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Current Terror Alert Level:
January 02, 2009
Muslim Family removed from airline flight - AirTran overreacts, leaves them stranded, refuses to reimburse them for rebooked travel.
The grievous solecism under question: "Where is the safest place to sit on an airplane?"
December 26, 2008
Pakistan, India are militarizing their border. Basically, the dispute comes from India accusing the Pakistani ISI (their secret police) of orchestrating the terrorist attacks in Mumbai last month. Pakistan denies this, but it's unclear how much control Asif Ali Zadari, the current president of the country, has over the ISI anyway.
In the above link, it's explained that Pakistan is pulling troops off of the anti-Taliban effort on the Afghan border. It probably doesn't need explaining that a fourth war between India and Pakistan would be really, really bad.
December 23, 2008
A Diaper Change You Can Believe In - Why, exactly, are thousands of God-loving Spaniards paying almost twenty bucks for Barack Obama to relieve himself in their nativity scenes? Somewhere between tradition and transition lies perhaps the funniest Christmas story you'll learn this season.
If you have 20 mins to spare, check out Aimee Mann's video Christmas Carol, starring Michael Cera, John C. Reilly, and others. Directed by Tim (of Tim & Eric).
December 20, 2008
Slow Motion Video - it may not be initially clear what's going on. Stick it out: it's worth it. [more inside]
December 17, 2008
Obligatory thread for rounding up year-end lists that people find interesting.
Happy 5th Birthday today to Alkaline Earth. From humble beginnings as a way to mock zieglerfe to humble on-goings as what it is today I love all you guys and gals that still come here and have stuff to say. mrflip and I thank you.
December 15, 2008
The Perfect Storm! A buzzword used increasingly by idiot businessfolk that has become as annoying and worn out as George Clooney's "acting." [more inside]
December 14, 2008
The NHL is undoubtedly full of fine upstanding individuals who have families and volunteer in their communities and are a pleasure to be around. Sean Avery, recently "let go" by the Dallas Stars, is not one of them. He will probably best be remembered for being in that rarified air of having necessitated a new rule ("The Sean Avery Rule") specifically due to his play. In a playoff game, he spent a whole power play doing nothing but unabashedly trying to block the opposing goalie's view (he didn't even bother facing the puck). After this, the Rangers let him go but Dallas must have decided he was an "outside the box thinker". They were less appreciative when out of the blue he called out an opposing player for dating his "sloppy seconds" (that would be Elisha Cuthbert).
December 12, 2008
RIP Boyd Coddington - following on the news that Bettie Page and Ithaca Legend Hot Truck Bob just passed, I also just found out that Boyd Coddington, a pioneer of the modern hot rod, passed away this year.
He started his career amid the spiraling kandy-kolored tangerine-flake rococo excess of the Ed 'Big Daddy' Roth days and reined it back to earth, with an aesthetic of clean elegance, marrying modern automotive design to the classic forms of 1930s - 1950s American Iron. (His first client? Some guy named 'Bono' from an obscure Irish rock band.)
None better shows this than his masterwork, Billy Gibbons' "CadZZilla". It turns up to "11" everything that is great about the early post-war Cadillacs, and it set the aesthetic theme for the next decade of hot rods. (Incidentally Billy Gibbons also commissioned Eliminator, another of the greatest hot rods ever created. Please enjoy this ZZ-Top video starring CadZZilla alongside Doc Brown, Alex P Keaton, 3 leggy blondes, and Sergio Leone.) Seeing CadZZilla in a magazine is what first got me into hotrodding, and I'd name it one of the most beautiful cars ever created. [more inside]
December 11, 2008
Bookmarklet to re-request a journal article thru the UT Proxy
Apologies in advance to Non-UT people: if you don't have a current UT EID this is of no use to you. If you are at home and get the no yuo on a journal article, rather than do the the go-to-library-site-log-in-look-up-journal-in-catalog-find-again-on-journal-site dance, you can just paste
https://ezproxy.lib.utexas.edu/login?qurl=
in front of the URL and it generally does the Right Thing.
Here, because I love you, is a bookmarklet to do that (it also encodes the url, improving your chances of success):
UT Proxy
Drag that link to your bookmarks toolbar and then practice:
* dictionary.oed.com
* nature.com
Appending .ezproxy.lib.utexas.edu to the domain name often works too but I've found the query one above to be more robust.
December 10, 2008
Obama chooses Steven Chu as Secretary of Energy - Nobel Prize in Physics in 1997 for laser cooling and trapping of atoms. Longtime supporter of alternative energy. Seems like a step in the right direction.
Also, he personally responded to my email when I was applying for graduate school at Stanford. It was to say that he wouldn't interfere with the usual vetting process and good luck and I ended up getting mega-rejected anyway but it was nice.
Brian Malow - Earth's Premier Science Comedian. As seen in Nature (subscription probably req).
December 08, 2008
Good Monday morning read: I'm Really Gonna Miss Systematically Destroying This Place.
December 04, 2008
If you are sick of hearing the same Christmas songs every year starting after Halloween, you might be interested in these 10 really geeky Christmas songs. [more inside]
December 03, 2008
Prop. 8: The Musical - play spot the celebrity in this 3 minute song from the Sacramento Community Players.
50 NES Quotes Every Gamer Should Know - time on AE for an old school "list" post. Some of them are pretty memorable although it turns out I didn't actually play a lot of these games. I do definitely remember the referenced scene from Golgo 13...hot stuff. Also this provides me a chance to point out to habcous that the unsanitized Soda Popinski of Punch-Out fame really existed and was called Vodka Drunkenski.
December 02, 2008
Theft on Campus - the Campus Watch articles are always great. But UT'ers will find the robbery reported at Texas Memorial Stadium particularly poignant.
December 01, 2008
No Escaping Britney Spears - Maybe all our refined, enlightened interests are lost in the long tail, because Britney Spears once again was the most popular search subject in 2008 on Yahoo. [more inside]
So this is interesting. Canada is about to have it's first ever (at least in recent memory) coalition shakedown in their government, as Prime Minister Stephen Harper is about to get ousted by Parliament, as the Liberals and the NDP are planning a coalition.
If you read that, said 'huh' and would like to know more, a brief primer on Parliamentary government and the Canadian party system follows in the extended. [more inside]
November 27, 2008
All season a TAMU blog has been making humorous videos mocking the Aggies' upcoming opponent. I wonder who they are serving vlog-style this week. Oh yeah, that's right. Pretty funny even if they are gonna lose by 30.