Gore-Al and other oddities

What I wanted to do/still need to do this summer (note that being marked out doesn't mean that I won't be doing it again this summer):
Go horseback riding.
Go swimming.
Go out of town. - This weekend!
Go to King's Island.
Go canoeing.
Go to as many Riverscape, Fraze, and Yellow Springs festivals as possible. - One out of three so far.
Get renovations done around the apartment. - nearing completion.
Get a dog. - Will have to wait until I move.
Do the 100 pushup challenge. - In process, on week 2 of 6.

Al Gore Places Infant Son In Rocket To Escape Dying Planet.

Oh look, Alex is linking to more Watchmen stuff. The Comedian's Sidearms and Rorschach's Grappling Gun/Mask Prop Replicas. I don't like it that the grappling gun is permenantly attached to the base, but otherwise - gonna need $600.

Saving this link for a listen later, but it sounds promising. Police Shame Pranksters On YouTube.

Did you know that 83% of past terrorist groups weren't stopped by military might or total annihilation, but instead through government negotiation and local policing?

What the hell is this? Looks like a fat, wingless griffin. And if it's 'shopped, it's a good one.

I have a love-hate relationship with lawns in general. But if I owned my own home, I would seriously consider doing something like this (although I'd have to save at least some grassy areas for picnics and general grass frolicing). Kill Your lawn Flickr set.

For you photogs out there - how to shoot with available light.

Did you know you can use Bengay on a mosquito bite to make the itch go away? I didn't.

Oh this is cool - Portrait of Woman Revealed Beneath Van Gogh Painting.

In the handy online conversion tools bin: VidtoMP3 - converts online video clips to mp3's.

I've always been fascinated by the Antikythera Mechanism, and it looks like they've discovered some new functions. Nothing Earth-shattering, but cool anyway. But let's get real - we all know it's really a part from a Steampunk battlemech.

Thank you, American public. They gave you exactly what you wanted. This is your fault.

OK ok ok at least one (more) Watchman link - post-panel press interview with Zack Snyder, Dave Gibbons, and the cast.

zombie santa and other oddities

I purposefully took the summer off from the stage: it's been four years (really? four years?) since I've not had to worry about line memorization or character development or lack of sleep and actually had time to enjoy the summer. So, that's what I'm trying to do.

Plus, it's helpful having the extra time to spend with mom (who has been back in the hospital the last few weeks and for the forseeable future).

But, anyway: stuff!

One of the things I gave up theatre this summer for (and which I need many more of): backyard BBQ's.

This robot that loves hugs is cute and all, but am I the only one that envisioned the unholy spawn that would result of it pairing with the face-recognition spider-bot? I imagine the child, all metal and wide, blinking eyes, recognizing my face and wanting to hug it with eight mechanical spider-appendages.

Of course, everyone has seen the cop sidelining the Critical Mass rider in NY.

6 technologies that don't know they are dead. I'd rather not see #6 go away anytime soon - mostly because I won't get a paycheck if they go poof - but realistically? It's inevitable. And good if they do.

Doing my best to be one of the 14%.

Cool in a quirky way, but are most robbers literate enough to even know what Pandora's Box is?

This place needs to be a real store.

Now you can finish your Dawn of the Dead diorama with Zombie Santa and Zombie Crazy Street Person.

It was nice and romantic, yeah, but could it have ended any other way? (taking bets on how long it takes for this to become a romantic comedy, but with the Hollywood ending treatment)
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I finally saw The Dark Knight over the weekend. Loved it. Loved seeing the Watchmen trailer on the big screen just a little bit more.

TR2N

Longer post later, but I wanted to get this up before Disney pulls it.

Tr2n teaser trailer (that would be Tron 2 ... as in the sequel to Tron ... as in Jeff Bridges is in it).

Crappy cell phone recording at Comic-Con.

