This is what’s happening in the gulf right now…
According to the video info, this shows… “Oil and gas stream from the riser of the Deepwater Horizon well May 11, 2010. This video is from the larger of two existing leaks on the riser. This leak is located approximately 460 feet from the top of the blowout preventer and rests on the sea floor at a depth of about 5,000 feet. (Courtesy video)”
Want to see something absolutely stunning and horrifying?
This blog shows the size of the BP gulf oil spill in real-time. You can choose any city to center the oil spill to frame the size and give some perspective on how colossal it is.
This is the oil spill superimposed on top of Newark, NJ as the “center” as of today (05/11/10).
Oil Spill as of 051110
This is beyond “bad”.
Every Monday I like to post some music to start the week off on the right foot.
This week….
Dash Berlin – Till The Sky Falls Down
DJ Pablo – One Bboy
Foo Fighters – Everlong
Moondance – Van Morrison
… and finally, Ernie (from Sesame Street) – Rubber Duckie
Here are some news stories from this week that I think the mainstream media completely missed out on. All links are from legitimate news sources and not the fringe / wacko sites.
* According to CBS Evening News, nearly every copier built since 2002 has a secret hard drive that keeps a copy of everything that has ever been copied or printed on it. DAAAAAAMN!! Three words : office Christmas parties. I’ll say no more.
* The Greek crisis is really is turning into a “sun-exploding pushing earth into a black-hole filled with angry flying vampire bat-baboons and drunk wonk-eyed former leprechauns off their meds” kind of bad. Spiegel has the writeup. Oh, by the way, don’t binge on pizza and tamales and green and red chili with Tabasco after 2 am no matter how great they all smell together…. the dreams and nightmares that follow would make Tim Burton freak. [SPIEGEL]
* Speakin’ of the Greek crisis, Brian Williams explains this week’s stock market “free fall” in 2 minutes and 47 seconds on the David Letterman show. Fair warning: some ugly brutal truth ensues in this 2 minutes and 47 seconds. Props to Letterman for the funny outtro.
* A sniper took out TWO living moving targets from 1.5 miles away in two consecutive shots?!? Can someone hand the solid gold “pimp hand of death” award to this man? [DAILYMAIL.CO.UK]
* The latest risk to your health? SITTING! “Short of sitting on a spike, you can’t do much worse than a standard office chair,” says Galen Cranz, a professor at the University of California at Berkeley. At the very end of the article, it says “(James A. Levine, an obesity specialist at the Mayo Clinic) talked to Best Buy, Wal-Mart, and Salo accounting about letting him design their offices and keep people walking and working as much as possible….and he partnered with Steelcase to manufacture a $4,500 version of the machine.” Sounds like he made a little cash on this new study. Hmmmm…. how about instead of selling a product, I’ll give away the TL;DR version for free – get yo’ butt out of the chair and exercise once in awhile! [BUSINESS WEEK]
* Speaking of exercise, scientists have just found out that exercising outside helps you stay healthy! Next up, eating healthy foods and not stuffing your face with pie keeps you from being a Chunky McChubbster! Film at 11. [YAHOO]
Typical hikers in the Northwest Territories
* Wanna feel better about some recent questionable choices you’ve made? Just wash your hands! Somehow, washing your hands removes guilt and doubts about recent decisions you’ve made. I’m gonna go test that out! I’ll buy a new motorcycle this weekend, and then come home and wash my hands! I’ll probably need to wash my wife’s hands too come to think of it. [SCIENCE DAILY]
* A dog named “Kanellos” has showed up at every single Greek protest for the last two years. Coincidence? Hmmm. Maybe that’s not an ordinary dog. Lemme go unpack my PKE meter and proton pack. Anybody seen Venkman? [GUARDIAN.CO.UK]
* Nintendo wants to kick Apple’s butt? Calling them out as the “enemy of the future”? You would think these two would be best friends! Somebody schedule a sit-down with these two! [TIMESONLINE.CO.UK]
* Aside from being a bunch of stupid thugs with delusions of adequacy, the TSA employees who work the body scanners are apparently slightly sensitive about their undersized wee-wees. Seriously! A “guinea pig during an employee training session on full-body scanning equipment” got his junk revealed for everyone to see when he went through the full body scanner. Well duh! What part of “full body scanner” did he not understand? Anyhow, Dr. Evil wasn’t too happy about everyone making fun of mini-me over the course of *a year*, so he eventually went postal in the parking lot, beating a co-worker with a large baton, and then “demanded the witness kneel down and say, “I’m sorry.”” Seriously! Freud would have a ball with this mess! Pun intended. [MIAMI TIMES]
* The headline says it all. “The once mighty Jordan River, where Christians believe Jesus was baptised, is now little more than a polluted stream that could die next year”. Right. Seriously. When we can’t even keep a river with blisteringly obvious historical value intact, there’s some big problems that need to be dealt with. [ABC.NET.AU]
* “Even dyed-in-the-wool preservationists from the WWF agree… Birds, those that have been covered in oil and can still be caught, can no longer be helped. … Therefore, the World Wildlife Fund is very reluctant to recommend cleaning.” In other words – terminate all the animals caught in the oil slick as humanely as possible. This sucks. The animals were in their own environment doing their own thing when BP got them all killed. Nice job, guys! [SPIEGEL.DE]
* Babies have a built in morality code! They even go so far to put the baby-smackdown on “bad” puppets! Veeeeery interesting study. [NY TIMES]
* It’s raining on the North Pole? For the first time ever? “Dashing through the slush… in a one horse power sleigh…” just doesn’t sound right. [CBC.CA]
* Google is actually coming out with a future predictor? A real working future predictor? Um… “amazing!” and “burn it!” are tied for first place in my head on this. [BOSTON.COM] has the story and the promo vids are below.
