Awww! He's cute! And sticky looking!

A Dust Storm?

Apparently there was a dust storm in Sydney yesterday.  The dust storm was mostly in the early morning, and later on it was just windy, so I missed most of it.  All I knew until I saw the pictures later was that the sky was a bit of a funny colour (which was also true last week when they were burning undergrowth near where I live) and that my hayfever was going crazy (which was also true last week when...)

Apparently the sky was bright orange.  I missed it all.  I can see the stuff on my floor now, though.  I wiped some of it up with a tissue and it is a distinct salmon colour, rather than the usual grey of household dust.  I'll have to mop and vacuum the place - but maybe not just yet, because it's expected to return this weekend.

Posted by: Pixy Misa at 05:58 PM | Comments (4) | Add Comment | Trackbacks (Suck)
Post contains 148 words, total size 1 kb.

Doing Your Part

A while back I calculated, very back-of-the-envelopely, that we could offset carbon dioxide emissions if we all bought (and kept) three books a week.  But I didn't show my work, and I'm not sure my numbers are right.

So, let's see.  From here there's a net of 4 billion tons of CO₂ added to the atmosphere every year.  That represents just over a billion tons of carbon - CO₂ is 27% carbon by weight.

If everyone on Earth bought three books a week, that's a trillion books a year, more or less (156 books per person x 6.7 billion people = 1.045 trillion books).  If each book weighs one kilogram (so we're not talking paperbacks here, unless the author is Neal Stephenson) that's a billion tons of paper.  But paper (well, I'm using cellulose for my numbers) is only 44% carbon by weight, so that's not actually a billion tons of sequestered carbon.  I think that's where I went astray before.

So, dividing 3 books by .44 to get the real number, we learn that a book a day keeps global warming at bay.

Posted by: Pixy Misa at 10:46 PM | Comments (15) | Add Comment | Trackbacks (Suck)
Post contains 187 words, total size 1 kb.

It's Been Nice Knowing You

Sydney is going to be hit by a tsunami in about half an hour's time.

For reals.

Okay, it's only a little one, and I'm fifteen miles inland and six hundred feet up, but still...

Posted by: Pixy Misa at 09:34 PM | Comments (4) | Add Comment | Trackbacks (Suck)
Post contains 40 words, total size 1 kb.

Thanks Obama!

No, seriously.

The AUD / USD exchange rate is back above 80 cents.

A few months ago it had dropped to 60 cents, which made running the servers seriously expensive.  Now it's back within my financial comfort zone.

Posted by: Pixy Misa at 06:02 PM | Comments (2) | Add Comment | Trackbacks (Suck)
Post contains 40 words, total size 1 kb.

Sydney Power Out, Hardly Any Zombies

See Twitter for updates.

Posted by: Pixy Misa at 05:40 PM | Comments (1) | Add Comment | Trackbacks (Suck)
Post contains 10 words, total size 1 kb.

Happy Turkey Day To All

'Ceptin the turkeys, I s'pose.

Posted by: Pixy Misa at 08:31 PM | Comments (4) | Add Comment | Trackbacks (Suck)
Post contains 10 words, total size 1 kb.

Echoes

There's a Railway Street in Baulkham Hills.

Which is odd because there isn't a railway in Baulkham Hills.

But there was, once.

Posted by: Pixy Misa at 12:55 AM | Comments (1) | Add Comment | Trackbacks (Suck)
Post contains 23 words, total size 1 kb.

Oh Well

America survived Carter; it will survive Obama.

Of course, the rest of the world almost didn't survive Carter, and as to that, well, tough luck to the rest of the world.

Posted by: Pixy Misa at 02:36 PM | No Comments | Add Comment | Trackbacks (Suck)
Post contains 33 words, total size 1 kb.

We're All Gonna Die!

The Earth is going to be hit by an asteroid.

In four minutes.

Three minutes.

RUN!

Update: Still alive.  You?

Posted by: Pixy Misa at 12:42 PM | No Comments | Add Comment | Trackbacks (Suck)
Post contains 24 words, total size 1 kb.

