Category: General

Not a chance, son.

It has been HOT this month. It hit 118º the other day, but it sure is nice to “cool off” in the pool – even though the pool water has reached 91º.

It’s against my policy to review buffet pizza because it invariably sucks; however, I accidentally ended up eating at a new buffet pizza place (I didn’t know when I walked in the door)

I’m not going to review it, but suffice it to say that Pizzasta was a “disasta”…

Technorati Tags: Blog, Psychic, Restaurant, Review

I’m quite pleased Michelle likes the new Doctor Who (and the classic stuff, too). The other day she was eating noodles, and kept hanging a big bunch out of her mouth saying, “look, I’m an Ood”.

Every time I tried to take a picture with the cameraphone, she’d such the noodles in and all I got were shots like this.

If I’d have gotten a really good picture of her as an Ood, I’d have sent it into Totally Doctor Who. I wonder what they would have done with a submission from the United States?

Technorati Tags: Blog, Doctor Who, Family, Food, Kids

I love my MacBook, but… for the last few weeks it’s been frustrating me no end. About three weeks ago the wireless connections would start dropping suddenly. My other wireless computers experienced no such problem, and the problem would occur on 3 different wireless networks.

Some days it would happen once or twice, other days 20 or 30 times.

Then, last week, one day it started to power off completely without warning and without a trace in the error log. It did it 5 or 6 times the first day. The next day, I could barely keep it turned on. It dropped 30 to 40 times. Sometimes right during the boot sequence.

The next day, it happened once… it hasn’t done it since.

But, the day after that, the wireless started dropping like flies again.

It’s going to be such a pain in the butt to take it in to Apple for warranty repair – I’ve gotten completely settled in to this computer and can’t do without it. 🙁

Technorati Tags: Apple, Blog, Computer, Mac, Macbook, Rant

BBC => Who Soundtrack Soon

Much though I love Doctor Who and have for many, many years (1975 or 1976 to be exact), there’s one thing that can be said… the incidental music has always been a bit… clanky. It’s too loud, it’s crude, jarring… but… I own all the soundtracks anyway.

The new series Who music is also somewhat jarring in a different way… it’s too constant. It’s always there, and it’s a bit heavy-handed, but musically it’s pretty good. I’m glad to hear that that a soundtrack is coming out soon.

Technorati Tags: Blog, Doctor Who

Pensacola News Journal => Evangelist arrested on federal charges

While it might be amusing, it isn’t my policy to bring notice about every evangelical to be arrested, but this one is particularly satisfying. (It’s too much to hope that they’d all be put in jail.)

Kent Hovind has been running Dinosaur Adventure Land in Florida, an “amusement park” designed to undermine science and reason and tries to present “young Earth” creationism as anything other than a delusion of seriously impaired minds. I was going to compare them to Flat-Earthers but why insult the Flat-Earthers? They get enough of that already.

A Pensacola evangelist who owns the defunct Dinosaur Adventure Land in Pensacola was arrested Thursday on 58 federal charges, including failing to pay $473,818 in employee-related taxes and making threats against investigators.

Of the 58 charges, 44 were filed against Kent Hovind and his wife, Jo, for evading bank reporting requirements as they withdrew $430,500 from AmSouth Bank between July 20, 2001, and Aug. 9, 2002.

At the couple’s first court appearance Thursday before U.S. Magistrate Judge Miles Davis, Kent Hovind professed not to understand why he is being prosecuted.

Check out his Wikipedia Entry, the “Hovind Theory” is particularly a hoot – if it weren’t such a terrifying indictment against our education system that people can still believe this stuff.

(And no, I’m not actually talking about the debate of teaching Evolution vs Creationism (or it’s poorly disguised avatar, Intelligent Design.) It’s about teaching Critical Thinking skills.

No one believes that they don’t think critically because the implication is that you’re stupid. This isn’t true, critical thinking isn’t specifically a function of being “smart” or “stupid”, it’s a skill that everyone needs to be taught.

Some of my favorite Hovind ideas:

• Dinosaurs lived contemporaneous to humans 6,400 years ago
• The grand canyon was formed from the receding flood waters from God’s flooding genocide (sometimes called Noah’s flood)
• The Loch Ness monster (and Bigfoot) are both examples of “dinosaurs” that survived the flood
• The “flood” was caused by a gigantic ice meteor (presumably aimed by god) which froze mammoths in Siberia standing up and broke upon subterranean water deposits which flooded the planet.
• The ice comment also formed the rings around the other planets

I also understand that not only did he object to his guns being taken away by the court, (“They aren’t my guns, they’re god’s property.”) but he’s also claiming that he’s not subject to federal law because, “… I’m a citizen of heaven and I answer to a higher authority.” I guess that’s ok if you’re just slaughtering cows to make hot dogs, but not when you’re up on a Federal indictment.

Technorati Tags: Archaeology, Bigfoot, Blog, Commentary, Cryptid, Dinosaur, Dinosaurs

No, this isn’t a blatant attempt to drive traffic towards my eBay auction, but it is an interesting experiment.

Two weeks ago, I put these speakers up for auction. They’re a really nice, used pair of Bose 901s, and they sold for about $583, which I consider to be a low figure, but, hey, you get what ya get. Except in this case where the guy who bought them welshed out because he didn’t understand what he was buying.

So, this time I put them back, same pictures, virtually the same ad copy, but I added a couple “listing upgrades” and WOW, what a difference. I’m seeing 3 times the daily traffic on the auction. Who knew? I guess the eBay pros did.

If you’re interested (before July 30, that is) you can see the auction here: Bose 901 Speakers

BBC News => How Warm is your Dinosaur

Dinosaurs were long considered to be cold-blooded reptiles.

More recently, some researchers have proposed that the extinct creatures actively regulated their body temperature like mammals.

A study in the journal Plos Biology now suggests this is not the case, but that bigger dinosaurs may have lost heat so slowly that they stayed warm anyway

Happiness is a warm dinosaur.

Technorati Tags: Blog, Dinosaur, Dinosaurs, Natural Sciences, Paleontology, Science

MSNBC => Physicist touches upon God and science

World-renowned astrophysicist Stephen Hawking said Thursday that the late Pope John Paul II once told scientists they should not study the beginning of the universe because it was the work of God.

You see? Science and blinkered superstition can get along just fine, as long as you don’t question the church’s cash cow.

Technorati Tags: Blog, Commentary, Loonies, Science

TimesDispatch.com => Train stuck in time

Locomotive 231 may finally finish its long-delayed run, nearly 81 years after it was trapped under the rubble of a Church Hill tunnel cave-in.

How cool is this? (Unless you were on this train, that is.) 81 years ago this train is stuck in the collapse of a tunnel and now they might dig it out. Perhaps they’ll finally be able to deliver those old letters that were bound to be in the mail car?

Technorati Tags: Archaeology, Blog