“Van Rompuy, a soft-spoken fan of Japanese poetry, beat out contenders including former British Prime Minister Tony Blair for a post whose duties are not yet clear.”  What they leave it out is that he sort of looks like Dick Cheney’s doofy younger brother.

Sounds like a good job though.

The best part is that  she’s a scientist! Dr. Brooke Magnanti is not just a high-class call girl, but a specialist in ”developmental neurotoxicology and cancer epidemiology. She has a PhD in informatics, epidemiology and forensic science and is now working at the Bristol Initiative for Research of Child Health. She is part of a team researching the effects of exposure to the pesticide chlorpyrifos on foetuses and infants.”

So basically, every geeks dream girl.  Darren from LinkMachineGo, guessed Belle de Jour’s identity soon after her blog started. How? Before becoming an anonymous sex-blogger, Brooke Magnanti ran an obscure Robotwisdom-style link blog and wrote in a few other places ; Darren recognized the writing style. Rather than reveal the secret he set up a method to detect people searching for her secret identity and tipped Magnanti off that The Daily Mail was sniffing around. [via]

I’m trying to promise Lady Oyster that I’ll be off email, cellphone, the site, etc. for an entire week.  I’m not sure I’ll be able to make it, however.  We’ll be back next Wednesday with bloggy goodness and possibly sporadically throughout the week.

Water droplets interacting with water at 2,000 frames per second.  They can bounce!  Incredible. [via]

[via]

I’m not surprised by any of the breweries on this list, nor am I surprised by their ranking.  I don’t really consider Sam Adams (Boston Brewery) a craft brewery anymore.  They’re just too big, too national; they’ve traded in their quality of product for the ability to compete with the macro-domestics.  But otherwise, you can’t go wrong with any of the breweries on this list.  They’re all making great, quality beers.

My 10 favorite from this list would be (in no particular order): Deschutes, Magic Hat, Matt Brewing Co. (Saranac), Stone Brewing, Dogfish Head, Lagunitas, Brooklyn Brewery, Rogue, Abita, and Shipyard.

This winter, Avatar is the only motion picture event.  There is no Harry Potter, no Lord of the Rings, no obvious competition for this type of film.

Especially when you look at all the numbers involved between a $300 million production budget, $150 million marketing/publicity budget, 14 years spend developing the necessary camera technology.  Yeah, sure there are no bankable stars, but it’s directed by James “freaking” Cameron?!? I get worried reading between the lines that Fox is already making excuses for the movies perceived failure.

Man what I would give to be in his shoes to hear what all my friends and family really thought of me.

Perhaps most significantly, the meat of the business isn’t particularly good. On Friday, I stopped into an Arby’s for the first time this millennium. It was clean, and I noticed an array of products beyond the bare-bones menu I recall from my Midwestern youth. Moneybox may be a food snob, but he is a nondiscriminating connoisseur of street food and greasy fare who still makes the occasional run for the border at Taco Bell. (Don’t tell Mrs. Moneybox.) But even I had difficulty completing the reporting for this assignment. Forget about salads and vegetables. As I scoured the menu—the gyro, the french dip, the patty melt—I had difficulty identifying anything that had gone through less processing than uranium. A few bites of a roast beef sandwich slathered with goopy cheddar sauce, and I was done. On the food chain, the thinly sliced beef is about as far from Boar’s Head deli meat as Boar’s Head oven-roasted ham is from the vaunted jamón Iberico.

Well, okay, it probably is the roast beef.  But the restaurant doesn’t even have anything else to offer customers aside from it’s namesake sandwich.  Not a good business decision.

And not just any billboard.  It’s an anti-discrimination billboard! Oh. My. God. How could they?

You know what the best part of this news report is? The ugly lady at the beginning who has no idea she’s the worst kind of hypocrite.  “I cringed,” said Christine Lutz.  “I was disgusted at the same time.  I said how dare you take the scriptures and twist it to fit your needs.”  Which is probably what she does, I’m only assuming, when she yammers on and on about no abortion, no gay marriage, etc.

I could say some other stuff, but I’ll save that for when I’m drunk and at a bar.  [via]

The Big Picture is featuring beautiful photos of Martian Landscapes shot from NASA’s Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO).

My life has been a constant struggle against the futility of existence, that when you think about things like the universe being 800 million-years-old you begin to question your own insignificance.  Still, despite that, the odds of humans even existing in the first place is miraculous.  Let’s not even begin to talk about evolution how we went from single cell organism to complex animals to sentient beings.  That’s impressive.