Governor Palin's Daughter Phoebe's Best Friend's Cousin's Hamster Reported Pregnant

New York Times, Washington Post ask "What did McCain know, and when did he know it?"

Update: Fox reports: "Hamster" actually guinea pig.  Also, male.

Update: Zogby reports: McCain polling lower with Hamster-American households.

Update: Andrew Sullivan demands to see veterinary records.  "How do we know that this hamster is really a guinea pig?  How can we trust this, when we've made up so many...  Uh, been lied to so many times?"

Update: Fox reports: Hang on, Governor Palin doesn't have a daughter named Phoebe.

Update: New York Times, Washington Post ask "What did McCain know, and when did he know it?"

Update: Gallup reports: McCain polling lower with Charmed-American households.

Update: Daily Kos reports: Risque MySpace photos of Phoebe's best friend's cousin discovered.

Update: Protein Wisdom reports: "Uh, dude, that's an armadillo in a wig.  And believe me, I know an armadillo in a wig when I see one."

Update: Huffington Post reports: Right-wing blogs caught in cover-up!

Update: Ace reports: Left-wing blogs hit bottom, keep digging.  "Believe me, Jeff knows an armadillo in a wig when he sees one."

Posted by: Pixy Misa at 11:19 PM | Comments (5) | Add Comment | Trackbacks (Suck)
Post contains 191 words, total size 1 kb.

Naughty Librarian

All Governor Palin has to do now is make an appearance wearing kitty ears.
more...

Posted by: Pixy Misa at 03:45 PM | No Comments | Add Comment | Trackbacks (Suck)
Post contains 35 words, total size 1 kb.

Happy Birthday America!

I shall now take a short nap in your honour.

Posted by: Pixy Misa at 05:07 PM | Comments (1) | Add Comment | Trackbacks (Suck)
Post contains 13 words, total size 1 kb.

The End Is Nigh

The sky in Sydney is red.  The colour of a bowl of water that you've been using to clean a freely bleeding wound.

Kind of cool, actually.

Posted by: Pixy Misa at 04:59 PM | Comments (3) | Add Comment | Trackbacks (Suck)
Post contains 31 words, total size 1 kb.

ANZAC Day

They shall grow not old, as we that are left grow old:
Age shall not weary them, nor the years contemn.
At the going down of the sun and in the morning
We will remember them.

This is why.

Posted by: Pixy Misa at 01:04 PM | Comments (2) | Add Comment | Trackbacks (Suck)
Post contains 40 words, total size 1 kb.

On Comporting Oneself In The Arena Of Public Discourse

Matoko of Ghost Blog called Glenn Reynolds of Instapundit a "theocon shill" for linking to Captain Ed's (formerly of Captain's Quarters, now blogging at Hot Air) favourable review of Expelled without linking to any of the unfavourable reviews she'd emailed him.

The problem with this is that it's (a) rude and (b) inaccurate.  Mostly (b); as I said earlier, if you're going to be rude it helps to be right.

But here's the thing: In the film, Ben Stein blames the Holocaust on Charles Darwin.

That's beyond rude, beyond being idiotic bigoted ahistorical claptrap.  It's essentially a blood libel against science.

You can see how a scientist might be a little irked.

Posted by: Pixy Misa at 12:40 PM | Comments (14) | Add Comment | Trackbacks (Suck)
Post contains 121 words, total size 1 kb.

Commuter Woes

Please not to be parking of the buses on the railway lines.  Is inconvenient for commutators.* Also hard on suspension.

Thank you.

* I was 45 minutes late to work, which actually isn't too bad under the circumstances.  It would have been worse except that I live at the junction of two major railway lines, and they only had one bus.

Posted by: Pixy Misa at 02:48 PM | Comments (3) | Add Comment | Trackbacks (Suck)
Post contains 63 words, total size 1 kb.

The Best Tribute

To a man who changed the world.

Posted by: Pixy Misa at 07:21 PM | Comments (2) | Add Comment | Trackbacks (Suck)
Post contains 10 words, total size 1 kb.

La Triviata

John of Gaunt was Isabella I of Castile's great-grandfather and great-great-grandfather.

