After 665 days of searching for nonexistent WMD "we" have
given up. It's a good thing too, since
"we" are unable to keep enormous known explosive dumps out
of the hands of bad guys. Oh yea-and Bush Lied
Safety Warning. Not for use as a stroller. May contain parts. Manufactured in a facility where one or more of the following may be present: Peanuts, almonds, unfiltered water, oxygen, ultaviolet and infrared radiation, sunlight. Use only as directed by your legal counsel. Do not use during earthquakes, volcanic eruptions, flooding or presidential election years. Use of handles may promote RSI, see your doctor or therapist before opening. May be flammable when exposed to open flame. Not for use as a stepping stool or adult seat. May cause injury if dropped from a height. Does not enable user to fly. Do not eat.
If erection lasts for over 4 hours call friends and brag. Persons attempting to find a motive in this blog will be prosecuted; persons attempting to find a moral in it will be banished; persons attempting to find a plot in it will be shot. We don't need no stinkin' badges.
Same-day service.
Unplug after use.
Slippery when wet.
Ignore this notice.
Use only as directed.
Consume in moderation.
Lather, rinse, repeat.
Your mileage may vary.
For external use only.
Don't try this at home.
No purchase is necessary.
You must be present to win.
Do not think of an elephant.
Other restrictions may apply.
Apply only to affected areas.
Part of a daily balanced diet.
No shirt, no shoes, no service.
You need not be present to win.
No user-serviceable parts inside.
Do not exceed recommended dosage.
Offer void where prohibited by law.
Do not remove under penalty of law.
You have the right to remain silent.
If swallowed, do not induce vomiting.
Valid only at participating locations.
Freshest if used before date specified.
Prices subject to change without notice.
Do not fold, staple, spindle or mutilate.
Contents may have settled during shipment.
Caution! The edge is closer than you think.
In emergency, break glass, pull down handle.
Product is sold by weight and not by volume.
Do not use if safety seal is torn or missing.
If condition persists, consult your physician.
Detach and include upper portion with payment.
Nutritional need is not established in humans.
Objects on screen are closer than they appear.
Satisfaction guaranteed; return for full refund.
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Anything you say can and will be used against you.
May be used as flotation device in case of emergency.
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Caution: Dates on calendar are closer than they appear.
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Any resemblance to actual persons living or dead is purely coincidental.
Do not use if you have ever had an allergic reaction to this product or any of its ingredients.
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The Internet is covered in slippery slopes with loose, slippery and unpredictable footing. The RIAA can make matters worse. Patent trolls are everywhere. You may fall, be spammed or suffer a DOS attack. There are hidden viruses and worms. You could break your computer. There is wild code, which may be vicious, poisonous or carriers of dread malware. These include viruses and worms. E-mail can be poisonous as well. We don't do anything to protect you from any of this. We do not inspect, supervise or maintain the Internet, blogsphere, ISP?s or other features, natural or otherwise.
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Warning: This Product Warps Space and Time in Its Vicinity.
Warning: This Product Attracts Every Other Piece of Matter in the Universe, Including the Products of Other Manufacturers, with a Force Proportional to the Product of the Masses and Inversely Proportional to the Distance Between Them.
Caution: The Mass of This Product Contains the Energy Equivalent of 85 Million Tons of TNT per Net Ounce of Weight.
Handle with Extreme Care: This Product Contains Minute Electrically Charged Particles Moving at Velocities in Excess of Five Hundred Million Miles per Hour.
Consumer Notice: Because of the 'Uncertainty Principle,' It Is Impossible for the Consumer to Find Out at the Same Time Both Precisely Where This Product Is and How Fast It Is Moving.
Advisory: There is an Extremely Small but Nonzero Chance That, Through a Process Known as 'Tunneling,' This Product May Spontaneously Disappear from Its Present Location and Reappear at Any Random Place in the Universe, Including Your neighbor's Domicile. The Manufacturer Will Not Be Responsible for Any Damages or Inconvenience That May Result.
Read This Before Opening Package: According to Certain Suggested Versions of a Grand Unified Theory, the Primary Particles Constituting This Product May Decay to Nothingness Within the Next Four Hundred Million Years.
This is a 100% Matter product: In the Unlikely Event That This Merchandise Should Contact Antimatter in Any Form, a Catastrophic Explosion Will Result.
Public Notice as Required by Law: Any Use of This Product, in Any Manner Whatsoever, Will Increase the Amount of Disorder in the Universe. Although No Liability Is Implied Herein, the Consumer Is Warned That This Process Will Ultimately Lead to the Heat Death of the Universe.
Note: The Most Fundamental Particles in This Product Are Held Together by a 'Gluing' Force About Which Little Is Currently Known and Whose Adhesive Power Can Therefore Not Be Permanently Guaranteed.
Attention: Despite Any Other Listing of Product Contents Found Hereon, the Consumer Is Advised That, in Actuality, This Product Consists Of 99.9999999999% Empty Space.
New Grand Unified Theory Disclaimer: The Manufacturer May Technically Be Entitled to Claim That This Product Is Ten-Dimensional. However, the Consumer Is Reminded That This Confers No Legal Rights Above and Beyond Those Applicable to Three-Dimensional Objects, Since the Seven New Dimensions Are 'Rolled Up' into Such a Small 'Area' That They Cannot Be Detected.
