Throw Another Mongolian On The Barbie!

Fine dining at bd's in Indy.

Huck The Cat

Of Roseholme Cottage.

Artisano's Spices, Indianapolis

Berkley Springs, West Virginia

Stopped here at noon for lunch. Interesting town!

Sent from my iPhone

Where Do The Richest Americans Live?

One guess:

Merry Christmas

Light snowfall on Connecticut Avenue, looking towards Dupont Circle.

The Little Old Lady From Pasadena

I just saw her. She's about eighty years old, and she's driving a beautiful gold 1966 or '67 Ford Mustang down U.S. 1 in Alexandria.

Still turning all the boys' heads!

Sent from my iPhone

Black Swan Eggs

Black swan eggs were the secret ingredient in Ovaltine until the late 1960's.

Boing-boing.

Cool Wheels

Weird and unearthly motorcycles.

Dark Roasted Blend.

The Caganer

In Spain, in Catalonia to be precise, it has long been a Christmas tradition to decorate your nativity scene with a caganer. Loosely translated, it means "the defecator".

Is that a
dipped chocolate caganer?

They even sell caganers depicting famous people. Here's one:


Nothing is sacred:This is "Bob Esponja"

Of course they have a website!

From the BBC.

Retirement Planning Using Time Travel

Neatorama.

Do Cell Phones Cause Pregnancy?

Correlation vs. causation. Interesting.

Boing-boing.

Commodore 64 Returns

I had one of these, many years ago. Now, boing-boing reports:

Whomever currently owns the much-passed-around "Commodore USA" corporate trademarks is shipping a modern Commodore 64 clone ("It's back... and better than ever!") The new Commodore 64 is a modern functional PC as close to the original in design as humanly possible. It houses a modern mini-ITX PC motherboard featuring a Dual Core 525 Atom processor and the latest Nvidia Ion2 graphics chipset.

Sent from my iPhone

That Mexican Drone

Tam links to a humorous discussion of the somewhat mysterious crash of a drone aircraft in a residential neighborhood of El Paso, Texas, just a couple of blocks over the border.

Commenter 'TheOtherLarry' adds:

I'm betting they bought it at one of those pesky US air shows, using the air show loophole. You know those drone dealers will sell drones to anyone.

Sent from my iPhone

Broccoli And Exercise

A CNN pundit, Ilya Shapiro, just said:

Studies consistently show that diet and exercise are more closely correlated with positive medical outcomes than health insurance. So Congress should pass a law to require Americans to join gyms and buy broccoli rather than to buy health insurance.

Ha!

Can Congress Force You To Be Healthy?

Or eat your vegetables? Or exercise every day?

Good article in the New York Times.

NASA Scientists Plan To Approach Girl By 2018

Girl said to be "not cold or lifeless".


NASA Scientists Plan To Approach Girl By 2018


The Onion.

Easy Street

Future banner for Turonistan, due to the recent relocation of our embassy.

Charts And Graphs

Very cool! One of the most effective graphical displays of highly complex data I have ever seen.

And look what happens to the life expectancy of Japan from 1940 to 1945 (@ 2:10). Wow!

h/t Og the Neanderpundit

A Healthy Constitution

A federal judge in Virginia ruled today that the ObamaCare mandate that all Americans must purchase health insurance violates the U.S. Constitution. According to CNN, Federal District Judge Henry Hudson said,

"An individual's personal decision to purchase -- or decline purchase -- (of) health insurance from a private provider is beyond the historical reach of the U.S. Constitution," Hudson wrote. "No specifically constitutional authority exists to mandate the purchase of health insurance."

"Despite the laudable intentions of Congress in enacting a comprehensive and transformative health care regime, the legislative process must still operate within constitutional bounds," Hudson added. "Salutatory goals and creative drafting have never been sufficient to offset an absence of enumerated powers."

"Enumerated powers? Whuzzat?" responded the New York Times,

The case centers on whether Congress has authority under the Commerce Clause to compel citizens to buy a commercial product – namely health insurance – in the name of regulating an interstate economic market. Plaintiffs in the lawsuits argue there effectively would be no limits on federal power, and that the government could force people to buy American cars or, as Judge Hudson remarked at one hearing, “to eat asparagus.”

Asparagus?

Well, presumably if Congress could make a good case that the interstate market for asparagus was unsettled, they actually would pass a law to make us all eat asparagus. But does anybody else feel that the Times's reporter's use of the asparagus reference is pejorative? Intended to make the judge seem like a feeble-minded old rustic?

