Duty

I have jury duty starting today. Feel free to investigate my archives or other links to the left.

Infinity Treads

Normally, I wouldn't advocate ruining a lawn, but this page has a very entertaining video. Check out the exercise groups in the background.

Recipes

This site has recipes for the indifferent. I love it. A sampling:

One Pot Chicken with Rice.

1 can clear chicken broth
1 can (chicken broth can) water
1 can frozen or canned whole kernal corn
1 can (chicken broth can) diced chicken
1 can (chicken broth can) long grain white rice
Heat chicken broth, water and corn to near boiling.
Add rice and chicken, stir, cover and simmer on low heat for 20 minutes.
Stir and season to taste with salt, curry, ginger, garlic or whatever.

Brave Texas Zebra Hunter

(Joshua Romano)

What a dirtbag. He was in a car driving by a Texas animal farm, saw a zebra, and just had to shoot it:

An 18-year-old Red Oak man has been accused in the fatal drive-by shooting of a zebra named Zambi.

Zambi was fatally shot about 12:40 p.m. July 5 as he grazed in a pasture at HiView Farms located just outside Waxahachie, said Lt.Kevin Ketchum of the Ellis County Sheriff’s Office.

The owner of the farm, which is also home to camels, llamas and ring-tailed lemurs, was working outside when the shooting occurred, Lt. Ketchum said. No other animals were injured.

Joshua Romano was arrested Friday at his home and faces a charge of cruelty to animals.

Lt. Ketchum said that on the day of the shooting, Mr. Romano and four friends had gone swimming in a creek near the farm but had to leave because of the rain.

As they drove on Farrar Road, witnesses told authorities Mr. Romano pulled out a deer rifle and shot the zebra. The animal was valued at about $10,000, Lt. Ketchum said.

“The vehicle never stopped,” he said.

The passengers in the vehicle had tried to prevent the shooting, and the driver sped up to make the shooting more difficult, Lt. Ketchum said.

No drugs or alcohol appeared to be involved in the incident, authorities said.

Hm, not drunk or high, so he's just a natural a-hole.

When your redneck friends from the swimmin-hole try to stop you from shooting something, listen to them.

Sweet Friday

It's Friday! I am so beat. Every day this week has been beyond busy. I was too busy to get my comics this week.

I'm working on good stuff, but I'm pretty tired. This weekend I need to complete some volunteer work and do some serious studying.

Some cool sites I've found recently:

A fully adorned Yak.

Budget travel for 94 cities around the world.

Lindsey Landis has published a very readable guide to using a digital camera and Photoshop to make professional looking photos.

Ivar Peterson presents evidence from algebraic and geometric optics inspired models supporting that, yes, as you suspected, the American method of lacing shoes utilizes the shortest laces.

And finally, I give you, Mail Order Husbands. It even has a compatibility test that pairs you with an ideal husband. The site seems hetero specific, but I'd bet the featured guys aren't too picky. (PS. Not sure how work friendly this joke site is. I didn't see anything explicit, but you never know what the gods of the filter might tag.)

Yoga Living?

I found this list at a yoga website. A sampling:

7. When a cake recipe calls for flouring the baking pan, use a bit of the dry cake mix instead-no white mess on the outside of the cake.

8. If you accidentally over-salt a dish while it's still cooking, drop in a peeled potato-it absorbs the excess salt for an instant "fix me up."

9. Brush beaten egg white over pie crust before baking to yield a beautiful glossy finish.

10. Place a slice of apple in hardened brown sugar to soften it back up.

11. When boiling corn on the cob, add a pinch of sugar to help bring out the corn's natural sweetness. (ah, an old 1940’s Fannie Farmer trick!)

12. To determine whether an egg is fresh, immerse it in a pan of cool, salted water. If it sinks, it is fresh-if it rises to the surface, throw it away.

13. Cure for headaches: Take a lime, cut it in half and rub it on your forehead. The throbbing will go away.

Florida Republicans and Toilet Sex

(Florida Republican Robert Allen - arrested 7-11-07 for offering $20 to perform oral sex in a public restroom)

On July 4th, I read that the mayor of Fort Lauderdale is really, really worried about putting a lid on sex in public restrooms, a phenomenon the local police department says isn't really happening. Mayor Naugle wants to spend hundreds of thousands of dollars per sex-free toilet. Talk about municipal waste.

