I can’t tell if this is for real or a setup… but if the speaker here really is a professor, LSU is obviously having trouble in making good hiring decisions.
Nov 15 2010
Intergalactic warming
Forget global warming. Now we have cosmic warming. Probably caused by those pesky CO2 clouds everyone knows permeate intergalactic space. The truth will eventually come out: billions of years ago, semi-intelligent aliens motored around outer space with internal combustion engines.
Quasars fingered for cosmic climate change
CLIMATE change doesn’t just happen on Earth. Billions of years ago, a heatwave struck the universe, leaving its imprint in the light from distant galaxies.
George Becker of the University of Cambridge and colleagues studied the light coming from galaxies at different times in the universe’s history. Dark lines in the spectra mark where certain wavelengths have been absorbed by clouds of gas as the light travels to Earth. The hotter the gas, the more blurred these lines become.
About 12 billion years ago, the gas warmed from 8000 to 15,000 kelvin, probably due to heating from quasars, objects powered by giant black holes, the team will report in Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society.
Keep your eye out for the remake of The Day After Tomorrow. It really will be set long, long ago in a galaxy far, far away, and will be called The Eon After Gasbags.
It stars Al Gore, natch.
Sep 28 2010
Faith Integration and dogs
Oops, I forgot. Praying before meals isn’t really faith integration. It says so right here in the faith integration handbook for dogs.
You have to find a way to relate the selection of the food, the manner of presenting it, and the method of eating it, to your faith tradition, whatever that might be, and however you might choose to relate to it (or reject it)…. after doing a suitable literature review, of course, developing a bibliography on faith and dog food, and possibly attending a conference or two on the subject.
Coming up soon: diversity and dogs in the modern obedience school.
Sep 18 2010
I hate wabbits
I know, it’s a caricature.
I admit, this guy does look like some of my neighbors. I live in a rural area, on a dirt road.
But like Mister Yosemite Sam, I hate wabbits. (I even have a red moustache… well, it used to be red, anyway.) These zig-zagging miscreants are not fuzzy, cute little ear-twitching tail wigglers. They are eaters of drip-line, despoilers of foliage, freelance socialists who think they have a right to my fruit trees’ drip system, inflaters of my water bill.
I have tried everything. I have been nice. I have put out bowls of water for them that are refilled every time my drip system runs to water my trees. In front and in back, so the poor little darlings don’t have to wear themselves out hopping around my lot. It doesn’t matter. They still chew up my polyprop drip line, so that I have geysers when the water timer comes on.
Some smart guy at the local vet supply said that if I put out fox urine crystals, it would make the rabbits stay away. So I spent more money than I should have, buying the distilled essence of bad smells to scare off the bunnies. (Aren’t you glad you don’t work in the factory that makes that stuff? And why don’t we hear of PETA demonstrating in front of the fox urine factory to improve the living conditions of the caged foxes….? …..who presumably are given lots of water.) Anyway, when I sprinkled the crystals in the prescribed manner and density, the flop eared vandals just laughed (ever seen a rabbit horse laugh?) and chowed down on my drip line. Again. For dessert, they ate the bark off one of my trees, to a nice uniform height of 24.376 inches. (Not bad for an 18 inch wabbit. Maybe they can levitate. Maybe they stand on each other’s backs.)
I hate them. Really. With the pure kind of hatred that would find pleasure in shooting them all, one by one. I am really, really tired of having a part-time job fixing my drip line. Is it so wrong of me to want to have a few trees that don’t grow at 4500 feet above the desert floor without a little extra water? I’m trying to make the world greener. I’m pretty sure I feel the same way about these wabbits that Adam felt about thorns after being ejected from Eden.
