Category: general

Hundreds of giant squid are washing up on Orange County beaches […] The bug-eyed sea creatures, believed to be Humboldt squid, normally reside in deep water and only come to the surface at night. Why approximately 500 of them began washing up on the sands of Laguna Beach and Newport Beach on Tuesday isn’t clear.

It’s funny that no one even speculates that the tsunamis might have caused this. I mean, sure, the world is huge, but so were the effects of those earthquakes. Just looking at an overhead view of where the earthquake took place, one might expect that the islands to the east blocked all the waves. But what if the islands themselves shook (which I imagine happened), causing further undersea turbulence beyond the main affected area? The squid could have been startled out of their deep sea habitat and then washed along with lesser waves.

Just a thought; I’m no seismologist/geologist/whatever.

(Speaking of the tsunamis…the estimated death toll–I am really starting to despise that term–has topped 226,000 people, while the true number of deaths may never be known.)

I am amazed at the beauty and intricacy of these snow crystals, archived by the Buffalo Museum of Science. Here’s the homepage of the project, which seeks to preserve the wonderful work of Wilson A. Bentley. (Via BoingBoing.)

I don’t know why it surprises me so much to see that snowflakes actually look how we’re taught they look in school. I guess I always thought of paper snowflakes as flights of fancy that had little basis in reality. But it turns out that they really do; even the ones I made up from scratch are similar to these pictures. Astonishing, and beautiful.

“All I wanted was a twin brother! And now…the shame…the horror…the smell…”

Someone posted, parenthetically, the following:

I probably learned it when I was teaching myself basic nuclear physics in grade school. Yeah, I’m a geek. ^_^;

He should have said, “Yeah, I’m an insufferable braggart.”

The url is scary (“school_intruder”), but the story is actually pretty funny (sad, yes, but funny, damn it).

A homeless man with nowhere else to go says he went back to his old high school and posed as a student for three weeks, sitting in on classes, showering in the locker room and sleeping in the theater.

“Anywhere I could hide,” Francisco Serrano said from jail Wednesday after he was arrested twice at Apple Valley High.

The four people arrested in last night’s meth lab bust have been charged with crimes.

Jaywalking, I hope. It’s a serious offense!

(Check out the picture in the article…looks like Anakin’s up to his old tricks!)

I’m not even going to say anything. I’m just giving you a link. Feel free to speculate about why I think this is disgusting.

Somehow, I didn’t know that the Blue Grass Army Depot in Madison County is storing

two nerve agents: GB, better known as Sarin, and VX. Both are contained in projectiles and rockets. It also stores mustard agent in projectiles.

Nor did I know that

According to an assessment prepared for Congress, Madison’s stockpile will pose the highest risk for terrorism in the nation two years from now because incineration will have been completed at other sites. It used area populations and the nature of the weapons stored at each site to calculate the risks.

That’s just great, terrorist bait in my family’s backyard…

(I’m supremely unsurprised at the left-leaning Herald-Leader‘s transparent attempts to blame this on the president, but it’s still annoying.)

And apparently Augusta had some earthquakes yesterday! Funny, I didn’t notice anything :D

There are some stories linked about the train wreck and chlorine leak in Graniteville, too.

Topix.net looks to be a great resource for local news!

He was a Scottish professional golfer in the 19th century but he predicted bullet trains, driverless golf carts, televisions and digital watches.

In a book published in 1892 with uncanny echoes of 16th century French seer Nostradamus, golfer Jack McCullogh also predicted that women would start dressing like men and do all the work while their menfolk took to the golf courses full-time.

So, obviously, he traveled through time. My only question is…

…we have driverless golf carts?

Lots of furor over the California INDUCE bill. Cory Doctorow’s rant is the funniest, as usual.

An extremist California Senator called Kevin Murray has introduced a Californian version of last year’s Federal INDUCE Act, a law that proposed to make the very Internet itself illegal, for it bans producing, selling, offering, descirbing [sic] or building a network that can be used to share files unless “reasonable care” is taken to ensure that the files shared won’t infringe upon copyright.

Today, while sitting at my desk fuming, I suddenly realized that the solution to all my problems is: real estate.

That isn’t going to make any sense to most of you. But it occurred to me that part of my plan depends on something that someone I know already knows how to do. So I can concentrate on a different part of the plan. I can make a list! Assuming he’s willing to work with me, things could really start coming together.

Vague, vague, vague! But it’s good, I promise.

I’m in the mood to write something that could get me dooced. Obviously I’m not going to, but I wanted to let you know ;P

Ahahahahahaha!

Seriously, the two pairs of pants were really helpful. I think I could have done with boots rather than sneakers. I had some snow boots at one point, but I think they got smushed and partially melted in my car and I threw them away. My ears were nice and cozy due to the toboggan, and my hands were fine with the gloves. My legs started to get a little chilly towards the end of the ride. My nose, though relatively unprotected, was okay because I had my coat zipped up all the way, and it actually reaches up to my nose, meaning my warm breath was trapped there to keep things cozy. It didn’t even matter that my hair was wet; I didn’t even really notice it until I arrived, took off the coat and toboggan, and thought, “Did I really sweat this much?” Then I remembered that I took a shower ;>

And I wasn’t late! Yay!

I am now wearing two pairs of jeans, two pairs of socks, and a sweater, and I’m about to put on a toboggan, gloves, and my coat. Bring it on.

I’m also going to be late if I don’t hurry up and leave already…