Month: January 2008

I love Mac fanboys:

Here’s a nifty thing: a graphic depicting the frequency of words that President Bush used in his State of the Union address the other night. The bigger the word, the more times he said it.

I was surprised “terror” only showed up 23 times– that’s probably a new low for him. Not surprisingly, “Iraq” was the second most common word in his vast vocabulary. And of course “al-Qaeda” ranked much higher than “child”, “hope”, “liberty”, “peace”, “reform”, or even words (which are only barely visible here) like “compassionate”, “strengthen”, and “succeed”.

I’m listening to Club 977 80’s channel on internet radio while I work, and generally there’s a pretty good mix of music from those glorious retro years. But every now and then a song pops up and makes one wonder, where the heck did that come from?

Take the current song, Tina Turner’s Private Dancer, whose refrain goes something like this:

Umm… what? Come on, Tina, that’s just stuff we don’t want to know about. Give me Karma Chameleon or something with equally crazy lyrics, because at least that song is fun.

Tom bought me a book for Christmas that pretty much sums up my life. Nice.

Makin’ cookies with sugar that’s… nine years old?

It’s been a couple of years since the Mentos + Diet Coke phenomenon, so it’s time for a crazy new combination of fun.

Enter potassium chlorate and Gummy Bears!

Step 1: Start with a test tube of molten potassium chlorate.

Step 2: Slide a single red Gummy Bear down the tube to his doom.

Step 3: Watch the flames!

These shots are taken from a video clip, and the flaming concoction lasted for a good twenty seconds. Pretty impressive for a single little lump of chewy red sugar.

Now, back in the old days we’d all see this and say, “Coooooooool!”. These days, it means that by next Tuesday we’ll hear about a new directive from the TSA about how Gummy Bears are no longer allowed on domestic airline flights. Who knows what evil could be perpetrated by terrorists armed with chewy candies?

“If brains were dynamite some people wouldn’t have enough to blow their noses.”

— seen on Slashdot

“Eternity is a very long time, especially towards the end.”

— Stephen Hawking

In a discussion on Slashdot someone posed this question:

To which someone else came back with a hilarious reply:

Ahh, physics geek humor.

So another fun insurance thing came up today. I received one of those envelopes filled with random pages of text from the insurance company, most of which deal with how they’re changing their privacy policy to allow any yahoo in the hemisphere to contact you with “special offers” and whatnot. But I saw this really important boldface type about my terrorism insurance coverage, and I just knew that I had to read it so I can fully understand what a terrorist attack on my house would mean to me.

It’s important to notice that only certified acts of terrorism are covered by this statement. Of course that makes me ask several questions:

1) Who certifies terrorist acts? Is that something the insurance company does, or is there some branch of the federal government that specializes in this sort of thing?

2) What are the requirements for something to be certified? Does one of these inspector people stand around in the carnage, frowning a bit, and then nod and say, “Yep, this was a terrorist act”?

3) Why are only 90% of the “terrorism losses” covered? I mean, come on, you’re leaving a measly 10% left? Just pay the whole thing.

4) Since pretty much everything, including my Carmex lip balm, is considered a terrorist tool these days, wouldn’t that pretty much mean even a dog sneezing on my laptop could be covered by this policy?