DiA has an idea:
If Barack Obama truly wants to set America on course to match the space achievements of the 1960s, he might lay out a plan for the orderly dismemberment of NASA. Then he might focus on the distribution of federal venture capital to the burgeoning private space industry. At the very least, he ought to insist on more collaboration between the two.
A home video of an Australian dust storm turning a neighborhood from orange to black in seconds.
A Shakira fan created a hilarious remake of one of her recent music videos. (And in case you think those absurd dance moves are exaggerated, check out the original version – it’s an exact remake.)
By the way, the homoerotic version has a “This video may not be suitable for minors” warning on YouTube, but the equally-sexualized Shakira version does not. Just sayin’.
Tyler Cowen passes along this nugget from Heart of Dryness:
For every newly converted vegetarian, four poor humans start earning enough money to put beef on the table. In the past three decades, the earth's dominant carnivores have tripled our average per capita consumption; in the next four decades global meat production will double to 465 million tons.
Ezra Klein adds:
Keep in mind that livestock production is a larger contributor to global warming than transportation. But there's been virtually no progress in persuading rich or poor countries to worry much about this fact.
Barb Dybwad spots some strange news:
File this squarely under “would never happen in the U.S.” but French lawmakers have a fascinating new idea to combat body image issues: require disclaimers on Photoshopped or otherwise “enhanced” images of people. […] The language will reportedly be: “Retouched photograph aimed at changing a person’s physical appearance.” The proposed law comes from French MP Valerie Boyer and is inspired by a recent report she authored on anorexia and bulemia.
More than 50 politicians have already signed on, and fines could run up to half the cost of the ad campaign.
Ben Wiggins made a stunning time-lapse of Burning Man. One of these years I'm going to make the trek.
A reader writes:
I played baseball through college, so I was surrounded by rednecks who dipped — ok, I admit it, I dipped, too (not a redneck, however). No self-respecting dipper used flavored dip — I remember when cherry flavored skoal came out — no way. In fact, there was a huge hierarchy of dips — leading up to the two biggies, Copenhagen (cause it tastes like dirt) and Kodiak (cause it was reputed to have fiberglass in it).
If he went on this rant around us, he'd never have made it beyond banning flavored tobacco being "gay" — the irony would have sent us into convulsions.
Points duly taken. I thought he was kinda hot myself.
A few of the site’s recent entries:
The Jedi census phenomenon is a grassroots movement that was created in 2001 for citizens of a number of English-speaking countries to record their religion as “Jedi” or “Jedi Knight” on the national census. The campaign was loosely organized by circulating e-mails claiming that if enough people entered “Jedi”, it would be recognized as an official religion by the government. In England and Wales 390,127 people (almost 0.8 percent) stated their religion as Jedi on their 2001 Census forms, surpassing Sikhism, Judaism, and Buddhism, and making it the fourth largest reported religion in the country.
The Streisand effect is an Internet phenomenon where an attempt to censor or remove a piece of information backfires, causing the information to be widely publicized. […] Mike Masnick originally coined the term Streisand effect in reference to a 2003 incident where Barbra Streisand sued photographer Kenneth Adelman and Pictopia.com for US$50 million in an attempt to have the aerial photo of her house removed from the publicly available collection of 12,000 California coastline photographs, citing privacy concerns. Adelman stated that he was photographing beachfront property to document coastal erosion as part of the California Coastal Records Project.
And for a shift into the science world, brace yourself for Traumatic insemination:
[T]he mating practice in some species of invertebrates in which the male pierces the female’s abdomen with his penis and injects his sperm through the wound into her abdominal cavity. The sperm diffuse through the female’s hemolymph, reaching the ovaries and resulting in fertilization. The process is detrimental to the female’s health. It creates an open wound which impairs the female until it heals, and is susceptible to infection. The injection of sperm and ejaculatory fluids into the hemocoel can also trigger an immune reaction in the female. […] However, such coercive sex practices are common in nature and provide sperm competition, enable the mating plug, and overcome female resistance to being mated.
And what’s a Mating plug?
[A] gelatinous secretion used in the mating of some species. It is deposited by a male into a female genital tract and later hardens into a plug or glues the tract together. In either case, it prevents the female from being successfully bred later. The mating plug is functionally similar to the chastity belt used in some human cultures.
Oy.
Pathum Thani, Thailand, 5 pm
"So now we stand at an epochal moment. The debate is over. The case has gone to the jury, and the jury is history. Events will soon reveal who was right, Bush or Chirac … But there are two nations whose destinies hang in the balance. The first, of course, is Iraq. Will Iraqis enjoy freedom, more of the same tyranny, or a new kind of tyranny? The second is the United States. If the effort to oust Saddam fails, we will be back in the 1970s. We will live in a nation crippled by self-doubt. If we succeed, we will be a nation infused with confidence. We will have done a great thing for the world, and other great things will await," – David Brooks, March 17, 2003.
So will he now concede that Chirac was right? Greenwald piles on here. My own record is just as embarrassing.
The Dish 