about "hearts and minds?" How about handing out $100s to an Iraqi rock quarry owner so we can have some of his rocks. And note the IOU left for the guy who made clay bricks. I love this country...

Because when they do their friends do things like wave bags of grass at uniformed cops on their way to work.

Chong: "Oh man, that sucks man. I bet he thought it was his old lady."

Cheech: "Nah, he prolly just wanted directions to da Wendys, you know?"

Today is Coconut's birthday! Hooooraaayy for Coconut!

Coconut is my first kitten that I woke up after a C-section on her mom at the Washington Animal Rescue League 6 years ago!

Coconut was toted around in a leather back pack for 6 months to and from work on the metro. She has been to the movies, out to resturants, an ice skating event and even the National Cathedral.

So everyone wish my Buddah Baby a Happy Birthday!

It's looking like catnip may actually be a termite repellant.

Found this interesting bit discussing just why France, Russia, and Germany were so vociferously apposed to the current war. Hint: it ain't because they're concerned about Iraqi civilians. The source of this argument will surprise you.

I think it's interesting to see that the old "Hobbes-ian" western attitudes still exist in this supposedly "Kant-ian" new world order. Western governments may at times act deeply concerned about the fate of the third world and be all warm and fuzzy about it, but if you scratch them, any of them, hard enough, you'll still find enough cold hard steel of pragmatisim and naked self interest to make any 19th century robber baron proud.

Article found via Instapundit and the Volokh Conspiracy.

Proof that if you saturate a country with enough cameras you'll eventually capture everything, we present this news story of a news crew who were in the right place at the right time when a meteorite did its thing. With video!

Ever wonder why the bubbles in a dark beer are a light color? Well, ok, neither did I, but some lager boy in the UK did and got this explanation as to why this happens.

Testing time!

"A dog is a prose, a cat is a poem."
-- Jean Burden

"One small cat changes coming home to an empty house to coming home."
--Pam Brown

A cat can purr its way out of anything.
-- Donna McCrohan

"As anyone who has ever been around a cat for any length of time well knows, cats have enormous patience with the limitations of the human mind."
--Cleveland Amory

This one is for Scott:

"I put down my book, The Meaning of Zen, and see the cat smiling into her fur as she delicately combs it with her rough pink tongue. Cat, I would lend you this book to study, but it appears you have already read it. She looks up and gives me her full gaze. Don't be ridiculous, she purrs, I wrote it.
-- from "Miao" by Dilys Laing

An example on what not to do with a battery and some electrodes.

DOH!

You go gramma! I especially liked this quote:

"I would have used a shotgun [instead of my .357 magnum], but I had just had new countertops done and I didn't want to tear up the kitchen."

See, even when defending ourselves in our own homes Americans don't want to break stuff when we don't have to.

And always remember, don't f*ck with gramma, 'cos she just might pop a cap in yer ass for bothering her.

by Jeff Johnson

Preface

This is not a criticism of our military forces on the ground doing the actual fighting. It is instead a critical look at the administration's decisions regarding how the war is being fought.

I think there has been too much political involvement with actually fighting the war (a-la Vietnam) and I think that it's hurting our ability to prosecute the war and is dangerous to the troops who are there.

Examples: We started the war off before the military was ready by trying to get Saddam. Admittedly this was a chance to end the war before it really began, but we when it became apparent that it hadn't worked the way we wanted it to we should have waited to send in the troops until all the forces were ready.

We send in the ground troops BEFORE we soften up the Iraqi army, compare what we did this time to what we did in the Gulf War. Back in 91 we bombed the living #$#% out of their ground forces for weeks before the ground troops went in. We isolated their troops, pounded on them for weeks until they just couldn't wait to give up. (Surrendering En Mass to Helicopters, reporters, just whomever they could find)

For the first few days of this war where was the Tac Air Support for the ground forces? Where were the A-10s and F-16s etc that were supposed to be pounding on the Iraqi forces before our troops reached them? They were tied up in the so-called "Shock and Awe" campaign to bomb the various strategic targets. If you watched over the weekend it took almost 4 hours for the Marines to call in an air strike on the building in Umm Qasr where they were taking fire. This isn't the way it’s supposed to work in a well-run combined arms campaign.

It wasn't until we started running into stiff resistance that Close Support strikes started really taking place. This didn't happen in 91 because we allowed time for the strategic targets to be taken out and then went after the Tactical targets. Only after we had decided that the Iraqi army had been massively degraded did we send in our ground troops.

The forces we have on the ground, while enough to ensure victory, aren’t exactly overwhelming. Where's the 1st Armored? (It's in Europe) Where's the 1st Cav? (It's at Ft Hood TX right now but it's under deployment alert to the Gulf) How about a light infantry division for fighting in the cities? Where are the forces that would greatly ensure our victory with the least possible casualties, and just maybe overwhelm the Iraqi army enough so that they do surrender? We have an entire infantry division (The 4th) that was tasked for this operation sitting on their butts because their equipment hasn’t arrived yet (I don't think their equipment is supposed to make it around to Kuwait until next week.) This is the division that was supposed to go in through Turkey.

From the Pentagon's own "Modern Urban Battle Analysis and Observations (Part II)":

Force Ratio: Successful attackers most often had superior manpower and firepower. In cases where the attacker won, but was inferior in manpower and firepower, the defender violated one or more principles of war. Nevertheless, the average attacker-to-defender ratio in the 22 battles reviewed was 4:1. Another consideration for both attacker and defender is the relationship between force ratio and combat duration. Historically, the stronger the attacker, the shorter the duration of the fight.

Sources say the Republican Guards defending Baghdad have around 60,000 men. The reports today indicate that the so-called Fedayeen troops may number as many as 30,000. I don't think the 3rd Mech Division, and 101st air assault and the 1st Mef have 370,000 men in them. It is believed that the total Army presence in the region is nearly 68,000 soldiers and 16,000 Marines for a total of 84,000 fighters. This means that if you combine the count of just the Republican Guard and Fedayeen troops we are actually outnumbered.

The numbers you hear the Pentagon say about deployments in the 200,000-300,000 range include all of the support troops, sailors on the various ships in the Gulf etc. These folks, while valuable, aren’t at the sharp point of the stick. Our superiority in weapons, training, air power etc.(called force multipliers) offsets this a great deal and we are in no danger of losing the war, but why go in with numbers that are closer to even if you don't have to?

