The crew of the Space Shuttle Columbia,
who perished in re-entry from Mission STS-107
ten years ago today
February 1, 2003
Friday, February 01, 2013
U.S. soldier gets double-arm transplant (WOW!)
Retired U.S. Army Sergeant Brendan Marrocco (right) lost all four limbs to a roadside bomb attack while serving in Iraq in 2009. It's nothing short of miraculous that Marrocco is the most severely-injured American service member to have survived such an ordeal.
It's also nothing short of amazing that nine weeks ago Marrocco received a double-arm transplant at Johns Hopkins in Baltimore. It will take a few more years of his nervous system getting acclimated - to say nothing of the physical therapy that'll be involved - but in the end Brendan Marrocco will have two fully-functioning arms and hands again.
From The Guardian article...
Sergeant Brendan Marrocco, 26, of Staten Island, New York, said he was anxious to return to an active life after the successful bilateral arm transplant surgery six weeks ago at the renowned Baltimore hospital.Something that also astounds me: both arms were transplanted onto Marrocco at the same time. The surgery only took 13 hours to accomplish. That sounds like a very long time until one considers the complexity of this procedure. When I first heard about it, I thought it would have taken at least a full day to pull off."I feel like I'm getting a second chance to start over," he said at a news conference. "I'm just looking forward to everything I would have wanted to do over the last four years." Driving, swimming and hand cycling top his list, he added.
He lost his arms and legs in a roadside bomb attack in Iraq in 2009. "I hated having no arms," Marrocco said. "I was all right with having no legs."
Just over half a day to give a wounded soldier two new arms. A new lease on life.
Like I said: does American healthcare kick ass, or what?
(Tip o' the hat to Kristen Bradford for a terrific find! :-)
Dung beetles use Milky Way to move poop
That's odd. I've eaten lots of Milky Way bars at my girlfriend's house...
Actually I speak of the Milky Way Galaxy, which is most visible in the Southern Hemisphere and which the humble dung beetle of sub-Saharan Africa uses for stellar navigation, scientist have recently discovered.
...and I didn't know the stuff was a laxative.
*rimshot* "Yes ladies and gentlemen I'll be here all week!!"
It's like this: dung beetles roll around balls of... ummm, "Number Two". They need to do it fast and in a straight line away from the source so that other natural predators of poo won't swipe it first. During the nighttime hours the dung beetles use the Moon to guide them. But on nights when there is no lunar light, something else is required.
So these researchers conducted a series of experiments and found that in the absence of the Moon, the Milky Way (the most concentrated visible part of it anyway, the brightest part being the galactic center in the direction of Sagittarius) suffices for the dung beetle's navigational needs
Pretty cool. So not only is the dung beetle the strongest animal on the planet in terms of weight ratios, it's also the first insect found to use the stars to guide their way.
Sorta "stinks to high heaven" in a perverse sort of way, huh?
Homeland Security sez: Fight mass shooters with scissors!
Shear-ly they can't be serious.
Just when you'd think that the Department of Homeland Security could not possibly prove it's the most useless U.S. government agency in the history of anything... they release this:
So if a carbine-wielding madman bursts into your office or school and starts shooting up the place, fend him off with a pair of scissors! Unless he also has a rock because, you know, rock beats scissors.
Taking this video to its logical extreme, the safest elementary school in America is whichever one gets to have this guy as its School Resource Officer...
No mention in the video about protecting yourself against a gunman with, y'know, a gun.
The New York Post has a great write-up about this latest waste of taxpayer money.
Ed Koch, former mayor of New York City, has passed away
The sad news broke this morning that Ed Koch, mayor of New York City for twelve years and certainly one of the most colorful characters in American political history, died earlier today. He was 88.
Disagree with him on some things though one might, it must be agreed by all that Koch gave his gal-darned best for his city. Koch managed his town instead of trying to manage his town's people (yeah I'm looking at you Michael Bloomberg).
