Haha, a funny
purepedantry | April 2, 2007From AFP:
-- Discover Magazine announced in 1995 that a highly respected biologist, Aprile Pazzo (Italian for April Fool), had discovered a new species in Antarctica: the hotheaded naked ice borer. The creatures were described as having bony plates on their heads that became burning hot, allowing the animals to bore through ice at high speed -- a technique they used to hunt penguins.
-- Noted British astronomer Patrick Moore announced on the radio in 1976 that at 9:47 am, a once-in-a-lifetime astronomical event, in which Pluto would pass behind Jupiter, would cause a gravitational alignment…
purepedantry | April 2, 2007I was just in London, and a friend of mine clued me into this British comic named Bill Bailey. Priceless.
Anyway, this is not even vaguely science-related, but there is a clip below the fold that is too funny.
He was also in this BBC show that I am in love with -- or at least in lust with -- at the moment called Black Books. Here is a clip from that:
purepedantry | March 13, 2007I love the comedian Eddie Izzard. This is primarily because he is one of the few I have ever seen that even tries to make relatively intellectual jokes about history and science. Anyway, enjoy this video about physics and Pavlov's other animals.
purepedantry | March 9, 2007First a German man sues three teenagers for making his ostrich impotent, now another is quite literally dividing the possessions in his divorce:
A 43-year-old German decided to settle his imminent divorce by chainsawing a family home in two and making off with his half in a forklift truck.
Police in the eastern town of Sonneberg said on Friday the trained mason measured the single-storey summer house -- which was some 8 meters (26 feet) long and 6 meters wide -- before chainsawing through the wooden roof and walls.
"The man said he was just taking his due," said a police spokesman. "But I don…
purepedantry | February 19, 2007A squirrel running around the innards of the plane grounded a Dallas-Tokyo flight:
An American Airlines flight made an unscheduled landing after pilots heard something skittering about in the wire-laden space over the cockpit.
The airline blamed the emergency landing of the Tokyo-Dallas flight with 202 passengers on a stowaway squirrel.
"You do not want a varmint up in the wiring areas and what-have-you on an airplane. You don't want anything up there," said John Hotard, spokesman for the Fort Worth, Texas-based airline.
He said pilots feared the animal would chew through wiring or cause…
purepedantry | February 12, 2007Take that PZ, I'm Magneto. What kind of supervillain are you?
Your results:You are MagnetoMagneto 64%The Joker 63%Apocalypse 63%Mr. Freeze 56%Dr. Doom 55%Lex Luthor 50%Riddler 49%Green Goblin 44%Venom 42%Poison Ivy 35%Kingpin 34%Dark Phoenix 32%Mystique 32%Catwoman 31%Two-Face 28%Juggernaut 16%You fear the persecution of those that are different or underprivileged so much that you are willing to fight and hurt others for your cause.
Click here to take the Super Villain Personality Test
purepedantry | January 29, 2007Residents of New Jersey must be warned not to eat too many toxic squirrels:
New Jersey has warned squirrel hunters near a toxic waste dump about consuming the critters because they could be contaminated with lead.
It is the first time the state has cautioned Ringwood residents _ many who are members of the Ramapough Mountain Indian tribe who hunt and fish in the area _ about their squirrel intake, said Tom Slater, a spokesman for the Department of Health and Senior Services.
A lead-contaminated squirrel was found in the area two months ago, prompting the agency, along with the state…
purepedantry | January 29, 2007Not to suggest that Americans wouldn't:
Ignoring health warnings and threats of prosecution, hundreds of people foraged among containers washed from a stricken cargo vessel on the southern English coast on Monday, hauling off booty that included BMW motorcycles, shoes, diapers, beauty cream and carpets.
The scavengers descended on beaches at Branscombe after rescue tugs towed the 62,000-ton cargo vessel, the Napoli, to a sandbar just offshore to prevent it from breaking up at sea and spilling thousands of tons of oil and cargo. The cargo includes hazardous chemicals.