It's worth noting that Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, a politician, has repeatedly stated that our airpower offsets any lack of ground troops in Iraq. With the sand storms and weather currently being experienced in Iraq much of our ability to provide close air support on demand to the troops have been severely degraded. I mean to @#@# with fighting fair and giving the other guy a chance let's put enough forces on the ground to not just win but pulverize the enemy.

These are several examples where political decisions are driving the military ones a-la Vietnam (at least I hope this is the case. If it's not then we really need to look at our command structure in the Gulf because they aren’t fighting smart.) I'm not bashing the Administration (I agree with what Sam Donaldson said, No matter if you were part of the people wanting to jump off the cliff, or part of the people trying to hold them back, the point is moot, we are off the cliff and falling, it's now time to work together as a group to ensure the best possible landing. ) Once the decision to go to war had been made I think the administration should have told the military, "This is what we want to happen, now go and make it happen" and then butted out. IMHO this isn't what's going on.

About the Author:

Jeff Johnson is a student of US Military History Specializing in the conflicts from WWII thru Vietnam. He served 4 years in the Army on active duty (With a tour in Korea) and 2 years in the reserves. He currently is a contractor for the US Goverment.

[He's also my brother -Scott]

Long, long time ago I remember someone in America got momentarily famous for microsculpting. Now looks like Willard Wigan of the UK has taken up the same itsy-bitsy torch. Very neat!

Another day, another no-prize for Jeff who brings us this article from Science Daily detailing a new discovery in the effort to treat Alzheimer's:

A molecule that naturally degrades a protein linked to Alzheimer's disease appears to reduce the levels of that protein by nearly 50 percent when delivered by gene therapy, researchers at the Salk Institute and UC San Diego have found in collaboration with researchers at the University of Kentucky. The findings appear in the March 15 issue of the Journal of Neuroscience.

Yourish brings us this letter from "Captain Steve", apparently an air force officer actually in the air on March 24th.

BBCnews is carrying this report summarizing new discoveries about the supermassive black holes at the heart of quasars and galaxies. Turns out conditions near them create "winds" of matter streaming out sometimes at 40% the speed of light which could've played an important role in "seeding" the universe with the complex atoms needed to form things like planets & people.

Looks like some enterprising Aussies are figuring out how to get electricity out of pig manure. In a nutshell: warm it (ewww), mix it with water, and then collect the methane and burn it. Boy, that's one generator you don't ever want to spring a leak, no?

Wow, and I thought Arkansas summers were bad. Check out what it was like in Dayton Ohio yesterday!

Can you say software bug? I knew you could...

I've got in-laws coming to visit in April. I wonder who I'm going to put on the sofa bed. Hint: rhymes with "cleaner". :)

Found this funny bit on one of my mail lists. Skip the over-wordy introduction and find out just where, or even if, you live on the pyramid of speed.

More crazy cat music!

Scott thinks this kitty is being rather naughty. I told him, kitty is 'cleaning' himself. He doesn't belive me.

Errm... this is kind of bizarre. I would not think this would be a family board game to play.

Thank god it's just a cartoon!

Ok, you have to check this picture out that Scott sent me.

How cute is that?

Found this nice 12-step program for the liberal in your life. My mom is starting to wobble leftward to an alarming degree lately, it may be time for an intervention...

Via Drumwaster's rants.

Damion gets a lace-and-mascara'd no-prize for showing us this slice of Japanese gothic. As usual, they seem to have a talent for taking an idea and running with it so far they fall off the opposite edge.

All the press monkeys were in such an uproar over "GPS jamming systems". While I'm sure all the journalism majors were surprised, I wasn't when we announced their atomization.

Ok, cluebat time folks... "jamming" a radio signal works* by flooding a certain frequency with a signal stronger than the one you want to listen to. When you are driving down a highway and one radio station gradually replaces another in your car, in a sense the new radio station is "jamming" the old one.

Let's say you were really really ticked off at, say, WJFK because you hate Don and Mike, and you wanted to just completely shut them down. All you'd need to do is get a transmitter to broadcast static on the same frequency as WJFK, and have that signal be more powerful than the radio station's. When you turn your transmitter on, suddenly everyone within a certain distance to your transmitter listening to WJFK is now listening to static. You're jamming the signal.

Now, note for this to work you need a transmitter. Something that emits a signal stronger than the original. As anyone who has ever tried to pick up a ballgame on one of those portable TVs knows, most types of radio signals are directional. A jammer by definition has to be pretty powerful to work at all, so it's usually pretty trivial to triangulate the location and shut it down. If you're the FCC, you use guys in suits.

If you're the military, you use a bomb.

Also from BBCnews, this story on how governments all over the world are facing what is actually becoming a kind of health problem. Bioterror? Nope. Chewing gum.

BBCnews is carrying this report on recent discoveries of the most distant (and therefore youngest) galaxies found to date. Gives an interesting overview of just how they figure out how far away these things are, although my brain seized up trying to get my head around it.

13 billion light years away. 13 billion years ago. I wonder what they look like now...

What do you get when you combine Norwegian (I think it's Norwegian) death rock, a video camera, and a hamster? Umm... well, actually, I'm not sure... you be the judge.

Note: Does not feature cruelty to hamsters.

The Japanese continue to progress in robotics, with sony introducing the SDR4X II at this year's "Robodex" convention. As soon as they get one that can walk stairs and clean cat puke, I'm there baby, I'm there.

I mean, really, how do you train for something like this?

A Moroccan publication accused the government Monday of providing unusual assistance to U.S. troops fighting in Iraq by offering them 2,000 monkeys trained in detonating land mines.

You'd think they'd need more than 2000. So long and thanks for all the bannanas!

I've gone on record many times saying that the west fights wars like no other culture in existence. While history has proven without question that our methods of warfighting are superior to all others, what is not often pointed out is how idiosyncratic they can be. No place is this quirkiness thrown into a starker light than our conception of the special status of a "prisoner of war."

These perceptions originate with the ancient Greeks. No culture up to that time had ever attempted to compose its armies of relatively free and equal citizen-soldiers. Unique in all the world, a Greek soldier had the expectation of protection under law, and the ability to speak his mind without fear of arbitrary reprisal. By enshrining these beliefs in the core of their culture Greek soldiers ceased to be merely chattel and acquired an intrinsic value, became more than simply a shrieking rabble whose individuals were patently expendable simply because the general didn't like the way they smelled that morning.

