Beware of bread

Greetings.

Jewish date:  19 Tishri 5771 (Parashath Bere’shith).

Today’s quasi-holidays:  Ancestor Appreciation Day, Banned Book Week, World Tourism Day.

Worthy cause of the day:  “Stand Up for Veterans - They Stood Up for Us - The Petition Site”.

Today’s news and commentary:

• “Dying to Eat: A Graphical View of U.S. Obesity”
• “Insect Dinners - Waiter, There’s Soup in My Bug”:  I cannot make something like this up.

Image featuring the insidious substance via Wikipedia

Today’s weird thing is “Bread Kills!”, which is a very silly illustration of bad epidemiological reasoning, specifically that fallacies of equating correlation with causation and the assumption that preceding alone is a proof of causation.  Enjoy and share the weirdness.

Aaron

Beware of Starfleet kitchen utensils

Image marginally relevant to today’s weird thing via Wikipedia

Greetings.

Jewish date:  18 Tishri 5771 (Parashath Bere’shith).

Today’s quasi-holidays:  Banned Book Week, European Day of Languages, National Pancake Day, Gold Star Mother’s Day.

Today’s news and commentary:

• “An alien's eye view of the solar system (w/ video)”
• “Lost language unearthed in a letter”
• “Million Dollar Comma”
• “We Only Trust Experts If They Agree with Us”:  This is a sad commentary on what people believe.
• “Salmonella Take Advantage of Our Battle Plan”

Today’s weird thing is the Star Trek Enterprise Pizza Cutter, which is described in this short video:

(There is also a Star Trek Enterprise Bottle Opener, but the pizza cutter is cooler and more useful in a fight against Klingons.)  Enjoy, share the weirdness, and live long and prosper.

Aaron

Beware of ballistic marshmallows

Greetings.

Jewish date:  13 Tishri 5771.

Today’s quasi-holidays:  World Gratitude Day, International Banana Festival, Elephant Appreciation Day, Miniature Golf Day, International Day of Peace, Independence Day (Armenia).

Today’s news and commentary:

• “Intel wants to charge $50 to unlock stuff your CPU can already do”:  You do realize, I hope, that this is an invitation for hackers to write their own unlocking code to avoid paying the $50.
• “The Quadrotor Drone Learns Several Terrifying New Tricks”

Today’s weird thing is the Marshmallow Mforcer Semi-Automatic Pistol, a weapon which fires marshmallows.  This should be useful when fighting foes made out of tissue paper.

Image of hint via Wikipedia

Special bonus weird thing:  Stay Puft Caffeinated Gourmet Marshmallows.  Apparently life sometimes imitates corny movies.  (Hint:  Ghostbusters reference.)

Enjoy, share the weirdness, and DUCK!

Aaron

Beware of period picnic tables

Image of the cracked media via Wikipedia

Greetings.

Jewish date:  11 Tishri 5771.

Today’s quasi-holiday:  International Talk Like a Pirate Day.

Worthy causes of the day:  “Don't Build the Belo Monte Dam! - The Petition Site” and “Protect the Paradise Forests and the Orangutan - The Petition Site”.

Today’s news and commentary:

• Relevant to today’s quasi-holiday:  “Pirates Need Science, Too”
• “Password advice from the father of the firewall”
• “HDCP Master Key Confirmed; Blu-ray Content Vulnerable”:  It was only a matter of time.  Any content that can be read can be cracked.

Today’s weird thing is “Periodic table”, which describes a picnic table in the shape of a period table.  Enjoy and share the weirdness.

Aaron

Beware of the Flying Alarm Clock

Greetings.

Jewish date:  9 Tishri 5771.

Today’s quasi-holidays:  Constitution Day.

Today’s news and commentary:

• “Pi record smashed as team finds two-quadrillionth digit”:  Intuition suggests finding later and later digits in π is something in the way of a mathematical game which, since π is an irrational number, will never end.

Image of the wrong sort of alarm clock, which is likely to be sent flying through the air, via Wikipedia

Today’s weird thing is the Flying Alarm Clock, which is a novel approach to getting its owner up by forcing the person being woken up to do a nontrivial task in order make it stop making a racket.  See this somewhat lame video which demonstrates it:

Enjoy (or loathe this thing; your choice) and share the weirdness.

Aaron

Beware of Firefox

Greetings.

Jewish date:  8 Tishri 5771.

Today’s quasi-holidays:  Collect Rocks Day, National Play-doh Day, Wife Appreciation Day, International Day for the Preservation of the Ozone Layer, Mayflower Day, Women’s Friendship Day.

Worthy cause of the day:  “Got Science?”.

Today’s weird thing is “Firefox rejects your”:

I hope your browser does not act like this in real life.  Enjoy and share the weirdness.

Aaron

Beware of Sam-I-Am

Greetings.