Watchmen Watch - 7/24

• BREAKING: My Chemical Romance To Perform Bob Dylan Cover In ...
• Watchmen: Getting Inside the Owl Ship!
• On deciding whether to watch Watchmen
• 'Watchmen,' 'Terminator: Salvation,' or 'The Spirit': You may ...
• Watchmen Trailer Aims for the Faithful (Verdict: Bullseye!)
• Watchmen trailer analysis

dude and other oddities

Seems to be a cannabis-heavy day for some reason.

In the 1960s, retired US Army colonel James S. Ketchum led efforts to develop a nonlethal incapacitating agent as a weapon for a "war without death." Along with LSD, they experimented with synthetic cannabis, apparently similar in effect to hash oil but much stronger. Alternet published a great profile of Ketchum who paints a vivid picture of those strange daze with the Us Army Chemical Corp.

Medical Marijuana and Minors. Reason TV has a story about Owen Beck, a 17-year-old high school kid from California who got bone cancer and had to get his leg amputated. The medicine Owen was taking was making him very sick and and lost a lot of weight, so his parents decided to try medical marijuana. The marijuana greatly helped Owen, easing his pain and nausea.
The owner of the dispensary, Charlie Lynch, often gave the marijuana to Owen without charging his parents. But the local Sheriff (who doesn't like the fact that medical marijuana is legal in his town and the state of California) called the DEA. They raided the dispensary and arrested Lynch. He's now under house arrest, attached to an extension cord for 2 hours a day, and is facing 100 years in prison.

Seriously. Why is marijuana illegal?

I don't smoke it, but come on. I'm just trying to understand the mindset of those that rationalize it.

On the other hand - don't do hallucinogens, else you'll start seeing dead rubber ducks in your bath.

Kind of a cool text art toy - Wordle

Curse of the Crying Boy and other oddities

Did you know that walking directions are now available on Google maps? And I love the Warning that comes along with it.

I noticed that the Google vehicles canvassed my city and now have the entire thing available for Street Viewing. Including my residence. Wish I could say I was outside and doing something noteworthy when the pic was snapped but ...

‘The Curse of the Crying Boy’ appeared out of the blue one morning in 1985. The Sun, at that time the most popular tabloid newspaper in the English-speaking world, published on page 13 of its 4 September edition a story headlined: “Blazing Curse of the Crying Boy”. It told how Ron and May Hall blamed a cheap painting of a toddler with tears rolling down his face for a fire which gutted their terraced council home in Rotherham, a mining town in South Yorkshire. The blaze broke out in a chip-pan in the kitchen of their home of 27 years and spread rapidly. But although the downstairs rooms of the house were badly damaged, the framed print of the Crying Boy escaped unscathed. It continued to hang there, surrounded by a scene of devastation.

Graphic of the Day: Romancing the highways - A Half Century History of US Transit Funding. Ahhh government funding based on myths.

Track Your Spending. Or Not. I'm more in the Not category.

7 Beauty Secrets That Cost Almost Nothing. Posted mostly because I'm a big fan of #1.

Some amazing sculptures created from old typewriters. Which reminded me of my probably already done idea to make small robots out of pieces of junk.

In WHAT? I'm Shocked I Tell You news: Coffee drinking, smoking common among AA members.

Watchmen Watch - 7/23

• 'Watchmen' games a go
• Warner Bros is Banking Hard on Watchmen
• Impressions on the "Watchmen" trailer from a non-fanboy
• Mason Auto Repair Watchmen t-shirt
• Snyder Reveals Hendrix, Dylan, Other Tracks in ‘Watchmen,’ No Smashing Pumpkins

Watchmen 7/22

• Smashing Pumpkins Song Given Boost By 'watchmen' Trailer
• Watchmen's Ozymandias "braces" for Comic Con
• New Watchmen Motion Comic Free for 2 Weeks
• Moviegoers get wound up over ‘Watchmen’

bird is thinking about pooping on that illegally-parked car to the

bird is thinking about pooping on that illegally-parked car to the right, but deer is just interested in lunch
Originally uploaded by roujo

I'm always on the lookout for easy, one-click optimization of my computers, and this one looks pretty snazzy. Might have to download it and give it a whirl.