The next innovation would be brought by Christianity. By instilling a core doctrine of universal love, by preaching that all human beings are intrinsically valuable, and by firmly placing the concept of a universal, immutable law to which even despots and emperors must obey at its center, Christianity allowed the definition of "value" to be spread from the soldier to the serf. Certainly these concepts would be eclipsed and ignored in brutal ways, but they were never completely forgotten, and, in this particular combination, they were powerful and unique.

Unfortunately the inheritors of the Greek traditions, the Romans, like every other culture ever to contact the near east, became seduced by the concept of god-emperor. As they adopted more and more of the trappings of absolute power the very beliefs that made them the rulers of the known world gradually corroded into dust. What the barbarians eventually destroyed in the forth century of the common era would have been unrecognizable to a senator of the third century BC, and in no small part even to Augustus himself four centuries before the collapse.

The Germanic tribesmen who swept away imperial rule in the west may have been primitive and illiterate, but they brought with them powerful and new beliefs in the supremacy and sanctity of the warrior. It was still possible, even acceptable, for a Visigoth or Merovingian chieftain to lop the head off a soldier due to incompetence, cowardice, or even insubordination, but that chieftain was then expected to compensate the soldier's family a fixed amount of gold for his fit of temper.

What gradually developed in the time between the fall of the empire and the rise of the nation-state was a unique culture that not only saw the value of the combatant at war, but also of that same combatant in surrender. By distributing land and rights to a comparatively large number of noblemen and welding this to innovative methods of finance, feudalism imbued the elite warrior with a certain kind of "equity" that made his life as valuable to his enemy as it did to his lord.

Unique in all the world this culture evolved an entire economy based on the concept of ransom. Anywhere else on the planet a knight or soldier unhorsed or disarmed was seen as merely an inconveniently (and therefore ever-so-temporarily) wriggling piece of meat. In the West, however, that selfsame helpless enemy was not seen as an impediment, but rather as an opportunity, a poker chip wrapped in a tin can valuable only as long as he lived.

Knock a knight off his horse and you were entitled to all his stuff, but if you stayed calm enough not to kill him you could offer it all back, for a price. More than one noble family got its start in the chaos of the tourney field when a freeborn boy got a lucky blow in on an unsuspecting knight, and conversely more than one literal king's ransom had to be paid because an effete nobleman decided the coincidence of birth outweighed the strength of desperation.

Elaborate rules were drawn up for ransoms, not just on the battlefield but in tournaments as well. Mercy for a surrendered foe gradually stopped being a novelty and more and more was expected of a "civilized" gentleman. Rituals were developed for the recognition of individual surrender, rules were created for what constituted proper and improper treatment, and an entire infrastructure was built up almost exclusively for the exchange of prisoners for gold.

It's important to emphasize that this culture of chivalry existed nowhere else in the world. Islam may hold itself up as the guiding light of religious tolerance, but the emirs and sultans thought nothing of slaughtering thousands of disarmed foes like livestock in a single day. In the Americas a victorious warrior could often expect a drunken, colorful, but most of all extremely short and sharp victory celebration, and in Asia a head could be separated from a set of shoulders literally at the twitch of an eye.

Of course, a peasant didn't fare all that much better in the West. After all, what good is ransoming someone who's worth less than the land they till? Mercy toward a common foot soldier developed relatively late in the west, as the concept of personal liberty and universal justice took hold in the enlightenment of the seventeenth century. Even then it was more a redrawing of the boundaries of who could benefit from chivalry rather than a transformation of the concept itself. The sense of "fair play" and "fair game" at its core survived. When Europe boiled out of its rapidly industrializing homeland for the final time in the sixteenth century, it took with it not only the unique concept of warfare as a form of cultural extermination, but also that there could actually be rules to govern this horrific idea.

The more traditional, but no less sophisticated, agrarian societies of the rest of the world were confronted with a juggernaught of unprecedented lethality and efficiency which paradoxically demanded nearly inconceivable mercies to it combatants. It was beyond surreal to such cultures that these incredibly vicious and always victorious white men expected to be spared simply because they threw down their arms. Even worse, to slaughter these devils as proscribed by tradition lead to even worse predations rained down on your head. Not only were these maniacs undefeatable, they were insane.

In a strange sort of way it's like football (US rules) or cricket... you simply have to grow up with it for it to make sense. A westerner will have no trouble understanding the distinction between a bomber crew dropping firebombs on a city being "fair game" and that selfsame crew in parachutes suddenly "off limits". That the only difference between the former and the latter is now the victims of the bombing have an extra set of mouths to feed is immaterial to a westerner. The city was, after all, being defended with anti-aircraft artillery. To be called subhuman for shooting the perpetrators of a terrifying attack simply because they're floating within easy reach beggars the imagination of most other cultures.

The rest of the world did eventually catch on, deciding that this bizarre fascination for the west's defeated and dishonored could be used against them, a chink in our armor they have been studiously prying on ever since. What they do not understand is our concern for captives is actually one of the strengths of the way we fight wars. Time and again returned prisoners insist the primary source of their strength in captivity was the knowledge that their government and their countrymen were doing everything in their power to get them out safely. Our soldiers take calculated instead of suicidal risks because of this fact. Finally, by caring humanely for our own captives we ensure that the next generation is raised with a father to teach instead of a legend to avenge.

Because you see for us, at root, to do anything less would be barbaric.

My father-in-law in Arkansas does not believe me when I tell him that mobile homes, or to be politicaly correct pre-fabricated housing, literally have a bullseye painted on the top of them.

Yeah of course one of my in-laws live in a PFH. BUT it's a hopped up one. I mean, who else has a jacuzzi on the back deck, a swimming pool 15 feet from the back door complete with a fridge with all the alcohol you will possibly need to drink while you float the day away.

I still have not seen a tornado yet while visiting.

No, this is not about Spring, Summer, Winter, Fall, it's about SEX!

Computertized sex! On condoms! That look like SIMS!

20 positions in all to click and and ogle at!

Ectoplasmic double exposures! Spiritual developer goofs! Diaphanous camera straps! Haunted old film! Freaky Photoshops! All this and more more more can be found at GhostStudy.com.

I've actually read about the Japanese fertility celebrations in various books, but hadn't actually seen any pictures of the event. Until now.

Update: even more pics of the same parade are here. I especially like the glasses and... umm... "nose" disguise. Oh come on, I know you at least smiled at this. It's an ancient fertility ritual for f's sake. Lighten up! :)

Warning: Filed under "funny" because I think it is, and none of the pictures represent willies actually attached to a person. However, some workplaces might not agree with me. You've been warned. :)

Instapundit leads us to this op-ed piece about the political agendas of people who count the dead.

