My favorite sapient screensavers

Radio Hams, Juggling Space Farmers, President Obama and Burt Rutan

Talented cosmonaut juggles eight!

What’s everyday life on the International Space Station like? Maksim Suraev, who is on a six-month stint at the orbital outpost, has the answer.

Maksim is the first Russian cosmonaut to start a blog from zero-g. His accounts of orbital life and fresh photos from space are published on the website of the Russian Space Agency Roscosmos.

The wheat has managed to grow, and it's great!

It took long enough to dry and it has almost reached the lamp. And now, finally, mission control has ordered it cut, packed and refrigerated. I'll take it to Earth with me. Scientists there will have their turn at it.

They are surprised themselves about how it managed to have grown into ears. They tried to do it several times and only got, as the scientists describe, "seedless monsters".

With some regret I've cut my wheat... After all, it has been with me at the station for nearly five months.

Via Russian space agency Roscosmos

-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

-.-. --.- / -.-. --.- / -.-. .- .-.. .-.. .. -. --. / -.-. --.-

(CQ, CQ, calling CQ Code letters used at the beginning of radio messages intended for all receivers.)

Radio Amateurs from Far East have Accomplished Communication Session with ISS: Russian Cosmonauts have Dreams Rarely

:: 03.03.2010

Technical universities’ students from Far East of Russia have organized a communication session with ISS the last Sunday. During the session, students asked many questions to Russian cosmonauts.

“ISS was reachable only for 8 minutes. During this time, technical students asked many different questions to cosmonauts” - told to “Interfax-Far East” chief of public relations department of ROSTO (DOSAAF) of Khabarovsk Valeriy Usoltsev.

According to him, students had a possibility to speak with Oleg Kotov. Russian ISS crewmembers told about their activities in spare time and about secrets of nutrition and work in microgravity conditions.

He added also that cosmonauts while answering the question of one of students told that they fully recover their forces during the sleep but they rarely have dreams due to their work and busy schedule.

Now that President Obama has canceled our manned space program and the new space shuttle it is up to the Russians, the Chinese and Burt Rutan* to conquer space. The Russians got to space before we did and the Chinese are now developing their own private space station independent of the International Space Station. We will be paying the Russians taxi fare to get to the ISS; they have figured out such niceties of capitalism as supply and demand and profit motive.... So you think earth-side taxis are spendy? Please hurry-up Burt... * Elbert Leander "Burt" Rutan (born June 17, 1943) is an American aerospace engineer noted for his originality in designing light, strong, unusual-looking, energy-efficient aircraft. He is famous for his design of the record-breaking Voyager, which was the first plane to fly around the world without stopping or refueling, and the sub-orbital spaceplane SpaceSipOne, which won the Ansari X-Prize in 2004 for becoming the first privately funded spacecraft to enter the realm of space twice within a two week period (at a cost of a whole lot fewer greenbacks than the U.S. government spent to do the same thing, but the U.S. was NOT required to fly their ship TWICE in two weeks!). He has four aircraft on display in the National Air and Space Museum: SpaceShipOne, the Virgin Atlantic GlobalFlyer, Voyager, and the VariEze. Authentic Super-Genius, among faux "genii", Burt Rutan Rutan makes our German rocket scientist Werner von Braun seem dim in comparison. Now if we only had another Jack Kennedy and fewer rocket-surgeon-genii in government....

President of the United States of America, Barack Obama, plays in the surf. "I am the president" Embarrased yet?

CLOWN SHOES

Straight out of a Keystone Cops movie:

This news article is surely mis-reported and confused. It could only have taken place in Phoenix, AZ, during one of Sheriff Joe's alien crime sweeps! Exactly who was wearing the clown mask? Is walking in clown-shoes illegal too? I believe that the circus has arrived.

February 24, 2010

Sad day for a clown: Tampa man jailed for wearing illegal mask Illegal Face Caught Walking!

TAMPA — Charged with wearing a clown mask on a public road, an 18-year-old Tampa man was jailed Tuesday afternoon.

Deputies say Matthew David Lopez, of 7003 Ponderosa Drive, was seen with two other people walking south on N 58th Street, just north of E Fowler Avenue. What caught a deputy's attention was Lopez's masked face with a bright red-and-orange wig, according to an arrest affidavit.

The deputy followed the group in an unmarked car as the group walked west through a slightly wooded path behind several business offices.

A marked Temple Terrace Police cruiser showed up soon after, and the group ran away before deputies could question them.

They were found near N 58th Street and E 122nd Avenue.

Lopez was taken to the Hillsborough County Jail on charges of wearing a mask or hood on a public road after the age of 16 years old and resisting arrest without violence.

He was released on $750 bail.

OK...

Keystone Cops on full alert! Clown reported walking (gasp)...

See Killer Klowns from Outer Space trailer: WOW!

Where is the brain power? The gene pool got peed in...