This morning I came out to leave for school, and I had another geyser…. which means I was spending my hard-earned money watering the local juniper bushes, which don’t need water, because some bushy tailed, fuzzy faced blackguard developed a yen for synthetic drip line…. again. If you’re an eco-pagan vegan PETA type who feels sorry for the poor little bunnies, keep in mind that they are wasting water. Mother Gaia did not intend for them to eat poly-prop dripline, or to have water they couldn’t suck out of desert plants. It’s practically my social responsibility to take firm action.
It has gotten so that when a wabbit runs out in front of my car on the local roads, I swerve to try to hit it. I almost got one that way yesterday. The kids laugh maniacally. They have absorbed the paternal hatred for wabbits. In fact, my 12 yr old daughter asked me for a rabbit’s foot that last time I shot one with a pellet gun. I laughed evilly and hurled the carcass over the fence to be eaten by the coyotes who come by every night hoping for a free dinner. In my family, we recycle. Nothing wasted. Not that there will ever be a shortage of wabbits. As if.
But the week is young, and I have a quota to meet. Hey, at least with me they have a sporting chance. I’ve had neighbors who used repeating shotguns.
I borrowed an air rifle from my church choir director. (I have noticed that choir directors are often armed. Haven’t you ever wondered what they’re hiding under those choir robes?) The air rifle is WAY cooler than my old Daisy single-pump pneumatic target pistol, which is only accurate out to about 40 feet. I’ve been practicing with it. And I’ve been watching “Lock and load” on cable TV for tips on how to shoot varmints. I have new cammies, and I’m learning how to talk like Lee Ermey.
This guy is my role model. I wish I could take him with me to faculty senate meetings.
Anyway, in my tan/brown cammies I blend in with the desert, and, like the US Marine Corps, I own the night. I think my motto has become, “every musician a rifleman.” This single shot break-action air pellet rifle even has a laser sight. Imagine being a jack-rabbit the size of a donkey with a red dot just below your left ear. Ah, the stuff of poetry. Think of it as another episode of that military channel classic, “Modern Sniper.”
It better work. If it doesn’t, I’ll be shopping for a grenade launcher at the next gun show. I saw something being demonstrated on the military channel that looks like it might fill the bill. It is sort of a gattling gun for 40mm grenades. You can get all kinds of specialized ammo for it. I may have seen one of these in my neighbor’s quonset hut/storage shed. I think he knows somebody at the local National Guard Armory.
I’ll take the anti-varmint round, please. About 1000 of them. Just so I can get in a little practice before I start stalking Bugs. Forget sporting chances. This is war.
Doesn’t the Second Amendment say something about the wight to vapowize wabbits?
If it doesn’t, it should have.
UPDATE: Alas, Anthony (see comments below) is correct. I got my cartoon gunslingers mixed up. Indeed, it is Elmer Fudd, not Yosemite Sam, who wishes to schedule the premature demise of flop-eared rodents everywhere. Oy, what can I say? Maybe I just wish I looked more like Yosemite Sam, and less like Elmer Fudd.
Sep 13 2010
Did the CIA ever get ANYTHING right?
Recently declassified footage shows a CIA spokesman confessing to a crowd of reporters (all of whom were later mind-wiped) that the CIA had accidentally overthrown Costa Rica:
O-SPAN Classic: CIA Accidentally Overthrows Costa Rica
Aug 30 2010
More Bizarre Headlines – More Witty Repartee
There are enough dreary headlines these days to depress even the most stouthearted optimist. Then there are these headlines…OK, I took a crack at each of these. They were just too good to pass up. Let’s hear from some of you other humorists. Pick one or more of these recent headlines and give me your best one-line responses. And please try to retain a modicum of decency! My mom reads this stuff.
Bedtime Story: 1-in-4 Grown Men Travel With a Stuffed Animal
I wonder if the same percentage of men sleep in footed pajamas.
Woman Nabbed For Auto Erotic Crime – Cincinnati woman was caught multitasking herself in Pontiac
OK, but did we really have to be told about it? Imagine being the newspaper writer assigned to this gem of a story.