“So here’s the upshot: of the 4.6 Gy [gigayears] of Earth’s known history, there’s only been enough oxygen in the atmosphere for us to survive for about 0.5 Gy. For roughly 90% of the Earth’s history we couldn’t even breathe the air. And about 10-25% of the time, there have been ice ages so savagely fierce that the glaciers reached the tropics: odds are good that any meat probe landing on solid ground during these periods would rapidly die of exposure. So historically, Earth has only been inhabitable about 8% of the time — assuming you are lucky enough to find some solid ground. Once you factor in the random surface distribution, we’re down to about 2% survivability.”  Almost enough to make you believe in a divine being.  Almost, but not quite.

I find Jon Stewart’s impression of Glen Beck pretty great, unnerving for sure, but still great. Gotta love those inane FOX news chalkboard moments.

I’m not sure why those responsible for erecting a statue to a beloved children’s television icon would design a scary, craggy monster looking statue; but then again, this is Pittsburgh (I have no factual basis to make that claim)?

The six-year project was unveiled on a drizzy day yesterday with the 11-foot bronze statue as a center piece to a children’s tribute area.  Still.  Did NO ONE look at the statue?!?  It is as frightening as the actual Fred Rogers was comforting and inviting.  It looks like the mythical Jewish rock Golem.

She goes on to say on a scale of 1 to 10, the pain is about an eight or nine for a full 24-hours after intercourse.  I don’t know if she’s using my pain scale (10 being decapitation, one being napping in a field of daisies), but this allergy sounds pretty awful to have.

Still, when the early news broke yesterday, a conspiracy theorists co-worker of mine made the off-hand quip, “watch him turn out to be Muslim, possibly a sleeper terrorist that the right wing will use to their advantage.”  Odd, very odd.  Not that I believe that line of thinking. It’s just a tragedy all-around.

Nidal Malik Hasan’s religion says nothing more about Islam extremism than Timothy McVeigh’s and the Unabomber’s actions say about white men.

Still, it’s hard to have an sort of understanding about the country and the war.  Luckily, my good friend Zack served a tour of duty there, came home alive, and was able to shed some light on the complex nature of Afghanistan. 

However, if you don’t have a friend like Zack, then let me suggest you read this extensive analysis by Spencer Ackerman.  It’s really long, but at the end of it you’ll be much better informed about the whole situation regarding the strategies, the decision makers, and what the possible outcomes could be.

Good god, if there is anything more frightening than a bear, it’s the hairless variety.  Leipzig Zoo vets have been unable to determine what caused Dolores and all other female Spectacled Bears in captivity to suddenly go bald. “Some experts believe it could be due to a genetic defect though the animals do not seem to be suffering from any other affliction.  The bears, which originate from South America,  normally have fluffy dark brown fur and would now be growing a thicker fur coat to keep warm during the winter.”

Update: Yup, just as creepy when they are seen in motion.

Above is our Sun, “photographed using a special filter which matches the specific shade of red light emitted by hydrogen gas. The image was then inverted to enhance the visibility of the Sun’s chromosphere, giving it the ominus blue glow seen above.”

[via & via]

Which means that people with DVRs still sit through commercials because they’re too lazy to use a remote.  With 1/3 of US households watching television through their DVR, when factored into ratings, many shows are increasing their viewership in the  range of 7 to 12 percent, with some shows having increases of more than 20 percent.  The four networks together are averaging a 10 percent increase.

Shocking!  But there it is.  Only now have networks come to realize that just because people watch television shows on time delay or on the internet doesn’t mean that people aren’t watching shows.  Doesn’t take a genius to figure that out, but I guess it does take a television executive about three years.

This takes nothing away from the sacrifice Pat Tillman made for this country, but it does call into question the man in charge of turning Afghanistan around for other US Troops.

Now he just has to work on that don’t ask, don’t tell policy.

Science rocks.  If I were a school superintendent I would put tables like this all over every school in my district.

Update: In 2003, Wake Forest University students Nazila Alimohammadi and Anna Clark built this picnic table.

