Wow, I never thought I’d see this. On the lawn of the century-old Cumberland County Courthouse in Tennessee is a statue of The Flying Spaghetti Monster. They issued a permit for it’s construction and everything. Granted, it’s only temporary, but the fact that this happened without inspiring a demonstration is a huge First Amendment victory.

Time to plan that Pirate Pilgramage. But hurry, the statue is only there until May 1st.

Let’s face it… if you need one of these, you aren’t getting much sleep anyway.

Key Quote:

The basic Quantum Sleeper unit consists of an aluminum bed frame and headboard with polycarbonate, bullet proof plating that is designed to provide a protective barrier (shielding) between a perpetrator or environmental condition and the homeowners or occupants.

Sweet dreams!!

Alert reader Chuck sends the blog this important bit of science news. Can an origami shuttle fly from space to Earth? He notes that it’s eerily similar to the breakfast debate from March 5th. In fact, it may have settled it. If a 2 inch paper airplane will hit Mach 7 and encounter temperatures of over 400 degrees, there wouldn’t seem to be any chance that a snowflake would stay below freezing. The pressure concerns from the breakfast banter just make it’s survival all the more unlikely. So I think we can safely stick a fork in this one. It’s done.

But it might be worth submitting to MythBusters anyway. If for no other reason that to see them drop Buster from space or blow up a snowflake.

Every home should have one of these. While women are the more direct beneficiary of a mirror that allows them to view themselves from any angle without being a contortionist, let’s not underestimate the value to guys who no longer have to answer one of the most dreaded questions in guy-dom, “Does this make my butt look big?” Now women can see for themselves that they look “fine.” Of course, they won’t believe that anyway as they’ll still be rationalizing that the M&M they splurged on last week has somehow gone directly to the ripple in their left butt cheek. But it will be significant progress if they agonize about this by themselves upstairs rather than standing in front of the TV and asking us.

Evangelicals are struggling this election season. Their last great hope for a candidate with rigid immutable ideology rooted in biblical theology faded with Huckabee’s campaign. Or did it? Barack Obama is allegedly (if the hype is to be believed) a student of the Rev. Jeremiah Wright Jr., a bible thumper if ever there was a bible thumped . Wright is a firebrand, a follower of Black Liberation Theology, he has a biased view of the world, and is convinced the bible speaks uniquely to his people. He divides the world theologically into us vs. them. There is good, there is evil, and he and his followers are on the side of good.

This should be music to the evangelicals’ ears. This is their tune, and on the one hand you might expect them to be dancing (non suggestively at a respectful distance of course). They can’t seem to get behind McCain, so why aren’t they flocking to Obama. After all, Obama was in need of some religious street cred to abate the rumors of his being a secret Muslim. What could be more advantageous than allegations that he is a devout follower of a pulpit pounding fire and brimstone guy like Rev. Wright?

But obviously the Evangelical crowd has yet to embrace their new candidate, and is pretty clearly unlikely to do so. Why? Well, the tune may be the same, but the words are all different. Black Liberation Theology speaks to unenlightened and disenfranchised Blacks. While the Evangelical right wing speaks to unenlightened and disenfranchised Whites. Two very different audiences. Two very different messages. Ironically (as if this travesty needs more irony), they are wielding the same bibles each somewhat indirectly condemning the other.

Yup… good thing that whole racism thing is over.

Send her this…

As if we needed more evidence that Cocaine and Corn don’t mix.

A driver who was high on cocaine destroyed an entire cornfield in an attempt to escape from the police.

Four police cars were destroyed before the 35-year-old crashed into a ditch and was arrested, near the village of Dussen in the south of the Netherlands.

The Duke boys and Boss Hogg couldn’t have done a better job.

Demonstrating yet again why baseball is America’s pastime, the Macon Music, a minor league team from Georgia, have announced they will have Elliott Spitzer Night at the ballpark.

The plans call for an invitation extended to Spitzer to attend the game and throw out the first pitch. Other elements for the promotion include:

– The Music will give away a trip to New York and a one-night stay at the Mayflower Hotel.

