Pykrete is sawdust reinforced ice that you can make at home. It takes a lot longer than regular ice or Blue Ice to melt. It doesn’t shatter like regular ice when shot with a .243 bullet, but that doesn’t help keep my food cold.

Why do I care about this stuff? If you go on 3, sometimes 4 day camping trips, you know that ice is a big problem. Dry ice keeps everything cold, but it also freezes stuff. Who want’s to have a frozen beer? This may be the solution.

Here’s an interesting history about its possible use as a boat in World War II.

Can you recognize an ordinary penny? It may be tougher than you think. Try it at Common Cents. It’s one of the Exploratorium’s Online exhibits. There are a bunch more there worth checking out. Some require Flash.

Thanks, Ron.

My friend Andy sent a song to me a week or so ago which was so big it caused my email provider to warn me that my account had passed the “high water mark”. Knowing that some of my friends still use dial-up, I didn’t send it on to anyone.

It turns out that it’s a song by Eric Idle of Monty Python fame. You can get it at Pythonline.com. Eric says:

“Here’s a little song I wrote the other day while I was out duck hunting with a judge. It’s a new song, it’s dedicated to the FCC and if they broadcast it, it will cost a quarter of a million dollars.”

It should probably be called “Fuck You, Very Much”, but then nobody would be able to talk about it on the air.

I avoid Blockbuster Video for a few reasons, but the main ones are their preference for the pan-and-scan, edited for TV versions of movies. There has been a lot of discussion and denial about them supplying edited versions, but my suspicion is that it really came down to use their using the TV version. They won’t carry an “unrated” version, and some DVDs come out with the Director’s Cut, which makes them unrated.

Because of Blockbuster’s clout, I didn’t want to support something that might move movie makers to eliminate the widescreen version. But according to a Slate article, “Blockbuster Video, the country’s dominant rental chain, announced that from that point on it officially preferred widescreen DVDs to pan-and-scan (also known as “full screen”).”

The small video stores in my area have already been put out of business, so it’s probably okay for me to rent G, PG and mild R movies there now.

I just signed this petition to count every vote this November. There are already articles posted here about this (Part 1, Part 2), so there’s no point in repeating it. What follows is the letter they suggest sending after you sign the petition.

We must act now to ensure that our voting systems produce accurate and verifiable results.

Some states are planning to use machines that will not allow voters to verify their choices. This means that any flaws in the machine or software will never be caught — and no recount will be possible.

And the head of the largest e-voting machine company — who is a major contributor to George Bush and has promised to deliver Ohio to him — asks that we just trust him.

Please join me by signing this call for accountability:

http://petition.democracyforamerica.com/page/p/verify/113648

The FCC was swamped with indecency complaints over a recent Oprah show about teen sexuality.  But a lot of it was instigated by Howard Stern and Jimmy Kimmel, in an attempt to show that a double standard exists about what the FCC considers obscene.

link

I recently finished rereading Arthur C. Clarke’s Childhood’s End.  Classic sci-fi from 1953.  It was a bit moralistic and philosophical but one rant showed how much things have changed.  At this point in the story it is 100 years in the future, around 2050:

“Do you realize that every day something like five hundred hours of radio and TV pour out over the various channels?  … Did you know that the average viewing time per person is now three hours per day?  Soon people won’t be living their own lives anymore.  It will be a full time job keeping up with the various family serials on TV!”

Well, there’s about 100 channels typically available now, that’s 2,400 hours per day.  It’s almost funny that he gave as low a number as he did when you consider that radio isn’t included in my number.  I’m not sure how old the statistic is, but according to the A.C. Nielsen Co., the average American watches more than 4 hours of TV each day.  That’s 30% more than what outraged Clarke.

As far as people living other’s lives, there’s the current addiction to reality TV.  And we’re only half way to the year he was talking about.

Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory is working on a breakthrough way of digitizing and archiving old recordings, such as wax cylinders and traditional flat records, that are too far gone for a standard stylus.

link

About half of what’s quoted here was removed for brevity, but there still had to be enough left that it would make sense so it’s longer than I would like.

It’s worth going over the work the Butcher of Baghdad did for his Texas patrons when he was their butcher:

• 1979: Seizes power with U.S. approval; moves allegiance from Soviets to U.S. in Cold War.
• 1982: Bush-Reagan regime removes Saddam’s regime from official U.S. list of state sponsors of terrorism.
• 1984: U.S. Commerce Department issues license for export of aflatoxin to Iraq useable in biological weapons.
• 1987-88: U.S. warships destroy Iranian oil platforms in Gulf and break Iranian blockade of Iraq shipping lanes, tipping war advantage back to Saddam.
• 1990: Invades Kuwait with U.S. permission.

U.S. permission? On July 25, 1990, the dashing dictator met in Baghdad with U.S. Ambassador April Glaspie. When Saddam asked Glaspie if the U.S. would object to an attack on Kuwait over the small emirate’s theft of Iraqi oil, the ambassador told him, “We have no opinion…. Secretary [of State James] Baker has directed me to emphasize the instruction … that Kuwait is not associated with America.” Saddam taped her.

Glaspie, in her 1991 Congressional testimony, did not deny the authenticity of the recording, which diplomats worldwide took as a Bush Sr’s okay to an Iraqi invasion.

So where is Secretary Baker today? … Mr. Baker is a successful lawyer, founder of Baker Botts of Houston, Riyadh, Kazakhstan. Among his glittering client roster is Exxon-Mobil oil and the defense minister of Saudi Arabia. Baker’s firm is protecting the Saudi royal from a lawsuit by the families of the victims of September 11 over evidence suggesting that Saudi money ended up in the pockets of the terrorists.