“Beat Whitey Night” At Iowa State Fair: Cops probe whether attacks were racially motivated
well, “duh!”
Has Michael Moore been made aware of this?
A no-show for 12 years, worker in Norfolk still paid
I know a certain president whom I would happily pay to be a no-show.
Murdered Spook Was A Cross-Dresser
Clearly NOT a headline from a Vince Flynn novel
Restaurants scramble after massive egg recall
OK, even I wouldn’t stoop this low…
Man, shot in head, notices five years later
How much you wanna bet he’s a Democrat?
Young Ho races to win in 37th Dammit Run
Wait……what?
Aug 22 2010
Today’s Headlines – Pithy Responses
U.S. may sue Arizona’s Sheriff Arpaio for not cooperating in investigation
We gotta find some way to stop these local law enforcement people from enforcing the law!
Gore calls for major protests on government’s climate change inaction
Doggone that climate!, it just won’t cooperate! Maybe he can organize a personal masseuse climate boycott.
Islamic Center Backers Won’t Rule Out Taking Funds from Saudi Arabia, Iran
And if we take issue with this mosque being funded by those who wish us harm then the left labels us as religious intolerants.
Lone juror ‘refused to find Blagojevich guilty’
P.T Barnum was right. Anyone ever seen the movie “Runaway Jury”?
Obama says housing glut hindering economic recovery
So far so good, Mr. President. Just remember, as you progress the game gets harder. Now, here is your next question: What caused the housing glut?
Murdoch $1m donation may not prove bias
So says Goldman Sachs partner Gary Gensler – Obama’s Commodity Futures Trading Commission head. Or was it former Goldman Sachs lobbyist Mark Patterson who serves under Geithner as his top deputy and overseer of TARP bailout. No, I’m sure it was Obama’s close hometown crony, campaign-finance chief and senior adviser Penny Pritzker, who was head of Superior Bank of Chicago, a subprime specialist that went bust in 2001, leaving more than 1,400 people stripped of their savings after bank officials falsified profit reports. Any one of these would surely be an authority on the issue of favoritism!
Two Dem Congressional candidates go on hunger strike, one gets enema
Which is only fair and somehow fitting since the Democratic Party has been shoving things up our backsides for some time now.
American Airlines Finds Another Creative Way to Charge Customers
Let me guess… rental fees for personal flotation devices on flights over water? Paid barf bag dispensers? 8X10’s of personal body scan images showing the pretty redhead in row 12E? (suitable for framing!)
Athlete blames cat over drunk driving charge / Facing Ethics Charges, Rep. Waters Points Finger at Bush Administration
In both cases the essential verb is “blame”. Ya gotta blame something or somebody!
No, this doesn’t mean you can now erect a manger scene during the “winter holiday” season. That would be unconstitutional.
Aug 17 2010
Report from Manitoba – The Canadian Illegal Immigration Problem
The Manitoba Herald
as Reported by Clive Runnels
August 1, 2010The flood of American liberals sneaking across the border into Canada has intensified in the past week, sparking calls for increased patrols to stop the illegal immigration. The recent actions of the Tea Party are prompting an exodus among left-leaning citizens who fear they’ll soon be required to hunt, pray, and to agree with Bill O’Reilly and Glenn Beck.
Canadian border farmers say it’s not uncommon to see dozens of sociology professors, animal-rights activists and Unitarians crossing their fields at night.
“I went out to milk the cows the other day, and there was a Hollywood producer huddled in the barn,” said Manitoba farmer Red Greenfield, whose acreage borders North Dakota. The producer was cold, exhausted and hungry. He asked me if I could spare a latte and some free-range chicken. When I said I didn’t have any, he left before I even got a chance to show him my screenplay, eh?”
In an effort to stop the illegal aliens, Greenfield erected higher fences, but the liberals scaled them. He then installed loudspeakers that blared Rush Limbaugh across the fields. “Not real effective,” he said. “The liberals still got through and Rush annoyed the cows so much that they wouldn’t give any milk.”
