World being taken over by mega ant colony.



[H/T for both the story and the Simpsons connection - The Great One]

Driving around town this afternoon, I was punching every button on my car radio's presets and simply not liking anything I was hearing. I decided to tune my radio to the classic rock station (I don't have it preset), and as I was tuning, I specifically thought, "Man, I hope AC/DC's 'Back in Black' is on."

Guess what was on when I tuned in.

Yep.

Facebook is almost as colossal a waste of time as blogging . . .





[Hat Tip to my Facebook Friend Jen]

My wife and I are now the proud owners of two mini-vans. (OK, go back and strike the word "proud.") We traded in my Mazda 626, and bought a second minivan.

OK, now to my point. The Mazda I traded in... was a standard transmission. Yep. You read that right. A stick shift. Every primary car I've ever driven was a stick shift. I learned to drive on a stick shift. I freaked out in driver's ed when I put the car in "drive" and it started moving on it's own because I had never driven an automatic before.(My left foot kept kicking the floor looking for a clutch.)

Anyway, when I traded in this car last week, the salesman told me that 99% of all cars made now are automatics. Whoa. That means I would have a hard time getting a standard if I tried. Nobody drives standard anymore.

It made me kind of sad. Nostalgic maybe. I was thinking, "Wow. I am now the possessor of a dying skill." My kids won't be able to learn standard because there won't be any. I was thinking how sad that was, but hey maybe it's OK, because they'll never need it.

I prefer driving standard. I prefer doing something as a part of driving. I prefer feeling like I'm driving. I like the power and control of deciding when to shift, and how many RPM's I want. I like riding the clutch. I like coasting in, with the clutch pushed in. I like the challenge of having to start going from a stop when I'm on an incline without rolling into the car behind me. I like the fact that I CAN!!!! (And I'm quite good at it by the way.)

And now, it's a skill not valued anymore. So I began to wonder. Maybe this was what it was like when drivers didn't have to get out and crank the handle on the front of model T's anymore. Maybe this is what it was like when women stopped having to teach their daughters how to wash laundry in the tub. Did those people mourn too? Did those people think that society was going to pot because their kids didn't need to learn or even care to learn the skills they had to have to survive?

Is it such a loss when technology changes? I mean, that's just progress right? So maybe I should just get over the fact that I will never drive a standard again, and that with few rare exceptions, no one will.

OK, maybe automatics aren't as fuel efficient as standards. And they break down more than standards, but aren't I forgetting the main thing? Progress! Technology! Ease of use. Driving an automatic is easy.

Maybe I'm just mad that I had to work so hard to learn how to drive. (It is hard learning to get going without stalling.) And now, no one else has to. Maybe I feel like if I had to do it, everybody should. But that's not fair, is it? That's like saying that just because I had to learn to type on an actual manual typewriter that everybody should. Or that just because my grandfather had to build houses without power tools that everybody should.

I guess we should just put standard transmissions in the scrap heap with manual typewriters, human-powered lawnmowers and rotary dial telephones.

What other "skills" are dying out? Tell me under comments.

Still makes me sad though. Farewell, standard transmission. We had some good times together. You will be missed.

OK, I think you people stopped watching these Friday "The Tick" Posts that all have "Everybody Needs..." in the title.

Watch this one! It's the last one. I promise.

It goes along quite nicely with one of Bill's posts right below this one... trust me. Hey, it's only 16 seconds of your life...

Everybody needs to watch this one. (And comment so I know you did ;-)

...And A Horn!!!!

This Fox Sports commercial never gets old:



Watch my Kobe Briant no-look Confusion Makuh!

"Not in the face, not in the face!" I love it. There is no end to the genius of "The Tick."

I took one of my sons to watch the Spurs vs. the Cavs a few weeks ago and witnessed LeBron James' pregame chalk ritual. Pretty cool...that he has a pre-game ritual, that is.

Well apparently he has a new one.



And Shaq won't be outdone.

The war of the pregame rituals

By now, you've no doubt seen LeBron James and the Cavaliers' hilarious pre-game "photo-op" intro. Before the starters take the floor, LeBron pretends to grab a bunch of cameras from his teammates and snaps pictures of them as they pose for group shots like high school students out on a class trip.