Thoughts and prayers going out to Hizzoner's family.
Thursday, January 31, 2013
Mellow Mushroom goes the extra mile for U.S. soldier's family
There is a Mellow Mushroom that opened up not long ago in nearby Burlington. I've yet to eat at that one but now I'm feeling led to. For one thing the pizza is insanely delicious. For another, after reading this next story y'all will agree: this company rocks!
And the store didn't charge Shawn Fulker a thing! From the story at ABC News...
The tale begins with Army National Guard Major Shawn Fulker, who lives in Jacksonville, Florida. At the moment Fulker is deployed thousands of miles from home in Afghanistan. His wife's birthday was coming up and in spite of the distance he wanted to do something nice for her. Josephine Fulker really loves the pizza at Mellow Mushroom, so Shawn e-mailed the company's corporate office and asked if one of their Jacksonville restaurants could deliver a pizza and a $50 gift card to his wife. Shawn let them know that he would gladly call the store and pay for it by credit card.
Good story so far, aye? But wait: it gets better...
Mellow Mushroom's headquarters forwarded the e-mail to the company's Fleming Island location, which went above and beyond the call of duty. First they made a special heart-shaped crust for the pizza.
Then the store manager and another employee drove out with it, stopped at a supermarket to buy balloons and a vase of flowers, and proceeded on to the Fulker home.
They delivered it all - including the $50 gift card - to Josephine.
John Valentino, the Mellow Mushroom franchisee who owns that location and others in Jacksonville, said his store was happy to have made the day special for the couple.The Facebook page for Mellow Mushroom at Fleming Island has gone bonkers with gratitude about their efforts for the Fulkers. Which was a very, very cool thing to have done."Of course we weren't going to charge him for anything," Valentino told ABC. "Him being a serviceman and his wife being home. … Hopefully in her husband's absence we were able to help her have a great birthday while he's over in Afghanistan serving our country."
Josephine Fulker had just finished Skyping with her husband when the doorbell rang and she saw the two Mellow Mushroom employees at her door on Thursday.
"I don't know their names exactly, but they had a pizza and a big butterfly balloon and a vase of flowers with a gift card for $50 and they told me that it was from my husband. I said 'Oh my goodness.' I was surprised and excited and overwhelmed and all of that. It was so nice," she said.
It was especially nice because Shawn Fulker had already sent his wife flowers and candy earlier that day. Since he hadn't been able to check his email for a while, he had no idea that Mellow Mushroom had been working on his initial request.
And hey, Fulker and his unit also showed their thanks, all the way from Afghanistan!
It's stuff like this that renews my faith in humanity. Way to go Mellow Mushroom :-)
Wednesday, January 30, 2013
70 degrees Fahrenheit at quarter 'til 5 p.m.
This is in north-central North Carolina, mind ya, and ordinarily at this time in the midst of winter the temperature should be about 40 degrees colder.
I went to Greensboro yesterday evening. It was much the same, with people wearing shorts, t-shirts etc. at 8 at night. I wore my "Weird Al" Yankovic Alpocalypse Tour shirt and if I didn't know any better could have sworn it was late spring.
But I've already seen snow four times this winter so far, most recently this past weekend (the girlfriend and I found ourselves looking at about 2 inches of the white stuff falling at her house in Roanoke). There's another cold front about to hit us in the worst way (read as: severe storms, high winds and possible tornadoes) this evening and given the way the trends work out we're apt to have snow later next week.
Expect a bunch more posts soon. In the meantime I gotta go unplug the 'spensive stuff. All of y'all getting hit by this storm system (which The Weather Channel has decided to dub "Magnus") and all of you folks in the path of it, batten down and good luck!
Saturday, January 26, 2013
Bias in mainstream press? WHAT bias?! (anti-gun vs. pro-life)
The apparently big story right now is about the estimated fewer than 1,000 who marched in Washington D.C. today against the Second Amendment. I understand that this has made all of the major evening new broadcasts: CBS, NBC, CNN etc.