Today, I see that Florida State Representative Robert "Bob" Allen (Republican - Merrit Island) has been arrested for soliciting oral sex from an undercover police officer in a public restroom. He was looking to provide fellatio. Thanks for the details local Fox News affiliate.

I just noticed that JoeMyGod has the goods on big Bobby Allen's push for pieces of legislature aimed at deterring lewd sexual conduct.

Another Republican closet case flushed away by hypocrisy.

Comic Wednesday

It's Wednesday already. That means making a trip tonight to a certain comic store in midtown to get new books. DC keeps killing Flashes and bringing them back (even though Bart Allen seems quite dead). And Marvel, hasn't House of M gone on long enough? You dropped it almost completely during your messy Civil War and now you're playing with it in the back pages of X books. Wrap it up already.

Also, I stumbled across this list of infrequently used, but apparently important, words. Some people would label usage an indicator of importance and erudition an indicator of self-importance. ;-p

Reflections

OK, this is just cool. Metal cylinders are used to complete the pictures. Very clever. Click the link above to see the pictures.

Money for Nothing

Iraq and Afghanistan are costing $10 billion and $2 billion a month, respectively. Imagine the good things that could be done domestically with $10 billion a month. Image the people who'd be alive if we weren't there.

Eyes on the City

(Michael Reeve)
New York is planning to use thousands of surveillance cameras and license plate readers to track people in lower Manhattan (below Canal). Privacy issues are raised by the NYTimes article linked above as is the fact that even the conservative think tank, The Heritage Foundation, admits that surveillance cameras haven't been shown to deter crime and terrorism.

The article also states that thousands of surveillance cameras are already in use in lower Manhattan. They are used without oversight. Get that, the government is already monitoring its citizens without oversight. From the article:

...The police and corporate security agents will work together in the center, said Paul J. Browne, the chief spokesman for the police. The plan does not need City Council approval, he said.

The Police Department is still considering whether to use face-recognition technology, an inexact science that matches images against those in an electronic database, or biohazard detectors in its Lower Manhattan network, Mr. Browne said.

The entire operation is forecast to be in place and running by 2010, in time for the projected completion of several new buildings in the financial district, including the new Goldman Sachs world headquarters.

Civil liberties advocates said they were worried about misuse of technology that tracks the movement of thousands of cars and people,

Would this mean that every Wall Street broker, every tourist munching a hot dog near the United States Court House and every sightseer at ground zero would constantly be under surveillance?

“This program marks a whole new level of police monitoring of New Yorkers and is being done without any public input, outside oversight, or privacy protections for the hundreds of thousands of people who will end up in N.Y.P.D. computers," Christopher Dunn, a lawyer with the New York Civil Liberties Union, wrote in an e-mail message.

He said he worried about what would happen to the images once they were archived, how they would be used by the police and who else would have access to them.

Already, according to a report last year by the civil liberties group, there are nearly 4,200 public and private surveillance cameras below 14th Street, a fivefold increase since 1998, with virtually no oversight over what becomes of the recordings.

Mr. Browne said that the Police Department would have control over how the material is used. He said that the cameras would be recording in “areas where there’s no expectation of privacy” and that law-abiding citizens had nothing to fear.

Yes, don't worry that city council, the part of the government elected by the people, doesn't have control over the program or its expansion, instead console yourself from the loss of privacy by repeating the mantra, "I don't need to worry if I've done nothing wrong."

A frightening aspect not directly addressed by the article is that corporate security services are a large part of current and planned surveillance operations. I understand the desire to have private corporations help with the cost of security, but that's what taxes are for. How is giving corporations free reign to collect and analyze data on free citizens a good thing? Seriously, how is trading civil rights and democracy for corporatism a good thing?

Big brother is here with an expensive suite, a bright smile, and a firm handshake.

Pics from Saturday

Pics from yesterday (click for larger versions).

We hung out by the river with a view of Jersey city:


We saw a familiar squirrel:

Lady held court:

And here's a video of Lady after I snuck up on her and Stuart (click twice to play):