The most interesting carpool passenger in the world

I did something like this coming through Atlanta alone several years ago.  Except instead of what this guy did or having a mannequin, I used a pillow wearing my leather jacket and I went the whole way through the high-occupancy lane with my left hand on the wheel and my right one holding the pillow up and in sight.

How I cleared Atlanta while doing that, I'll never know.

From the Associated Press via Q13Fox News in Seattle...

Most Interesting Man in World' fails as carpool lane ruse

FIFE, Wash. (AP) — A Washington State Patrol trooper says it’s by far the best carpool scam he’s seen, but it didn’t work.

A motorcycle trooper parked along Interstate 5 near Tacoma on Monday afternoon spotted a driver and a rather unusual “passenger” pass by him in the carpool lane.

When the trooper stopped the car, he discovered the “passenger” was a cardboard cutout of the actor who portrays “The Most Interesting Man in the World” in Dos Equis beer ads.

The driver’s response?

“He’s my best friend.”

The highway patrol didn't confiscate The Most Interesting Man in the World, but they did tell the driver to not use him again.

Later on the patrolman tweeted: "I don’t always violate the HOV lane law … but when I do, I get a $124 ticket."

I love stories like this.  You have to give this guy props for some ingenuity even if it didn't work.  And hey, from the photo above it looks like he's still having a good time despite the error of his ways.

Read More

io9 features sci-fi inspired political ads. Take a wild guess which one made the list...

Behold the 8 Weirdest Real-Life Science Fiction Political Ads as assembled by popular geeky/techy website io9.

And yes, that school board commercial of mine from 2006 is on the list.

But check out this ad - also inspired by Star Wars - that West Virginia Governor Joe Manchin aired when he successfully ran for re-election two years ago...

Hey, Manchin shot a TIE Fighter out of the sky with a rifle! That's a hella lot better shootin' than the Imperial Stormtroopers ever did.

But John Waite of Spokane, Washington blows away everybody with what he did when he ran for city council. The comic book store owner campaigned while wearing a full set of space marine armor from the StarCraft computer game series! Nevermind Spokane City Council: we should send Waite to Washington D.C.: that whole town is overrun with worse than the Zerg ever were.

Blast on over to io9 for more. And tip o' the hat to good friend Todd Williard for finding this!

Read More

Back from the Pacific Northwest!

That was the most fun trip that I've had in a long, long time.

Will be posting pics in the next few days, after getting caught back up on things. I'm wondering if the excursion to Mount St. Helens might merit a post all its own.

So... did I miss anything? :-)

Read More

Dude accidentally slices off arm with homemade guillotine

Hey Jenna St. Hilaire, hate to tell you this girl but your hometown is in the news again for all the wrong reasons...

A homeless man in Bellingham, Washington nearly became a nominee for the Darwin Award when the guillotine he was building in a wooded camp "unexpectedly" cut off his arm. At right you can see the photo that police released of the decapitation machine.

Feel free to post whatever jokes cross your mind about giving this guy a hand etc. But seriously: why was a homeless man building a guillotine at a campsite? And just look at that thing: it's easily one of the more sophisticated guillotines that I've seen built by a layman. Something like that takes some skills to pull off. As much as I have to wonder about his motive, I have to also wonder why he wasn't putting that kind of ability to work in carpentry or metalwork.

Read More

Raoul Wallenberg and Dan Cooper: New clues in two massive mysteries

Sixty-six years after he disappeared into the prisons of the Soviet Union, new information has been discovered about the fate of Raoul Wallenberg.

Raoul Wallenberg was a Swedish diplomat who became one of the most revered heroes of World War II. At the height of the Holocaust, Wallenberg was able to rescue and shelter tens of thousands of Hungarian Jews who would have otherwise been dispatched to the concentration camps. When the Soviets liberated Budapest early in 1945, Wallenberg was taken into custody by the Russians on suspicion of being a spy for the United States. His fate remains unknown to this day. The Soviets reported two years later that Wallenberg had died in his cell... but there are reports that he was seen alive as late as 1987.

Now two researchers who have studied the case for decades have announced that they have discovered old Soviet files pertaining to Raoul Wallenberg: files which the Russian government has long claimed did not exist.

Meanwhile, there may (or may not) be new developments in the mystery of one of the most celebrated criminals in American history...

