Want a great place to re-learn all of the things that secular science holds dear? Visit the “Creation Museum”:http://www.creationmuseum.org/ in Petersburg, Kentucky which opened on 5/28/07. Get excited to “bring the pages of the Bible to life… [with] life-sized people and dinosaur animatronics…” I only can assume the museum does not depict Jurassic Park-like scenes. Want a discount on admission? Try “working there”:http://www.answersingenesis.org/home/area/jobs/employment.asp, although you need to sign and believe this “Statement of Faith”:http://www.answersingenesis.org/home/area/about/faith.asp, which might be a bit harder to do than you think.
Thanks again to “QT”:http://www.suntimes.com/news/quicktakes/index.html for the start and click the following links for more about what’s going on with “Kentucky”:http://duenos.net/article/280/XRatedKentuckyTowns#comment, “the conservatives’ wikipedia”:http://duenos.net/article/261/MoveOverWikipedia, and “Creationist cruises”:http://duenos.net/article/164/CreationistgroupfundraiseswithAlaskancruise.
Nude cycling in Paris (and around the world)
As a member of the biking (anti-car) movement I’ve occasionally run across people who’s great passion is nude biking. Browsing the French cycling board “Vélorution”:http://www.velorution.org/articles/ I came across the organising site for the first Parisian nude ride. The site (“cyclonudiste.fr”:http://cyclonudiste.fr) is pretty slick and very informative. Nude riders turn out for a number of reasons, but 2 of the big ones that pop out are to highlight the vulnerability of bikers on the road and to protest moral prudism. French law, of course, doesn’t have a strict ban on public nudity per se, but rather considers each case as to whether or not there is a “provocative attitude.” So French.
I’ll be traveling around Europe for the next 3 weeks and so may not be able to post as frequently as I’m used to, but here is something I’m going to be sad to miss. If you’re in Paris on June 9, this sounds like fun. Of course nude bike riding is a “global movement”:http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_Naked_Bike_Ride that happens around the beginning of June in a lot of places (see “this list”:http://www.cyclonudiste.fr/ for dates and places) so maybe I will get to participate, or at least take pictures.
Marge the cow
http://news.scotsman.com/scitech.cfm?id=825282007 in the Scotsman, Marge and her offspring are the result of a $110 million research program going on in New Zealand by the biotech company "ViaLactia":http://www.vialactia.com/. If they succeed at breeding bulls that can pass on Marge's skim milk trait we are well on our way to yet another species with a narrow gene pool. It's working well for the "cheetah":http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cheetah#Genetics_and_classification.
"Photo":http://flickr.com/photos/ramirezlook/288814587/ taken from "AnaC.Ramirez'":http://flickr.com/photos/ramirezlook/ Flickr stream.
What's your theme song?
Theme songs. Couples have them, high school sports teams have them, even (and especially) bad ’80’s sitcoms have them. Why don’t you have one? I’ve always wanted to have a song play when I enter a room but could never pick a logical choice. Should I be off-beat and soulful (“Bert Jansch”:http://www.last.fm/music/Bert+Jansch), casually sophisticated (“Dave Brubeck”:http://www.last.fm/music/Dave+Brubeck) or plain James Bond sexy (“Nina Simone”:http://www.last.fm/music/Nina+Simone)? The best place to look for your theme song is obviously the pop charts and what better song to choose than the number one song on the day of your birth? For me that’s the timeless classic by ’80’s super-band “Wham!”:http://www.last.fm/music/Wham%21, _Wake Me Up Before You Go Go_. Now that I think of it, nothing says Alex Herder like George Michael singing:
??You take the grey skies out of my way??
??You make the sun shine brighter than Doris Day??
??Turned a bright spark into a flame??
??My beats per minute never been the same??
Curious about your theme song? “Look it up”:http://www.joshhosler.biz/NumberOneInHistory/SelectMonth.htm. (Thanks Rachel)
Acoustic Kitty
 retrofitted a common housecat to be a mobile bug in the KGB headquarters. They put in advanced listening equipment, replaced its tail with an antenna, and subverted its hunger impulse. After an estimated $20 million invested in the project, dubbed Acoustic Kitty, and extensive tests they went to release the cat on the streets of Moscow near the KGB headquarters only to see it run over by a taxi.
