Per aspera

Today’s sign of the impending apocalypse:
Monkeys control robots with their minds - CNN.com
This can lead to no good.

Jesus Christ.
(via Unqualified Offerings)
UPDATE:  Robert Farley at LGM has a slightly longer and more thoughtful response than I:
Long story short, it’s quite likely that an invasion would cause a lot more people to die than are likely to die sans intervention.
The idea of a threat of an invasion in order to force SLORC compliance with international […]

Joel Johnson went on a web show sponsored by OCP, ostensibly for a conversation about gadgets, but went off and wouldn’t stop talking about Robocop.
Yesterday, I was invited to talk about gadgets onThe Hugh Thompson Show, a television-style talk show sponsored exclusively by AT&T for distribution on the online AT&T Tech Channel. I eventually did […]

To this:  The Most Vulgar, Disgusting, and Foul Joke in the World

Go read this post:
What Color Are the Holes in Your Parachute?
For real. If you don’t have the time now, put aside fifteen minutes later and read the whole thing.

BBC News:
Climate change campaigner Al Gore and the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change have been jointly awarded the Nobel Peace Prize.
The committee cited “their efforts to build up and disseminate knowledge about man-made climate change”.
Mr Gore, US vice-president under Bill Clinton, said he was “deeply honoured”.
Mr Gore, 59, won an Oscar for his climate […]

My desktop weather widget thingy tells me that it’s 68 degrees Fahrenheit outside.  The date, as you know, is January 6.  This is insane.  Global warming will kill us all.  I figure we’re a week, week and a half away from total ecosystem collapse.
On the plus side, it’s nice to have the option to wear […]

Second-hand - a cabbie from Uganda describes what it was like:
“Bush is a dictator. Did I offend you?”
“No. What makes him a dictator?”
“You cannot joke about killing him. Hell even under Amin we danced and sang death songs at him. He had a hotel complex that he tortured people in. The difference between Bush and […]

Via Tom, I learn that Anthony Bourdain was apparently filming an episode of No Reservations in Lebanon when the bombing started. As of Monday, he was still there, in Beirut, and has posted to the forums at eGullet about it. I’m just going to quote pretty much the whole thing, because I can’t […]

Bird flu’s coming, and we live in a banana republic.  The government’s taking a market-based approach to preparation (”People will help each other out!  It’ll be like a country-wide Amish barn-raising of disaster relief!  You’ll be happy about bird flu before it’s all over!  Government help?  I guess we’ll probably arrest some looters or something, at […]