Weirdness
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Three interesting things
- There are more World of Warcraft players than there are farmers (from Paul Krugman via MR)
- The reason the average car produces X many tons of CO2 (a figure I always found fishy) is due to the fact that the carbon bonds with oxygen already existing in the air, which never occurred to me until I read this article. The majority of the actual mass (the O2) comes mostly from the existing air.
- John Edwards, still not popular! It says good things about America, and the Democratic party that he’s doing well. I suppose the Republican alternative to him is Tom Tancredo.
- From this BloggingHeads.tv – “John Kerry was a Democrat’s idea of what the Republicans like”. The Republicans seem to be making the same desperate mistake with Giuliani right now.
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A weird story
Combining characters from The Departed, Mississippi Burning and Donnie Brasco. In real life no less.
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Russian Weirdness
From the AJC (again)
Woman’s 12th Baby Weighs Over 17-Pounds
A small Russian city just got a really big addition: a 17-pound, 1 ounce baby whose mother had already delivered 11 other children.Tatiana Khalina, 42, delivered the girl by Caesarean section at a maternity clinic in Aleisk, a town of 30,000 people in the Altai region in southern Siberia, a nurse at the clinic said Thursday.
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The Guinness Book of World Records says the heaviest baby ever was born in the United States in 1879. It weighed 23 pounds, 12 ounces and died 11 hours after birth. Guinness says they heaviest surviving baby was born in 1955 in Italy, weighing in at 22 pounds, 8 ounces. -
The criminal side of over coming handicaps
From the AJC
Armless Gwinnett man involved in deadly fight jailed
A disabled artist known for painting with his feet was jailed this week on charges related to a deadly brawl with another man earlier this month.William “Rusty” Redfern was booked into the Gwinnett County Detention Center Wednesday on a misdemeanor charge of affray, a legal term for fighting in public, and later released on $1,200 bond.
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Witnesses said the men yelled at each other from across the street. Redfern, who was born with no right arm and only a stump for a left arm, then ran into Teer’s driveway and head-butted him.Teer, 49, died minutes later. Police initially suspected Teer died from the head-butt. However, a subsequent autopsy determined that he died of a heart attack. Teer had been suffering from coronary artery disease, according to the Gwinnett County Medical Examiner’s Office.
If you put your mind to it, I suppose you can accomplish anything.
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Jury Duty Again!
And only two years after the last time.
And question #4 on the questionnaire (along with name, address, etc) is “Are you Hispanic?”
Weird.
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Monday rapid fire
- Al Gore goes Geothermal
- Dallas Swat (it’s a reality TV show apparantly) officer arrested for having sex with prostitute.
- Firefox Tune Up program
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Double weirdness
- The quest for alternative energy seems to have caused an earthquake. In Switzerland no less. Overall it’s cool though.
- The dirty car art gallery – a guy actually does fine artwork on dirty cars. See to believe.
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The United States of Baseball and Florida
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Addendum to the Grateful Dead post
I came across this interview with Ann Coulter on JamBands.com, evidently she’s quite the fan. Favorite Quote:
Moreover, I really like Deadheads and the whole Dead concert scene: the tailgating, the tie-dye uniforms, the camaraderie – it was like NASCAR for potheads
Most interesting fact
My collection of Dead tapes, by the way, was the reason I heard one of the Linda Tripp tapes before Ken Starr did. Tripp’s lawyer obviously needed to hear the tape before turning it over to the prosecutor, but he only had an old 1950’s tape player and couldn’t get it to work and Ken Starr wanted the tape the next morning. He was terrified he’d hit the wrong button and erase the evidence. In the wee hours of the morning, it occurred him, a Deadhead himself, that he knew one person in D.C. who definitely had a tape machine. So, at around 2 AM, he called me and asked to come over to use my tape deck.
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Friday in appreciation, volume III
I was in Chicago last week so I didn’t get a chance to do the in appreciation post, but here is this week’s.
This week’s in appreciation is the Grateful Dead. While I’m not a huge fan of the music (I love Old and in the Way, and the Jerry Garcia Acoustic Band is quite good) they stand out as true American icons, especially for artists. Not only did they commit to a style of music and a style of life, they created it first. And seemingly with the attitude that it’s better to have a small achievement than a great excuse (to paraphrase Hoffer). They spend 30 years doing what they wanted to do without asking favors or permission. Contrast that to the Live 8 and the Live Earth crowd and they become a marvel.
So, Grateful Dead, you get this week’s In Appreciation.