Officials are particularly concerned about smugglers who meet liberals near the Canadian border, pack them into Volvo station wagons and drive them across the border where they are simply left to fend for themselves.
“A lot of these people are not prepared for our rugged conditions,” an Ontario border patrolman said. “I found one carload without a single bottle of imported drinking water.
They did have a nice little Napa Valley Cabernet, though.”
When liberals are caught, they’re sent back across the border, often wailing loudly that they fear retribution from conservatives. Rumors have been circulating about plans being made to build re-education camps where liberals will be forced to drink domestic beer and watch NASCAR races.
In recent days, liberals have turned to ingenious ways of crossing the border. Some have been disguised as senior citizens taking a bus trip to buy cheap Canadian prescription drugs. After catching a half-dozen young vegans in powdered wig disguises, Canadian immigration authorities began stopping buses and quizzing the supposed senior-citizens about Perry Como and Rosemary Clooney to prove that they were alive in the ’50s. “If they can’t identify the accordion player on The Lawrence Welk Show, we become very suspicious about their age,” an official said.
Canadian citizens have complained that the illegal immigrants are creating an organic-broccoli shortage and are renting all the Michael Moore movies. “I really feel sorry for American liberals, but the Canadian economy just can’t support them,” an Ottawa resident said. “How many art-history majors does one country need?”
In an effort to ease tensions between the United States and Canada, Vice President Biden met with the Canadian ambassador and pledged that the administration would take steps to reassure liberals. A source close to President Obama said, “We’re going to have some Paul McCartney and Peter, Paul & Mary concerts. And we might even put some endangered species on postage stamps. The President is determined to reach out,” he said. The Herald will be interested to see if Obama can actually raise Mary from the dead in time for the concert!
Jul 08 2010
Just in case they didn’t notice our candles, let’s turn on the searchlight? Or maybe not
A scientist who makes his living in SETI, searching for alien societies who might be communicating with us, says that It’s too late to worry that the aliens will find us
STEPHEN HAWKING is worried about aliens. The famous physicist recently suggested that we should be wary of contact with extraterrestrials, citing what happened to Native Americans when Europeans landed on their shores. Since any species that could visit us would be far beyond our own technological level, meeting them could be bad news.
Hawking was extrapolating the possible consequences of my day job: a small but durable exercise known as SETI, the Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence.
Although we have yet to detect an alien ping, improvements in technology have encouraged us to think that, if transmitting extraterrestrials are out there, we might soon find them. That would be revolutionary. But some people, Hawking included, sense a catastrophe.
Consider what happens if we succeed. Should we respond? Any broadcast could blow Earth’s cover, inviting the possibility of attack by a society advanced enough to pick up our signals.
On the face of it, that sounds like a scenario straight out of cheap science fiction. But even if the odds of calamity are small, why gamble?
For three years, this issue has been exercising a group of SETI scientists in the International Academy of Astronautics. The crux of the dispute was an initiative by a few members to proscribe any broadcasts to aliens, whether or not we receive a signal first.
In truth, banning broadcasts would be impractical – and manifestly too late. We have been inadvertently betraying our presence for 60 years with our television, radio and radar transmissions. The earliest episodes of I Love Lucy have washed over 6000 or so star systems, and are reaching new audiences at the rate of one solar system a day. If there are sentient beings out there, the signals will reach them.
Detecting this leakage radiation won’t be that difficult. Its intensity decreases with the square of the distance, but even if the nearest aliens were 1000 light years away, they would still be able to detect it as long as their antenna technology was a century or two ahead of ours.
This makes it specious to suggest that we should ban deliberate messages on the grounds that they would be more powerful than our leaked signals. Only a society close to our level of development would be able to pick up an intentional broadcast while failing to notice TV and radar. And a society at our level is no threat.
