humor
oracknows | October 13, 2007I don't do this very often, but this picture of Pope Benedict XVI struck me as amusing:
One suggested caption is here.
Not bad, but surely my readers can do better than that. Add your own caption!
scientificactivist | October 13, 2007Anyone who has lived outside of the United States or practiced science for a significant amount of time can vouch for the wonder that is the metric system. However, since an unfortunate majority of Americans do not fit this description, we're subject to outbursts like these:
NO, on celsius. This is the United States of America. We speak English and use Fahrenheit. Well, I guess you could show wind speed in kilometers, too. Where does it stop? I guess when we become a Spanish speaking nation.
Yes, this was just one the many responses to an announcement by Chief Meteorologist Tim Heller on…
oracknows | October 12, 2007Knowing a certain recurring character on this blog, I so wish I had the time to take a trip into New York City on Sunday afternoon to participate in this.
How do you plan to spend next weekend?
With 200 zombies. Doing Yoga. In New York.
* Tattered clothes. Severed Limbs. Blood. Guts. Brains. The works.
** Chanting. Meditating. Posturing. The usual.
*** Where else would you do it?
'Nuff said.
oracknows | October 12, 2007Although his taste in music is questionable at best, Snowball the Cockatoo definitely knows how to get down and get funky.
I can't say I've ever seen anything like this before. Now maybe if we introduced Snowball to some old Parliament-Funkadelic. Tear the roof off the sucker, Snowball, and give up the funk!
oracknows | October 12, 2007Woo-meisters will not be pleased. While perusing this week's Skeptics' Circle, I was reminded of something that I had meant to post about a couple of days ago.
I don't know how he did it or where he got it, but somehow he has found the Holy of Holies for woos everywhere. He found The Woo Handbook. In it, he finds the twenty main strategies for dealing with Skeptics. They're pretty much all there: shifting the goalposts, labeling skeptics as "close-minded," introducing quantum mechanics, and appeals to ignorance, along with #18, the technique of woos that probably annoys me the most (at least…
terrasig | October 12, 2007The Southland is all abuzz today following yesterday's Charlotte Observer article by Lisa Zagaroli that members of the US House Homeland Security Committee were advised to get vaccinations (for hepatitis A, hepatitis B, tetanus, diphtheria and influenza) before traveling to car races in Concord, NC, and Taladega, AL.
Neither NASCAR fans or local politicians were pleased with the insinuations:
Rep. Robin Hayes, a Republican from Concord, took umbrage when he heard about it.
"I have never heard of immunizations for domestic travel, and as the representative for Concord, N.C., I feel compelled…
evolvingthoughts | October 12, 2007
From an AP Bio student on his vocab quiz (they have to learn word roots, like -itis, -logy, etc. and be able to use the parts in real words w/ definitions):
"Mammograb: Examination of the breasts."
Via Beautiful Biology, hat tip to John Pieret.
evolvingthoughts | October 12, 2007
My mate Ian Musgrave, Astroblogger and expert in several fields of science, and his lovely family, are up visiting rellies in Queensland from the arid wasteland that is Adelaide. We all went on a bushwalk and while we were eating apples at the top of the cliff, we saw a couple of dolphins (bottlenose, I think), a mother and calf. Way cool...
All you urban prisoners should be quite envious.
pharyngula | October 11, 2007Here's a nice collection of anti-creationism cartoons, all in one place. Very handy!
(via Greg Laden)
mikethemadbiologist | October 11, 2007
It's bad enough that a plane which previously made non-stop flights from the continental U.S. to Guantanamo Bay crashed in the Yucatan with tons of cocaine aboard. What's even more ridiculous is the 'cover' story.
The plane was owned by Donna Blue Aircraft which is in the business of "Aircraft Consultance and Sales."
According to Boing Boing:
Mad Cow Morning News visited the owners of the plane, "Donna Blue Aircraft Inc" of Coconut Beach FL., and discovered that it's an "empty office suite with a blank sign out front."
There was no sign of Donna Blue Aircraft, Inc., at the address listed at…
mementomori | October 10, 2007Des Moines, Iowa, 1961 - Martin Polzhappel, a 25 year-old carpenter, visits his family doctor for yet another bronchial infection. Instead of giving him the usual intramuscular injection of lincomycin, today the doctor decides to try a new oral antibiotic called ampicillin. Mr. Polzhappel is only too happy to avoid subjecting his buttocks to the not-so-tender mercies of the Hermann Göring look-alike masquerading as the good doctor's office nurse.
Our patient takes his prescription to the Katz Drug Store located on Euclid and 2nd Avenue, now considered by historians to be the site of one of…
jlynch | October 9, 2007I note that Minazo, Japan’s largest seal died this week. Minazo became an Internet icon:
He will be missed.
(HT to Ugly Overload)
pharyngula | October 9, 2007I was sent this by Pekka Pekuri on Facebook, and all I can say is…niiiice.
Where is Superman when we need him?
omnibrain | October 8, 2007Just because Chimps are Funny:
And no bitching about my use of the word monkey! Via Neatorama
oracknows | October 6, 2007Ah, yes, it's that time of year again. The winners of the 2007 IgNobel Prize have been announced. There have been several "worthy" winners, for example:
Mayu Yamamoto from Japan won the Ig Nobel prize in chemistry for her development of a novel way to extract vanillin, the main component in vanilla bean extract, from cow dung. In tribute to Yamamoto's achievement, Toscanni's imitated her achievement and distributed samples of the resulting ice cream to Nobel laureates seated on the stage. Loud chants of "Eat it! Eat it!" from the audience finally persuaded the skeptical Nobel laureates to try…
mikethemadbiologist | October 6, 2007
In some wickedly funny satire, Amanda Marcotte shows us how to create an anti-menstruation movement:
The "abortion is icky" argument is such that the anti-choice crowd could easily start agitating for a ban on menstruation without skipping a beat. The fact that menstruation is incredibly common shouldn't slow them down; after all, the anti-choice position demands that you believe that more than 1/3 of American women are murderers. Menstruation is, except maybe to a handful of insistent earth mother crunchy feminists, generally regarded as pretty icky. I throw a bloody tampon at you, you'll…
omnibrain | October 5, 2007Have you ever wanted a pre-frontal lobotomy?! I know I have!
Just think, by severing connections to your pre-frontal cortex (or just destroying the whole darn thing instead) you can have drastic personality changes! You could even skip that and go straight to mental retardation! Of course we're not sure here at Omni Brain what technique they're using up there in Canada for the lobotomies there are just so many great ones!
You could drill holes in people's heads and then inject alcohol, you could drill a hole in the head and just remove whatever brain matter happens to be sitting around…
grrlscientist | October 4, 2007tags: birds, birding, word play, humor
When I was working on my dissertation, my colleagues and I referred to any large or mixed flock of birds as "a shitload of birds" for obvious reasons. I hadn't thought about this for awhile until recently, when I noticed that one of the email lists I am on is discussing the made-up nouns that we use to describe flocks of particular bird species .. you know, like "a murder of crows" and that sort of thing. Below the fold are some of these names for you to enjoy and of course, feel free to add your own inventions to the list!
A coronation of Emperor Geese…