Television footage showed…
purepedantry | January 23, 2007Anyone who has ever had an annoying child sit behind them in the plane will crack up at this:
AirTran Airways on Tuesday defended its decision to remove a Massachusetts couple from a flight after their crying 3-year-old daughter refused to take her seat before takeoff.
AirTran officials said they followed Federal Aviation Administration rules that children age 2 and above must have their own seat and be wearing a seat belt upon takeoff.
"The flight was already delayed 15 minutes and in fairness to the other 112 passengers on the plane, the crew made an operational decision to remove the…
kcontreary | December 8, 2006Falling under the broad category of "papers I never thought I'd see written" comes this article by Hammad Siddiqi about the social norm of leaving the toilet seat down and whether or not it represents a Nash Equilibrium. He models the situation in terms of a two-player, non-cooperative game with payoffs given in terms of C "cost of changing seat position" and D "cost of husband getting yelled at by irate wife". Needless to say, D>>>C. Not exactly gender-neutral, but read on if you're curious...
Structure of the Game
There are two people, one is a representative of the male species…
purepedantry | December 6, 2006CNN's headline reads Flatulence on plane sparks emergency landing:
It is considered polite to light a match after passing gas. Not while on a plane.
An American Airlines flight was forced to make an emergency landing Monday morning after a passenger lit a match to disguise the scent of flatulence, authorities said.
The Dallas-bound flight was diverted to Nashville after several passengers reported smelling burning sulfur from the matches, said Lynne Lowrance, spokeswoman for the Nashville International Airport Authority. All 99 passengers and five crew members were taken off and screened…
purepedantry | November 26, 2006This was forwarded to me in an email, and it is just too "dam" funny for me not to post. It is a letter that was sent to a man named Ryan DeVries by the Pennslyvania Department of Environmental Quality and his letter in response. Make sure you read the first letter first.
SUBJECT: DEQ File No.97-59-0023; T11N; R10W, Sec. 20;
Lycoming County
Dear Mr. DeVries:
It has come to the attention of the Department of Environmental Quality that there has been recent unauthorized activity on the above referenced parcel of property. You have been certified as the legal landowner and/or contractor who…
purepedantry | November 15, 2006On The Colbert Report last night, Stephen Colbert talked about an article about uterine transplants for The Word. Scientists now claim that there is nothing technically to prevent us from performing a womb transplant, even to the point that you could put a uterus in a man:
Scientists claim that the first human baby could be born from a transplanted womb within three years.
Animal experiments have dismissed many of the concerns that womb transplants could not produce healthy babies.
The Swedish expert behind the research says that one of the best candidates to be an organ donor would be the…
purepedantry | November 7, 2006Not to have too much levity about electoral irregularities, but this is just funny:
In some areas of Indiana and Ohio, computer problems meant polling stations did not open on time, with voters being turned away, or given paper ballots. In Colorado, voters queued for hours because of technical glitches and in Oklahoma, a squirrel chewed through an electric cable, cutting off power to electronic voting machines in several polling stations.
"It's an unmitigated disaster," said Warren Stewart, the political director of VoteTrustUSA, a watchdog deeply sceptical of electronic voting.
Was it an…
purepedantry | October 6, 2006Here is your YouTube fun of the day. It is compilation of the Daily Show series Evolution Schmevolution from about a year ago I think. Hilarious.
purepedantry | October 5, 2006Memoirs of a Skepchick dramatizes the researchers who determined men and women are aroused at the same rate -- talking to a grade school class:
"So you watch the men and women get hotter with the night vision goggles?"
"It's a camera, technically, and . . . yes, yes we do."
"What are they doing while you watch them?"
The man looks to the teacher for help, but recalls that she took advantage of today's talk to step out for a coffee and cigarrette. "Well, they're, uh, they're watching movies actually."
"What kind of movies?"
"Um, a lot of different movies . . . "
"Why would people get hotter…