And Baker has just opened a new office … at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue. This is a White House first: the first time a lobbyist for the oil industry will have a desk right next to the President’s. Baker’s job, to “restructure” Iraq’s debt. How lucky for his clients in Saudi Arabia. The Kingdom claims $30.7 billion due from Iraq.

Should be newsworthy that the U.S. essentially gave permission for Iraq to attack, and then used its doing so as an excuse to attack Iraq, don’t you think?

The full article is an excerpt from the new edition of The Best Democracy Money Can Buy.

The United States ranks 10th in the industrialized world in broadband capability and “10 is 10 spots too low,” Bush said at the annual convention of the American Association of Community Colleges in Minnesota.

I guess that means we should be zero instead of number one.  Or is that Bushspeak for: we should have none?

Aye!  A tricky bastard he is!

Why is it so annoying to watch someone else make a mistake?  Researches say it may be because it affects the same areas of the brain as when a person makes his or her own mistake.

Perhaps this is why I get frustrated trying to explain to someone else how to do something on the computer.  I could never figure out why I would get so frustrated.

A California assemblyman has introduced legislation banning anyone under 18 from using a tanning machine with ultraviolet rays, except under doctor’s orders. – link

A Louisiana lawmaker has filed a bill that would ban people from wearing low-slung pants below the waist, thus “exposing skin or intimate clothing.” – link

Don’t they have anything better to do?

From FreedomToTinker — there’s no point in rewriting it, so I’ll just give credit and copy:

Part 1:  The Sloganator

The first evidence of the campaign’s Net-cluelessness was the Bush-Cheney poster generator that came to be called “The Sloganator”. This was a web tool, on the campaign’s site, that let you create a Bush-Cheney campaign poster containing the slogan of your choice. On hearing about this, any Net-savvy person knew exactly what would happen next. Opponents would discover the site and create posters with disparaging slogans. Contests would be held, to see who could make the funniest poster. And the whole episode would be commemorated with an online slide show.

Part 2:  New, Unauthorized Sloganator

I wrote previously about how the remix culture will affect political discourse.
A great example is the new, unauthorized version of the Bush/Cheney “Sloganator”. The original, you may recall, was on the Bush/Cheney website. It allowed you to make a campaign poster with the candidates’ names and (almost) any slogan you liked. After much hilarity at the campaign’s expense, mainly in the form of parody signs with disparaging slogans, the Sloganator was retired.

Now it has been resurrected, appearing in a new, apparently unauthorized, version at http://www.bushsloganator.com. In the remix culture, it’s hard to undo your mistakes, because other people will just copy them.

I now know why 0@adelphia.net was available:  It gets a spam every 5 minutes, and 99% of them have viruses.

The address was way more trouble than it was worth in easy-to-remember-ness, so it’s gone.

The winning entry of the Wacky Warning Label Contest was found on a bottle of drain cleaner:  “If you do not understand, or cannot read, all directions, cautions and warnings, do not use this product.”  I prefer the fishing lure with “Harmful if swallowed.”

Warning labels from previous contests are available here.

I just added a new address to my adelphia.net cable modem account.  I had to talk to their tech support to do it, but that’s another story of their crappy service (although the access speed is great).  It’s an amazingly simple name (just a single character) and it was surprising that nobody had already taken it.

I sent mail from my other Adelphia address to it to verify that it was setup properly.  It hasn’t been used for anything else.

It took less than 15 minutes to get my first spam.  While writing this I got another, which also had a virus.  Maybe that’s why the address was available.

Although I live close to LA, I can’t pick up KBLA which broadcasts The O’Franken Factor and other liberal fun.  No problem: they have a live internet feed using the RealOne player. 

I’m listening to it now, and it works great.

It’s a timed test to put all the states names on a map.  I haven’t thought about some of these places in a long time but was still surprised that I failed third grade twice before passing.  There isn’t a lot of time for dropping names in the wrong places.

Thanks, Terry

It’s already allowed for some other crimes, now there’s a move in LA to confiscate the cars of drunk drivers when they are arrested. 

Yeah, drunk driving is a bad thing, but this should really worry everybody.  The police can make mistakes and, let’s face it, they aren’t all model cops.  This would give them the right to stop you for whatever reason (which they can already do) and if they don’t like you and decide to arrest you for drunk driving, you lose your car.  Or whoever’s car you happen to be driving.

No trial, no recourse.  They auction the cars and keep the money, which provides the same motivation that exists in the drug forfeiture laws.

I could maybe see it for repeat offenders that are way above the limit, but I’ve know people that were arrested for two glasses of wine with dinner.  DUIs are already a cash cow with the enormous fines, mandatory classes, etc., this is just more of the same.

The LA Times is the only one covering this so far, and their links are only good for about two weeks, but anyway it is here.  Watch this one — it’s deserving of a revolt.

Can’t decide what tree to plant it the front yard?  Hate your neighbors?

SignPast offers newly made versions of old businesses, specializing in the auto and gas categories.  And they’re big:  about 24 inches.

Seeing all those gas references reminds me of the brief Firesign Theatre prayer that incorporated lots of oil company names in it:

“…annointed with oil on troubled waters? oh Heavenly Grid, help us bear up thy *Standard, our *Chevron flashing bright across the *Gulf of Compromise, standing *Humble on the *Rich Field of *Mobile *American Thinking? Here in this *Shell, we call Life…”