Oh right i forgot. Those high gas prices? All Obama's fault.

You don't happen to live in one of the U.S.'s top ten least walkable cities, do you? (Jacksonville, Nashville, Charlotte, Indianapolis, Okalhoma City, Memphis, Kansas City, Fort Worth, El Paso, and Mesa - I'm looking at you)

The paintings of Fred Einaudi - freaky and gorgeous.

The Karmasheetra. Not really for kids.

Bad news for Canis lupus - grey wolves are back on the endangered list.

In Alex Really Should Eat More Of These Green Leafy Things news: A handy list of fresh fruits and vegetables - by the month.

Dr. Horrible didn't kill stephenson ... or did he?

stephenson
Originally uploaded by roujo

Remember - only ONE DAY LEFT to be able to view - online - for free - all three acts of Dr. Horrible's Sing-A-Long Blog (starring Neil Patrick Harris, Felicia Day & Nathan Fillion and directed by and co-written by Joss Whedon).

sleep eternal

sleep eternal
Originally uploaded by roujo

MORTAL COMBAT DUN DUN DUN DUN - Gmail vs. Outlook. I happen to use both - downloading my Gmail messages into Outlook. So I'm not sure where that puts me in the vs. battle.

Surprisingly (or perhaps not), California uses more gasoline and diesel than China.

It's a good question - how DO we warn future generations about radioactive waste?

I've been spending money like Bill Gates the last month or two, so I could use a few of these kinds of weekends.

Photographers - beware the big man with a gun.

Who watches the watchmen?

We do.

HHS Moves to Define Contraception as Abortion

In a spectacular act of complicity with the religious right, the Department of Health and Human Services Monday released a proposal that allows any federal grant recipient to obstruct a woman's access to contraception. In order to do this, the Department is attempting to redefine many forms of contraception, the birth control 40% of Americans use, as abortion. Doing so protects extremists under the Weldon and Church amendments. Those laws prohibit federal grant recipients from requiring employees to help provide or refer for abortion services. The "Definitions" section of the HHS proposal states,

Abortion: An abortion is the termination of a pregnancy. There are two commonly held views on the question of when a pregnancy begins. Some consider a pregnancy to begin at conception (that is, the fertilization of the egg by the sperm), while others consider it to begin with implantation (when the embryo implants in the lining of the uterus). A 2001 Zogby International American Values poll revealed that 49% of Americans believe that human life begins at conception. Presumably many who hold this belief think that any action that destroys human life after conception is the termination of a pregnancy, and so would be included in their definition of the term "abortion." Those who believe pregnancy begins at implantation believe the term "abortion" only includes the destruction of a human being after it has implanted in the lining of the uterus.

The proposal continues,

Both definitions of pregnancy inform medical practice. Some medical authorities, like the American Medical Association and the British Medical Association, have defined the term "established pregnancy" as occurring after implantation. Other medical authorities present different definitions. Stedman's Medical Dictionary, for example, defines pregnancy as "[t]he state of a female after conception and until the termination of the gestation." Dorland's Medical Dictionary defines pregnancy, in relevant part, as "the condition of having a developing embryo or fetus in the body, after union of an oocyte and spermatozoon.

Up until now, the federal government followed the definition of pregnancy accepted by the American Medical Association and our nation's pregnancy experts, the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists, which is: pregnancy begins at implantation. With this proposal, however, HHS is dismissing medical experts and opting instead to accept a definition of pregnancy based on polling data. It now claims that pregnancy begins at some biologically unknowable moment (there's no test to determine if a woman's egg has been fertilized). Under these new standards there would be no way for a woman to prove she's not pregnant. Thus, any woman could be denied contraception under HHS' new science.

Article continues here.

Originally heard about here.