---

"A new New York Times/CBS News poll finds that a majority of the public support allowing openly gay men and women to serve in the military. Seventy-nine percent of Democrats said they support permitting gay men and lesbians to serve openly. Fewer Democrats however, just 43 percent, said they were in favor of allowing homosexuals to serve openly." The polled Republicans apparently were a bit less confused, mostly recognizing a connection between the words gay and homosexual... ------------------------------

A federal agent sizing up Nick George might peg him as Most Likely To Be Recruited By The CIA. He's a physics major at a top college, he minors in Middle Eastern studies, speaks Arabic, has lived in Jordan and is adventurous enough to have backpacked through Sudan and Egypt.

At Philadelphia International Airport last August, his interest in the world got him handcuffed.

The Wyncote native was detained for five hours after Transportation Security Administration screeners grew suspicious about something in his pockets.

Arabic-language flash cards.

Security technologist Bruce Schneier said,

"This is just stupid". "There's no other way to explain it. Someone saw these Arabic language cards and just freaked. It should have taken TSA 15 seconds.

"Terrorism can't do this to us. I think only we can do this to ourselves."

-------------------------------------------

Brockton, Mass., is shoveling $180,000 in tax revenues and insurance money over to a 6-year-old because elementary school officials had called him a "sex offender" for tweaking the waistband of a 7-year-old girl's panties.

-------------------------------------

A Gainesville man was charged late Tuesday with interrupting a working police dog by commanding the dog to sit. According to Gainesville Police Officer David Blizzard, Porter was pulled over for operating a car stereo so that it was audible more than 25 feet beyond the vehicle.

A police dog was brought to the scene to walk around Porter's car to determine if there was probable cause to search the car for drugs.

According to Blizzard's report, Porter "began stating loud commands to 'sit' and 'sitz,' which interrupted the K9 from his duties. The K9 stopped twice while walking the vehicle and looking in the direction of (Porter) who was giving those commands."

A small plastic bag found under the front passenger seat contained marijuana residue. Porter was being held at the Alachua County jail on Wednesday.

---------------------------

One-armed man hunted for stealing single cufflink

Headline from The Daily Telegraph, London --------------------------------------------

Train traps Callahan woman in her yard

CALLAHAN — Aretha Brown is a 66-year old woman with back trouble who has had to crawl between two train cars almost every time she has left her yard this year.

On Dec. 27, CSX put about 40 connected train cars on one of the three tracks that crosses the path between her home and nearby Pickett Street. Since then, Brown has had to crawl under the train cars when she goes to the store, to her mailbox on Pickett Street, to church or if she does anything else.

“My house is falling apart and I can’t get anyone to come and make repairs because they won’t climb under the train,” Brown said.

It is also hard to carry groceries while crawling under the train, and when she goes to church she has to be careful not to get her nice clothes dirty. She said she also banged her shoulder against the train and it hurt for several weeks.

CSX said Friday the parked cars are storing supplies for construction crews performing routine maintenance on the railroad tracks in the area, and that location seemed best. It didn’t know about Brown’s house.

Brown’s sister, Mae Hailey, said she asked CSX in early January to move the cars, or to disconnect the cars in front of Brown’s house so she could walk between them, but the railroad refused. Spokesman Gary Sease said CSX preferred to find a new location for all the cars.

CSX also plans to build an access road within the next two to four weeks that would allow Brown to reach Pickett Street without having to cross any of the tracks, Sease said.

Brown said her parents bought the house more than 30 years ago and the family has always walked over the tracks.

At times Brown will walk 300-400 yards past the train cars to get to Pickett Road. But when she does she has to deal with mud puddles, foliage, bushes, trash and other barriers that are between the tracks and the road.

“I actually get dirtier walking around the train than I do when I go under it,” she said. “It also takes me about 20 minutes to walk around it.”

To get to her house from Pickett Street, Brown has to walk over several pieces of wood that serve as a de facto bridge over a ditch, climb under the couplings between railroad cars, and then walk on another plank of wood, a very unstable bridge over a large puddle.

Brown lives in the old, white house with nine cats, who are outside most of the time. There is an adjoining house her sister and niece Rita Hailey used to live in before they gave up in frustration and moved out a few weeks ago.

Her brother, Frank Cheavers, still lives in the adjoining house.

Brown is thinking of moving and laughed when asked if her family would sell the two structures.

“I really don’t think anyone would want to buy this,” she said.

On Friday afternoon, Brown climbed under a rail car and walked out to Pickett Street where her sister was waiting. Mae Hailey owns the family car and was picking up Brown so they could go shopping and mail some packages.

“When people hear about this they think we’re a bunch of yahoos in Callahan,” Hailey said.

She’s glad to be out of that house and in a mobile home on Dixie Avenue. Before the sisters departed, Hailey commiserated with someone who had just climbed under the train to get back to Pickett Street.

“If you think it’s bad now,” she said, “you should see what it’s like after dark.”

---------------------------

American Funnymen of an Era

Phil Harris Wonga Philip Harris, June 24, 1904, Band Leader, Comedian, The Phil Harris-Alice Faye Show, The Jack Benny Program Click for a sample of Phil and his band. Added to Quicklist Added to Quicklist

Phil and Alice

Harris and Faye married in 1941; it was a second marriage for both (Faye had been married briefly to singer-actor Tony Martin) and lasted 54 years, until Harris's death. Harris engaged in a legendary fist fight at the Trocadero nightclub in 1938 with RKO studio mogul Bob Stevens over Faye, after Stevens ended a romantic relationship with her in favour of Sharon Gunn. In 1942, Harris and his entire band enlisted in the U.S. Navy and they served for the duration of World War II.

