More stupid people

Yet another school board of idiots is thinking of putting creationism in the curriculum.

Hummers

The originally commercially available Hummer, the super wide and bulky version, really was a commercial version of the military HumVee, but it was somewhat limited in it’s sales. The H2 model was completely redesigned and was essentially a GMC Yukon in a smaller version of the Hummer frame. It shares essentially no components with the original military HumVee, so all the people buying the H2s and H3s who believe they are driving around in military style vehicles are really just driving strange looking Yukons and paying about twice the price to do so.

Bad rules

This is the greatest accidental invention of a new sport ever. Grenada and Barbados were in a soccer tournament in 1994 where Barbados needed a 2 goal or greater victory was required to make it to the next stage of the tournament while Grenada would move on with any other result. Barbados was up 2-0, but with minutes left Grenada scored. Normally Barbados would just have to dig in and try to score in the final few minutes, but some crazy person decided that for this tournament if a game was tied at the end of 90 minutes it would go to overtime and (here’s the crazy part) overtime goals would count for 2. Barbados realized the insane situation this set up and they purposely scored on their own goal. Now with the score tied 2-2 Barbados had a better shot of making it to the finals, they just needed a single goal in overtime. Grenada realizing the situation they were suddenly in started trying to score on either goal and Barbados started defending both goals. In those frantic last couple of minutes things were so crazy that the Grenada goalkeeper was trying to throw the ball into his own net only to be blocked by Barbados forwards.

The game somehow made it to overtime and Barbados went on to win with an overtime 2 point goal.

Face Blind

Faceblindness (Prosopagnosia) is interesting. Something like 3-4% of people apparently can’t recognize faces at all. They recognize people by other cues such as posture and context. There are varying degrees and subtypes of this condition, but in extreme cases individuals may not recognize close family members. Interestingly people with this disorder will sometimes have an emotional response, galvanic skin reaction, to familiar faces, but no conscious recognition. Capras delusion has the opposite conditions, people with this recognize familiar faces but have no emotional response. This often results in them believing that their loved ones have been replaced with impostors.

There are a few nifty test you can take over at faceblind.org to see how faceblind you might be.  If anyone out there is faceblind let me know so that I can play with you.

Bear eats baby

Handing your honey covered baby to bear is a bad idea. I’ve heard this from at least two sources as something that really happened. Most recently in A Walk in the Woods by Bill Bryson. According to Snopes.com (an urban legend site I’ve somehow only just heard of) it’s never actually been documented as happening. The  legend dates back to at least 1971 and possible as far back as the 1940s. However, handing your honey covered baby to a bear is still a bad idea.

Butte Hole

Butte hole may be saved by butt hole (of geese).

The giant nasty hole in Butte, Montana, created by copper mining, has been slowly filling with toxic water for decades. It’s full of toxic heavy metals like arsenic and no one has had any idea how to clean up this water which inches closer to over spilling it’s banks into Butte, where houses sit directly next to this giant hole. This is bad since the water is so toxic that a few years back when a bunch of migratory birds landed on this toxic lake while they were migrating they all died.

There may be hope of a solution from a strange and unexpected source.  A few years ago somebody notice a slime in the water.  Turns out the slime is something alive. This was thought impossible until recently. This slime seems to be feeding off of the heavy metals and fairly quickly dropping them out of solution. The slime is cleaning the water. After some testing they found that this bacterial slime is most closely related to a bacteria that has only ever been found in rectal swabs from the same species of birds that landed and died on the lake.

Mount Marcy

Mount Marcy mountaintop view

Here’s a picture from our last trip. This is a stitched panorama taken from the end of our 7.6 mile hike up the mountain. I believe this view is out to the SE. The lake in the distance to the left of the pile of rocks appears to be Boreas Ponds.

Not in the picture but much closer to the right and down would be Lake Tear of the Clouds. Lake Tear of the Clouds has the distinction of being the highest lake in New York state. It’s looks to be barely even a pond. It also has the distinction of being the location, then vice-president, Teddy Roosevelt was at on Sep 13, 1901 when he heard that McKinley’s condition was deteriorating. He raced from there down Mount Marcy to the SW to the North Creek railroad station, where at 5:22 AM on the morning of Sep 14 he received a telegram informing him that McKinley had died.

The strange thing about this is that McKinley was shot on Sep 6, which was before Roosevelt left on his Mount Marcy trip. It’s hard to imagine a vice-president today deciding it’s a good idea to go hiking immediately after his boss has been shot.

Watson

IBM is developing a super new artificial intelligence named Watson, which will hopefully be able to interpret english language questions and give english language answers. The current goal is to make it a competitor on Jeopardy in the fall.  It can either be surprisingly accurate and quick in it’s answers or, much more entertainingly, it can fail and start spitting out nonsense answers.

Basil Blight

I’m on the lookout for basil blight tonight. Easily spread fungus first seen in the US in Florida, now known to be in NY and problem other places including Ohio.  The leaves may look yellowish on top, underneath they should look purplish greyish.  If I see any evidence, it’s apparently best to harvest all that still look decent. So maybe I’ll be making pesto tonight.

I’ll probably be making pesto anyway, the basil is getting pretty thick, and if not pesto then at least olive oil basil ice cubes.