Well, not to be outdone/YouTube'd, Shaquille O'Neal called the LeBron's intro "weak," and tried his hand at choreographing a better one in the locker room before the Suns faced the lowly Wizards over the weekend.

"Everybody always talks about LeBron's weak intro, so I challenge LeBron to intros," The Big Xerox told reporters/bloggers post-game. "Alright? So he does his little camera thing, we did our bowling thing, we'll let the people decide. If he changes his intro, then I'm going to change my intro."

So, "people," which choreographed pre-game ritual do you like better? Let's hear it.

Nestor Carbonell has been all over TV. (Cane, Suddenly Susan, The Dark Knight) He's probably best known around these here parts as "Richard Alpert", immortal, semi-leader of the others, a yoda-like character.

But not to me. I first met him as "Batmanuel" on "The Tick", a brilliant, but ill-fated TV show.



Just like Don Knotts in any other role was still Barney Fife in another role, whenever I see Nestor/Richard/Guyliner, I only see "Batmanuel"



Go here for an abridged 5 minute Tick episode to see how brilliant it was.

Here's the 50 second clip I really wanted you to see, but I can't find it in English, but you know, it may actually be funnier in French.

God Bless You, Batmanuel. You can run around on other shows, but nothing can make us forget the coolness that is Batmanuel.

My cousin Josh filmed this quick video of Gracie (5) being her daredevil self. She asked if she could ride her bike "off the cliff," and being the awesome dad I am, I said of course. I'm the dude off camera, watching with pride, and then stepping in after the damage is done.


Gracie Knievel from Jared Wilson on Vimeo.

The impossibility of Vampires is "proven".

University of Central Florida physics professor Costas Efthimiou's work debunks pseudoscientific ideas, such as vampires and zombies, in an attempt to enhance public literacy. Not only does the public believe in such topics, but the percentages are at dangerously high level, Efthimiou told LiveScience.

Legend has it that vampires feed on human blood and once bitten a person turns into a vampire and starts feasting on the blood of others.

Efthimiou's debunking logic: On Jan 1, 1600, the human population was 536,870,911. If the first vampire came into existence that day and bit one person a month, there would have been two vampires by Feb. 1, 1600. A month later there would have been four, and so on. In just two-and-a-half years the original human population would all have become vampires with nobody left to feed on.

Now if we can just debunk the existence of zombies, bigfoot, chupacabra and of course our own mythical creature.

[Hat Tip: Reformissionary]

Are you a fan of Daylight Savings Time? If so, please leave in the comments why we need this abominable Governmental tinkering with the time. Personally, I'm agin it.

So's John J. Miller:

Well, it turns out that DST had nothing to do with farmers, who traditionally haven't cared much for it. They care a lot less nowadays, but when the first DST law was making its way through Congress, farmers actually lobbied against it. Dairy farmers were especially upset because their cows refused to accept humanity's tinkering with the hands of time. The obstinate cud-chewers wanted to be milked every twelve hours, and had absolutely no interest in resetting their biological clocks—even if the local creameries suddenly wanted their milk an hour earlier.

As Michael Downing points out in his new book, Spring Forward: The Annual Madness of Daylight Saving Time, urban businessmen were a major force behind the adoption of DST in the United States. They thought daylight would encourage workers to go shopping on their way home. They also tried to make a case for agriculture, though they didn't bother to consult any actual farmers. One pamphlet argued that DST would benefit the men and women who worked the land because "most farm products are better when gathered with dew on. They are firmer, crisper, than if the sun has dried the dew off." At least that was the claim of the Boston Chamber of Commerce, chaired by department-store magnate A. Lincoln Filene. This was utter nonsense. A lot of crops couldn't be harvested until the morning dew had evaporated. What's more, morning dew has no effect whatsoever on firmness or crispness.

. . .

We're also informed that DST helps conserve energy, apparently because people arriving home when the sun is still up don't switch on their lights. Didn't it occur to anybody that maybe they compensate by switching them on earlier in the morning? Moreover, people who arrive home from work an hour earlier during the hot summer months are probably more prone to turning up their air conditioners. According to Downing, the petroleum industry once was "an ardent and generous supporter" of DST because it believed people would hop in their cars and drive for pleasure—and guzzle more gas.

