Watch America take a licking, keep on ticking

Emergency and Information Service


Why it's Hungarian, I couldn't tell you, but this is a neat service that plots all the severe weather events and major accidents that have happened in the last 24 hours on a map of the U.S., along with summaries of the event.

Bang your head!

These guys were NOT on the list

Note: This was originally posted somewhere else (okay at my myspace page; what of it?) But I decided to post it here because...well, just cause.

I love metal. Sometimes I forget because my tastes have leaned away from the oh-so-hardest of rock (or as Nathan says, I listen to a bunch of emo crap-which is NOT true by the way). But the other day I was flipping channels and stopped on VH1's "40 Greatest Metal Mania Songs" or something like that, in which they recounted the greatest metal hits of all time. And it was AWESOME. I bowed down before the rock gods of Metallica, Megadeth, Pantera, Iron Maiden, Slayer, Judas Priest, AC/DC, Guns and Roses, Alice in Chains and even some of the more rockingest of "hair" bands such as Motley Crue and Skid Row (which as one commentator correctly pointed out on the show, is unfairly classified as a hair band.) This, combined with the Behind the Music special on Pantera which I saw the week before, has rekindled the fire of metal in my pants! Unfortunately, as all my CDs are packed away I've been listening repeatedly to the System of a Down CD I left in my car...but it'll do.

Because I Can't Think of Anywhere Else to Post This

The dark art of the con!

My wife and I went and saw The Da Vinci Code this weekend. I must say I thoroughly enjoyed it. I must also say that I am one of apparently 3% of the world's population who has not read the book, and this statement and the former may be related. Anyway I read all the reviews ahead of time, all of which were lukewarm to negative, and despite my normal reliance upon reviews to help me decide which movies not to waste $8.50 on I decided to see it anyway. The simple fact is I had not read the book, and I had no plans to read the book, but I wanted to know what all the fuss was about. I still don't know if The Da Vinci Code is a great book, but it makes for a hell of a movie. I really enjoyed it. I found it to be tense, interesting, slightly cerebral, and invigorating. I did not think (like every single reviewer I read) that Tom Hanks was weirdly cast as the leading man or that the writers appeared to be too unwilling to deviate from the book. So anyway, if you've read the book you might feel otherwise. But my wife read the book and she still enjoyed it, though not as much as I did I don't think. Anyway, if you're hankering to indulge yourself in a guilty pleasure, ignore the reviewers and what anyone else tells you and go see it anyway. If you don't like it....well, at least you got to see Tom Hanks with long hair and Audrey Tatou speaking English with a oh-so sexy French accent.

Prevent the terrorists from making a tetris!

Fucked up, but somewhat cathartic too...

http://www.ebaumsworld.com/games/new-york-defender.html

Dinosaurs and common sense

My wife subscribes to Smithsonian Magazine, and there is an article in this month's edition about a T-Rex found in the U.S. with soft tissue and blood cells still intact.

Dinosaur Article

Now, who really thinks that soft tissue can survive (and remain soft) after 60 to 70 million years? Honestly, that defies basic reason. What amazes me is not that a dinosaur was found with soft tissue intact. I'm floored by this statement from the article: "Schweitzer’s work is “showing us we really don’t understand decay,” Holtz says. “There’s a lot of really basic stuff in nature that people just make assumptions about.”" Really! Decay is an assumption?!?

Regardless of whether a person believes that evolution is true or false, or that the earth is x million or thousand years old, or anything else about such things, this shows some of the most astounding blinded bias I've encountered in a while. Holtz, and I'm sure plenty of other people, are so solidly convinced of such subjective things as the history of millions to billions of years, they are would rather doubt that tissue decays than that a T-Rex could potentially be found out of a possible, theoretical, historical context that can never be demonstrated or reproduced in reality. It just goes to show how powerful a world view really is. Basic common-sense issues are nothing in the wake of a charging world view.

Now those of you who share this world view, I know this will make you angry. That's fine, my goal isn't to make you angry, but to scoff about how powerful a world-view is. So, even though you can't help yourselves, you can spare the hate-comments about how holy and sacred the "scientific" history of the last x billion years is. I just want to make a philosophical point.

Super Mario Bros. - performed live

Has to be seen to be believed...

http://www.ifilm.com/ifilmdetail/2723272