The flip side is that for any alien society that could be dangerous, a deliberate message makes no difference. Such a society could use its own star as a gravitational lens, and even see the glow from our street lamps. Hawking’s warning is irrelevant.
Such considerations motivated the SETI group at the International Academy of Astronautics to reject a proscription of transmissions to the sky. It was the right decision. The extraterrestrials may be out there, and we might learn much by discovering them, but it is paranoia of a rare sort that would shutter the Earth out of fear that they might discover us.
Then there’s this, from a scientist who has written science fiction about nice aliens who “uplift” less than sentient species into full sophont status. Maybe one of them would try to “uplift” humanity…
I’m not deeply worried that ET wants to come to Earth and eat us or something. But if ET is out there, and can get here, and wants to get here, I really doubt that it would be out of a sense of altruism. What if ET is at the same moral level as the Aztecs? Maybe they believe in sacrificing low-level cultures (that would be us) to appease the Dark Energy God.
I mean, they could always just send a nice note, if all they want is to be pen pals. And everyone knows it isn’t a good idea to meet in person with people you just met on Facebook…. let alone give them your home address.
Jul 01 2010
The Truth About Undocumented Fireworks
The Fourth of July is almost upon us. The day we set aside to celebrate our nation’s independence. But I for one am very troubled by some of the holiday-related signs that have been popping up. In my community as well as in a number of other local towns notices are being posted reminding the citizenry about the prohibition of so-called “illegal” fireworks. I find the term “illegal” to be very offensive. Such racially charged rhetoric does nothing to solve the problem and only serves to promote anti-fireworks sentiment, giving rise to more hate speech and fear-mongering among Christians and other extreme right-wing conservatives.
The truth about fireworks needs to be told. For too long the ravenous and rabid haters of fireworks have been allowed to post their hateful signs without challenge all the while promoting their so-called “safe and sane” fireworks which are hardly more than sparklers.
To begin with, the supposed importation of “large quantities” of undocumented fireworks has been greatly exaggerated. The claims that millions of dollars worth of fireworks coming across our borders is simply not true. Sources say the real amount is probably no more than a few crates per day.
Second: The claim that purchasing undocumented fireworks takes income away from American fireworks is ludicrous. Undocumented fireworks are only doing what American fireworks won’t do. If American fireworks actually made a loud boom, blew tin cans high into the night sky or were fired from Coke bottles then there would not be such a demand for undocumented fireworks. But Americans fireworks do not provide such services therefore it is clear undocumented fireworks are here because they are wanted and needed in this economy.
Third: As for claims that undocumented fireworks are being purchased with welfare money and are clogging our medical facilities with excessive burns, and severed fingers. I’d like to point out that recent statistics prove much more welfare money is used in gambling casinos than for fireworks and that only emergency medicine is being utilized in order to reduce medical emergencies. In fact, rather than being a drain on public service, undocumented fireworks pump much needed cash into the economy and provide opportunity for emergency and fire service personnel to collect overtime pay at this time of the year. And given the relatively low cost of distribution and sale of undocumented fireworks the net transfer of income is exactly opposite of that implied by the fireworks bashers.
Fourth: The issue of criminality. These fireworks don’t kill people, guns kill people. And if little teenage thugs weren’t buying undocumented fireworks then they’d probably be out TP-ing houses or engaging in some other mayhem. But statistics show that when teens are occupied with using fireworks in the wholesome and mostly healthy celebration of Independence Day, other reported crimes drop dramatically!
In conclusion: America is a continent, not a nation made up of fifty sovereign states containing many individual municipalities. As such all fireworks made anywhere on the continent should be allowed to be sold and used anywhere on the continent. To prohibit such commerce would be to spit in the face of those who fought and died for the independence of this nation…er continent. And if we as a nation…er, continent, cannot embrace undocumented fireworks then I think the line, “rocket’s red glare” should be stricken from our National…er Continental Anthem!
Long live cherry bombs! Long live bottle rockets! Long live M80s!
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