Please Note: Some Quantum Physics Theories Suggest That When the Consumer Is Not Directly Observing This Product, It May Cease to Exist or Will Exist Only in a Vague and Undetermined State.
Component equivalency notice: The Subatomic Particles (Electrons, Protons, etc.) Comprising This Product Are Exactly the Same in Every Measurable Respect as Those Used in the Products of Other Manufacturers, and No Claim to the Contrary May Legitimately Be Expressed or Implied.
Health Warning: Care Should Be Taken When Lifting This Product, Since Its Mass, and Thus Its Weight, Is Dependent on Its Velocity Relative to the User.
"Two-thirds of us, according to calculations I have made while
brooding inordinately about this inside my Subaru, are lineuppers, slowing
rapidly from 70 to 30 or 20 or whatever and taking our places - courteously and
patiently, as our mothers taught us to do, respecting the broad tenets of social
justice and the primacy of fairness to all persons on the road, regardless of
income or ethnicity or car model or perceived level of personal importance -
where was I? Oh. Sorry. Taking our places at the end of the line, I was saying,
the long two-lane line that has formed to the right, creeping toward the mouth
of our tunnel bore. There is still some empty lane space beside us on the left,
true, where the cones are gradually closing those left lanes down. But people
are already lined up. If we passed them on the left to get in farther ahead, we
would be cutting the line.
One third of us, on the other hand, zoom on by. For purposes of this problem, I
shall call these sidezoomers. (When I raised the Caldecott Tunnel Problem with
my father, who is 83, he startled me by suggesting a longer label that included
more bad words than I believe I have ever heard him use at one time.)
Sidezoomers have a variety of strategies, each exaggerated by the configuration
of the Caldecott but replicated in bottlenecks across the land: there are the
ones who zoom by a few dozen cars, angling in when they see a plausible opening;
and there are the ones who zoom all the way up, to the very top of the cone-off
funnel, at which point they thrust their aggressive little self-entitled fenders
toward the lineup and nudge themselves in. And there are those who opt for
frontage-road sidezooming, which requires maneuvering into the far-right highway
lane in order to get off at a certain pretunnel exit that dumps cars onto a
surface street alongside Highway 24. They zip along that street and get back on
24 at the next entrance, slipping in ahead of the bumper-to-bumper highway
lineup they just bypassed. So now they're cutting the line, too, but from the
right.
And that very last exit lane before the tunnel, also on the right? You can't get
back onto the highway once you've exited there, but if you're a sidezoomer you
can slide into the empty exit-only lane, still on the highway but pretending
you're leaving, and then you drive and drive right past all the lineuppers until
whoops, now at the last minute you've changed your mind and you're not exiting
at all; you're sneaking back into the line.
Not in front of me, though."
Almost every weekday I'm a "lineupper" in the exit to the northbound Seattle express
lanes. And I'm not going to stop getting as close as safely possible to car crawling ahead
of me. Oh, I leave room when I'm near the end of the line, because the line backs all
the way into the restricted commuter lanes - so for a while there people have a legitimate
excuse for merging in. But as we get closer (and I have a predetermined spot) my
generosity evaporates. The idiots who designed I-5 through Seattle ended the
northbound express lane exit with a brilliant blind hill, causing easily spooked
Seattle drivers (don't get me started) to slow to their natural cruising speed of 15 mph.
So letting in "sidezoomers" won't smooth traffic flow, it'll just reward bad behavior.
" Before the year is out it's worth giving a belated Metafilter
sendoff to Thomas Scot Halpin, who died in February, his place in history secure
as one of the great
substitutes of all time, alongside
Earl Morrall,
Mr. Bergstrom, and tofu.
Halpin was 19 in 1973, a rec-room drummer who idolized Keith Moon and had the
good fortune to score stageside seats at a 1973 Who show at San Francisco's Cow
Palace. Seventy minutes into the show, though,
his seat would be upgraded: Keith Moon passed out behind his
kit, Townshend asked the crowd if anyone could play drums ("someone really
good"), and Halpin's friend made enough of a racket to attract Bill
Graham's attention. Graham pulled him onstage, Townshend gave him a shot of
brandy to steel his nerves, and The Who featuring Scot Halpin of Muscatine,
Iowa, lurched into
Smokestack Lightning.
Additional youtubery.
2006 NPR
interview."
"You are in a mall when the zombies attack. You have:
1. one weapon.
2. one song blasting on the speakers.
3. one famous person to fight alongside you.
* Weapon can be real or fictional; you may assume endless ammo if applicable. Person can be real or fictional.
Weapon: The BFG 10000 from Quake III. Best. Weapon. Evar. Song: "Bat out of Hell" by Meatloaf. Nothing rocks more. Person: Harrison Ford as... oh, I'm not sure. Han's more ruthless but Indy's more indestructible. Maybe Super President from Air Force One, who is both ruthless and indestructible plus, as a special added bonus, can call in a nuclear strike, just in case."
