Friday Night... I'm Home and Blogging

Yay! More on Doctor Who: The Forgotten.

Comic Book Urban Legends Revealed #150: Green Arrow, Grendel, and Nextwave.

Babymen and Brave and the Bold.

Firefox Logo found in deep space.

Eco-friendly toys.

Washington State bees are dying.

Leonardo da Vinci's mother was a slave.

More about my eighth cousin.

I would eat it. If it was good, I'd never eat regular meat again.

Links

I could see taking down the site if it listed personal details, but GoDaddy shut down the police rating site that only listed names and badge numbers.

TSA confused by a new computer.

2008 M's Commericals.

Stumpy Friends! from friend-of-the-blog Karin!

Bees are having even more problems. From the Sacramento Bee. Heh.

Magna Carta seems like it would make a good superhero name.

A dramatic video of an airplane nearly crashing.

The ringed moon of Saturn.

More tomorrow.

Saturday Night Links

Comic Book Urban Legends Revealed #143: Wonder Man, Flex Mentallo, and The Human Fly.

The Marvel Assistant Editors' Month.

Ok, maybe I need one of these. I bet my sister could make one.

Obama, Japan has a preference for the US President.

Scoble takes a ride in a Tesla Roadster. I don't want a sportscar, but I'd love a commuter car that fit some of those specs.

Saved by a dvd.

Häagen-Dazs to battle Colony Collapse Disorder with $250,000 in research grants.

Another NorthWest meteorite.

New ways to study baseball statistics reveal that Jeter does suck.

Boycott Hot Topic T-shirts.

Boing Boing reports on the effort to put Carl Sagan on a stamp.

This news probably shouldn't make me so happy. But I hated those ads with an overwhelming passion.

Happy Villain dyes her hair. That's a way to fight depression.

Images from a fire should never look so beautiful.

A solar grand plan: how to end US dependence on foreign oil by 2050. Along the same lines, the 14 Grand Engineering Challenges of the 21st Century.

Open Source software, Vendor-Free software, can help companies keep running critical components. Because they don't have to worry about the vendor going out of business.

This website seems to be a lawsuit waiting to happen.

Speaking of lawsuits, this article makes me want to never go to Home Depot again. Especially since I usually bring tools/parts with me to the hardware store to compare to what I'm purchasing.

Ah, for Doctor Who fans.

Pugs.

New Comics Day

Before I take off for work, a couple of thoughts...

I told my boss about the sugar-coated bees, and she was delighted with the story. It's one of those cases of creative problem solving that makes you smile. So I've been telling the story to everyone at work, and it's been cheering people up. It's a good tale.

New comics come today, so there will be reviews tonight or tomorrow... Saturday at the latest... I learned the hard way that trying to get reviews up right away takes away a lot of my enjoyment of a book, so I won't be rushing to post a review. I will, however, only read a book once before reviewing it (that's why they are "rapid" reviews) and I always reserve the right to change my mind on further readings.

I'm off to work... more later...

Sugar-Coated Bees

Can't help it. The image of bees coated in powered sugar is just making me laugh... and it also made me think of Clan Apis, one of the best educational comic books I've ever read. If you haven't gotten it yet, do yourself a favor and at least check out the website. In particular, I'm very fond of Jay Hosler's Killer Bee true story. Go on... read it... NOW!

Lotsa Thoughts

First off: Don't Forget To Vote. Hubby and I voted absentee last night (it's a good way to avoid having to find and go to the polls on a specific day). I suspect that most people reading this are likely to vote anyway, but if you aren't, think about it. If you don't vote, you are leaving your fate in other people's hands... including MINE.

Ahem.

An item in the Seattle Times this morning caught my attention. It says that an 18-year-old girl was kidnapped a month ago in Swaziland, and has now been made the King's 10th wife. To be honest, I thought stuff like this only happened in stories. I really wonder what the girl, Zena Mahlangu, thinks of the whole thing. Is it a dream come true, or the start of a long nightmare? Link to article.

It's bad enough that Toyota put out a truck called the "Tacoma" after a city in our state, apparently Buick is about to put out a "Rainier" SUV. That's pronounced "ray-neer" by the way. The city of Tacoma is best known in these parts as a smelly place (there's a song about "The Aroma of Tacoma"). Mount Rainier is best known for sitting prettily on the horizon... wonder if that bodes evil for the SUV's reliability? Link to article.

Local Muslims were stunned to learn that the DC Sniper was a Muslim from around these parts, because they'd never heard of him. Turns out he's part of the Nation of Islam, which doesn't share the beliefs of the folk around here that are mainstream Islam. But that hasn't stopped the media from identifying him as simply "Muslim", which in turn makes the local community of Muslims look like they supported him or something. Link to article.

A girl had hit upon what she thought was a great fund-raising project in Salem Oregon. She would sell bottled water with a school logo on it at school events! Except... the school district has an exclusive deal with Pepsi. And Pepsi has made it clear that the fundraising idea is not cool with them. Go corporate America... smash youthful creativity! Makes me want to drive down to Salem and buy some bottled water from the girl. Link to article.

Also in Salem, a beekeeper has found a way to get rid of a deadly parasite that is wiping out beehives around the country. Basically, his device coats the bees in powered sugar, which doesn't harm the bees but makes the Varroa mites let go of the bees and fall away. It's safer for the bees than the various chemicals that have been tried over the last 15 years, and more effective than most of them, too. In the article in the Seattle Times, a beekeeper whose bees were treated in the machine had this to say: "It just bounced these sugar-coated bees out into a pile."

That's an image that's going to stay with me all day.