* Are we our bodies or are we just our microbes? Dude. That’s like asking if the galaxy is made of stars or do the stars make up the galaxy? Trippy. [TECHNOLOGY REVIEW]
* Beautiful women can be bad for your health. Allow me to quote Jack Nicholson/The Joker on this so called “problem”….. “If you gotta go, go with a smile.” [TELEGRAPH.CO.UK]
* Stephen Hawking is now talking about how to build a time machine! Between this new topic and his jibber jabber last week about visiting aliens, I think the Men In Black are overdue to flashy thing him. Or at least put him on the next shuttle back to Antares. The dude is leaking secrets. [DAILYMAIL.CO.UK]
* Speaking of aliens… “Russian regional president Kirsan Ilyumzhinov claims he was abducted by aliens. Now, a Russian MP has asked President Dmitry Medvedev to investigate his claims to make sure he didn’t give any state secrets to the space visitors.” Ok then! How about we try less vodka and more sunlight for you guys? Yes? Повторяйте за мной. “Нет больше водки. Спасибо!” [GIZMODO]
* Scientists have gone too far! Not content with the perfectly logical idea that metal doesn’t smell because it doesn’t have noses, it turns out metal has no smell at all. In fact…. the smell is actually your sweat and the metal interacting! Dude. Ew. [BIO ED ONLINE]
* You know something is bad when the industry that was using tons of a product suddenly drops them like a bad habit and runs far far away. High Fructose Corn syrup? Extraordinarily bad for you. Specifically the “High” and the “Fructose” and the “Corn Syrup” part. [BNET]
* And finally, can a katana blade really cut a bullet that has been fired from a pistol in half? The answer is….. YES.
Epic way to kickoff a Friday afternoon.
Richard Simmons on Whose Line Is It Anyway.
Last night my wife and I hit a few Hollywood Video stores that are going out of business and we picked up some Xbox games for 80% off and some good movies on DVD that were 5 for $10. Not too bad!
But what really got my attention were the movies I didn’t get. Even at $2 a piece I passed right by these gems.
First up was TRANSMORPHERS : FALL OF MAN
Transmorphers Front
Oh yeah. Not a ripoff of Transformers at all. Seriously! Nothing like it! This artwork and title won’t confuse anybody!
Transmorphers Back
The blurb in the upper left piles it on, too. “This prequel to the 2007 blockbuster, is a sci-fi action extravaganza in the tradition of INDEPENDENCE DAY and WAR OF THE WORLDS”
Even more amazing was THE TERMINATORS movie cover.
The Terminators Front
This kind of stuff is legal? Come on! By the same logic, I can get away with opening a Burger Kings if I wanted to, right? It’s not Burger King! It’s Burger Kings! With an s! I serve the flame-mesh Whapper! The flame-fresh Whopper? Never heard of it.
This next movie I’ve actually heard of, and for a brief second, I thought $2 was ok for this diamond in the very very very very rough. Then I realized I could get Moon
Mega Shark vs Giant Octopus
Mega Shark vs Giant Octopus!! Just for the awesome… badness of it!
Finally, this movie made me laugh just for it’s title.
Ankle Biters
It’s a movie about vampire kids? And the tag is “don’t look down”? Awesomeness.
Seriously, though. These movies were green-lit, financed, produced, edited, released and made some money for somebody. So who am I to say anything? This is either an incredibly depressing fact or an awesomely inspiring fact depending on how you look at it.
Me? I’m gonna’ write a script! I’ll call it DIE HARDS! Yes!
Call me Hollywood.
As an extra special bonus, I’ve added trailers for some of the movies I found below.
Brace yourself.
Transmorphers: Fall of Man Movie Trailer
Mega Shark vs Giant Octopus trailer
A secret underground mansion with a waterslide going directly from the bedroom to the pool? A central jacuzzi with an atrium above it?
Slide A
Slide B
Slide C
Looks like a nice summer home for Tony Stark.
Even though the realtor obviously photoshopped some parts of it, and I think 4,300 sq feet is kind of smallish for a $3 million dollar mansion, I still want it.
Great news! I only have $2,999,980 to go! No problem!
Here’s the listing on Country Life (with more interior photos).
There’s a pretty good Humble Indie Game Bundle going on now.
Like the video says, it’s five games for PC, Mac or Linux and a donation to two charities (the EFF and Child’s Play) for any amount you want! You can legitimately get everything for $1 if you like!
Not a bad deal!
Every Monday I like to post some music to start the week off on the right foot.
This week….
Kings Of Convenience – I’d Rather Dance With You
Apollo 440 – Stop The Rock
…and finally the legendary Pinball Number Count – The Pointer Sisters
There’s an awesome graphic on the New York Times’ website that shows how much the EU countries all owe each other. It all comes down to Britain, France and Germany loaning Ireland, Greece, Italy, Portugal and Spain some serious money.
Taking a moment to look at how much Germany is owed, you can see that…
…you get $704 billion!
Even more stunning is how much France is owed.
…that’s a staggering $911 billion these countries owe to France!
This is nuts. No wonder everyone is freaking out that Germany wants to stop loaning these other countries more money. And no wonder Germany wants to stop loaning money as well!
Click the graphic to enlarge on the New York Times website.
Europe's Web of Debt