To the very best of my understanding, there was NO such coverage at all of yesterday's March for Life, which many have calculated drew more than 500,000 to the Mall to protest abortion -the premeditated murder of unborn children - on the fortieth anniversary of Roe v. Wade.
Now, applying some logic here, you would think that a story regarding half a million people would dwarf that of an event which drew, at most, several hundred.
But I suppose when it comes to stories and their coverage from big media, some of them just don't fit the expected narrative...
Friday, January 25, 2013
Winter Storm Khan is giving us snow today
Dear management and staff of The Weather Channel:
You probably thought this was something "cute", didn't you?
Next year, just drop the whole "names for winter storms" thing, okay? "Gandalf" was pushing it already. But not like this...
"Khaaaaaaan!!"
Gun control lunacy: Feinstein would take YOUR weapon but keep hers, and the modern cost of saving a life
Senator Dianne Feinstein - a person who exemplifies the absolute worst that an elected official could possibly be - is trying to ram through another gun control bill on Capitol Hill. It would take away dang nearly every firearm that We The People have as articulated in the Second Amendment... EXCEPT for her own and those of other government officials.
So lemme get this straight: Feinstein, who owns a pistol or two herself, wants legislation that will prohibit the "little people" from having guns but also wants to keep her own.
I am trying to be a man of polite society so I will refrain from using the word that many will be tempted to use in describing Feinstein. I can at least say with no small degree of accuracy "rank hypocrisy".
And then from the D.C. area there is the story of a man who several days ago came across a pack of pit bulls trying to maul a little boy to death.
The man fired his handgun at the dogs, saving his young neighbor's life.
And for his valiant act of courage the man is now facing an "illegal weapon" charge because of Washington D.C.'s insane gun control laws. He faces a year in prison and $1000 in fines.
Let's get this straight: the D.C. prosecutors would rather this guy not have a gun at the cost of a dead eleven-year old. Am I getting that right?
If a jury convicts this dude, I will have lost most of the hope that's still there for America.
But not all hope, if more local sheriffs vow to refuse to comply with federal gun laws that would deprive citizens of their Second Amendment rights. Read the new piece by Chuck Baldwin at the link for the encouraging words from people across the fruited plain to those inside the Beltway.
And the words are: "Hell no."
Crazy new data storage: DNA and quartz crystals (for 300 million years)
Because I don't want to go to bed with two consecutive posts pertaining to Star Wars staring me in the face (no matter how good, or how nutty)...
A strand of DNA containing the digital data of all of Shakespeare's sonnets, a half-minute sound clip of Martin Luther King's "I Have a Dream" speech, a photo and a science paper was announced a few days ago in an article from the journal Nature. So you could pretty much take everything information-wise accumulated during the course of your entire life - photos, videos, music, writings, financial information, medical files, an entire Blu-ray collection of movies and TV shows, computer games and porno - and put it inside a test tube. The DNA used in the research took two weeks to extract data from, but the read times are supposed to get shorter as the tech develops.
And earlier this month a group of researchers in Japan announced they've turned quartz crystal into a storage medium that will last 300 million years. Currently it has the capacity of a standard CD, but it's thought that it can be expanded with more layers of crystal. It probably won't have the size-to-data ration of the DNA gimmick but in time it'll still hold a lot of your videos, finances, movies, porno TV shows and other stuff.
If the technology ever produces practical quantum computing and nano-scale laser diodes, there could be some wildly cool applications with this. Never mind that iPhone silliness: gimme a real Mother Box!
(Can't recall if I've ever used a Fourth World/New Gods reference on this blog before, but I have now :-)
Thursday, January 24, 2013
And STAR WARS EPISODE VII will be directed by... J.J. Abrams!
Get ready for it peeps...
My head hurts just thinking about what a lightsaber battle is going to look like after Abrams gets finished with all his lens flare plug-ins.