Seems that India has opened its very first "sex museum", intending to instruct rather than titilate. Personally, I think it's a great idea. Kids gotta learn it somewhere, why not somewhere with all the facts?

Of course it would never fly out here, because we all know that such things "encourage" behaivior. Like learning how to wash your hands after going to the toilet "encourages" people to sit on the pot more often.

Proving that an entire country is no match for one plucky British tabloid, the Sun is at it again, this time "attacking" a French costal patrol vessel moored near Tower Bridge on the Thames. Not to worry, as all they fired at them was a few sacks of feathers. Go Sun!

Via On the Third Hand

Read this article in the Post this morning about some new theories on the Earth's core and how it functions. A "maverick" geophysicist is putting forward a theory that the core is a giant natural fission reactor, and is running out of fuel. The prediction follows that should this reactor actually stop, well, mass hysteria would result. While interesting, I think the time frame of "one hundred years to one billion years from now" is just a really fancy way of saying "I don't know".

We are officially in the home stretch. We have hit the 3rd trimester. From what I'm told, this is the worst 3 months of the entire thing. (Well, duh, you just keep getting bigger and then you have to 'produce' a small human in the end)

Every night we play baby games. Tap on my stomach to see if she taps back. She usually does. What is getting a bit weird is that she is starting to really move, to the point that one side of my stomach gets rock hard and pointy. Thick pointy. I have no clue if this a head or a butt sticking up. I KNOW it's not a foot. Feet are different. Don't ask me how, they just are.

I also finally have achieved the 'brown line', or linea nigra (if you want to be all official and medical). It's subtle, but it's there. And lopsided. Or rather, I have a lopsided belly button, since this line runs along next to the left side of it.

Scott and I have finally gotten the baby's room cleaned out, the vertical blinds torn off the walls (I DESPISE verticle blinds- they are too noisy. *CLACKITY CLACKITY CLACK!*) The room has been painted a nice lilac color and now all it needs is the wall paper border put up, which my mother will do for me in April. We'll also be doing corner moulding running down each of the walls. I still have to do kitty paw prints on her closet and bedroom doors.

Now all I really have to do is look for some curtains for the room and get the set of shutters for the window. I think I want to sleep in that room when I'm done with it! It's going to look really cute when it's done.

Scott still does the husbandly thing and points at my belly everyday and says, "Haha...your belly is bigger than mine!" Well, ok, not really, but he has noticed that my belly button ring is no longer actually in my belly button anymore. All the more for me to work on getting rid of it once Olivia arrives.

At some point next week I have to go and get my glucose tolerance test done. This is where you get to drink the 'special drink' that apparently is like drinking 5 cups of sugar with a tablespoon of water, and then get stabbed to see if your body tolerated it. I am looking foward to being stabbed again. I cannot wait. Oh how I love being stuck by lab people.

It's hard to think that in 3 months there is going to be another human in the house.

I dunno man, I'm sure tushyClean is a legitimate product with many satisfied customers. Knowing me, though, Ellen would push the lever and end up in the front yard. Don't forget, comes in a variety of colors!

Not content with graphic biblical descriptions, one Russian main has claimed to have recorded the actual sounds of hell. Warning, as noted, these are the actual sounds of the souls of the eternally damned. We cannot be responsible for those who click this link. If you have a pacemaker, high blood pressure, or a history of angina in your family, please do not click the link. Not for small children, the faint of heart, or the weak of stomach. At least one woman actually gave birth prematurely after listening to the awful, horrible sounds of millions of souls in eternal agony. YOU HAVE BEEN WARNED!

When going to Hawaii, don't miss the volcanoes, the black-sand beaches, the Pearl Harbor memorial, the helicopter tours... and the giant black rock penis. No, really.

Don't you just hate it when things like this happens?

How do you clean a mess up like that?

TidyButt, when not just any enema will do. Ok, it's official, you can buy absolutely anything on the internet.

Mar 23 1989

In 1989, a 1000-foot diameter asteroid misses the Earth by only 500,000 miles.

(Astronomers did not see it until it passed.)

Ok Damion, I found your welding mask. You owe me a beer. :)

Say you're an ex-member of the Soviet Union, just chock-a-block with ugly buildings, monstrous statues of your oppressors, and more guard towers and barbed wire than you can shake a stick at. What're you gonna do? Well, if you're a canned mushroom mogule (no, really!) in Lithuania, you buy it all up and turn it into Stalinworld!. According to the article: It combines the charms of a Disneyland with the worst of the Soviet gulag prison camp.

Now don't that just sound like more fun than a tree full of monkeys on meth?

Where malted marketing meets herbal managerie, we present the new power drink.

Yeah, when you're pet's smarter than you are, it's probably time to get a rock

In a bizzare kind of reverse-carpetbagging, looks like everyone else is "stealing" New England's barns. Got news for ya folks... there's nearly as many barns in upstate New York, I've seen them. Oh, sure, there's probably a ganster or two in the foundations, but whaddayagonnado?

Found this article detailing what life is like living at 10,500 feet in Leadville, CO. Exploding potato chip bags, ice cream that bubbles out of its container, boiling water you can almost touch, and all manner of other oddities. Turns out the place is a kind of laboratory for high altitude studies.

I guess because it's a translation, this article doesn't make any sense to me. Seems it has something to do with baseball, and wanking, and "shooting for distance", but I'm not real sure how it ties together.

What I want to know is who did they get to go in after and measure these things?

Eh, he's a bank robber, the guys in a rush, right? No time to be all neat about it, just wave a gun around, grab a bunch of money, and haul ass, right? No bag? No problem! Just stick it in your pants and head on out. I mean, what's the worst that could happen?

Jeff gets 2 no-prizes in one day for bringing the latest news about the UK's Sun and its one-paper crusade to pull some stuffing out of France's Pres. I dunno, calling him a "harlot" is probably a bit harsh.

But only a bit.

And if this wasn't just about French nationalism then please tell me why their elite is getting the vapors over a goofy British tabloid?

In yet another example of a media darling getting caught with his underoos showing, a real documentary film maker takes some time out to fact-check Michael Moore's latest film, "Bowling for Columbine". The results are startling to say the least:

The bottom line: can a film be called a documentary when the viewer cannot trust an iota of it, not only the narration, but the video?

Read it all, especially if you think you agree with Mr. Moore's views and politics, enjoy his films, or if you like reading a particularly well-done takedown of a media primadonna.

