Author: Eugene Glover

Once, North America was home to megafauna (big animals), but after the arrival of good ol’ human beings, the mammoths, cave bears, camels, saber-tooth cats, lions, giant ground sloths and all the other tasty megafauna went into serious decline and then extinction.

Some scientists are now proposing to restore ecological balance to North America by introducing modern megafauna to the continent. While ground sloths, mammoths and saber-tooth cats won’t be back anytime soon, the proposal would return elephants, camels, lions, cheetahs and other animals to the continent.

Sounds like a cool idea, as long as you don’t live in the re-population area…

Original Source: BBC News – Full Story

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Originally uploaded by Gridman.

Remember the good ol’ days when food and drink were not welcome at the local grocery store?

Now it’s “Come on it, buy a crappuccino at the Starbark’s and spill it all over the floor. We don’t mind, we’re here for you.”

Anarchy! Pure anarchy. Next they’ll be letting people open the canned soup and trying it before they buy.

What the heck are Tom Simplot’s minions thinking?

Simplot is running for re-election in the Phoenix City Council election in September. What’s questionable is why his minions seem to have decided to find every closed business, fenced off, abondoned or demolished property in this district to post his campaign signs. Perhaps the idea is that he proposes to do something about it, but to my eye, I’m coming to associate urban decay with his campain signs.

Can’t be a good strategy.

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Originally uploaded by Gridman.

No real reason to blog this other than I liked the photo.

Red Devil Pizza

Originally uploaded by Gridman.

It’s a red letter day today! My flickr photo of a Red Devil pizza finally unseated my photo of a Lee’s salami sandwich as my #1 most viewed photo!

Not to mention that, yesterday i noticed that if you do a Google search for “Red Devil Pizza” my flickr photo comes up as the #1 search result. The real Red Devil Pizza website doesn’t even show up!

I just saw one of the smartest, sneakiest uses of the English language ever!

My wife was looking through eBay, trying to find out what sorts of things are selling these days, and lo and behold, on the “Pulse of eBay” she found This auction: 2 Cardboard Boxes – Yes, our hero, the auctioneer, had gotten an auction for 2 empty cardboard boxes into the top most-watched items on eBay. Better than that, they were selling for $610 when last we looked.

Even more intriguing, a prominent Quicktime logo was displayed halfway down the page, with a link that said “Click here to watch this auction.” Well, how could we resist?!

Here’s the beauty of the ambiguity of English: it didn’t mean to “watch a movie of the auction” it meant to “set this auction as one I’m watching” – hence everyone who clicked on it increased his number of watchers until it was at the top of the pulse.

Brilliant! I hope he gets his $610!

The military has begun fighting a war on new front: Attempting to combat declining participation in science education. The US Air Force and Army have setup a boot camp to train scientists to write and sell screenplays, in the hopes it will improve the quality of the science in Hollywood movies.

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Earlier in the week, The Ninja Team Video Project got listed on Podcast Alley.

Before we were listed, we had 3 subscribers… no doubt myself, John and Chu-Wan. But now, unbelieveably, we have 9 subscribers! That’s a 200% increase in subscriptions!

6 people I probably don’t know have probably seen one of the episodes and probably are sitting around going, “What were they thinking?” That’s the probability, anyway.

Today when I was driving home, I came up to a traffic light that was backed up about 2 stops. I was heading west. The light had just turned red, so the eastbound traffic had almost completely passed by. In my lane, we were just beginning to inch forward as we filled in the gaps left by the 5 people who actually managed to pay attention enough to creep past the last green light.

About this time, a pedestrian, with no regard for anyone, starts crossing the road without benefit of a crosswalk. He boldly walks in front of the last eastbound car, and then begins weaving in and out of the westbound cars that are trying to move forward. He holds his hand up to tell them to stop or just stands in front of them until he gets across the street.

By now he’s slightly behind me and I’m watching him in my rear-view mirror. I see him obstruct the last car in the westbound lane. I see the eastbound bicycle riding along the sidewalk, and then, in a moment of perfect comedic timing, the jaywalker, triumphant in his crossing of the road, facing east, steps onto the sidewalk squarely 2 feet in front of the bicycle. The bicycle plows him down.