Your life path

This descriptive chart can be used as a reference.

An imaginary conversation with Hunter S. Thompson

ME: So how did you do last week with your bets?

HST: Two teams that will not play in the Super Bowl for another eight years are the Denver Broncos and the screwy Indianapolis Colts. That much is clear beyond doubt. They are Losers, doomed like blind pigs in a jungle of snakes and hyenas. The Colts are chicken crap, and the Broncos won't even make the playoffs. They have humiliated me for the last time.

ME: Uh-huh, someone sure is bitter. So other than loosing a bucketfull of money what else were you up to last week?

HST: Last week was extremely busy. I spent most of it doing top-secret surveillance work on some of my neighbors who are obviously up to no good and need to be watched closely. I have always hated Evil-doers, and now that the President has given us a green light to crush them by any means necessary, I see my duty clearly. Dangerous creeps are everywhere, and our only hope is to neutralize them with extreme prejudice.

ME: Well, good luck with that. Our country could use more patriots like you.

HST's responses were taken from his excellent weekly column. Go read it, now.

Random Obvservations

Just like you won't hear a reggae song without the words Haile Selassi, Jah, or Bablyon (elements of Rastafarianism) you won't hear a song in spanish without the word Corazon (heart). I have no idea why this is true.

Brick by brick

Finally, a way to make the bible interesting, the Lego Old Testament. (via Daypop Top 40)

Also in Legos, the Star Wars trilogy. Walking a tightrope between certifiable and funny as hell, there's Lego Porn.

Lights go out on the Enron Empire

Enron is famous for two things: making lots of money and growing like crazy by revolutionizing the way energy is traded and making billions during the California energy crisis. Now they are in the process of blowing up like the Death Star. Lets go over the imploding company checklist:

1. SEC investigations
2. Attempted bribery
3. Crooked deals
4. Chief financial officer fired/quits
5. Accounting shenanigans
6. Shareholder lawsuits

If thats not wild enough check out the companies they are doing business with:

Kenobe Inc.
Obi-1 Holdings LLC
Jedi Capital II LLC

It would be nice if they went bankrupt and their chief executive rotted in prison but since he is one Bush's biggest donors and chief energy advisor, thats not likely.

Jack's carbon fiber beanstalk

"A space elevator is essentially a long cable extending from our planet's surface into space with its center of mass at geostationary Earth orbit (GEO), 35,786 km in altitude. Electromagnetic vehicles traveling along the cable could serve as a mass transportation system for moving people, payloads, and power between Earth and space."

Although they don't say it Spider's silk might also be an option for the material of the elevator. (via The Daily Grail)

Also from Firstscience.com is this article about the hypersonic Aurora spyplane which almost certainly replaced the aging SR-71. They also have a link to a short movie filmed in 1998 which is thought to show the plane in action.

Walking a tightrope

A glum look at the situation in Saudi Arabia based on NSA intercepts and high level officials.

"In interviews last week, current and former intelligence and military officials portrayed the growing instability of the Saudi regime—and the vulnerability of its oil reserves to terrorist attack—as the most immediate threat to American economic and political interests in the Middle East. The officials also said that the Bush Administration, like the Clinton Administration, is refusing to confront this reality, even in the aftermath of the September 11th terrorist attacks."

The article also gives a detailed account of the failed attempt to kill the Taliban leader Mullah Omar.

"Days afterward, top Administration officials were still seething about the incident. "If it was a fuckup, I could live with it," one senior official said. "But it's not a fuckup—it's an outrage.This isn't like you're six years old and your mother calls you to come in for lunch and you say, 'Time out.' If anyone thinks otherwise, go look at the World Trade Center or the Pentagon." A senior military officer viewed the failure to strike immediately as a symptom of "a cultural issue"—"a slow degradation of the system due to political correctness"

Spot the crater

You can help a lazy scientist and become a crater spotting expert at this NASA site. Spend some time classifying craters or identifying them. Now I need to figure out a way to get other people to do my job for me over the web.

Bombs over Kabul

Crazy photoshop antics over at Fark using the leaflets being dropped in the minefield desert S hole known as Afghanistan. The place has more mines than California during the gold rush. And why does the leaflet show rolling green hills in the background? I have yet to see ANY vegetation in all the footage shown. Maybe the Taliban have something against trees too.

Also, get your war on with this comic. (via Metafilter)

(11/20/01 - The same thought must have occured to the Economist because they have an article describing what happend to all the trees in Afghanistan. The UN were also worried about the state of Aghani flora back in 1999.)

Random observations

When I tried to look up the word 'flux' in the thesaurus in Word 97 they offered up 'backdoor trots' as a synonym. Not what I had in mind.

Bert ditches Ernie for bin Laden

What happens when a demonstrator in Bangladesh prints out a picture of the OBL from the web and puts it on a poster that is photographed and seen around the world? A bizarre situation. (via Metafilter)

Surreality

Some great landscapes by Jim Warren.

The man with the narrow buttocks

"Speculation grew yesterday that the explosion which killed 29 people in a chemical factory in Toulouse two weeks ago was the result of a terrorist attack and there were accusations of a cover-up by the French authorities."
"Friends of the dead man, Hassan Jandoubi, 35, say he often wore many layers of clothes because he was ashamed of his thinness and was, in particular, self-conscious about the narrowness of his buttocks."
Maybe he should have gotten implants. Here's the whole story.
(via Rumor Mill News)

Get out of hell free

Apparently the hijackers figured they would be going to paradise and banging virgins anyway so why not indulge in a little debauchery in Vegas. (via Rumor Mill News)