I don't like Michael Moore, but for awhile I tried. Everyone kept going on and on about "Roger & Me", his film about his attempts to interview the chief executive of General Motors after the company closed a plant in Flint MI. I didn't see the movie, although I can't tell you why I kept passing on it, but I did try and watch "TV Nation", another critic's darling, this time on network TV.

I found Moore to be obnoxious, elitist, virulently left wing, and so completely unreasonable in his attempts to "display hypocrisy" he set my teeth on edge at nearly every turn. How can anyone really expect an enlightened interview from a corporate executive when the purported "journalist" is dressed in a giant chicken outfit? Nowadays the MTV show Jackass does some of the same stuff, but at least they make no attempt to pose it as real journalism.

Jeff gets yet another no-prize for bringing this report on a collapsing star to our attention. With picture!

Screwing up the digits of a phone number can have interesting results, especially when it's a helpline, that gets routed to a phone sex line.

Something similar happened to my workplace awhile back. We had a 1-800 number for our helpline, and a 1-888 number so people could call the office toll-free. The president of the board was trying to get the office but instead of dialing 1-888-[office number], she dialed 1-888-[helpline number]. The results were, shall we say, colorful.

BBCnews is carrying this report on recent discoveries regarding the mass of the oldest black hole yet found. Surprisingly, it's just as massive as the ones we find today, yet was formed when the universe was only 6% of its current age.

Because I wanted to write about something else

What I learned while installing a new convertible top on my 1971 Alfa Romeo Spider:

• If the book tells you to use a 1/8th drill bit to remove rivets, you will generally have the best results using a 1/8th drill bit
• Failing that, a much larger drill bit will do.
• Eventually.
• Large drill bits make rivet heads spin round and round and round and round without actually removing them, but with a bit of skill (pushing), they break off anyway.
• Looking into your tool box and finding a 1/8th drill bit two weeks later can lead to learning colorful new combinations of swear words.
• Ziplock bags are your friends.
• Drain holes are not.
• When given the chance, all small, unbelievably rare fasteners will always seek out said drain holes.
• A magnetic wand will not reach down a drain hole to rescue a fastener.
• No matter how many times you use "f*ck" in a sentence, cursing will not levitate a fastener out of a drain hole.
• When you plug the drain holes with foil, the fasteners will hop and dance around it trying to get in (see "glue solvent", below).
• RIT dye will correctly dye the cloth trim of a 33 year old Italian convertible.
• After seven coats.
• Cats enjoy stepping in fresh dye.
• Cats enjoy laying on freshly dyed cloth even more.
• Dye will stain tile. And cats. And fingers. And carpet.
• If you run from the kitchen to the garage very fast you will only drip dye on the carpet once.
• This does not impress your wife.
• If you use glue solvent in a small closed garage, you will not pass out.
• If you use glue solvent in a small closed garage, you will see the walls turn interesting colors.
• Always open the garage door before using glue solvent.
• Having the Euro gain against the dollar just before you order parts sucks.
• It takes two people to put a front bow gasket on correctly.
• You learn several new and colorful ways to construct a sentence when one of those people is a short Italian yankee who is busy with her own project.
• An awl (used to line up holes & punch through vinyl) is the most useful tool on the planet.
• It's a bad sign when you have to pull the front of the top up at least half a foot to connect it to the rear of the car.
• Cheap tops are cheap because they leave out about 6 inches of material over the length of the top.
• Two small, skinny people are not enough to close a new cheap top the first time.
• Even when one of them creates new swear words on the spot.
• No matter how many times you use "f*ck" in a sentence, cursing will not telekinetically close a top.
• There's a certain kind of oil filter wrench that can actually double as a top-closing tool.
• Almost...
• Two people, a filter wrench, colorful swear words, and about an hour of labor is barely enough to close a new, cheap top.
• The glue used to cement portions of a convertible top is the cartoon glue Wiley Coyote tried to use to stop the road runner. Gooey, color of butterscotch, foul smell, sticks to everything? Yup, ACME glue-all (aka "pliobond").
• A small pint-sized paint can full of ACME glue-all is awkward to use inside a car.
• A plastic cup is much easier to manage.
• ACME glue-all dissolves plastic cups.
• Alfa probably didn't make the interior of this car vinyl specifically to resist giant oil-slick-like glue spills, but it did so anyway.
• Using ACME glue-all in a tight, enclosed space will not make you pass out.
• Using ACME glue-all in a tight, enclosed space will not make you see funny colors.
• Using ACME glue-all in a tight, enclosed space will make you wish you hadn't eaten that big greasy burger so quickly.
• I have an amazing ability to resist nausea.
• Ellen does not.
• Only wimps sketch how things are put together before they take them apart. Real men squint at diagrams and spend two days puzzling it out themselves.
• Just because one obscurely routed, impossible-to-get-at cable is hard to pull tight doesn't mean the other one will be.
• It is always better to check that an obscurely routed, impossible-to-get-at cable is actually attached to something before pulling it tight.
• A very small screwdriver is very useful for rerouting cables pulled half-way out of their pockets.
• Ziplock bags are your friend
• There's nothing quite as satisfying as the crystal-clear back glass of a top you put on yourself.

Even if it did take three weeks.

It's not nice to scare the kitty. Not to worry, cat's fine. A little accordion-ed, but fine. Why do I know? One of our bunch does the same sort of thing about once a month, and none of them are even scratched. Their heads are only used to keep their noses from falling off.

Ellen was outraged of course, but she was laughing anyway.

I was actually wondering how long it would take, but it seems someone's finally hooked up the Masons with the government's secret weapons programs. We really don't make this stuff up... but boy do they ever.

A bank-shot via Right Wing News.

Looks like Terry Pratchett's next book has been announced, this one titled The Wee Free Men, due out in May of this year. As with the past few books, this one takes the discworld into a new direction with a new set of characters (although we have met the Pictsies previously). From the description:

"Another world is colliding with this one," said the toad. "All the monsters are coming back."

"Why?" said Tiffany.

"There's no one to stop them.

There was silence for a moment.

Then Tiffany said, "There's me."

If you haven't read Pratchett before you're really missing out on some funny stuff. Our Goth friends in particular should get an enormous hoot out of:

• Mort, wherein Death takes a holiday.
• Witches Abroad, detailing the (mis)adventures of three witches who end up trapped in the machinations of a fairy tale gone wrong (stars my wife's hero, Granny Weatherwax).
• Reaper Man, wherein the Grim Reaper gets existential and opts for early retirement.