The biggest news of this hour is that J.J. Abrams will be directing Star Wars Episode VII. This will be his next project after the upcoming Star Trek Into Darkness.
Hmmmm... Star Wars and Star Trek together at last. Sorta like those old commercials for Reese's Peanut Butter Cups, when you think about it...
Seriously though, this is abundawonderfully great news!! Star Wars is in very, very good hands :-)
Wednesday, January 23, 2013
Turkish group claims LEGO Jabba's Palace is racist, offensive to religion
Let's compare some fiction and fact...
- Jabba's Palace was first built by the B'omarr Monks, who continued to live within it and practice their religion long after after Jabba the Hutt took over and made it his headquarters.
- The Hagia Sophia was a Christian basilica until 1453 when Ottoman Turks forced their way inside, slaughtering thousands of innocent people whose blood poured into the streets of Constantinople. From that time on Christians were forbidden from worshiping within their own building.
Got that? Good. Because it only makes the claim by a group of Turkish Austrians that LEGO's new Jabba's Palace set from its Star Wars line is "racist" and an affront to religion all the more ridiculous.
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| LEGO version of Jabba's Palace (left) and Hagia Sophia in Istanbul (right) One is a place that has known murder, slavery and intolerance toward others. The other is a children's toy. |
From The Telegraph article...
Austria’s Turkish community said the model was based on Hagia Sophia mosque in Istanbul and that the accompanying figures depicted Asians and Orientals as people with “deceitful and criminal personalities.”Hit the link for plenty more of this ludicrous story, including a statement LEGO released in response to what the Turks are insisting.The Turkish Cultural Community of Austria released a statement calling for Lego to apologise for affronting religious and cultural feelings.
The anger was provoked by “Jabba’s Palace”, a model of the home of Jabba the Hutt from Lego’s Star Wars product range based on the blockbusting series of science fiction films.
Jabba is the large slug-like creature who holds Han Solo captive in the film Return of the Jedi, and his palace is the setting for several crucial scenes, including using Princess Leia as his slave.
Jabba’s domed home and accompanying watchtower bare, according to the statement, an unwanted resemblance to Istanbul’s great Hagia Sophia, and another mosque in Beirut
...
The Jabba case came to light after an Austrian Turk complained to the organisation after his sister had bought his son the box set.
Austria’s Turkish community also took issue with the figures that went with the palace, including Jabba.
“The terrorist Jabba the Hutt likes to smoke a hookah and have his victims killed,” said the statement posted on the organisation’s website.
“It is clear that the ugly figure of Jabba and the whole scene smacks of racial prejudice and vulgar insinuations against Asians and Orientals as people with deceitful and criminal personalities.”
The crimes associated with the figures, the statements adds, include terrorism, slavery, murder and human sacrifice.
Taking into account that many of the Lego figures carry weapons, the Turkish organisation also urged parents “not to buy toys of war or toys of discrimination” as the model goes against the “peaceful coexistence of different cultures in Europe”.
As an indication of the anger felt over Jabba’s Palace, the organisation said it was considering taking legal action against Lego for inciting racial hatred and insulting human dignity.
How about some more comparison? Like, how the Turks in Austria are claiming that "The crimes associated with the figures... include terrorism, slavery, murder and human sacrifice."
There are numerous accounts written by those who survived the conquest of Constantinople about how Sultan Mehmet II allowed his soldiers to plunder the city for three days: butchering anyone who got in their way, stealing from homes and separating families. Mehmet II took the city's most beautiful young women - and men - to be in his private harem (those who resisted were beheaded). Many boys were pressed into the service of the Janissary corps. Not long after the conquest, the Ottoman Turkish sultan sent several thousands of children to each of the major potentates of the Muslim world to be slaves.
So far as we know, the only criminal activities that Jabba the Hutt and his gang engaged in were spice-smuggling and gun-running.
