30,000 toy ducks, the floating kind from your childhood baths of yore, are approaching the coast of Great Britain after being washed overboard from a container ship more than 15 years ago on the other side of the world. The ducks apparently traveled the currents a total of 17,000 miles, from the Pacific up through the Arctic (while frozen in blocks of ice), down the coast of Greenland, and now toward England.
You just can’t make this stuff up.
Talk about the amusement park ride from hell…a 13 year old girl was riding the Superman Tower of Power at Six Flags Kentucky Kingdom when, apparently, a tension cable snapped and severed both of her feet at the ankle. The girl wasn’t even crying as the gruesome accident was discovered after the ride descended — she was undoubtedly in shock — but the other riders were most definitely traumatized.
If you can stomach such grammatical flora as “We seen the cable break loose…” and “…she didn’t have no legs…”, you can read the local news report for yourself. There is currently no word on the girl’s condition, or if her feet were even retrieved. The ride, of course, is shut down, but the park remains open.
“You must be this high to ride this ride…but you will only be this high when you get off.”
I know, three posts in one night, try not to get too excited…
I almost didn’t write this because I am a vehement opponent of how much time major news services devote to “celebrity news” instead of “real news.” However, since this is a blog, I don’t exactly have high standards to aspire to…and this was just too good to pass up.
By this time, I’m sure most of you know Paris Hilton was suddenly released from jail after serving less than 5 days of her 45-day sentence for violating probation and multiple DUIs. She was sent home with an ankle bracelet to serve her remaining sentence under house arrest…very trying at her house, I’m sure. The vague excuse of “medical considerations” given by the Sheriff’s Department did little to dispel the pervading stink of celebrity special treatment.
Well, it apparently didn’t sit well with the prosecutor or the judge — who had explicitly denied the option of Hilton serving her sentence out under house arrest, and had so warned the sheriff. Hmm…what’s that sound? I think it’s the sheriff rolling around in small-denomination unmarked bills. At any rate, just hours after she was released from jail, an order was issued for Hilton to appear at court the next morning for the judge to determine if she should go back to jail. I dare say that’s probably a forgone conclusion, given that neither the judge nor the prosecutor authorized her release.
Apparently a good fist to the face is the way they resolve disputes over agenda issues (are you kidding me? Agenda issues?) in the ‘bama state senate. A Republican state senator punched a Democratic senator (there’s Democrats in Alabama? Holy crap) and, like a true gentlemen, doesn’t feel it’s necessary to apologize “yet”. Nice.
I highly recommend you all take some time to read this incredibly excellent piece by an American reporter who has spent extensive time in the Saudi kingdom. While there, she had to respect the Saudi cultural attitudes toward women, which as most of us know involves covering the body from head to toe in robes and fully submitting to men, among other things.
What is most interesting about the article is not just her personal experiences — which are, in and of themselves, fairly amazing for a country that is considered “civilized” and has a comfortable relationship with the United States — but how being immersed in that culture affected her. It’s somewhat sad, and reminds you of how different other places can be…and how much it is tolerated by the rest of the world just because they have oil.
So it’s about 1:00 am (obviously, by the timestamp on this post), and I’ve been up trying to get some coding done. Coding makes you thirsty. Since I’ve promised Amanda I’ll watch my health or some such crap, I figured I’d have plain old water. I stumble into the kitchen, grab a glass, pull the Brita pitcher out of the fridge, pour…
…and stare, dumbfounded, as I realize I’m holding a glass full of solid ice. Not ice chips, mind you, but a solid piece — one whole solid drinking-glass-shaped piece of ice.
The scientists in the audience will know immediately what just happened. But because it’s 1:00 am, and I’ve mentally shut down for the day (I can’t wait to see what my code looks like tomorrow), it takes me a minute. I looked back and forth between the ice block in my glass and the tiny little 1/2-inch opening on the top of the Brita filter, suspicious of its tricks, before the realization dawned on me that I had just recreated something I had seen in all those Youtube videos: supercooled water.