There are dozens more, all are very good, but these were our particular favorites. Enjoy!

I was surprised to discover that Salaam Pax is still "on the air" in the blogosphere. Read him while you still can for a look at what it's really like over there.

Here's to hoping we get all kinds of interesting updates from him now and far into the future.

We've watched every single one of the "Walking with" shows the day they've aired on Discovery, even when it meant a six hour marathon busily poking each other to stay away (we tend not to stay up much past 10 around here). As usual, the Brits will get to see it first, but it looks like the next "Walking with" show will be about human evolution. Should provide a nice overview of current thought on human origins.

Today just blows big time. We're talking serious, cover-your-head-in-black-and-make-afghanis-say-,"wow, that chick is depressed"-sort-of-thing.

I got a 'restriction' from my doctor. I am not allowed to do my normal aerobic routine anymore. No more jumping up and down. No more laughing at the Austrailian chicks with weights going "poored concrete... in the laygs... bend ya knees pick ya bah up." No more brow beating the husband because he's a lazy lush. I have a free pass to park my ass and it's killing me.

I am only allowed to go for walks now. I did manage not to gain any weight this time around. WOOHOO! Only a 20 pound weight gain so far! On target!

This is all due to some incredible edema that occured in my ankles and knees this past week. Ankles that blew to the size of my calves ("it's because your ancestors needed to flee from the base of that volcano." says the soon-to-be-disappeared-husband) and hurt when I bend them.

I am not retaining water all over, just in my ankles, knees and fingers. Edema... it looks more like a really bad case of cellulitis (especially at 6 pm) and is rather uncomfortable.

No, they are not concerned with preclampsia. I have a normal blood pressure and am not showing any other symptoms of it. They are concerned that I am on my feet most of the day and am not able to lay down at some point to take the pressure off my feet. (Who the hell lays down at work?) I did mention that I sit down frequently, but that was quickly brushed off as that not being good enough.

I'll just have to seek out the stickiest pair of panty hose yet! Scott thinks the hose I have now could stop bullets. He ain't seen nothin' yet. I got to call A up since she works at a pharmacy for some pressure stockings! They may take 15 minutes to put on, but by god I will have ankles again, oh yes I will!

Because you may find out you're not eating what you think you're eating.

What with Iraqi soldiers surrendering weeks in advance of any actual hostilities, having something white to wave at an ROV or an unsuspecting foreign journalist might be a problem. Not to worry, the folks over at Slycraft novelties have come up with this convenient surrender kit that you can mail to Iraq to help with the cause! From the site:

Update: And don't forget to order your set of genuine american brass balls. Mail 'em to your French friends, so at least they'll know what real ones look like.

Update 2: Also not to be missed: the Gulf War drinking game (via The Lex Files).

For the rural fetishist in your life, the one who can't just toodle down to a local store because one doesn't exist, or who's just wants to convenience of home delivery, we're happy to present to you The Fetish-Factory, an apparently very large on-line store for absolutely everything fetish.

Apologes to the crew at TCM if they already knew all about this place and/or actually featured it in their mag at some point. I'm old and forget things sometimes.

I'd never heard of the complete, unrepentant, spiral-eyed wackos also known as the "Westboro Baptist Church" until weirdlinks featured their oh-so savory notice about how Mr. Rogers is now burning in hell. But apparently lots of other folks have, as this nice ADL write up shows. Reading their FAQ simply proves once again that you can be well educated and remain utterly insane. I'd compare them with Nazi's but they'd just think it a compliment.

At least they're not in Arkansas.

Definitely one of those things someone should've thought of sooner. A set of "specially configured" ladies underwear that is designed to stimulate... umm... well, you know. This just changed the entire complexion of next years' valentines day!

And people thought BB guns were dangerous:

THIS astonishing X-ray reveals how a boy cheated death by a millimetre when he was shot in the face with a harpoon.

MSNBC has this article on just how, exactly, those $10 "free pay per view" descramblers actually work. Hint: They don't, not really. They just block your box's ability to talk to the home office. Eventually the home office notices this, and then tells the box to shut off. Worse, the box logs all the PPV stuff, so when communications is restored you get a big honking bill for all your "freebies".

C'mon people, the cable company designed the digital cable system to be as tamper-free as possible. Analog boxes were easy to snark because they were just a bunch of circuits and wires. These new boxes are computerized way beyond anything before. I wouldn't be surprised if there was a little peephole camera that took pictures of you wanking to the "Girls Gone Gaga" video you ordered.

Yup, I said factory! You did know about the Fw-190 factory, right? Well, simulatorworld.de recently published this interview with the president of the factory. Let's see, that makes, what, three or four different kinds of WWII fighter craft you can purchase new from some factory or another. Sometimes the world is a very cool place.

Proof that just because you're well educated doesn't mean you can't be a complete spiral-eyed looney, we bring you the real reason the Bush administration wants to go to war with Iraq. Freedom? No. Oil? No. Terrorism? Nope. As should be obvious to anyone by now, the real reason is to aquire ancient extraterrestrial technology buried in the remains of Iraq's ancient city-states.

Yup. We're invading Iraq to capture E.T.'s phone. You heard it here first!

A bank-shot via NakedWriting.

I dunno. I think we're just going to let the Instant Girlfriend Kit speak for itself.

What I find kinda scary is it went for 44 bucks.

I don't think I'll be ordering, mainly because I'm saving up for car parts, but I sure do think Star Spangled Ice Cream is a clever site. I especially like the graphic for the "Nutty Environmentalist" flavor!

Found via Emperor Misha.

See wild interspecies love fests!

See sexy kitties drunk off their asses!

Satisfy your cat fancy!

All this and more can be found at Kitties Gone Wild!!!

Nina should be sure to show Billy (the veteran fisherman in Ellen's family) this pic of, as the article says, "the hammerhead that got nailed". Warning: somewhat graphic. Apparently some gents hooked a 15 foot hammerhead on a drag line. While reeling it in, a much bigger tiger shark decided to turn the hammerhead into a hammersnack. The pic shows what was left (head).

If I ever visit Australia I think I'm just going to look at the beach from my hotel room... much safer that way!

I dunno, I started out wanting to hammer a company putting a naked 80-something in their annual report as a demonstration of their "transparency". But really, when's the last time you ever heard of an executive board with a sense of humor? I mean, its obvious they're no good at it, but they're trying.

BBCnews is carrying this piece about the discovery of the first mummies every found in the UK. Weirdly, seem to have died fully 600 years before they were buried.