It was Thanksgiving eve
Back in 1971
He had on a pair of sunglasses
There wasn't any sun
He used the name Dan Cooper
When he paid for the flight
That was going to Seattle
On that cold and nasty night

-- from "The Ballad of D.B. Cooper"
by Chuck Brodsky

This coming November will mark the fortieth anniversary of Dan Cooper's daring skyjacking of that Boeing 727 between Portland, Oregon and Seattle, Washington. It was on the night before Thanksgiving in 1971 that a man calling himself "Dan Cooper" (often erroneously reported to be "D.B. Cooper") boarded the Northwest Orient Airlines flight, then claimed in mid-flight to have had a bomb. Upon landing Cooper demanded several parachutes and $200,000 in unmarked bills. The plane took off again and somewhere over the northwestern wilderness Cooper, laden with a parachute and the cash, jumped out of the plane into freezing rain and American legend. He was never seen again.

And now a woman has come forward with apparent evidence that Dan Cooper was her uncle. Federal investigators are looking into it.

The Dan Cooper mystery is something that I have been following since I was nine years old. Every few years it seems that there is a new development in the case. Personally, this is one mystery that I'd just as well prefer to see forever unsolved. Cooper never actually hurt anyone and his stunt... well, that took some serious brass ones to even conceive the plan for, never mind that he actually pulled it off, seemingly. Yeah he broke the law bigtime, but there aren't too many scoundrels that it can honestly be said were "heroic" in their misdeeds.

Dan Cooper... or whatever his real name might be... is one of them :-)

Read More

"This god-damned mountain doesn't dare do anything to Harry."

Those were the words of one Harry R. Truman. He also assured reporters and visitors to his lodge that "No one knows this mountain better than me."

The 83 year-old Harry Truman was speaking of Mount St. Helens in the state of Washington: the mountain on which he lived along with his 16 cats. For two months the long-quiet volcano had slowly been stirring in activity. Geologists became alarmed by the increasing swarms of small quakes and the appearance of a bulge on St. Helens' north side: indication that lava was building up beneath. Many tried to convince him to leave, but Harry Truman refused to go. It was nothing to worry about, he swore up and down.

A few days later, at 8:32 a.m. on the morning of May 18th 1980, Mount St. Helens erupted. It was one of the most violent geological events in modern history. The entire northern face of the mountain was blasted away as 540 million tons of ash and debris was thrown out and across thousands of square miles.

Geologist David A. Johnston was stationed six miles away. Johnston had been one of the most vocal in persuading residents to leave the area during the buildup toward the eruption. The superhot flow of ash and steam took less than a minute to reach his location. Johnston's last frantic words before his radio went silent: "Vancouver! Vancouver! This is it!" All that was ever found of David Johnston was the ruin of his United States Geological Survey trailer, discovered by workers in 1993.

As for Harry Randall Truman: he and his 16 cats are still on the mountain somewhere, buried beneath 150 feet of and thousands of tons of ash and debris. True to his word, he never left.

All told, 57 people died in the eruption: the deadliest volcanic event in United States history.

And that was thirty years ago on this day, May 18th 1980.

National Geographic has an impressive gallery of photos showing Mount St. Helens before and after the eruption. Well worth checking out.

Read More

Radioactive wasp nests plague dump site

Sounds like a Fifties B-movie, or maybe the genesis of a new Spider-Man villain: the country's most contaminated nuclear waste site has provided building material for swarms of wasps building their nests and now the nests themselves are loaded with radioactive isotopes of cesium and cobalt. The Hanford nuclear reservation near Yakima, Washington is currently being cleaned up and workers are having to deal with the nests, which fortunately have already been abandoned by the wasps.

I must admit: 'twould have been a pretty awesome sight to see the skies of Yakima filled with giant glowing wasps :-P

Read More

Star Wars fan does 110 MPH trying to race toward eBay bid

From the Seattle, Washington side of the galaxy: a 46-year old man was stopped for speeding on I-90 by State Patrol troopers. He was doing an astonishing 110 miles per hour and once he had finally been pulled over, officers found his car loaded with Star Wars memorabilia.

The man's reason for going so fast? He was trying to rush home to bid for another Star Wars item on eBay.

Click on the link above for some hilarious reader comments!

Read More

State of Washington considers swabbing DNA from EVERYONE who gets arrested

It's like Barney Fife gone zealous with a genetics lab: legislators in the state of Washington are mulling the idea of getting DNA samples from everyone who is stopped by law enforcement for anything at all, even something so minor as a traffic infraction. And no, they don't wanna wait until a conviction in court either: everybody arrested would have to yield over their personal deoxyribonucleic acid. Although supposedly the DNA would be destroyed if there is no conviction (yeah right).

Y'all in Washington, you need to fight this as hard as you can. This is a huge intrusion of personal rights and screw what the "bigger government" types are saying about how this is "needed" to be "safe". It's not a question of "will this be abused?" because history has proven that if a thing such as this is tolerated, it will be abused!

Read More