I’m glad to see that someone wrote down the Cartoon laws of physics. An example:

Any body suspended in space will remain in space until made aware of its situation.

Daffy Duck steps off a cliff, expecting further pastureland. He loiters in midair, soliloquizing flippantly, until he chances to look down. At this point, the familiar principle of 32 feet per second per second takes over.

A nice little bit about the author of my favorite comic, Bill Watterson.

The Tuesday Morning Quarterback returns…and on nfl.com of all places - TMQ week 13. Sports commentary by a guy who hasn’t received a few too many blows to the helmet.

Ah, the joys of Google - somehow, someone found my page through the search term ‘albuquerque weather rss’. How did they find that, you ask? Let’s see…

* A post about the weekend Marcie and I were in Albuquerque - And I’ll never misspell it again now!
* Random posts about the weather
* RSS is one of those little buttons on the right hand side of the screen.

The amazing part is that these three unrelated posts lead to me being the #10 most relevant answer on Google as of today. Come on now, really, I’m not that important!

Here’s some fun facts about my new home, for those who were curious (or if not curious, bored enough that they’re reading this article):
* Lewis County, NY has twice as many cows as it does people.
* It has 7 stoplights. I drive through 3 of them on my 1-mile commute to work.
* There is no Wal-Mart, K-Mart, Target, Lowe’s, Home Depot, etc. in Lewis County. I’ve got a 30-45 minute drive minimum to any of those.

Truly, I am living in the sticks now. Fortunately, I can get digital cable and cable modem service, so I’m not totally isolated here…

Apparently, approaching life from a more relaxed perspective has health benefits later in life, according to an article in today’s Sun-Times.

Researchers say that’s a good way for people 18 to 30 years old to reduce their risk of high blood pressure later in life.

A large study led by Northwestern University medical school researchers found that young adults who are extremely impatient or hostile are 84 percent more likely to get high blood pressure than laid-back young adults.

Works for me…

Apparently, being tall means you make more money over your life.

Good thing I’m 6′3″…

The BBC is running a rather interesting article on the most popular/interesting ways data is lost on computers. Not too surprisingly, human error has a lot to do with it…

Taking the number one spot is the US man who was so frustrated with his laptop, he shot it in a fit of e-rage, then realised there were important files he needed.

Hot on his heels is the company director whose soapy bath time ended in disaster when his laptop slipped in with him.

Whoops!

From Wired.com:

Former Royal Navy Lt. Cmdr. Patrick Dalzel-Job, the inspiration for James Bond, has died at age 90. While Dalzel-Job considered Bond “far too dramatic” and shunned his womanizing ways, Ian Fleming, Dalzel-Job’s former naval intelligence colleague and creator of 007, insisted the British war hero was the model for the secret agent. Dalzel-Job could ski backward, navigate a midget submarine and undertake the riskiest parachute jumps. In one of his most daring exploits, he rescued residents of a Norwegian town just before it was destroyed in a German bombing raid in 1940. Dalzel-Job recounted his adventures in his memoir, From Arctic Snow to Dust of Normandy, but skipped the Bond flicks. “When you have led such an exciting life,” he said, “you don’t need to see a fictional account of it.”

Throw in a 007 movie tonight - the Cubs are done in the playoffs now, so life returns to normal.

My alma mater is pretty well represented in the Nobel Prizes this year:

Illinois Nobel prize winners - the first three winners were all from the state, and two of the three prizes went to faculty at the University of Illinois. Don’t look for me on the Nobel list anytime soon though…somehow I doubt there’s much earth-shattering research in cheese.

Stumbled across this article during my morning web-surf - a rather interesting take on dealing with people becoming antibiotic resistant - let nature do the trick.

How Viruses Will Save the World (wired.com)

You heard it, straight from the mouth of the mayor of Chicago - “high school is boring”.

Chicago Sun-Times story

From the “Justice really is blind” department…

Last year, some drunk yahoo ran onto the field at a White Sox game and jumped one of the base coaches. Yesterday, he got a slap on the wrist (30 months probation). The kicker is the reasoning behind the sentencing that the judge gave:

“The violence that baseball players are exposed to comes from within,” Holt said. “What fan has not seen a pitcher intentionally hurl a baseball at a player’s head at 90 mph? Who has not seen a batter leave home plate headed for the pitcher’s mound bat in hand bent on mischief and mayhem?
“What is the expected conduct of fans who sit for two or three hours drinking unlimited quantities of beer? How did Comiskey Park come to be known as the world’s largest outdoor saloon?”

Apparently, the judge is known for being a softie (on the radio this morning, a few cops called in and said the popular nickname for him among officers and district attorneys is “Let ‘em Go Leo”). Where’s a little individual responsibility? The guy gets himself stupid drunk (on expensive ball-park beer no less…), and the judge blames the sport for the problem. Players in the field getting into fights is one thing…at least there, you’ve got a provocation, trivial as it might be. This is just a drunk idiot

How to resolve all those messy downloading music issues for only $2 million:

http://www.pbs.org/cringely/pulpit/pulpit20030724.html

Basically, you have a company which buys one copy of every CD, and then you, as a shareholder of the company can pay a nominal fee ($0.05/song) and download it. Great thing is that under curent copyright law, it’s apparently actually legal.

Apparently, it’s true. Kansas really is flatter than a pancake.

Kansas Is Flatter Than a Pancake (Annals of Improbable Research)

Actually, I’m not surprised - if you condensed the width of Kansas to a 6″ pancake, most of the variation would be gone. I’d bet Illinois is flatter than a pancake too, Mississippi River bluffs and other geographical features included.

This one is pretty funny. One of those small South Pacific island systems (Vanuatu) has privatized their postal system, and as a money-maker set up an underwater post office…

Underwater Post

You can even fill out the information on their site and have a waterproof postcard mailed from their office (about 10ft / 3m underwater off Hideaway Island). $10 versus a few grand for a vacation out there.

…for good makeout music now? Barry White died on Thursday.

Nice work if you can get it!

Chuck Cramer at Underwriters Laboratories

Don’t ask me how I got so high, but if you do a google search for ben s johnson, I now show up on the first page. Google must not like my apostrophe, so I’ve adjusted the title of my page.

An interesting article on upcoming Supreme Court vacancies I came across this morning. Sen. Leahy makes a great point - it’s certainly within Bush’s perogative to get jurists whose views align with his appointed to the court. However, appointing someone to the court who makes Justice Thomas look like a flaming liberal isn’t in the country’s best interests. Take a read through the article.

I think the problem in politics is that a significant group of people (some of them work at 1600 Pennsylvania Ave. NW) are thinking “I want to win, and the other side to lose”. It’s thinking like that which really rubs me the wrong way, because it’s fundamentally inconsiderate.

Not enough think “Why can’t we both win?” Maybe that’s a little idealistic of me, but really, wouldn’t things be better if we all weren’t trying to screw each other over?

I’m sure the folks over at We Love the Iraqi Infomation Minister are ecstatic now…

Chicago Tribune story.