Our Intrepid Reporters

Concerning the recent episode of Sarah Palin's Alaska with Kate Gosselin sharing a camping trip with Sarah Palin, the Washington Post's blog, Compost, had this to say:

Last night's episode of Sarah Palin's Alaska was an exercise in perspective. Move the lens even a bit, and I'm sure the picture would change. From Kate Gosselin's perspective, the afternoon of Fun 'n Campin' 'n Roughin' It With the Palins, Alaska-style, probably becomes a nightmarish affair of dampness and numbness and danger. The closest analogue I can come up with is the time James Joyce and Marcel Proust shared a taxi.

Or the time that Curtis LeMay and Jean-Paul Sartre were stuck in an elevator for nearly an hour.

They Saw A Niche...

And they filled it.

So to speak.

Cthulhu-shaped sex toys.

Boing-boing.

Proofing Black Powder

I just spotted this thing on the What Is It blog. It seems to be a device for measuring the power of a sample of black powder.

What Is It?

I don't know what it is, but the T&A just ordered 5,000 of 'em.

Lots of other cool old implementa at the What Is It blog.

Skin-Covered Machine Gun

Ick! I don't like it.

Boing-Boing.

The Eighth-Largest Army In The World

...is comprised of the 600,000 deer hunters in Wisconsin.

But that pales in comparison to the 750,000 who are in the woods of Pennsylvania this week. Michigan’s 700,000 hunters have now returned home. Toss in a quarter million hunters in West Virginia, and it is literally the case that the hunters of those four states alone would comprise the largest army in the world.

h/t Say Uncle.

Catz

Roseholme Cottage has a new cat and this started me thinking about our long-departed Maine Coon named Zoom. Look at those ear-tufts! His tail was nearly the same diameter as the rest of him.

Bacon Tuxedo

Just in time for Christmas!

The 'Right' To Govern

There I was, minding my own business, reading a Washington Post column about people's obsession with Sarah Palin, when it leaped out at me:

The left, you see, has long thought that there ought to be some connection between intelligence or learning and the right to govern.

"...the right to govern."

Wow. Just....wow.

Obama Restores Felon's Gun Rights

Stranger Than Truth!

Then, in 2005, he applied for a gun permit and found out for the first time he had a felony conviction. He applied for a presidential pardon, which was officially granted Friday, in the first round of pardons during Obama's administration.

CNN.

Harley-Davidson Got Fed Bailout Money

So did Verizon, Toyota, Union Bank of Switzerland (UBS), Barclays Bank (UK), Citigroup, Goldman Sachs and General Electric.

WaPo

Three-Strikes Challenger Is Charged With Four Murders

John Wesley Ewell, whose criminal record stretches back decades, was arraigned Tuesday in Los Angeles on four counts of murder with special circumstances, robbery and receiving stolen property.

LOS ANGELES — A multiple felon who campaigned against California’s three-strikes law and was free after managing four times to escape its harsh sentencing guidelines has been charged with murdering four people in home-invasion robberies here this year.

NYT.

The Iranian Worm

Experts dissecting the computer worm suspected of being aimed at Iran’s nuclear program have determined that it was precisely calibrated in a way that could send nuclear centrifuges wildly out of control.

Nice work, whoever you are.

NYT

Oprah Invites Hundreds Of Lucky Fans To Be Buried With Her In Massive Tomb

Oprah Invites Hundreds Of Lucky Fans To Be Buried With Her In Massive Tomb

Early This Morning

Standing in the middle of Pennsylvania Avenue at 3:27 this morning.

Hot Wheels

Spotted downtown:

Google TV

I got a Google-TV box, partly because it includes a blu-ray player (found a $9.99 blu-ray disk of Le Femme Nikita at the grocery store last night!). And it does one really cool thing: you can browse the web and watch a little TV picture-in-picture...that's CNN-HD in the lower right corner.

Jobs Available

They're hirin'. And they don't care who knows it!

Six Hundred Billion Crisp, New One-Dollar Bills

Treasury Secretary Geithner met with China's vice-minister for Finance. As the BBC reports it:

Mr Wang gave his backing to the US Federal Reserve's controversial decision to restart quantitative easing - effectively printing dollars to buy up US government debt.

That's a lot of paper and a lot of ink. Wish I could print money whenever I needed it...sigh.