Nor do I ever recall Jabba employing suicide bombers, declaring jihad against anyone or even declaring that Luke's announcing himself as a Jedi as being "blasphemy". Come to think of it, Jabba tolerated a lot of "coexistence of different cultures" at his court.
Yup, Jabba the Hutt and his palace are insulting to certain cultures and religions, no doubt about it...
Yes, it can really be like this...
Bipolar Bear, whose entire appearance in the animated series The Tick was for a whopping 8 seconds (series premiere The Tick vs. The Idea Men, 1994):
Heh-heh, love it! I've thought since the beginning that The Tick was one of the most intelligent, cerebral and funny shows to ever come out of animation. Nothing of the past decade and a half comes even close. The Nineties seriously was the height of the animated series as an art form and The Tick embodies everything that was good and pure about that era.
Speaking of bipolar disorder, I currently have three new pieces for Being Bipolar on the burner... and I can't figure out which one to run with next. Recent events complicated matters in terms of issue appropriateness, if anyone's curious. I'm hoping to have a new one up real soon.
And no, I don't mind laughing about my own mental illness. Not at all. When you're in a spot like me, you have to. But even so, I'm thankful for The Tick to have made it funny as only it could :-)
Hu Songwen: Kept alive for 13 years by his self-made dialysis machine!
This man is hardcore. HARD-CORE, no two ways about it. MacGuyver ain't got nuthin' on this dude...
Hu Songwen was diagnosed with early kidney failure in 1993. A college student at the time, Hu went to a regular hospital for the next six years on a routine basis to have dialysis scrub his blood of the waste material that a healthy metabolism has no problem with passing out of the body.
But then the money ran out. And Hu could no longer afford those hospital visits.
So left with what he deemed no choice, Hu put together a homemade dialysis machine.
And his self-crafted dialysis has kept him alive for the past thirteen years!
Mail Online has plenty on the story of Hu Songwen, including a bunch more pictures and the technical details of how his machine works.
Gotta love ingenuity and initiative like that. Whenever I find a story like this, it renews my hope in humanity. Here's wishing Hu all the best in a long and prosperous life :-)
Tuesday, January 22, 2013
Forty years of silent screaming
The moment is still seared into my memory. Indeed, I can still feel the revulsion that was far too much for a little child to have to grasp.
It was this day in 1983. I had seen on the news about something called "abortion". Seems that it was the tenth anniversary of it being allowed. So I asked Mom what "abortion" means.
"It means a mother kills her baby before it's born."
A chunk of my childhood died that day. There are some who would think of it as "no big deal". But to me it was the beginning of a loss of innocence. The first bricks of the wall of naivety that had secured this small child away from the madness of man's own making, come crumbling down to Earth.
"It means a mother kills her baby before it's born."
My God.
And then some years later as a foolish teenager who thought himself wise, I was stupidly defending abortion. It seemed the "enlightened" thing to do, I thought. Thankfully that phase didn't survive my high school years. I'm hoping that twenty years of writing in opposition of abortion has helped me atone for it.
I made an attempt to do it as a columnist on our student newspaper at Elon, the first spring that I was a student there. My first piece as a columnist was about abortion: how it was destroying our culture, our sense of morality.
One week later while walking around with the flu and a 104-degree temperature (what an idiot) a female student walked up to me and said into my ear "You stupid pro-life fucking piece of shit."
I received some death threats too. I took a pro-life position and people claimed to want me dead for it. I'll always take perverse pride in knowing that at least a few people read my premiere essay and took it seriously...
And now, here we are: the fortieth anniversary of Roe v. Wade. The Supreme Court decision that established a "right" to terminate an unborn child.
Funny thing: we admit that human life ends when the heartbeat stops. Why then shouldn't human life begin when a heartbeat starts?
And there is a heartbeat there. In fact, there have been roughly fifty-five million hearts that have stopped beating since this day in 1973.