– The ninth fan – or Client No. 9, as Spitzer was known in the prostitution ring – into the ballpark will receive a free Music prize pack.

– Fans with the name Eliot, Spitzer or Kristen, along with any fan from New York, will receive $1 off admission. Any fan who has ever resigned a position will also receive $1 off admission.

– The Music will play Frank Sinatra songs throughout the night.

– Wire taps will be placed around the stadium.

– Fans will be able to use ATMs in the ballpark available for cash withdrawals not to exceed $5,000 per hour.

– The 871st fan through the gates will receive a gift certificate for the team store.

Classy…

The news is that NY Governor Elliott Spitzer is “involved” with a federal prostitution ring investigation. Of course he’s claiming it’s a private matter between him and his family, and in part he’s right. But I’m still disappointed. He rode by wide margin to an election victory on a message of hope and change. New Yorkers were captivated by a man who told a good story and was going to set the badly damaged government of the state on track. Yet less than 2 years into his term, he’s been rocked by two significant scandals of his own making. Each of which I could get by if he were showing any promise of delivering on the “new deal” he was supposed to deliver. But so far, he has been decidedly impotent, well, at least legislatively.

The parallels between Spitzer and Obama are frightening. They are both young mavericks leading the charge for change against the great cogs of the status quo. They are both promising there will be no more business as usual. Now I’m not suggesting that Obama is destined for scandal or will cheat on his wife. But I do wonder if, like Spitzer, his reach will far exceed his grasp. That we’ll find come 2010 that the man who promised so much has found that will and optimism don’t buy squat in a highly politicized arena.

Now maybe it’s unfair to saddle Obama with Spitzer’s legacy. Obviously, his mileage will vary. But it is food for thought. Sometimes feeling good is just not enough.

Proving yet again that this country is chock full of the innovative ideas that will propel us to prosperity in the 21st century and beyond (or maybe just that necessity is the mother of invention), I submit the “beer belt.”

I can’t help but think that the marketing is wrong though. While it appeals to guys, it doesn’t really meet the need as a personal aid since there is no cooling or insulation provided. Unless you’re going out to shovel snow, this is just going to result in warm beer. However, think about your lady wearing this… maybe with a Daisy Duke type outfit… mmmmmmm. Tool Time meets Spring Break. Maybe I’ll buy Kim one of these for my birthday.

This device could have some use as an athletic supporter for this guy. He’s over 100 years old and planning to run a marathon. Key quote:

Martin says that in the last weekend, he’s completed a 13-mile half marathon that took him a little more than five hours. It would have been faster, he says, but he says he stopped for a beer and a cigarette.

My kinda athlete…

From Doug’s fevered 7th grade imagination comes today’s breakfast brain teaser. If there was a snowflake in high Earth orbit and gravity drew it down to the ground through the atmosphere, would it melt? Hmmm… there’s something to take your mind off your waffles.

His thinking was mostly around whether the very small mass of the flake would generate enough frictional heat on re-entry to cause it to melt, or if it would float gently all the way down like it does from the clouds. But there are several more fundamental questions that we had to deal with.

First, could a snowflake form in space? I think the answer is maybe. Snowflakes require nucleation sites meaning that water alone won’t do. Small particles of dust would be required as well. In deep space this might be a problem, but in high orbit, there should be ample detritus. But there are still the near-zero atmospheric pressure and the stupidly sub-zero temperatures involved. At those pressures, liquid water is not stable, and there will be a tendency for solid ice to sublimate directly to water vapor. I think on the sunny side of earth, this is exactly what we’d see, similar to how vapor trails exist on the sun-side of comets. On the dark side of Earth, I think it would be too cold to get flake-like crystals. After all, crystal structure is highly temperature dependent. I think you’d just get ice. Could there be a sweet spot near the terminus line where there is just enough heat to get you a flake? Maybe. But ice would not reform as a flake. It would sublimate in the coming sun. It would have to be the sun to dark transition that caused water vapor to condense to flake crystals around nucleates. This seems an unlikely confluence of conditions, but maybe.

