Cheney’s retirement lair is at…

…the “exotic monster pet” stage of development? Excellent. Although why he only wants one face-slapping, Greenpeace-eating, narcotrafficante-disrupting giant Colombian snake is beyond me completely. I know that Rumsfeld is letting Cheney crash at his place until the new digs are ready: possibly he doesn’t have the room?

Moe Lane

PS: VIPER FANG!

rum9

Cautionary rules.

A friend of mine is putting together a project, and asked me for some input thereof. Here’s four of the first things that I came up with. Note: it would have been five, except that I got distracted by The Biology of B-Movie Monsters, which is an article made of awesome.

  • If my research requires me to understand rage before I can eliminate it, I will not infect chimpanzees with a virulently contagious virus that causes uncontrollable, murderous behavior just to have a reliable sample of same. Just being five minutes late with the little bastards’ bananas does it every time. (28 Days Later)
  • Rabbits have been domesticated for thousands of years. In all that time, nobody has thought to increase their size to that of a Buick. There is a reason for this. (Night of the Lepus)*
  • If I desire the services of an illiterate, odd-looking servant with strange religious views, instead of constructing one out of a wolf I will simply go to Whitechapel and hire a human. He’ll be happy to trade regular meals and almost clean underwear for keeping the house clean and promising not to eat the cook.(**)
  • When recreating dinosaur species from their DNA in order to create a theme park, remember this simple safety tip: no carnivores. (Jurassic Park)

Kind of fun to come up with, really.

Moe Lane Continue reading Cautionary rules.

Brain Donors. Wow.

I haven’t thought of this film in years:

I know that this will sound very, very odd – but watching Brain Donors
probably kept me from going insane – geez, almost sixteen years ago at this point.  It showed up at precisely the right moment to get me out of “Oh my God, she left me” mode and smack dab into “Turn it off before I laugh out a kidney” mode.  I’ve never dared watch it since; what if it doesn’t live up to my fond memory of it?

The end of a war that you’ve never heard of.

Well, that some of you have never heard of. Apparently there is a game called EVE Online. It’s a space genre Massively Mutiplayer Online computer game (resource gathering & strategic fighting), and it had a full-fledged “evil empire” alliance in it that everybody else in the game universe was gunning for… and was unable to destroy. And somebody just destroyed it.

I’m bringing the story to your attention because it’s fascinating reading, even if you don’t play MMPOs. It apparently involved treason, a complicated shell game, alternate identities, and the loss/transferal of resources with a game value of billions and a real-world value of tens of thousands of dollars. Plus, the webcomic that Aaron Williams did on the subject gives you an idea of just how far the bailout meme has penetrated the non-political ‘sphere.

Let me explain the difference for you, Mr. Westrope.

So that you can explain it to the next reporter asking you why you didn’t gut biomedicine, but did gut physics, in the Obama-Reid-Pelosi debt bill:

Clay Westrope, Sen. Nelson’s spokesman, said the senator was not anti-science, but that he felt the stimulus bill was the wrong place to add financing for long-term research. “If they were in a spending bill, he would probably support them,” Mr. Westrope said.

Mr. Westrope said he could not explain why biomedical research was regarded as a stimulus, but physics research would not.

(Via Instapundit) You see, “biomedical” means “stem cell research” to the Democratic base, and they’ve been told that they’re in favor of that. However, “physics” means “nuclear energy” to those same base, and they’ve been told that they’re against that. It is politically safe, then, to cut physics research, but not safe to cut biomedical funding. At least from the Democrats’ point of view.

I’m glad that we cleared that up; aren’t you?

Moe Lane

PS: I’m also glad that we’ve established just how much pull Energy Secretary Chu has in this administration. Science advocates, take note: if you have a funding issue, you’re better off talking to Ben Nelson’s chief of staff. Or anybody else that Senator Nelson would actually listen to.

Crossposted at RedState.

About bloody time Without Warning showed up.

I’d add Without Warning to the Wish List, except that I don’t think that I can hold out for more than a few days before I buy this sucker. I’m fond of John Birmingham’s Axis of Time trilogy, although he and I guessed wrong about which Democrat would get the nod for nominee (likely to both of our regrets); this looks like it’ll be similarly spiffy.  Why they made us wait six months for it is beyond me completely.

Oh, what the heck. Somebody bought me Mad Men (which I’m enjoying muchly; thanks to the kind soul who got it for me) after all: maybe I’ll get lucky.

What I’m actually doing, instead of doing anything useful.

I don’t know why it’s interesting, but it is. A little harder than the old WinRisk I already have on my machine, but not that much more so.

Fair warning: the game autoloads under the fold.

Continue reading What I’m actually doing, instead of doing anything useful.