Category: Out there

Seems half the people I know got a copy of this in their inboxes recently:

Call out Gouranga be happy.
Gouranga Gouranga Gouranga.
Say Gouranga my friend.
Gouranga….That which brings the highest happiness.

No one has a clue what it’s about, but it’s so lovely I’m loathe to call it spam.

Meanwhile the Center for Democracy and Technology has a very comprehensive piece out, Why Am I Getting All This Spam? Personally I’d be sunk without Entourage’s incredible spam filtering – lately getting 150+ pieces of mail a day at birdhouse.org, 2/3 spam.

Received this at the J-School’s webmaster email address today, subject line “Take Heed” :

Your name is NOT “Scot Hacker” and take that “gay Christian” remark off of this site or you are going to be in a heap of trouble in more ways than one. Let me tell you about a few of them: You will be reported to the Dean and the Assistant Dean; what you are doing may be reporting to large donor alumni; what you are doing will be reported to media; what you are doing will be reported to organizations as a person of interest and you do not want to become involved with people who can do worse to you than you are trying to do to the name of Christians. Your “gay Christian” remark is placed there only to defame Christians; you are probably a mislead Muslim. If you think this is going to be tolerated, you are dead wrong. Diana

Had no idea what she was talking about but searched for “gay christian” and found a 3-year-old article on our site about black gay Christians in South Africa by an ex-student name of Julia Roller. Diana apparently couldn’t find an email link for Julia so unleashed her spew on me. I returned a nice note wondering what she had against black gay Christians, but it bounced. Too bad – was really looking forward to getting sucked into the bottomless fray of lunatic religious extremism.

Me to Amy, watching morning news: “Did you know we have a bomb called the MOAB — the Mother Of All Bombs?”

Amy to me, stepping out of shower: “Did you know my deodorant has “Super Deodorancy?” It says so right on the package.”

The earth at night as seen by satellites. The image is actually a composite made by gluing lots of images together. Interesting the way light patterns map not just to population densities but to parts of the world with money, i.e. Africa doesn’t lack population — it lacks the resources to make its cities visible from space at night. Be sure to click through for the high-res version.

It has just been pointed out to me that Defective Yeti also posted yesterday an entry titled “Annnnd We’re Back,” just like the one I posted last night. Well, not just like – Defective Yeti’s post is, of course, funny, whereas my posts almost never are. I’m not that kind of guy. I would like to assure the public that I did not read Defective Yeti yesterday and that the coincidence is just that. Please remain calm. Thank you.

Quite possibly the most aptly named animal on the planet, here is Monterey Bay Aquarium’s description of the truly foul hagfish.

Also known as slime eels, hagfish are primitive fishes. They have four hearts, no jaws, no true eyes and no stomach. They have poor vision but a very good sense of smell and touch.

Hagfish live in burrows on the seafloor and locate their food by smelling and feeling as they swim. They prey on small invertebrates living in the mud, as well as scavenging dead and dying fish. They are noted for their unusual way of feeding—they slither into dead or dying fishes and eat them from the inside out, using their “rasping tongue” to carry food into their funnel-shaped mouth.

Hagfish are notorious for their defensive slime––a mucous fluid secreted from their pores. It’s different from slime that some other fish produce; millions of microscopic threads run through it, which makes it extremely sticky.

Why I love living in the East Bay, reason #367:

I subscribe to a couple of neighborhood mailing lists, one of which works in coop with local police officers. Most of the traffic consists of police reports, usually garden variety holdups and drug busts. An item today was a bit more, um, creative:

“FW34 was getting in her car to move it across the street, for the street sweepers. She noticed a loud noise coming from the muffler. Her husband came out and looked under the car. There was metal and wood shavings, a pipe sticking out and green plastic bag. It appears that someone had tried to rig it so the Carbon Monoxide would go into the cab of the car. There are no suspects at this time.”

The more I dig through these, the more our neighborhood sounds like a bad pulp fiction novel. Click More for more.
Continue reading “Green Plastic Bag”

Hey girls! Got to “keep it real” … “way cool” … “so cute” … a girl’s got to eat lots and lots (and lots) of beef! Cool To Be Real is a thinly “vealed” beef industry propaganda campaign aimed at teenage girls — too many of whom, apparently, are going vegetarian behind the backs of good wage-earning cattlemen. How can a vegetarian be true to herself and keep it real? Fortunately, I think (I hope) that even Teen-Beat readers are savvy enough to see through this. As Matthew put it, “It’s like life imitating the Simpsons.”

This afternoon did a quick animation experiment using a small portion of Amy’s expansive gumball collection and iStopMotion. Soundtrack from the Minutemen’s “Toe Jam.” Around 220 individually snapped frames with no particular intent. n.b. Even very old pre-chewed gum gets a bit sticky under hot lights.

(Click)

No theories.