Caturday In the Cupboard

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Actually she's not closing the door; she's making sure that it's open and that I can see her. Here's why: Oh yeah! Neck scratches R da Bestest!

A Mercenary by Any Other Name...

...would still smell.

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I can't bring myself to tag this with "humor."

Followup: I realized that not everyone might have picked up this news bit yet- if the above makes no sense, read this.

I'm Not Superstitous

So today is Friday the 13th. I'm not too worried. As the Pogo cast and crew never tired of saying, Friday the 13th is a much bigger deal when it falls on a Wednesday. Additionally, in about 10 minutes from the time I write this, the official Unix time will be 1234567890. And I don't believe that this heralds the end of the universe. There's a big eye-rolling fuss over the fact that the Mayan calendar ends in 2012, so that must be the end of the universe. Our calendars end at the conclusion of each December, and I haven't noticed any universal conclusions associated with those.

So why the lackadaisical attitude toward these deeply-ingrained cultural fears? It's simple, really. I've have long harbored a belief that superstitions bring bad luck.

Prescient

OK, not really; even 15 years ago anyone paying attention could see the path we were on. But this Calvin and Hobbes comic, from 15 years ago today, is pretty amazing.

Well, I'll Be A Monkey's Nephew!

I wasn't expecting to do anything for Darwin Day (today is the 200th anniversary of both his and Abraham Lincoln's births), not because I'm not interested, but because there doesn't really seem to be anything I can add to the tremendous amount of great stuff that's out there. If you want more on Darwin, click through some of the geoblogosphere links on the sidebar. Not every geoblogger is "doing Darwin," but many are (and get your mind out of the gutter).

However, I came across this site a little bit ago, and I haven't seen any geobuddies post it, so here you go. The general idea is that you upload a picture of your present incarnation, and the site will devolve you into any (or all) of four prehistoric hominids. Here is my extant corpus, the basis for the following:
And here is my (approximately) 125,000th great grandfather, Lockwoodo habilis: And a couple tens of thousands of generations later, Lockwoodo erectus:I really like those early Pleistocene glasses in the second picture, but this engine really doesn't seem to know what to make of my beard; contrary to popular conception, the lower half of my lineage's head has become more, not less, hairy through time. Happy D-Day!

BTW- I had to use the "Shift-PrtSc" operation and paste this in Paint, then crop it; I didn't see any way to directly save the picture.

That's Just History

When Hitler developed the V-2 rocket and started bombarding England with it, the US realized the importance of having a manned observation post on the moon; it has been maintained ever since 1916. That's just history.

When Washington threw a dollar across the Delaware (a dollar went a lot farther in those days), it killed King George, and the British surrendered. That's just history.

When we invaded Iraq, the whole world was stunned by the number of nuclear weapons Saddam had amassed: no one expected his arsenal would exceed the combined total of both the US and Russia. That's just history.

"When (President Franklin) Roosevelt did this, he put our country into a Great Depression,” Austria said. “He tried to borrow and spend, he tried to use the Keynesian approach, and our country ended up in a Great Depression. That’s just history.”

One of these statements was actually made by a US representative, apparently in all seriousness. (Hint: it's the one in quotes) Yglesias and others are making much of the fact Roosevelt didn't come into office until four years after the start of the Great Depression (which despite the Republican-style PR effort, was not great at all: it actually really sucked). I would also like to point out that the work Keynes did was in response to the depression. So this quote is a profoundly disturbing double-dip. On the other hand, Austria does meet one of my criteria for policy-makers: see point 4 here. But I'm sure it doesn't bother the repiglicans at all: when they don't like the facts, they make up ones they do like. That's just history.

Ka-Blam!

Two satellites have just collided in orbit, about 500 miles over Siberia. There doesn't appear to be a whole lot known yet. This could be completely innocuous in terms of consequences, or pretty bad. I remember reading an article some years ago about a potential chain-reaction, where debris might impact other satellites, creating more debris that destroyed still more... I haven't read much more about this idea, so I really have no idea whether it's considered plausible. But whatever, consider this a heads-up. ; )

Followup: WaPo has a similar article with a little better info. (Registration may be required; free, and they've never spammed me)