Monkey Naming Rights

Goldenpalace.com paid $650,000 to name a newly discovered species of titi monkey. My $14.76 bid to name the species "C-Dog Monkey!" (that's right, the exclamation point would've been mandatory) didn't have a chance.

I Watch Too Much TV

I know this because I just found myself wishing Levis'd used the Madness tune from the stone tossing commercial on the broken-in jeans commercial instead, so they'd have one good commercial to play twice as often.

I just got hooked on Veronica Mars. Missed Olerud's Grand Slam because I got sucked into the back-to-back episodes on CBS last night.

Doctor Who News

Sarah Jane Smith (Elisabeth Sladen) will be back next season and Monarch of the Glen's Anthony Head will appear. [BBC]

Farewell Scotty

RIP James Doohan

Captioning

"The only problem is, he doesn't throw his clubs when he gets mad, if you know what I mean."

Mmmm ... forbidden time travel donut

"Gravity doughnut promises time machine"
This sounds suspicously like a fanboy physicist trying to salvage the Superman-flies-really-fast-around-the-earth-reversing-its-rotation-thereby-turning-back-time scene. From the article:

In theory, it should be possible to travel back to any point in time after the time machine was built, reports Ori in Physical Review Letters1. One slight snag is that he has not worked out how to generate the gravitational doughnut, although he has some ideas. "It's wild speculation, but you may need to move large masses rapidly in a circular motion," Ori says.

You Try, You Really Try ...

... to give people the benefit of the doubt, to not lapse back to embarrassing arguments you made in high school (e.g., 'people should have to pass some kind of intelligence test before being allowed to procreate') and then you stumble across something like this Angry Retarded Mom and you pretty much feel sick to death with humanity all over again. (Not that it makes it right, but she started calling people 'tards' first.) Check the post about firearms, it's chock full o' black humor.

On a semi-related note, I'm tempted to develop a Micah 6:8 Litmus Test for blogs that profess to be written by Christians but are little more than hateful screeds against 'libs, muslims, and gays'. I'm thinking of a template like:

The Micah 6:8 Litmus Test has been applied to your blog. Here are your results:
Do Justly
You wrote: "[insert easy to find quote in support of torture]"
Love Mercy
You wrote: "[insert easy to find quote advocating bombing the hell out of civilians in some other country demonstrably not involved in the 9/11 attacks]"
Walk Humbly With Thy God
You wrote: "[insert easy to find quote advocating putting statues of the Ten Commandments in front of courthouses or some other blatant violation of the principle of Separation of Church and State]"

You failed the test miserably. Your God is disgusted with you. I hope you're looking forward to the hellfire and damnation you've got coming.

Needs some tweaking. I, personally, don't believe anybody's got hellfire or damnation coming ... just want to point out that they must believe it based on their purported religous beliefs. If I ever decide to apply it, I'm sure you'll be able to tell by the inevitable spike in drool-soaked wingnut troll comments here.

.000001%

If only there were more Conservatives with a conscience.

Irony

I just renewed my AAA membership, while at their site, I saw link that I thought odd for AAA .. "Witness 20th Anniversary Tour."

What, I wondered, does an auto club have to do with mid-80's Kelly McGillis flick? From the page:

Package* for 2 includes:
1-night hotel accomodations
Full hot breakfast buffet
PA Dutch family-style dinner
Official Witness Movie Experience Tour
Witness DVD or VHS movie upon check-in

Then, it goes on to list all the things you get as part of the package.

All rooms feature a refrigerator, coffeemaker, in-room safe, hairdryer, iron & ironing board, pay-per-view movies, Nintendo games and free high speed wireless Internet access. There are two restaurants, lounge, three pools , fitness center with women's and men's saunas and whirlpool, lighted tennis courts, basketball and shuffleboard, and game room.

I think you have to play the Nintendo games on a hand-carved wooden controller (like this iPod), but aside from that, I'm still a little stunned by the juxtaposition. I mean, what?, no animatronic Amish (Amishatronic?) to guide you through a holodeck simulating scenes from the movie?

Google Map Hacks

Robot Wisdom linked a couple nice ones today, a pedometer and a map/satellite overlay. Looking a nice list of the different hacks out there (which I didn't find), I did happen upon another one that looks like it might be cool way to make an online 'scrapbook' of a trip.

Happy Fourth!

Experience the majesty of Chepachet, RI's "Ancient and Horribles Parade."