Jewish date:  7 Tishri 5771.

Today’s quasi-holidays:  Felt Hat Day, Independence Day (Costa Rica, El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras, Nicaragua).

Worthy causes of the day:  “DemocracyForAmerica.com » Stand with Patrick Leahy”, “Save Darfur Coalition:  Give just 60 seconds for Sudan”, and “Tell Congress: Don't extend the Bush tax cuts for the wealthy”.

Today’s news and commentary:

• “Ancient brewers tapped antibiotic secrets”:  I do not make stuff like this up.  Nor could I.
• “New Poll Gauges Americans' General Knowledge Levels”:  We need to work on this.
• “Online appeal sets classical music free”:  Interesting idea.
• “Crested dinosaur pushes back dawn of feathers”

Cover via Amazon

Today’s weird thing, inspired from discussing the ownership of a number of Dr. Seuss books yesterday, is “Green Eggs and Ham Sam i am Jesse Jackson”.  (I apologize for not including the video directly on this blog, but embedding was disabled.)  As a special bonus, there is also a recipe for Green Eggs and Ham Recipe, in which the green color is due to scallions and spinach.  Enjoy and share the weirdness.

Aaron

Beware of asteroids

Image of something sort of jetpack-like via Wikipedia

Greetings.

Jewish date:  29 ’Elul 5770 (Parashath Ha’azinu).

Today’s quasi-holidays:  International Literacy Day, World Rabies Day.

Worthy cause of the day:  “Protect us from toxic coal ash”.

Today’s news and commentary:

• “Jetpacks For Sale - Buy a Jet Pack”:  Took them long enough.

Today’s weird thing is “Asteroid Discovery From 1980 − 2010”:

This should give some idea how much in the way of rocks there are flying around the inner Solar system.  If you feel worried about the prospects of collision, do note that the size of objects are not shown to scale.  Enjoy and share the weirdness.

Aaron

Beware of secret agents¡

Greetings.

Jewish date:  28 ’Elul 5770 (Parashath Ha’azinu).

Today’s quasi-holidays:  “Neither Snow Nor Rain” Day, National Thylacine Day, International Dadaism Month.

Today’s weird thing is “Eagle”:

Enjoy, share the weirdness, and please, don’t do this.

Aaron

May the Force be with Chew

Greetings.

Jewish date:  26 ’Elul 5770 (Parashath Ha’azinu).

Today’s quasi-holiday:  Be Late For Something Day.

Today’s (two-week backlog of) news and commentary:

• “Yellowstone Hot Spot Shreds Ancient Pacific Ocean”
• “Take a deep breath - why the world is running out of helium”
• “Dilbert Creator Scott Adams Tries to Build an Eco-Friendly House (or:  How I (Almost) Saved the Earth)”
• “Got E. coli ? Raw Milk's Appeal Grows Despite Health Risks”
• “A pox on your bank account: failure to vaccinate and its legal consequences”
• “Heaps of Fossils From Evolutionary ‘Big Bang’ Discovered”
• “Large, double-clawed raptor stalked Europe's Cretaceous creatures”
• “10 Ways Your Taxes Pay For Environmental Devastation”
• “The power of anecdotes”
• “How the Washington Shakespeare Company came to offer Shakespeare in Klingon”:  And you will see Klingon Shakespeare, or you will die with no honor!
• “Water Before Meal Means Fewer Calories Consumed”
• “Deadly Whooping Cough, Once Wiped Out, Is Back”
• “Alien Solar System Looks Strikingly Like Ours”
• “Black Fawn”
• “Tropical Glaciers in Indonesia May Disappear by the End of the Decade”
• “Survey Probes Americans' Incorrect Opinions on Energy Efficiency”
• “Patenting The Geophysical Center Of Europe?”
• “Video quality less important when you’re enjoying what you’re watching”
• “Drug-resistant staph infections on the decline in U.S. hospitals”

Image via Wikipedia of the original stuffed animals which inspired one of the things which inspired Wookiee the Chew

Today’s weird thing (if Klingon Shakespeare was not enough for you) is “Chewbacca Illustrated as Winnie-the-Pooh”, describing the book Wookiee The Chew - The House at Chew Corner, with further illustrations at James Hance - Relentlessly Cheerful Art.  No description your humble blogger can give will truly do justice to this, so just click on the links and see this for yourself.  Enjoy, share the weirdness, and may the Force be with you.  Oh, and someone send me a copy of the book, please.

Aaron

Beware of alien cat

Greetings.

Jewish date:  24 ’Elul 5770 (Parashath Niṣṣavim-Wayyelekh).

Today’s quasi-holiday:  Skyscraper Day.

Today’s weird thing (after a break due to me visiting Israel) is “alien cat”:


Enjoy and share the weirdness.

Aaron