Posted by: Pixy Misa at 01:14 AM | Comments (6) | Add Comment | Trackbacks (Suck)
Post contains 13 words, total size 1 kb.

Not Unexpected

John Howard is out, and we're in for at least three years of Labor fumbling.  Economically, the new government is unlikely to do much harm; they'll likely continue the policies that have been forming ever since the Hawke and Keating days.

When it comes to international relations however - based on their campaign statements - the new Labor government is a bunch of bumbling clowns.

But at least it's not Mark Latham.  Judging by his post-election meltdown, Australia dodged a bullet there.

Posted by: Pixy Misa at 09:49 PM | Comments (2) | Add Comment | Trackbacks (Suck)
Post contains 84 words, total size 1 kb.

Flash Gordon

Even on a limited budget, modern computer graphics can produce some amazing-looking spaceships and planetscapes.  Add a solid sense of 1930's retro-future design, lavish and imaginative costumes, a smartly written and slyly subversive script, and a talented cast who are in on the joke but play everything absolutely deadpan, and you have everything that's missing from this miserable pile of krep.

Not recommended.

Posted by: Pixy Misa at 01:24 AM | Comments (6) | Add Comment | Trackbacks (Suck)
Post contains 65 words, total size 1 kb.

Corrections

Aiming to activate the theme builder tonight.  Had one of those weekends, full of distractions; every night I ended up thinking, well, I didn't get to finish the theme builder today, but it's a long weekend, so I can always do it tomorrow.  And then it was Monday.

Also, Potemayo, genre of: absurdist comedy bildungsroman.

Posted by: Pixy Misa at 06:30 PM | No Comments | Add Comment | Trackbacks (Suck)
Post contains 57 words, total size 1 kb.

Uncherished Beliefs

Over on the JREF (James Randi Educational Foundation) forums, a challenge was posted to create an idea so outlandish that no-one would believe it.  Given the existence of Time Cube, this is not an easy proposition, but here's what I was able to come up with.

Truth in a 4-Koma

Calvin and Hobbes is the real world. What we perceive as reality is merely a dim reflection of it. Bill Watterson is a being from the fifth dimension sent to break the truth to us gently.

The Real Reason

Belgium is not a real country; it's a facade to hide the entrance to the hollow Earth at the North Pole. (The icy mass commonly regarded as the North Pole is just to throw people off the track.) This is why the French invaded in 1795, and the Germans invaded in 1914 and again in 1940.

The same goes for Hawaii, which is really the South Pole, directly opposite Belgium on the globe (globes and maps are altered to hide this). The place you visit when you go to "Hawaii" is really a special facility in southern Nevada.

We All Know Who Won That War

All people and animals should only eat meat, because plants are reincarnations of our past lives and thus held holy. (Milk and eggs are okay too, of course.) The reason that Christians take wine and bread as their holy sacrament is not to represent the blood and body of Christ, but because Jesus was a raisin loaf.

A major schism in Loafianity occurred in 1647 between those who abhorred chocolate and coffee and those who considered the beans to be "a particular variety of beetle". The ensuing war resulted in the destruction of Atlantis.

Einstein vs. Tesla

i. Victoria's Other Secret

Einstein's fourth great work - the one he really got the Nobel Prize for - was Extra Special Relativity, which explains that there are not three but six dimensions of space: length, width, height, other, thingy, and Tyra Banks. While scientists of the early 20th century appreciated the enormity of his discovery (particularly once they worked out how to take pictures of the Tyra Banks dimension), the theory was hushed up when it was realised that this meant that there was eleven quintillion square miles of available real estate in Manhattan alone, and that if word got out the property market would immediately collapse.

This also explains where Carrot Top comes from.

ii. The Least-Known President

Nikola Tesla's role in politics and science is often overlooked. Though he was elected President of the United States three times (dying in office in 1943, to be succeeded by his Vice President, Franklin D. Roosevelt), his greatest contributions came in the field of physics with his Reflective (1923) and Transgressive (1928) Theories of Relativity.