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http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2001/11/04/wcia04.xml in The Telegraph reminded me of the story, although I'd always heard that the cat was run over by a bus. A bus would've been funnier.
Permafrost no longer
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/05/27/us/27newtok.html?ex=1337918400&en=7e93b110d8fc61d0&ei=5088&partner=rssnyt&emc=rss from today's New York Times highlights one of those towns on the edge, Newtok Alaska. Newtok used to be just another small Arctic outpost but now it's an island, cut off from the mainland by erosion. The residents of Newtok have an important story to tell about what it's like to live on the edge. It's a story we should hear.
Photo courtesy of "Greenpeace":http://www.greenpeace.org/international/campaigns/climate-change.
Open-source travelling
http://globalfreeloaders.com/ and "Couchsurfing.com":http://www.couchsurfing.com/home.html.
Now I haven't had much experience with either site yet, but I'm going to be doing a bit of traveling over the next couple of weeks and plan on using the services extensively. I'll keep you posted. This could be the greatest revelation since the "homemade Chitty-Chitty-Bang-Bang":http://duenos.net/article/121/homemade-chitty-chitty-bang-bang.
A long bike journey
One of the biggest things that gets me going is the idea of an epic quest. Ewan McGregor’s “The Long Way Round”:http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Long_Way_Round, “1,000 Days at Sea”:http://1000daysatsea.blogspot.com/, and Noel Hidalgo’s “Luck of 7 trip”:http://duenos.net/article/229/Anepicopensourcejourney are all very exciting journeys. As epic as their scales are though, “this trip”:http://imagineonbike.com/ might take the lot. Barcelona native Patrick Gaño is on a bicycle trip (no motor!) that he has scheduled over the course of two years, all the way to Alaska. He’s planning on passing through France, Italy Spain, Slovenia, Croatia, Macedonia, Greece, Egypt, Jordan, Israel, Syria, Turkey, Iran, Pakistan, Nepal, China and Japan. According to the “website”:http://imagineonbike.com/ which is unfortunately really bad, he’s already made it through to Turkey and is almost into Iran. Talk about inspiring! The picture was taken on the coast of Croatia.
The great bee caper
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Disappearing_bees and it could be devastating. The biggest problem is that we can't even reach a conclusion as to why so many bees are deserting their hives, but since 1971 half the bees have disappeared in North America alone. A simple "Google search":http://www.google.co.uk/search?q=bee+disappearance yields 100's of causes and solutions. Some of the leading causes could be pesticides, genetically modified crops, or even "cell phone radiation":http://www.iht.com/articles/ap/2007/05/03/healthscience/NA-SCI-US-Honeybees-Weird.php.
The solutions being offered are not very impressive in that their scope is wide and various, but "this article":http://environment.guardian.co.uk/conservation/story/0,,2084842,00.html?gusrc=rss&feed=29 in The Guardian is the most recent. It suggests that bees should be kept by city dwellers to foster a greater "bee friendly" landscape. Of course at this rate we may have to find a whole new solution. Nanobots?
"Image":http://flickr.com/photos/encinoman/515498886/ from EncinoMan's "Flickr! stream":http://flickr.com/photos/encinoman/.
Ooh, shiny AND toxic
I’ve been busy lately planning for a trip next week but I came across these and thought I’d share. Conspicuous consumption meets garishly bad taste in chrome and sterling silver, respectively:
Of course, if what really revs your engine in auto luxury is that nauseous “new car” smell you might be interested to hear that it’s really just glue mixed with formaldehyde. It kills brain cells, something that may be lots of fun on a Friday night but is really bad behind the wheel. Plus it gives me a monster headache. For more about the “new car” smell and its alleged links to cancer, read this “article”:http://www.treehugger.com/files/2005/09/beware_that_new.php from TreeHugger.
(Thanks to “Motor Authority”:http://www.motorauthority.com/cars/bmw/canadas-own-chrome-m3/ and “this strange site”:http://mcfilmfest.com/051117gay-tampa-gossip.html for the pictures)