Found this space.com article about new discoveries regarding the crab nebula pulsar. Seems they're now detecting "minipulses" on the order of 2 nanoseconds. The only thing they can figure out might be generating them is some sort of weird plasma ball formed by the monstrous magnetic field. They figure whatever is generating them is only about 2 feet across, roughly the size of a beach ball.

Just thought you all should know, horses and swimming pools don't mix. Not to worry, everything turned out OK at the end. Some horses got loose and started wandering around, eventually one of them stumbled into a swimming pool. I especially like the fact that the trapped horse's buddies stood around and stared at her the whole time.

My ol' "Sounds-Fishy-o'-meter" was pinging like crazy when I read about Rachel Corrie getting run over by a bulldozer. The Post, like nearly all the mainstream outlets, were just being their ol' monkey selves by concentrating on the grizly details of the incident and assuming anyone in a bulldozer is automatically a bad guy.

I didn't want to crow about it, because someone (however annoying, naive, and infantile) died. If she'd gotten bashed in the head and sent home wrapped in bandages I'd have crowed to the roof about it.

However, Bigwig over at Silflay wrote this piece up to show that, while tragic, we are most definitely not hearing all there is to know about Ms. Corrie.

Oh, and I especially liked this lovely quote:

"It's possible they [the protesters] were not as disciplined as we would have liked," Thom Saffold, a founder and organizer of the International Solidarity Movement, said in a telephone interview from the group's base in Ann Arbor, Mich. "But we're like a peace army. Generals send young men and women off to operations, and some die." [emphasis added]

This from the kind of group that says a single civilian killed in Iraq is a war crime worthy of indicting an entire nation.

Follow the money and I don't doubt you'll find this... thing... supported by rich Arab "charities" funded by erstwhile allies (hint: rhymes with "pouty"). I can only hope this particular useful idiot was unaware of how cynically she was being used.

Ever wonder what "couch bombing" was? What exactly was involved in a "Rear Admiral"? Have a feeling that sometimes a "snowball" wasn't just a lump of frozen water?

Well, ok, neither did I. But this collection of dirty proverbs was funny nonetheless. Amuse your friends! Scandalize the neighbors! Make mom and dad wonder what the hell you're talking about (again)!

We've covered this once or twice before, but it's always good to give refreshers. Ever wonder how John Edward et. al. do it? Hint: It's not because they talk to dead people, it's because they're really good at "cold reading". And separating you from your money, of course.

Feeling like getting your tongue pierced? Be sure to read about the brain abscess connection.

It's the Camel Toe Cup! Amaze your friends!

One of the things always put forward about why humans like cats is that they're roughly the same size as a human baby (and all this time I thought it was because they yakked in such interesting and amusing places). Well, turns out that's probably true, as was involuntarily demonstrated by Cassie, Damion & Kris's cat. We'd given them a "onesie" to use as a pattern and base for their "make your toes curl" going home outfit. Tiny little outfit + small unsuspecting cat leads us to:

When Onesies Attack!

Must... maintain... dignity...	For this, impudent human, I will widdle on your Game Cube	Even in pink, the mind control works. Treats may cause me to be merciful to you.
Notice to all feline comrades: This human is dangerous to dignity when bored!	Some strange people who crashed a party awhile ago

Slashdot posted a note about the latest, greatest scientific contest, the DARPA grand challenge. The goal is to get a vehicle to drive autonomously across a 250 mile course in and around Los Angeles and Las Vegas.

I'll bet you a quarter it takes exactly 20 minutes for some liberal left-wing-nut to start crowing about how DARPA is part of the military, and we're all just being sheep manipulated into figuring out how to help the army prosecute "mass genocide". Bullsh*t. Getting a robot car to drive all over the place is just plain cool.

Many of you by now have probably read about the Japanese "see through skirt" fad. Just wanted you to know it has been proven a fake. Be sure to check out that second link, because it has great pics of the "boobie scarf" which is not fake, and (to me) is a lot weirder.

Strongbad can't answer e-mails today because he's playing a new video game. Rember: you must stomp 10 peasants to achieve BURNINATION!!!

Ok, I'm done being pregnant. This is not happening fast enough. Yeah ok, I know, I should be enjoying this, but I'm getting annoyed with my body.

Bending over (or rather bending at the knees and squatting) to pick something up is rather uncomfortable. Rather uncomfortable like trying to cram a bowling ball up ... well, you know ... is uncomfortable. This basketball that I apparently swallowed has gotten in the way to the point that I can't even put panty hose on correctly. Or socks. Or shoes. Or pants. And it's only going to get worse.

Now I get looks from Scott like: "Dear god, could you get any bigger?!? No no... please, don't stand up... no really, I was just leaving, no no... please..." [bZZZZAp!!]. I look at myself in the mirror getting dressed, "Yeah, I am, aren't I? It's quite a bit larger today. DAYMN!" Then trying to get the clothes on that fit you last week this week is a new chore.

I'm also finding out that talking on 'pregnancy chat' rooms is NOT a good idea. To sit back and watch is fun, but to participate is like feeding yourself to the wolves.

Example:

Mom0f50ScreamingAngels: My labor was so easy that I did not even know I was in labor. I was cooking dinner and it slid right out on the floor. You know what I did? I just put it in the sink for a moment and finished carving the roast, served it (the roast, but I did have to look) and then tended to my new darling.

TwinboysandaTwoYearOld: Oh yeah? My labor was so intense... my left leg fell off! I sewed it back on without anesthesia while I was breastfeeding.

There's always an "oooo" or "poor dear" comments being made for stuff like that.

I just sit back and wonder what the hell is wrong with these people. If they are like that online, who knows what they are like in real life! Are these the same women who put their 3 week old embryo into the ultra-expensive schools?!? Are these the same women who compare how 'advanced' their kids are compared to other children?!? Could this be me?!?

Nah. I gave a "onesie" to my goth friends so they could make a going home outfit out of spikes, leather, and PVC pipe. I fully plan to be the soccer mom from hell. Watch the f*ck out, little miss Susie Minivan!

Not safe for work due to the porn pop up ads!

This is a cute video of a cat and his fish.

When gizmologists get busy, we proudly present to you the 1/5th scale Sherman Tank project. Complete with working potato cannon! Yes, I want to build one. No, Ellen won't let me. :)

And Kris, be sure to have towels handy to wipe up the drool when D sees this.

