With sincere apologies to the memory of Tennessee Ernie Ford!
Two Trillion Tons
(Click the link for mp3 audio…)
Mar 30 2009
What Does a Trillion Dollars Look Like?
So your president has already spent your children’s children’s children’s inheritance down to about ten generations. They say that when it comes to government spending, a trillion here, a trillion there, and pretty soon you’re talking about some real money. But what do all those trillions look like? Go here to see.
(By the way, that red speck in the left corner below is a person.)
Mar 30 2009
Japanese Astronaut Tests Stink-Free Underwear
I have two teen-age boys. They are so all over this.
HOUSTON, March 23 (Reuters) – Teen-age boys, are you tired of embarrassing questions about when you last changed underwear? Japan’s space scientists may have just the answer — a line of odor-free underwear and casual clothing.
Koichi Wakata, the first Japanese astronaut to live on the International Space Station, is testing the clothes, called J-ware and created by textile experts at Japan Women’s University in Tokyo.
“He can wear his trunks (underwear) more than a week,” said Koji Yanagawa, an official with the Japanese Aerospace Exploration Agency.
Wakata’s clothes, developed by researcher Yoshiko Taya, are designed to kill bacteria, absorb water, insulate the body and dry quickly. They also are flame-resistant and anti-static, not to mention comfortable and stylish.
Japanese astronaut Takao Doi gave the clothes a trial run during a shuttle mission last year. Even after a vigorous workout, Doi’s clothes stayed dry.
“The other astronauts become very sweaty, but he doesn’t have any sweat. He didn’t need to hang his clothes to dry,” Yanagawa said.
Thankfully there were no pictures with the article.
Mar 30 2009
QOTD
“Oh, Lord! Thou knowest how busy I must be this day; if I forget Thee, do not Thou forget me. March on, boys!”
- Sir Jacob Hill, 23 October 1642, before the Battle of Edgehill in the English Civil War
As if He could.
Mar 26 2009
Gotta Love Colorado in the Springtime
“Significant snow accumulation possible tomorrow.” That’s always fun…
Mar 18 2009
Found It!
We have a new sport. A Christmas or two back my most excellent S-I-L gave me a Garmin GPS for the Land Yacht. Like all real men, I thought, “What do I need THAT for? I have a natural sense of direction.” Natural sense of direction or not, it’s been a great tool.
Then last year someone turned us onto geocaching. The Spousal Entity found it was a great way to add a little adventure when she takes the boys crosscountry. The concept is pretty simple, but it does require a GPS unit. People hide containers in various spots, log the location online at Geocaching.com, and then we go find it. Sounds easy enough, right? Depending on the accuracy of your GPS unit, the number and geometry of the satellites overhead and other semi-random factors (especially the wiliness of the fiend who hides the cache), it can take a good bit of searching to finally find it. Once you do, you open it, sign the log inside, maybe trade trinkets if there any, and then go online and register your find.
We’ve been doing this semi-occasionally for a year or so when Spousal Entity heard someone had found 128 caches in a single day. Not to be outdone, she brought in her coworkers and set down to map out how to beat the guy. Did I mention that her coworkers were 90-lb brain math PhDs? One of them downloaded a table of all the local caches and then developed a scatter plot with multiple linear regressions (and side pipes and chrome headers, I think) to determine the optimum route to find 130 caches in 18 hours.
We got to the coordinates of the first cache at 6am and then proceeded to drive back and forth all over town and out into the country. We brought food and water with us and limited our potty breaks. We missed a few caches, found a few extra, and finally just before 10pm, we found cache GC1ADGF, named INTELSAT 701 after the comm satellite, or as well like to call it – #130.
(Geocaching bumper sticker courtesy of World Caching Store)
Mar 17 2009
Happy St. Patrick’s Day (A Few Irish Blessings and Curses)
May the curse of Mary Malone and her nine blind illegitimate children chase you so far over the hills of Damnation that the Lord Himself can’t find you.
“Lord, confound this surly sister,
Blight her brow with blotch and blister,
Cramp her larynx, lung and liver,
In her guts a galling give her.”May his pipe never smoke,
may his teapot be broke,
and to add to the joke
may his kettle not boil,
may he lay in the bed
’till the moment he’s dead
may he always be fed on lobscouse and fish oil,
may he swell with the gout,
may his grinders fall out,
may he roar, bawl and shout,
with the horrid toothache.
May his temples wear horns,
and all his toes corns,
the monster that murdered Nell Flaherty’s drake.No butter be on your milk nor on your ducks a web. May your cow be flayed. And may the flame be bigger and wider which will go through your soul than the Connemara mountains, if they were on fire.
It is often that a person’s mouth broke his nose.
May he never eat bread nor drink whisky, but be tormented with itching without benefit of scratching.
(And my favorite)
Get down on your knees and thank God you’re still on your feet.
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