See those photos on the right? Ultrasound imaging has been refined to the point where high-definition 3D pictures can be made of the unborn child within the womb of his or her mother. We can now chronicle in stark detail the development of a baby for practically its entire nine months of gestation.
Look at those pictures.
Do any of those look like "unviable tissue mass" to you?
Does a mere clump of cells within the body possess a face? Fingers? Toes?
Can a benign tumor yawn? Can it smile?
Does an appendix scream in pain when it is ripped open during a "medical procedure"?
Yes, there are screams. The first of many. There have been abortionists who halted their "practice" at once when they heard the sound of an unborn baby's agony. Too often there are other screams too. The screams of those who realize sooner or later "Dear God, have mercy on me for what I have done..."
Fifty-five million hearts silenced. Fifty-five million people. Killed without being allowed to draw breath beyond the comforting warmth of their mothers' wombs.
Now think about what we have lost in those forty years...
We have lost great scientists.
We have lost great physicians.
We have lost great artists.
We have lost great athletes.
We have lost great leaders, great statesmen.
I've been dabbling in filmmaking for several years now. How many directors, writers, actors, cinematographers have we been robbed of? Their gifts never to see the light of day, the flicker of the big screen.
Fifty-five million people, dead before they were born. The Nazi regime murdered 12 million.
And yet some dare to wonder why there is such violent in our streets. In our homes. In our schools.
How the hell can we possibly claim to value the preciousness of human life we see every day, when we don't give a damn about the preciousness of human life when it is at its most vulnerable?
I... don't see how that is possible at all.
"But Chris, it's a woman's body."
Bullshit.
Yeah, I said "bullshit".
It's not a "woman's body". It's the body of a whole another person. A person with his or her own chromosomes and brain activity. If a woman doesn't want to be bound to one body, she shouldn't be reckless with her own. If she is, then there are alternatives. There are thousands of barren couples in this country who are desperate to have a child in their life. Let them have that opportunity.
Fifty-five million children dead. Across the span of forty years.
Forty is the biblical number of completion. God made the children of Israel wander in the wilderness for forty years. From that weak and timid band of refugees came a strong and hardened people who took back the land promised their fathers. Forty is the age of full maturity, in body and mind and spirit.
What have we come to, in the forty years that God has mercifully allowed us since this day in 1973?
Can we say honestly proclaim that four full decades of abortion have nurtured within us a better heart and soul?
Or maybe it is that we no longer have that soul. Perhaps, we don't deserve it. Forty years is an awful long time to look back upon an error and repent of it. For one individual or for a people entire.
More laws will not restore the soul of our culture. Taking guns away won't replenish it. Not all of the politicians and psychologists and pop culture icons put together will bring back a thing that God has given us but we have chosen to let fall away.
President Barack Obama surrounded himself with children last week when he signed his executive orders pertaining to gun laws. Imagine how many more could have been there if he and those like him and allowed those children to live.
Don't talk to me about the violence on the evening news when we let the greatest violence of all happen in the clinical sterility of a "clinic".
Forty years.
How far we have come.
I don't know of any better way to wrap this up than to defer to the wisdom of one of the most beloved people of the modern era...
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| "The greatest destroyer of peace is abortion, because if a mother can kill her own child what is left for me to kill you and you to kill me? There is nothing between." -- Mother Teresa |
Monday, January 21, 2013
LOST as a Nintendo-style role-playing game
It's been ages since anything Lost-related has appeared on this site. Someday I'll try to write up an essay that's been percolating for a year or two: how the answers to everything we'd been looking for really, honestly were revealed or explained by the time of "The End" in 2012. Including how the Island could move (there's a scientific theory for that!).
Until then, it's nice to see that Lost still resonates. Enough so that CollegeHumor.com explored the notion: "What if Lost was a computerized role-playing game?" Sorta in the style of Dragon Warrior running on a Super Nintendo...
There may be spoilers if you haven't watched Lost, so viewer beware. For those who held on to the very end, this is a pretty hilarious video.