I came to my study of Christianity relatively late in life, shortly after I graduated college in my mid 20s. Before that time I was, at various points, atheistic (no god), agnostic (prove it), or deist (yeah, ok, God, but boy are His religions f'd up or what?) So for the vast majority of my life up to that point I had no real conception of just how deeply ingrained Christianity is on western societies, not just in America but everywhere considered "western". Most shocking of all to me was the discovery that Christianity in no small part created the secular and scientific society I loved and my "evangelical" associates hated. I had discovered that the belief system whose most vocal adherents literally made my toes curl in their ignorance was actually what made my way of life possible. How did that happen?

By melding the philosophical practicality of the Greeks with the organizational skill of the Romans, the early Christians created a powerful system to allow people to reason their way to faith. The works of men like Clement, Justin Martyr, Irenaeus, Origen, Tertullian and others instilled a tradition of logical criticism heretofore the exclusive pervue of the Grecian Jewish communities like that in Alexandria.

Of equal importance was Christianity's emphasis (again, copied from earlier Jewish communities) on monasticism. When the tides of Germanic and Nordic tribesmen finally overwhelmed the battlements of Europe and washed away the crumbling supports of the classic western world, the monasteries remained like rocks on a storm-swept beach. They remained not just as repositories for books that would otherwise be used to wipe the backside of a nose-picking Viking, but also as islands preserving the tradition of men (and, far too infrequently, women) dedicating their lives to learning for its own sake, indeed for the sake of their eternal soul.

European thought seemed to take a nosedive into the "dark ages" not because of a disdain for knowledge in and of itself, but because the instability of the countryside made it too dangerous to travel outside the walls of a monastery. Even when it was safe to travel there really wasn't anywhere to go. Largely rural even at the height of Roman power, Western Europe simply didn't have libraries on the scale of Alexandria or Antioch. Certainly the Muslims, who simply had the dumb luck of invading the most ancient and literate section of the planet west of the Himalayas, were in no hurry to share the hoards of knowledge they'd inherited, stolen, from the Infidel.

So the engine of Christian thought was forced to sit idle not from a breakdown of its parts, but from a lack of fuel to fire the boiler. It would take most of eight centuries for that fuel to be found, rediscovered, as crusaders brought back crates of books from both Spain and the holy land, and bilingual Jews made themselves available for their translation. The tank was filled, the parts were cleaned and oiled. It would only take someone turning the key to start the machine wheezing and chuffing back into motion.

That someone would be Thomas Aquinas, a brilliant thirteenth century thinker who set about harmonizing the spiritual world of developed medieval Christianity with the hard-nosed philosophy of the "rediscovered ancients". He did so with such insight that some of his arguments are still used today, eight centuries later. However, by even making the attempt he, and hundreds, thousands, of his monastic compatriots set a powerful precedent... Christianity would forever after be seen as a religion that both invited and paid attention to criticism not just from theological grounds, but from more secular "philosophical" ones.

Less than 75 years later the Death came and changed everything. By culling perhaps as much as one third to one half of Europe's population, the great plagues of the fourteenth century transformed nearly every aspect of European culture. The scarcity of labor forced a reliance on technology, which in turn created a practical market for the exchange of ideas that worked, not through the esoteric assertion of a monastic propeller-head, but through the school of hard-knock reality.

It was at this point that the engine lit by Aquinas was routed onto a side rail that took both its passengers and its purported engineers down the track to our modern world. The man who pulled that switch was named Galileo Galilee.

A brilliant, practical man with a tendency to speak the truth as it was proven instead of as it was given, Galileo was at first actually supported by the gigantic enveloping power that the Christian Church had become. Were it not for the movement founded by a truely meddlesome and hard-headed monk and the utter intransigence of a woman who refused to recognize she had no business ruling a country, let alone a church, Galileo's teachings would probably have been embraced outright.

Of course, it didn't work out that way, but through a series of technological and political coincidences, it didn't need to. The development of the printing press allowed Galileo's theories, and more importantly his techniques, to be spread literally faster than they could be burned. The rise of Protestantism allowed the nascent practicality of science to survive not because of any innate value, but because anything the pope hated was by definition something of value.

The fact that any nation that utilized the discoveries of these scientists almost automatically became a military and economic power was not lost on anyone paying attention. If that meant ignoring the growing number of increasingly uncomfortable theological questions their research was rapidly uncovering, well, as long as it meant our cannons blew the heads off of those who chose not to ignore them better and faster that was just fine.

Eventually though, the discoveries were so obvious, so powerful, and so revolutionary they could not be ignored. Science was proving that at nearly every point the Bible touched the natural world, it was getting it wrong. The child of reason, so carefully nurtured at the very heart of the religion that protected it for so long, had returned unrecognizable, seemingly intent on consuming the parent.

At this point, occurring roughly everywhere around the late nineteenth century, western civilization suffered a sort of nervous breakdown. Faith, still a core requirement for a well-rounded human being, became far harder to realize in a world where one could not relax comfortably in the warm pages of the inerrant book of one's ancestors. It suddenly had to be found through serious inquiry, long and hard quests for both internal and external knowledge, commitments people from western cultures many times simply found too hard or too frightening or just too much work to accomplish.

Two avenues were chosen, neither worked very well. Europe slid into a cold steel hell of nihilism, fascism, and communism, ultimately resulting in millions of its own citizens murdered in mechanized meat grinders so efficient we simply have no clue as to exactly how many were shoved in. The United States suffered a flat failure of nerve, with large sections of its society choosing to ignore and deny and fight any knowledge, any fact, that might upset the grand illusion that allowed them to accept the results of knowledge while repudiating its implications. The result was a citizenry often breathtakingly ignorant of the workings of the modern world, coming all too close in word and deed to the amber-frozen medieval Muslim fanatics they ridiculed from their own pulpits.

It would be tempting to think this leaves us at a crossroads today, but this is merely the narcissistic conceit of a culture still unable to come to terms with the universal truths of morality and mortality. We are instead still barreling across this dark and dangerous plane, riding an engine going so fast it broke the sound barrier long ago. It is badly dinged and worn in spots, and burns the unwary who touch it in the wrong places or at the wrong times. But its lights have guided us forward, steered us clear of the abyss of fanatacism and the cliff face of nihilism, even if it occasionally teetered or banged into each, hurling the willfully ignorant into one or the other at each turn.

And painted on its side, covered with decorations from a billion hands, intertwined with the symbols of a million beliefs and a thousand formulas, defining the debates even of those who utterly repudiate it, is the unmistakable symbol of the cross.