This is too absurd to be true.
Pharyngula
Evolution, development, and random biological ejaculations from a godless liberal
The most important battle in the history of mankind!
A bit more than a week ago, I mentioned this interview I did for a site called One Blog A Day. The comment thread on the interview has grown in a peculiar way — John A. Davison and his pet sycophantic monkey, VMartin, are babbling away in a most painfully lunatic fashion, cruelly egged on by wÒÓ†. It’s hard to beat this comment for delusions of grandeur:
Bwahahahaha! At least … we have a source for Kryptonite!
Researchers from mining group Rio Tinto discovered the unusual mineral and enlisted the help of Dr Stanley when they could not match it with anything known previously to science.
Once the London expert had unravelled the mineral’s chemical make-up, he was shocked to discover this formula was already referenced in literature – albeit fictional literature.
“Towards the end of my research I searched the web using the mineral’s chemical formula – sodium lithium boron silicate hydroxide – and was amazed to discover that same scientific name, written on a case of rock containing kryptonite stolen by Lex Luther from a museum in the film Superman Returns.
“The new mineral does not contain fluorine (which it does in the film) and is white rather than green but, in all other respects, the chemistry matches that for the rock containing kryptonite.”
Wait … it’s white? Phooey. We need the green stuff. As everyone knows, white kryptonite only affects plants. Boring!
People who have seen your photo and know your name might notice you when you pick up two-dollar hookers in the seedy part of town.
Another useful hint: when said observers later mention this fact, it is not a convincing disavowal to state that you do not hang out in the red-light district “on a regular basis.”
(Hat tip to Zeno for providing this fabulous PSA. I note that Zeno is pseudonymous and does not have his picture on his blog.)
Uh, right. That line comes from a story in a 1949 issue of Mechanix Illustrated, “Octopus wrestling is my hobby”.
What little I’ve read of the extreme audiophile community makes my brain hurt, and I’ve avoided it like poison. James Randi deals with the freaky audiophiles now and then — people who believe their special magic cables will make your stereo sound better, or that an array of weirdly shaped hatstands in your room will make the music resonate just right — but it’s not something I want to get into regularly. A reader sent me a link to the special One Drop Liquid, though, and I just had to share my cerebral agony with everyone else, out of spite.
The title of this article is terribly misleading: “The Octopus that can open drink bottles”. I was thinking it would be so cool to have an octopus on your shoulder, and you hold up your beer bottle, and he reaches out an arm and twists the top off for you. And then you read a little further and discover that the little smart-aleck will only do it if you open it first and put some octopus food inside for it. I wouldn’t mind a bit of shrimp or crab bobbing about in my beer, but having to open the bottle first to put it in there defeats the whole purpose of carrying a bottle-opening octopus around with you.
I thought maybe I’d just have to train the octopus to like beer … but then I’d have to share, and just my luck I’d probably get an eight-armed lush. Having a clever beast around who’d probably figure out how to open the refrigerator and then crawls in and drinks all your beer seems like a bad idea.
Hey, maybe this fits into the framing debate. The famous violinist Joshua Bell stood in a Washington DC subway station, playing Bach on his Stradivarius, in a test to see how many commuters would stop and appreciate the magnificent music.
A few people stopped, but no crowd formed, and he got a total of $32.17 tossed into his violin case. That actually isn’t bad for 45 minutes of playing, but I suspect he isn’t going to give up his day job.
From Geoff Arnold, it seems there is a cult of Schneier. Since I said hello to Bruce Schneier in my brief visit to Minicon yesterday, I feel that I am obligated to set the facts straight. It’s all true. He is a god among men, and the earth would tremble at his footsteps if he wasn’t so beneficent that he insisted on levitating himself everywhere.
Speaking of deities on earth, I also got to briefly meet Teresa Nielsen Hayden at her panel on conversations on the net. Yes, in person, she is exactly like she is on the web, only more so. Somebody interrupted her, she raised a finger, and with a glance disemvowelled him on the spot, something you really do not want to see occurring in the real world. Alien geometries were involved; people reduced to consonants are angular, dysphonic, disturbing, and very hard on the eyes.
Fortunately, I only waved to Patrick Nielsen Hayden from a distance, otherwise an evening in the presence of a Trinity might have perturbed even my absolutely inflexible dogmatic atheism.
I am a little jealous of Skatje, who is spending all day and all night today and most of tomorrow at the con.
Skatje’s keeping us up to date on the con at her weblog. I’ll have you know I introduced her to de Lint’s books, and now she’s going to be bringing home a bunch more for me to read. Bwahahahaha! My clever scheme bears fruit at last — there’s the true reason I had kids, merely so they would one day bring me books.