The two women students created the sculpture as part of a public art course taught in the fall by David Finn, associate professor of art. Students in the class were paired up and assigned to work with campus organizations in creating works for public display. “We wanted our project to be fun and functional without a lot of emotional or political content,” Clark says. An aspiring dentist, Alimohammadi had taken several chemistry classes and suggested working with that department. They devised their “Periodic Table” concept — a pun of the familiar Periodic Table of Elements configuration — and the department responded enthusiastically. Alimohammadi did the structural steel work and Clark hand-painted the surface tiles. The piece, which was dedicated in an informal picnic ceremony on April 15, is accurate in every detail, right down to the auxiliary lanthanides and actinides tables that constitute the table’s bench.

[via & via]

We took notice when Google first announced they were going to add a music search function.  If you haven’t seen the music search feature yet in your searches, you will; they are rolling it out slowly.  However, you can test it out here.

I’m not terribly sold on this, but it’s a step in the right direction.  What I’d want is something that searches for Mp3s like the Hype Machine, as well as torrents.  But I understand the legality involved with both of those practices and how that functionality isn’t in Google’s best interests.

This reminded me of how much I enjoyed Hitch’s recent article for Slate where he discusses what he learned from his debates with religious people.

I haven’t yet run into an argument that has made me want to change my mind. After all, a believing religious person, however brilliant or however good in debate, is compelled to stick fairly closely to a “script” that is known in advance, and known to me, too. However, I have discovered that the so-called Christian right is much less monolithic, and very much more polite and hospitable, than I would once have thought, or than most liberals believe. I haven’t been asked to Bob Jones University yet, but I have been invited to Jerry Falwell’s old Liberty University campus in Virginia, even though we haven’t yet agreed on the terms.

Wilson isn’t one of those evasive Christians who mumble apologetically about how some of the Bible stories are really just “metaphors.” He is willing to maintain very staunchly that Jesus of Nazareth was the Christ and that his sacrifice redeems our state of sin, which in turn is the outcome of our rebellion against God. He doesn’t waffle when asked why God allows so much evil and suffering—of course he “allows” it since it is the inescapable state of rebellious sinners. I much prefer this sincerity to the vague and Python-esque witterings of the interfaith and ecumenical groups who barely respect their own traditions and who look upon faith as just another word for community organizing. (Incidentally, just when is President Barack Obama going to decide which church he attends?)

Incidentally, Hitch and Wilson’s documentary Collision hits theaters this week, but only on a few theaters.

Early this morning, NASA launched the Ares I-X rocket on a sub-orbital test flight.  This is the first new rocket tested in 30 years! BOOYAH!  A cone of cloud formed around the nose as it blasted upward. A beautiful sight under any circumstances. (AP Photo/Chris O’Meara)

No one did a thing to help her.  The victim was found under a bench, semi-conscious, after nearly two-hours of abuse and torture from classmates.

“This just gets worse and worse the more you dig into it,” Lt. Mark Gagan of the Richmond Police Department told CNN. “It was like a horror movie. I can’t believe not one person felt compelled to help her.”

As many as 10 people were involved in the assault in a dimly lighted back alley at the school, while another 10 people watched without calling 911 to report it, police said.

The worst part of all of this is the response from West Contra Costa Unified School District spokesman Marin Trujillo after the brutal gang rape outside of her high school’s homecoming dance: “The dance was successful event and safe for the students that were there.  This dance itself was a successful event.” 

Holy Christ almighty in heaven?!? Um, no, no it wasn’t.  When something like this happens on school grounds and the students not only do nothing, but also particpate and none of the authorities know it’s happening, then no, there was nothing successful or safe about the school dance. 

But I guess the students’s indifference seems like learned behavior from the administrators of this school, or something.  How else to explain, “Richmond High School has a 69 percent truancy rate and is in a school district that had 19 student murders last year. Fights at Richmond have been posted on YouTube, and a van was set on fire on the football field’s new artificial turf. An investigation by CBS station KPIX-TV last year found only a handful of the 16 security cameras in the school were working.”

Sad, just sad.

Triboelectrification be damned.  Now that the lightening strikes have passed and there is no worry about static electricity interfering with the onboard systems, NASA is attempting to launch the new $445 million dollar rocket today (eta 10:30a.m.).  The launch test is intended to study how well this rocket design works by gathering data from over 700 onboard sensors.

The 327-foot (100-meter) tall rocket is slated for a two-minute fact-finding flight that will reach a maximum altitude of about 150,000 feet, or 28 miles (46 km), after which it will land in the Atlantic Ocean and boats will collect its spent first stage for study.