If distilled water is cooled below freezing, it won’t actually solidify. If it is then introduced into a “contaminated” environment (like my drinking glass), it will freeze instantly. Apparently water cannot actually freeze unless it contains impurities. I had bumped the temp on my refrigerator down a couple notches earlier in the day because I thought it wasn’t quite cold enough; apparently I went a touch too far. But at least, as the title implies, this proves that Brita filters really do purify the water, and quite well apparently.
A very simple but cool (haha) thing. Still, it confused the hell out of my poor tired brain for a second. “I just poured water…why am I holding ice?”
I like to think that as I get older, although remaining mostly idealistic, I’m not as naive as I used to be. When I first read the above headline on CNN.com, many things went through my head. “What do they mean by integrated? Was there a bunch of little proms and now there’s one uber-prom? Are they maybe now including freshman and sophomores? Why is this news?” Even after clicking on the link and reading the story highlights at the top, I didn’t totally get it:
- “Students of Turner County [Georgia] High School voted to have school-sponsored prom
- In the past, parents have organized private, segregated dances
“What, the parents used to put on their own proms and only invite the ‘cool’ people or something? Like the jocks and cheerleaders?” Then I read the first line of the story:
Students of Turner County High School started what they hope will become a new tradition: Black and white students attended the prom together for the first time on Saturday.
You have got to be f#%@ing kidding me.
What year is this? The context of that headline — a story in the here and now — totally caught me off guard, hence my complete misunderstanding of what the subject of the article could possibly be. That would have made sense had I seen it in a newspaper clipping from, oh, almost 40 years ago. But just now? No wonder this country is so screwed up. It gets even better with a (white) student referring to a prom she attended in 2001:
“There was not anybody that I can remember that was black,” she said. “The white people have theirs, and the black people have theirs. It’s nothing racial at all.“
But the crowning jewel is really the parents. Bless these kids, most of them seem to be all for the integrated prom, but some of them actually weren’t allowed to go because their parents “don’t agree with being with the colored people”. Can you imagine those kids having to explain to their date/friend/future family and children that they couldn’t go to their senior prom because their elitist white southern parents were so racist they couldn’t bear the thought of their children at a party in the same room as blacks…in 2007?? Not that that sick mentality was ever acceptable to begin with, but I guess the whole point of this post is that I can’t believe that racism can still be so blatant, even in the south. I guess they got around the desegregation laws by throwing them as private parties.
I bet those asshole parents call themselves Christians too. They’re the ones with the “family values”. They’re also the ones that vote all these “family values” politicians we have into office. Awesome. I think I need to go be sick now.
Never believing the optimistic view of Iraq spewed by some politicians (“The American people never see all the good things happening in Iraq!”), this story nonetheless impressed me. A CNN journalist visited a class at Baghdad University — during which twelve explosions rocked the classroom — and asked students how they felt about Iraq and what they were trying to accomplish at B.U. Their unity — Shiites, Sunnis and Kurds together — is inspiring. A great piece, definitely worth the read. Imagine how much courage it would take for you to still attend classes at a place that is attacked daily, where many students have died and over one hundred professors have been assassinated since the war began in March 2003.
Thanks to James for pointing this out to me. PartiallyClips is a creative comic strip by an author that uses a single image across three frames, and invents dialog to fit the scene (instead of actually drawing a scene to fit dialog). I’m still laughing at this one (you have to know something about Battlestar Galactica for it to be truly funny). Check it out if you appreciate a laugh, it’s a cool site with good stuff.
Although I can’t verify that he actually holds the title as he claims (I can’t even verify there is such a title as “World Freehand Circle Drawing Champion”), this is nonetheless very impressive: a man draws a seemingly perfect circle, freehand. He even has a warm-up before he does it. You can’t make this stuff up.
