I'd never heard of this, but I was watching a show on the Discovery Channel talking about pre-historic North American animals. Apparently about 35 million years ago a massive impact crater was formed in the Chesapeake Bay area. The crater has subsequently been buried, but investigation is showing the crater to be at least 50-60 miles wide and a mile deep.
Here's a couple of LINKS
NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC
WIKIPEDIA
A few Steven Wright jokes from here:
I was once walking through the forest alone. A tree fell right in front of me--and I didn't hear it.
Right now I'm having amnesia and deja vu at the same time. I think I've forgotten this before.
I went to the museum where they had all the heads and arms from the statues that are in all the other museums.
Ever notice how irons have a setting for *permanent* press? I don't get it...
There was a power outage at a department store yesterday. Twenty people were trapped on the escalators.
Every so often, I like to stick my head out the window, look up, and smile for a satellite picture.
I'm moving to Mars next week, so if you have any boxes...
A powerful piece by an Iraqi war vet on killing:
an excerpt:
Killing enemy combatants comes with its own emotional costs. On the surface, we feel as soldiers that killing the enemy should not affect us — it is our job, after all. But it is still killing, and on a subconscious level, it changes you. You’ve killed. You’ve taken life. What I found, though, is that you feel the shock and weight of it only when you kill an enemy for the first time, when you move from zero to one. Once you’ve crossed that line, there is little difference in killing 10 or 20 or 30 more after that.
95% of the time that I go to get ice from the freezer to put in my orange cup, I drop 1 or more pieces of ice in the floor. I have come to believe there is no better slippery design for ice "cubes" than those produced by the automatic ice maker in my fridge. I'll go to grab some ice from the bucket, and even when I think I have a good hold one will slide out, hit the floor, slide across the kitchen floor, and hide somewhere that I can't find it... It's a fun game I play every day.
I saw a link to this over at the Marginal Revolution Blog. It's an interesting discussion of the government "job created" statistics by Felix Salmon - and how the stats can be highly misleading - talking about some highly creative accounting:
Yes, for the purposes of this report, the government has calculated the number of jobs created by taking the number of hours worked and dividing by 173. If you pay a man to wield a shovel for one year, working 40 hours a week, then hey, you’ve created 12 jobs! If you pay him overtime, and he works 60 hours a week, then you’ve created 18 jobs! If he keeps on working at that pace for three years, then you’re up to 54 jobs! All from one man earning one paycheck.
Here's an interesting story about George Washington's leadership and character in his effort to maintain the support of angry and mutinous troops from the NYTimes
excerpt:
In early 1783, with Revolutionary War victory in sight but peace uncertain, Washington and the Continental Army bivouacked at Newburgh, N.Y. Troops were enraged by Congress’s failure to provide promised back pay and pensions. Rumors of mutiny abounded.
In an effort to adhere to some self-imposed stop loss rules I've put in a sell order on Gamestop GME which is now down over 20% from where I purchased. I can see both a long and short case for being in this company, but the short side is winning out right now. Cutting losses and stepping aside to re-evaluate.
Also looking at cutting Garmin loose, but decided to hold on for a while longer to see what developes. There's so much downside priced into GRMN right now that I'll wait and see what happens. They pay a 2.3% dividend and the balance sheet is loaded with cash so I'll wait. The smartphones might be the end of them, but I'm not convinced of that yet.
I have not real comment here other than I find this piece of data on the songs of blue whales quite interesting:
The best records exist for the whales off California, and they showed that the whales sing at a frequency 31% lower than they did in the 1960s, when blue whales around the world had been commercially hunted to the brink of extinction.
Here's a neat idea. A pre-filled tax return with the income information that the government already has. Makes alot of sense to me - seems that a big portion of the work of creating a tax return is transferring data from paper forms that the govt. already has regarding income. Data here says in a test run in California it's far cheaper to process than how it's currently done.
Politically this is a tough go though - as tax return is big business - and making it easier to file reduces the money the tax preperation business could earn on the "easy" returns.
Anyhow, I thought this was a good idea: Why Can’t the I.R.S. Help Fill in the Blanks?
These are good for a funny read if you have a while:
Some of my favorites
Mediocrity
Problems
Losing
Priorities
My Grandmother, "Mom Mim," got me this clock radio back when I was in about the third grade. If I'm not mistaken it was a birthday gift. Note the faux wood that was all the rage back then. It was packed with features like a digital clock with green numbers, an AM/FM radio, as well as an alarm (with snooze!) that I could switch to either wake me with the radio playing or just have it buzz at me. It's probably @1980 model clock if I had to guess
It's been a good clock for me, but it's now time to retire it. The radio on/off long ago broke long ago (although I could listen to the radio using the snooze button), and alot of the buttons were sticky, but the alarm switch was still functional so I've used it up to now - probably for nearly 30 years - as I'm almost 40 yrs old. Lately the alarm switch has started slipping too and won't stay on, so I'm going to have to retire it.
It's strange the thoughts you attach to something old that spans different parts of your life, and it's really kindof sad to decommission the old clock. My youngest memories of the clock are of twisting the radio dial and listening to all the different radio channels out there. When I was young I remember finding the oldies channel in Louisville and listening to all the old rock-n-roll songs I'd never heard. That was back in the day when the announcer would introduce the songs, or break in at the end of the song to tell you who the artist was. Near the clock I kept a notebook paper list of my favorite oldies songs as I learned them. Songs like Don McLean's "American Pie", Otis Reddings "Sitting by the Dock of the Bay", The Turtles "Happy Together", Tommy Roe "Dizzy", or The McCoy's "Hang on Sloopy." The list gradually grew very long and I remember trying to rank the songs every once in a while. The Beach Boys' "Good Vibrations" always ended near the top of my list.
Looking at the clock also makes me think of waking up very early for certain trips, like getting up early to go on my first "caving" trip one weekend with teachers and friends at elementary school, or getting up early to go on my first fishing trip that used a boat at Lake Cumberland.
In college it kept me on schedule I guess, although I gotta admit I almost never made it to that 8:00 chemistry class. I could blame my roomate Kyle, but we were just too lazy for our own good. Luckily the bookstore had good study guides and we made it through fine, but as a lesson to all youngsters out there: Never schedule an 8:00 college class - you won't make it. The 7:30 labs on Friday were mandatory or we probably wouldn't have made it to those either.
As I've grown older the clock has always been there glowing dimly by my head almost every night. I'd gotten so good at turning the alarm off that I could almost do it without waking up. Maybe that's why I usually tend to be a little late for work.
But mainly I think I like the old clock because it was a gift from my grandmother. I was a little fella when she got it for me, but in a way it represents the support and expectations that helped me get from there to here over the course of 30-odd years.
My wife got me a new alarm clock today. Makes me wonder what new thoughts I'll attach to it. What stories it will preside over. And I wonder whether it'll outlast me.
Here's an interesting story about a Guantanamo guard meeting up with some released Guantanamo prisoners - story from the BBC.
Strangely I saw this posted on the economics blog marginal revolution, but I think it probably hits on a truism that we remember the that past more favorably than it was. It's a Daily Show clip, so it's a a bit politically charged, so ignore if it's not your cup of tea, but I think it does show how easy it is to overlook the progress our country has made in many areas through idealization of the past.
CLICK HERE TO WATCH THE CLIP
It's pretty dang cold outside. Roads are a little bit slick. Some snow on the ground. Very weird. Peace, Captain Obvious