These theories hold that there is but one dimension of space, and three dimensions of time; our normal perceptions are an illusion that subtly inverts the nature of reality. Under Transgressive Relativity, years are the equivalent of nation-states strung out along a line, each independent and subject to its own set of physical laws. We can, if we but free ourselves of social conditioning, transfer our consciousnesses back and forth between these states.

Meanwhile, the effects of events in one dimensional space spread out across three-dimensional time at the speed of light. Thus, for example, the drawing of a particular set of lottery numbers in Melbourne on Thursday night guarantees that those numbers will not appear on a ticket I bought in Sydney on Wednesday morning.

That Blip in Your Readings

Fairies are real, but their numbers have dwindled since the invention of distillation since they readily succumb to alcoholism. Their presence is detectable by an absorption peak at around 320nm in UV spectrometry.^*

Geostrology

The stars have no effect on our lives; they are too far away and their influence too small to be measured. The real truth is much closer to home: the very stones beneath our feet. Continental drift means that these stones are always in motion, so the effect is different for everyone, but modern science allows us to make the calculations necessary to predict your future in astonishing detail.

All you need to know is the latitude, longitude, and altitude of your birth... to twelve decimal places.

The Secret of the Pineal Gland Revealed!

Our brains are not the source of our conscious minds, but merely the receptors of thoughts and conveyors of perceptions, carried by a newly discovered baryon (known as "Dave") to the real font of awareness, i.e. velvet ants. Don't eat them. You never know who it might be.

The Real Real Truth About International Politics

Steven Colbert is the legitimate King of France, tracing his line through Leopold I of Belgium to Charlemagne. You can tell this by the fact that he has six fingers on his left hand, though this is digitally edited out of his television broadcasts. Because of this, the French Government censors any references to Colbert in all forms of media. If you attempt to enter France carrying a DVD or video tape, regardless of content, it will be taken from you and destroyed. France even invented its own television system to assist in this process, known as "SECAM", the System to Exclude Colbert from All Media.

You can easily confirm this by accosting any Frenchman on the streets of Paris, and asking him what he thinks about Steven Colbert's latest show. His puzzled expression will tell you everything you need to know.

Posted by: Pixy Misa at 08:52 PM | Comments (4) | Add Comment | Trackbacks (Suck)
Post contains 924 words, total size 7 kb.

Mangledotes

Posted by: Pixy Misa at 03:35 AM | No Comments | Add Comment | Trackbacks (Suck)
Post contains 97 words, total size 1 kb.

We Don't Need No Stinking Badgers!

Sure, they deny it, but where there's smoke, there's badgers:

The Iraqi port city of Basra, already prey to a nasty turf war between rival militia factions, has now been gripped by a new fear -- a giant badger stalking the streets by night.

British army spokesman Major David Gell said the animals were thought to be a kind of honey badger -- melivora capensis -- which can be fierce but are not usually dangerous to humans unless provoked. 

"We have not released giant badgers in Basra," he said, "and nor have we been collecting eggs and releasing serpents into the Shatt al-Arab river."

That's as may be - but what about the mushrooms, eh?  What about the mushrooms?

Posted by: Pixy Misa at 04:54 AM | Comments (3) | Add Comment | Trackbacks (Suck)
Post contains 123 words, total size 1 kb.

There Is Something In What You Say

Matt Taibbi:

Anyone who’s ever been to a lefty political meeting knows the deal – the problem is the “spirit of inclusiveness” stretched to the limits of absurdity. The post-sixties dogma that everyone’s viewpoint is legitimate, everyone‘s choice about anything (lifestyle, gender, ethnicity, even class) is valid, that’s now so totally ingrained that at every single meeting, every time some yutz gets up and starts rambling about anything, no matter how ridiculous, no one ever tells him to shut the fuck up. Next thing you know, you’ve got guys on stilts wearing mime makeup and Cat-in-the-Hat striped top-hats leading a half-million people at an anti-war rally. Why is that guy there? Because no one told him that war is a matter of life and death and that he should leave his fucking stilts at home.

(via Tim Blair)

Posted by: Pixy Misa at 04:53 PM | No Comments | Add Comment | Trackbacks (Suck)
Post contains 143 words, total size 1 kb.