P.S. According to this, one million one-dollar bills weighs 2200 lbs, so that's 600,000 of those, or a total of 1,320,000,000 lbs. An average tractor-trailer carries, what, 20 tons? So that's 33,000 semis full of one-dollar bills.

Hey, I know! Why not give unemployed people jobs printing all that money? Think of all that work: producing the paper and ink, shipping them to the Bureau of Engraving and Printing, driving the 33,000 trucks back and forth, forklift operators...now there is some stimulus!

Or, think of it like this: what if an asteroid or comet weighing 1.32 billion pounds hit the earth? Actually, this funny-money will probably do just as much damage, with a lot less kinetic energy.

Robots To Guard Your Home

Cool!

It's Official

It must have nearly killed them to have to set that headline!

Rally For Sanity

This is my favorite sign from the big rally. There are 99 more here.

h/t Say Uncle.

I didn't go; had to work. I edited a piece about the rally for the big show yesterday and I had fun putting together a little montage of Peace Train/Crazy Train/Love Train. And I have to say that seeing Cat Stevens (Yousef Islam) perform "Peace Train" in front of the U.S. Capitol was very inspiring. He even participated in a good-natured "Battle Of The Bands" with Ozzie Osbourne.

Just Like In The Movies

Cop shoots gun out of perp's hand.

At least ONE cop in the NYPD can shoot. And well!

h/t Say Uncle.

Flying Fortress?

I saw one of these over Front Royal, VA this afternoon about 1 PM. At first I thought it was a balloon or blimp because it just seemed to hang there; I didn't think anything that big could move that slowly. It was within the air control area of Dulles Int'l airport. Is there some kind of airshow this weekend? Or maybe it was returning from an airshow elsewhere. Its course was south; maybe it was returning from Dayton, OH? It had four engines and the wingtips were rounded off from leading edge to trailing edge. Can't think of anything else it might be except a B-17.

Link to PDF of WWII aircraft silhouette book.

Determination

A Dutch woman has gone to a shooting gallery nearly every summer for over seventy years. If you hit the target, you get a snapshot:

1936

2009

Uhhh... kudos to Breda for spotting this, er... five effing months ago!

Daguerre

Daguerre is credited with inventing photography in the early 19th century. Then someone makes this nice monument to him. Wouldn't a photograph be better? Anyway, then I come along and take a photograph of a sculpture of the inventor of photography...using a digital camera. Very confusing.

Outside the National Portrait Gallery.

Two Gun Stories In The New York Times

More States Allowing Guns In Bars

Judges Want To Bear Arms After Philippine Shooting

Guns Stolen From Mexican Police Arsenal

Six thieves wearing police uniforms entered the compound, drove directly to the radio room, tied up the staff, then proceeded to the armory. They took 43 H&K G36 rifles, 26 9mm pistols plus bulletproof vests and grenades. The guards offered no resistance. The State Attorney General's office has arrested the guards.

Owner Of Segway Company Dies In Segway Accident

He plunged off a cliff.

Hitting A Bullet With A Bullet

About 2 minutes in, he does it:



h/t Maddened Fowl.

Chix Kix Lix Hix

High-schooler Ashley Flinn kicks a field goal and two point-afters to help her school's football team to a 17-10 win over their rivals from Dakota, Michigan.

The Uranian Phalanstery Is Being Evicted!

Founded by Richard Tyler:

Richard Tyler was born in Lansing, Michigan April 1st, 1926. He was the only child to an Artist Father and Mystic Mother. "Richard thought that life was a joke" Dorothea chuckles as she tells me of Richard's days of service during WWII in Japan as a Paratrooper. He was the kind of personality that would end up in the brig for robbing a Japanese bank, "disappearing with piles of void paper money. Guns, blazing to the sky".

And now it's all over.

NYT article.

A blog post about the Uranian Phalanstery.

Snapshots

Some photos from my bicycle ride:

The Browntown General Store

RC Cola sign (actually a thermometer - 92 degrees)

The bridge across the Shenandoah River - it's about a hundred yards wide here, and about three feet deep.

Mailbox made from a tractor

The ubiquitous "Posted" signs...

...and black lace panties hanging from the tree.

Beautiful old weatherbeaten farm buildings.

And another.

Weathered wood.

After work on Sunday my attention was arrested by this flower in a big planter at 6th Street and Pennsylvania Ave.