But the very worst thing about DST is that it's bad for your health. According to Stanley Coren, a sleep expert at the University of British Columbia, the number of traffic accidents and fatal industrial mishaps increase on the Monday after we spring forward. (Check out one of his studies here.) The reason, presumably, is because losing even a single hour of sleep over the weekend makes a lot of people a bit drowsier on what we might usefully call Black Monday. Unfortunately, there's no compensating effect of a super-safe Monday as we go off DST and "fall back" in the autumn.

So DST is deadly. But maybe we should keep that troubling little fact to ourselves, before Congress decides to impose the National Bedtime Hour.

I'm watching The Two Towers extended edition with Blake right now, with the commentary turned on.

It's always fun listening to the commentary, but let me just say that the portions with Elijah Wood, Sean Astin and Andy Serkis are absolutely insufferable. There's lots of faux-intelligence, bad interpretations of Tolkien's purposes and themes, whacky discussions of the religious elements of the work, and endless talk of "emotional resonance", "multiple levels of connection", and lots more actory argle-bargle. Ugh.

The commentary of Billy Boyd and Dominic Monaghan, on the other hand, is hilariously awesome.

Had to say it. That is all.

I know I can google it or something. But I probably won't. I'd kind of rather not know.

"It" is this thing everyone is all of a sudden (it seems in the last five minutes or so) talking about on the internet. A "Kindle".

I honestly don't know what it is. A cell phone of some sort?

To everyone who's panting over it: you've done perfectly fine all these years without a "Kindle". What changed in the last day or two? Is this the next big thing we just can't live without?

I thought there was an economic downturn/Great Depression going on. I keep waiting for that to change our culture in some discernable way.

But then again, I don't even own an iPod, so I'm a good hundred years minutes behind everyone else.

I think I'm just old.



Update: OK, I've been educated on what this is. It's an e-book reader, and, though I don't enjoy reading books electronically (probably because I can't dog-ear the pages) I have to admit this is pretty cool. When I first posted this I thought it was some new cell phone or something. This is better.

Why in the U.S...

is milk sold in gallons, but soda in liters?

I think a gallon is 2.8 liters, right? So why not sell a gallon of soda? Or a half gallon instead of a "2 liter"?

Nothing else in the US is measured that way. Even soda cans themselves are measured in ounces (as opposed to mililiters). But when you buy a big bottle of soda it's measured in liters. Why?

I'm puzzled by the inconsistency demonstrated here by using both the English and Metric systems. So another way to ask this, is: why are bottled sodas the only American liquids measured according to the metric system?

And while I'm asking how do Europeans measure the above beverages?

The inestimable Lars Walker of Brandywine Books has published a list of ten foods that he hates that everyone else loves. Here's a sample:

1. Cheese. Except on pizza (through which cheese has somehow managed to insinuate itself into even my life, obviously with my destruction in mind), I don't like any kind of cheese, prepared any kind of way. Macaroni and cheese? Doesn't even taste like food to me. Toasted cheese sandwich? Useful for inducing vomiting. I honestly think that on the day in my infancy when (I'm told) I fell over backward in a high chair and bit my tongue through, I must have severed some important taste nerve. There's something good out there, that the rest of you can experience, that's lost to me forever.

2. Watermelon. Tastes insipid to me. Only a vague taste, and that an unpleasant one. Plus it's messy to eat and full of seeds. In general, I'm against seeds in food. They're like bones; just an interruption.

3. Pickles. Sweet or sour, I hate them all. If I had a nickel for every pickle I've picked off a hamburger, I'd have enough money to buy a big jar of pickles, which I'd then throw away.

#3 had me laughing out loud.

So, what foods do you loathe that everyone else seems to love? I'm not a very picky eater, so I am not sure I could conjure up ten of them. But I have a few.

1. Spinach: OK, love for this leaf may not be widespread enough to fit on this list. But I really can't eat it. I'm not sure I ever have. My brain simply shuts down at the thought.

2. Sushi: We went through all that trouble to discover fire, and you want to eat your fish raw?

I don't eat bait.

3. Carmel mocha frappa choca soy ginseng mocha mocha or any of the other concoctions you guys order at Starbucks. That's not coffee. It's a milkshake. A very, very expensive milkshake.

What's on your list?