Funnymen

Click on this...

The Case of the Mukkinese Battle Horn

[After repeatedly encountering the same mysterious woman] Superintendent Quilt: Brown, who is this woman? Sgt. Brown: It's the producer's girlfriend, sir. [To audience] Sgt. Brown: You think I'm kidding?

The Case of the Mukkinese Battle Horn is a 30 minute comedy film starring Peter Sellers, Spike Milligan and Dick Emery. The film was made in November 1955, and released in 1956.

Supposedly filmed in 'Schizophrenoscope', it concerns Inspector Quilt of Scotland Yard's attempts to retrieve a 'Mukkinese Battlehorn' stolen from a London museum. Along the way he meets characters not dissimilar to Eccles, Henry Crun and Minnie Bannister from The Goon Show.

Peter Sellers, top, Spike Milligan, left, Harry Secombe, right

The Goon Show

The Goon Show was a British radio comedy programme, originally produced and broadcast by the BBC Home Service from 1951 to 1960.

Bluebottle: Me and Eccles know where it's gone, Captain. Eccles: Yeah. We know. Seagoon: Splendid, lads. Tell me where it is and I'll reduce your sentence from two years to four. Bluebottle: Well, it, er, went, um- Thinks: Where did it went? It wented- Eccles? Eccles: Yeah? Bluebottle: Do you remember, Eccles? Eccles: Oh yeah, I remember Eccles. Bluebottle: Well, does he know where it wented? Eccles: I'll ask him: Do you know where it wented? Bluebottle: What does he say, Eccles? Eccles: He hasn't answered yet, I think he's out.

Click above for The Goon Show The Whistling Spy Enigma Part I Click on the above for the annoying World Whistling Championships The Ladykillers is a 1955 British dark comedy film, another edition in a series of post-war Ealing Comedies. Directed by Alexander Mackendrick, it stars Alec Guinness, Cecil Parker, Herbert Lom, Peter Sellers, Danny Green, Jack Warner and Katie Johnson. Added to Quickl

Click here for Lady Killers clip Click here for Kind Hearts and Coronets clip

Much-Binding-in-the-Marsh was the title of a comical BBC radio and Radio Lxembourg show broadcast from 1944 to 1954, starring Kenneth Horne and Richard Murdoch as senior staff in a fictional RAF station battling red tape and wartime inconvenience.

On-going jokes from Much-Binding (an example of the "Disgusted of Tunbridge Wells" archetype) influenced later literature:

"R. P. Tyler knew the difference between right and wrong; there were no moral greys of any kind in his life. He was not, however, satisfied simply with being vouchsafed the difference between right and wrong. He felt it his bounden duty to tell the world.

"Not for R. P. Tyler the soapbox, the polemic verse, the broadsheet. R. P. Tyler's chosen forum was the letter column of the Tadfield Advertiser. If a neighbour's tree was inconsiderate enough to shed leaves into R. P. Tyler's garden, R. P. Tyler would first carefully sweep them all up, place them in boxes, and leave the boxes outside his neighbour's front door, with a stern note. Then he would write a letter to the Tadfield Advertiser. If he sighted teenagers sitting on the village green, their portable cassette players playing, and they were enjoying themselves, he would take it upon himself to point out to them the error of their ways. And after he had fled their jeering, he would write to the Tadfield Advertiser on the Decline of Morality and the Youth of Today..." From Good Omens by Terry Pratchett and Neil Gaiman. Alastair Sim The film stars Ian Carmichael as Henry Palfrey, a failure who attends the "School of Lifemanship" in Yeovil, run by Dr. Potter (Alastair Sim), who teaches him how to win in life, and get the better of his rival (Terry-Thomas), through gamesmanship and various other underhand means.

UNDER CONSTRUCTION: "Eliminationism" In Politics

Actor wearing the mask of a bald-headed politician, 2nd century BC. The philosopher Aristotle wrote in his Poetics (c. 335 BC) that "comedy is a representation of laughable people and involves some kind of blunder or ugliness..." Thalia, muse of comedy, gazing upon a comic mask (detail from Muses' Sarcophagus) Strepsiades, his son and Socrates (from a 16th Century engraving). Faced with legal action for non-payment of debts, Strepsiades, an elderly Athenian, enrolls his son in The Thinkery (the "Phrontisterion") so that he might learn the rhetorical skills necessary to defeat their creditors in court. The son thereby learns cynical disrespect for social mores and contempt for authority and he subsequently beats his father up during a domestic argument, in return for which Strepsiades sets The Thinkery on fire. Soldier loads a "leaflet bomb" during the Korean war. Poster promoting eugenics and euthanasia of disabled people. "Eliminationism" claims a moral purpose, holding that political opponents are "a cancer on the body politic that must be excised—either by separation from the public at large, through censorship, or by outright extermination—in order to protect the purity of the nation." Joshua Holland, Dave Neiwert on the Roots of Right-Wing Terror