So, let's start the festivities:
Weapon: Kzinti Variable Sword-Instant
zombie sushi. Song: "Walk on Hot Coals" by
Rory Gallagher, the
Irish Tour '74 version, please. Person: Jet Li seems to be taken already. I thought about Superman, but that seems too
easy: I could be armed with a licorice whip and humming tunelessly if I'm packing that kind
of backup. I pick Special Agent Dana Scully. She's smart (doctor!), tough, weapons
trained, and of course..."Last Man on Earth".
"Without kimchi, Korea would not be the same country---there might
be a nation in the same place, and it might even be called the same thing, but
it would not be Korea.
If you think I'm exaggerating, you haven't been to Korea. It's enough that
the stuff is ubiquitous: outside of Western-style fast food, there is not a
single meal eaten here that does not somehow incorporate kimchi. According to
the International
Herald Tribune, Koreans eat more than 1.6 million tons of kimchi every
year. But it's more than its presence on tables that makes it so important and
so prevalent. Fat brown kimchi pots and huge bales of leafy green cabbage are
mainstays of the Korean countryside, giving it its own contours and mood. The ajummas hunched in
the field, digging radishes and scallions for the winter gimjang out of
the soil with thin trowels, are Korea's iconic naifs, Millet's gleaners dressed in blue polyurethane visors and floral blouses.
When Koreans pose for photos, it's not cheese they invoke to bring smiles to the
faces of the subjects, but "Kimchi!" Kimchi is monumental in a way that no
prepared North American foodstuff can ever hope to be---it is a touchstone of
Korean life, the leafy skein from which the country's history and self-image has
been woven."
"Tetrodotoxin can cause a pleasing numbing sensation when eaten
in tiny amounts, but if you ingest too much of the substance, nothing pleasant
at all happens. The symptoms of tetrodotoxin poisoning include dizziness,
exhaustion, and nausea. Eventually your muscles begin to freeze--first your lips
and tongue, then the tips of your fingers, then your hands, then your arms and
legs, and finally your heart and lungs. Victims typically remain conscious, but
are eventually paralyzed and can't move or speak. (In parts of Japan, legend has
it, the bodies of fugu-overdose victims were once laid beside their open caskets
for several days to ensure that they were not being buried alive.) The amount of
tetrodotoxin required to kill a man can fit on the head of a pin. Tetrodotoxin
poisoning has no known cure.
Blowfish bones have been excavated in shell mounds in Japan going back more than
2,000 years, and the Japanese remain by far the world's largest consumers of the
fish, eating an estimated 10,000 tons of it each year. The country's ravenous
appetite for fugu is, in part, a simple function of taste. Connoisseurs say that
fugu, an extremely lean fish, has a pure, almost pristine freshness.
"Cleanliness," says chef Masa. "That's the special fugu umami." (Umami
translates literally as a savory Japanese flavor, but the term connotes a kind
of mystical deliciousness.) But much of fugu's allure, of course, comes from its
air of danger. As the owner of a fugu museum in Osaka once put it, "Human beings
are funny. They want to eat what is forbidden." Japanese poets have penned
tragic verses referencing fugu ('I cannot see her tonight / I have to give her
up / So I will eat fugu,' goes one work by the eighteenth-century haikuist Yosa
Buson), and the dish was once so popular that during the Tokugawa and Meiji
periods (1603-1912), Japanese authorities banned people from eating it. In
modern Japan, it's still illegal to serve fugu to the emperor.
"
"The most outlandish of these devices was the Rocket Drag Axle,
which connected mechanically to a car's differential and, when ignited,
surpassed the engine's motive force by upwards of a thousand horsepower and
launched the vehicle forward at a truly mind-numbing rate of acceleration. The
infamous Black Widow Volkswagen Beetle, a basically stock Bug fitted with a
Turbonique Rocket Drag Axle, instantly became a drag racing legend by leaving
Tommy Ivo's four-engine Showboat dragster in its dust with a 9.36 elapsed time
at 168 mph on Sept.19, 1966, at Tampa Dragway.
Built by tobacco heir Zachary Reynolds of R.J. Reynolds Tobacco fame, the
"Tobacco King" 1964 Ford Galaxie was as wild an example of a Rocket Drag
Axle-equipped car as one could ask for, and certainly reflected Reynolds'
daredevil personality. Playboy, pilot, Ham Radio enthusiast and all-around
enfant terrible, Reynolds specifically wanted a car that would terrorize
everyone with its appearance alone..."
Warning: this project involves taxidermy, dremels, and sometimes graphic
pictures of dead animals. While there are no guts in this tutorial, viewer
discretion is still advised."
""Dad used to boil the heads and suck the brains out through
the nose. It was a legend. Was it sad? No! It would be sad now of
course, but some people eat squid and it's more weird to me to eat a
squid than a squirrel."
P.P.S. That damn singing-rabbit Skittles commercial is still giving me
nightmares. I don't understand the appeal, they might as
well be selling a line of Eraserhead snacks.
Powder Game ver1.9
: Another Earth, Water, Fire, and Plants game, with the addition of Wind, Fans,
Gunpowder, and Windmills. (Java required)
Via MetaFilter