His next idea was that maybe you could form a flake on the space station and shove it out an air lock. I think you could certainly form snow inside a space station. However, I think the transition to space is where the trouble is. Sudden vacuum would certainly cause the ice to sublimate. But could you vent the air lock slow enough to preserve the flake? Maybe. It would need to be done on the dark side. But maybe.

So under some stupidly ideal conditions, maybe you could get a flake in orbit. But I think keeping its flake-like consistency would be near impossible. The slightest bit of added energy would cause it to sublimate to vapor, especially given the enormous surface area of a flake. That energy could come from atmospheric friction, sunlight, or most anything else. The chances it would reach stabilizing pressures before it encountered that energy seem vanishingly small.

And then the bus came. So that was my hypothesis. I also encouraged him to ask his science teacher. He seemed to like that idea, so we’ll see if the teacher has a different take. If you have other ideas or think of factors I haven’t considered, feel free to post them.

… or just roll your eyes.

I’ve long asserted that the “fact” that we live in a more dangerous world now than when we were kids is way more perception than reality. Not that we shouldn’t be vigilant and take reasonable precautions. But predators don’t lurk in every shadow. However, bad things do happen. It’s just that the news of a bad thing happening to someone in a suburb of Topeka used to be contained to the metro area. Now Anderson Cooper runs a 15 minute segment on it and Nancy Grace investigates. The reality of 24 hour news networks is that small but sensational news gets disproportionate coverage.

So this article comes as refreshing vindication for at least part of my view. It turns out that the Internet is not the seamy digital underworld full of pedophiles the media would have us believe. In fact, it would seem the Internet is not an especially dangerous place for kids at all. A story I’m sure will not be covered by AC 360.

Much has been said about McCain’s arguably centrist positions on many issues. While the conservative pundits are determined to have him for lunch over this, it is arguably this position which makes him reasonably situated to do the unthinkable – preserve a Republican in the White House post 2008. His largest liability to achieving this seems to be the Iraq War.

Even on Iraq, he has a somewhat balanced position. While he supported the war, he was a staunch critic of its execution and of Donald Rumsfeld long before it became politically expedient to be such. Ironically, his current position supporting the Bush policies and “staying the course”, while Republican mantra, are hardly politically expedient either.

Here’s the thing. The staunch conservatives already hate him. But they have nowhere else to go. Sure, they could stay home, but honestly that seems unlikely. It would be giving the election to the Democrats, and while they rattle those sabers, I can’t imagine they would wield them. This is a fight for the middle. And in the middle, the key issue is going to be Iraq. Outside of the war, health care is arguably the only other major divisive issue among Clinton, Obama, and McCain. But I think that while health care will be important, it won’t be a deciding issue.

The barbs between Obama and McCain of late have been interesting. Obama is right that there was no alQaeda in Iraq before we created that opportunity for them. But McCain is also right that the reality is that they are there now, and must be dealt with. As much as “bring the troops home now” feels good, it’s not practicable. To that end, either Obama knows he can’t deliver on his promise, or he’s more naive on foreign policy than even his detractors claim.

McCain may well be in the best position of the three to fix the quagmire in the Middle East, or at least get it to something livable and maybe even marginally beneficial. He exhibits a nuanced and malleable perspective rather than being a slave to immutable dogma. But I have trouble getting by the fact that he is unrepentant about having taken us in there in the first place. I expect I’m not alone.

Iraq is arguably the debacle of my lifetime. It is not just a foreign policy nightmare, but has had enormous impact on us domestically as a social and economic issue. Our children will be paying for this war long after the history books have been written about it. Even if we withdrew tomorrow, the cost of the war would still loom large for decades to come.

To my mind, to gain any credibility here, the Republicans in general, and McCain in specific should own up to this. While the Democrats could and should have done more to stop it, the Republicans are responsible for getting us here. I could see myself getting to a point of believing they are part of the solution for building us out of the hole we’re in. But until I get some notion for them that they recognize that they are responsible and this was a mistake, I’m not inclined to let them near any shovels.

The First Rule of Holes: when you’re in one… stop digging.