(Other than in the usual context of the epic battle of good against evil, etc etc.) Flash required….
Now playing: Bill Whelan – Andalucia
Some nice stuff here:
Cosmotions: timelapse photo animations of the real cosmos
Now playing: Leech – Studer- Van Dam. Dir: Plasson – “Ainsi que la brise légère”
Won’t need sugar in the tea this morning…
(Hmm… I wonder if anyone in Ireland is breeding these guys…)
Now playing: Kenneth Gilbert – Air vif pour Zephire et la Rose (piece croisee)
[tags]cat, cats, Bengal, kitten, kittens, oooh, cute[/tags]
And what either Nietzsche or George Bernard Shaw would have made of this, I have no idea.
The chart above represents development of power levels of both God and Superman beginning in 1940, and extrapolated to predict trends up to 2030. Several features are worthy of note. First, note that God has had no substantial increase in Power Level during the time period analyzed. Supermans powers, on the other hand, have been increasing steadily. The largest gain in Power Level can be seen in 1980, which followed Supermans discovery of his ability to travel back in time, violating physics as we know it, and presumably requiring an infinite amount of energy. A reader also points out that in ’93 Superman died and was resurrected, which presumably indicates a large jump in power as well.
Using conservative estimates for the development of Superman’s powers, we can see that they will exceed those of God by the year 2030 (if present trends are a reliable indicator.) By 2040, Superman will not only be omniscient and omnipresent, but will most likely be capable of altering the logical fabric of all existence.
Oooooookayyyy…. But then, this would still be cool, because around 2035 we should be all set for one of those great DC crossovers. God Vs. Superman! Who wins? (Hint: which one does DC [oh, all right, Warner, be that way] own?)
Now playing: Orlando Consort – Chançonette/Ainc voir/A la Cheminee/Par verité
[tags]comics, Superman, DC Comics, Warner Bros, super powers, superhero, superheroes, superpowers, God, deity, potential change of management, but somehow I don’t think the Arisians are going to take this lying down[/tags]
On summer evenings, when the little ultrasonic things that keep bugs and mice out of the house are turned on, if the windows are going to be open, turn the ultrasonics off. Otherwise the local pipistrelle bats come in the windows and start hunting through the house for the strange mutant bat-thing that’s suddenly appeared on their territory and is making these weird noises.
(sigh)
Now playing: Tina Turner & Elton John – The Bitch is Back
[tags] bats, pipistrelle, protected species, Ireland, summer[/tags]
…whose stuff I’ve always loved, especially the line about the new definition of “apostrophe”: “Look out, an S is coming!”. But these is so much good sense here that I’ve copied the whole thing. (And there’s a link back to the source.)
Fourteen Things That It Took Me More Than 50 Years To Learn—by Dave Barry
- Never, under any circumstances, take a sleeping pill and a laxative on the same night.
- If you had to identify, in one word, the reason why the human race has not achieved, and never will achieve, its full potential, that word would be “meetings.”
- There is a very fine line between “hobby” and “mental illness.”
- People who want to share their religious views with you almost never want you to share yours with them.
- You should not confuse your career with your life.
- Nobody cares if you can’t dance well. Just get up and dance.
- Never lick a steak knife.
- The most destructive force in the universe is gossip.
- You will never find anybody who can give you a clear and compelling reason why we observe daylight savings time.
- You should never say anything to a woman that even remotely suggests that you think she’s pregnant unless you can see an actual baby emerging from her at that moment.
- There comes a time when you should stop expecting other people to make a big deal about your birthday. That time is age eleven.
- The one thing that unites all human beings, regardless of age, gender, religion, economic status or ethnic background, is that, deep down inside, we ALL believe that we are above-average drivers.
- A person who is nice to you, but rude to the waiter, is not a nice person. (This is very important. Pay attention. It never fails.)
- Your friends love you anyway.
Thought for the day: Never be afraid to try something new. Remember that a lone amateur built the Ark. A large group of professionals built the Titanic.
…Perfection. 
[tags]Dave Barry, humor[/tags]
I love it when things like this happen. Once again neuroscience gets stood on its ear…
Terry Wallis awoke from a coma-like state 19 years after tumbling over a guardrail in a pickup truck and falling 25 feet into a dry riverbed. Now doctors armed with some of the latest brain-imaging technology think they may know part of the reason why.
Wallis showed few outward signs of consciousness, but his brain was methodically rebuilding the white-matter infrastructure necessary for him to interact with the outside world, researchers reported yesterday in the Journal of Clinical Investigation.
…Using both Positron Emission Tomography scans and an advanced imaging technique called diffusion tensor imaging, the researchers examined Wallis’s brain after he regained full consciousness, and found that cells in the relatively undamaged areas had formed new axons, the long nerve fibers that transmit messages between neurons.
…Dr. Steven Laureys, a neurologist at the University of Liege in Belgium, said the findings will force doctors to reconsider the way they treat patients who are in minimally conscious and persistent vegetative states.
Damn straight it will. (And I’m afraid the repressed researcher in me is screaming, “Someone take a real close look at this guy’s DNA”!! — as another doctor cited in the article correctly points out that in the normal scheme of things, this man’s recovery is a one-in-three-hundred-million kind of thing.)
But the point in the article where I just had to laugh out loud:
In his last few years at Stone County Nursing and Rehabilitation Center in Mountain View, Ark., Wallis’s family began to notice that Terry, a Ford enthusiast, would grunt when a Chevrolet commercial came on the television.
Sometimes serendipity dresses up in really strange costumes…
Now playing: Duke Ellington – Satin Doll
[tags]brain, neurology, rewired, coma, recovery, neuropsychiatry, white matter, corpus callosum[/tags]
Last week, like a thunderbolt from Zeus himself, an unexpectedly large horde of pre-Christian devotees descended on Mount Olympus for the annual Prometheus festival.
Many wore white robes although a minority, it is true, came wearing little more than their love for the 12 ancient gods. But a bit of near-nudity notwithstanding, their arrival might have gone unnoticed had it not been for the fact that there were 4 000 of them dancing in the wood-encircled meadow halfway up the mountainside.
Apparently, though, this has really, really annoyed some people.
This year, despite fierce protests from the Orthodox Church, pagans were allowed to set up a cultural association. Now they want to take their battle to the ancient temples of Greece in the hopes of one day having the religion officially recognised.
…”What their worshippers symbolise, and clearly want, is a return to the monstrous dark delusions of the past,” hissed Father Eustathios Kollas, who presides over the community of Greek priests. “They should be stopped.”
This should be interesting to watch. I have strange visions of this issue winding up in front of the European Court of Justice at some point, if some involved EU citizen feels his or her right to worship freely is being infringed…
[tags]Greece, religion, paganism, pagan, Greek Orthodox, Olympus[/tags]
Stephanie Jaworski’s venerable JoyOfCakes.com has been beautifully redesigned. I wandered over there this morning and instantly started drooling.
(sigh) Duane’s Twelfth Law: You will always come across a particularly scrumptious-looking food site at the moment when you were just getting into the business of dumping a few pounds. Feh…
[tags]Food, cooking, cake, baking[/tags]
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