Turtles All The Way, Ph.D.: November 2005

My Neighbours Are Hoors!

The stories of a woman in Scotland who lives above a brothel. My Neighbours Are Hoors!

She has a very amusing writing style. She even made a glossary of some of the slang she uses, very thoughtful.

Stan Berenstain is Dead

CNN.com - Berenstain Bears co-creator dead - Nov 29, 2005. Stan Berenstain is dead, but he will be remembered for a long time for the books he wrote with his wife Jan. Many generations of kids, past and future, are better off because of his work.

The best Lego set ever!!!!!

I want one!!! (4MB Quicktime Movie -- But it's totally worth it! You have to watch!)

BrickQuest!

The best of all possible toys.

Presented without comment

Brainwashing

An interesting view of how brainwashing is done by the Moonies:

The very friendly people made me feel important and valuable, but subtly, in an increasing crescendo, they began to interrupt me as I spoke. I would be asked a question and as I began to talk, someone would interrupt with another question, at a slight tangent, which woudl derail my thought, and as I responded to that, trying to answer one or the other or both, someone would interrupt with another question. In essence, I never was 'allowed' to complete a thought. At the same time, they were not adversarial, but interested. What puts you off-guard is the lack of confrontation - in fact, a different person asks you a question each time, so you are swiveling in your chair, so to speak. In doing so, you are responsive to their lead, and therefore, are somaticly under their control. You move in response to them. After a sustained period of time, you can become somewhat deranged, as you have not successfully completed a thought for an hour - hours. More. At their camps, this can go on for 18 hours, interspersed with religious doctrine - AND THIS IS COHERENT AND COMPLETE - it thereby becomes a life-line of stability in an otherwise chaotic communication system. They control your food (low nutrition), your sleep (very important) and your bathroom breaks (infantilizing you). Thus one can embrace the doctrine as relief from the chaos - conversion.

The Army Reserve

I just saw a commercial for the Army Reserve. You can still go to college and have a normal life, all while being in the Army. "I'm going to be part of something important. And it's the reserve, so they'll train me around here until they need me." Hm... How long do you think that'll be?

I'm not opposed to people joining the reserves. However, I think it's extremely dishonest for the Army to run this sort of ad now, when huge numbers of the reserve are on duty in Iraq and Afghanistan (including a good friend of the Turtle).

They're everywhere!

Map Sex Offenders - Free US Sex Offender Registry Mapping System. It's kind of scary. I mapped the Turtle household, Mom and Pop Turtle's place, and the Turtle-In-Law's place, and all had a bunch of sex offenders relatively nearby. They're much more common that I thought.

Star Wars Lessons

10 things I have learned from George Lucas:

#1

Storm Trooper armor is purely cosmetic as it stops neither blaster fire nor little rocks thrown by teddy bears.
#2

Slaughtering children doesn’t necessarily make you an unappealing hero to children as long as you call the butchered kids, “younglings.”
#3

Not all Jedi are gay.
#4

A beautiful idea about an interconnected, tangible magic, created by life, which rewards the virtuous can be completely shit on just by saying, “Microbes.”
#5

Jedis never scream when they fall from high places. Yes they do. No they don’t.
#6

Digitally generated slapstick can only improve the dramatic tension of a scene.

Star Wars III: 'sword fight'
#7

R2D2 can fly when he battles robots but not when he battles swamp creatures.
#8

Maybe Samuel L Jackson has been in enough movies.
#9

The laws of physics don’t apply to jumping Wookies.
#10

The cost and time to get a Death Star fully operational is inversely proportionate to its size. A small one takes about 19 years. A gigantic one takes about 9 months.

SOOOOOOOOO CUTE!!!!!!!

Japanese Stork Gets Prosthetic Beak

Yahoo News:

An oriental white stork whose beak snapped off last year after getting stuck in metal wiring got a replacement Friday, a news report said.

Taisa had lost weight since he broke his beak last November because he found it difficult to catch live fish, and no longer got along with his female breeding mate due to stress, Kyodo News agency quoted keepers at Akita's Omoriyama Zoo as saying.

Dentist Toshiaki Chiba attached a plastic resin prosthetic to the end of Taisa's broken beak using a dental adhesive, according to the report.

Why Does George W. Bush Hate Cattle Ranchers?

From Electoral Math:

Creekstone Farms, which relied on exports to Japan for 80% of its business, has been unable to export any of its premium beef to Japan since the Mad Cow incident in December 2003. Japan requires that any country that has reported a case of the disease test each head of cattle. Despite Creekstone's willingness to pay 100% of the testing costs and the construction of a new testing facility, the USDA still wouldn't allow Creekstone to perform the necessary tests. The department's fig leaf concern was that such tests would raise the suspicion that untested beef would possess Mad Cow, which is, of course, poppycock.

This is the reason I've cut way back on my beef consumption. A few companies want to test for Mad Cow, and others pressured congress into preventing it. Screw them all, I say!

Sleep!

An interesting article about the evolutionary origins of sleeping:

Birds appear to be able to defend against predators with a variation on this strategy. When they feel safe, they sleep with their entire brains shut down, as humans do. But when they sense threats, they keep half their brains awake.

Dr. Lima and his colleagues have demonstrated this strategy in action with several bird species, including ducks. 'All we did was put our ducks in a row, quite literally,' said Niels Rattenborg, a colleague of Dr. Lima's, now at the Max Planck Institute for Ornithology in Germany. 'The ducks on the interior slept more with both eyes closed, and the ducks on the edge slept with one eye open. And they used the eye that was facing away from the other birds.'

To give each side of the brain enough rest, the ducks at the ends of the row would stand up from time to time, turn around and sit down again. This allowed them to switch eyes and let the waking half of the brain go to sleep.

Ah, memories II

I should note that when Mrs. Turtle lived there, it said, "Nude, Nude, Nude." It looks like the sign was attacked and the owners were forced to change the wording.

Clench Racing

Anyone who has read The Chronicles of Thomas Covenant, or tried to read it, will understand this wonderful game. Clench Racing:

The rules are simple. Each player takes a different volume of The Chronicles of Thomas Covenant, and at the word 'go' all open their books at random and start leafing through, scanning the pages. The winner is the first player to find the word 'clench'. It's a fast, exciting game -- sixty seconds is unusually drawn-out -- and can be varied, if players get too good, with other favourite Donaldson words like wince, flinch, gag, rasp, exigency, mendacity, articulate, macerate, mien, limn, vertigo, cynosure.... It's a great way to get thrown out of bookshops. Good racing!

Steering wheels

Formula 1 cars have the coolest steering wheels. This article has the technical datails.

Everything you wanted to know about ethanol...

... but were afraid to ask.

Support the Troops

Bob Odenkirk is a genius:

I immediately began supporting the troops. I put yellow ribbons up around my house. Literally everywhere (On my bedposts, on trees outside, on the mailbox pole (17 of them!)! I took pictures of the yellow ribbons and sent those to the troops. Can you imagine how thrilled they must be to know my yellow ribbons are everywhere! Yellow ribbons! And ribbon stickers on the back of my car! The troops must be ecstatic to know of all my yellow ribbons! Imagine you are a young father or mother. You have been away from your family, your newborn kids, your young husband or wife, you haven’t seen them in months. You are scared shitless of every civilian around you, whom you are supposed to be protecting. You have to travel in crudely armored vehicles from here to there and you have no idea when you’ll be back home or if you are making any progress of any kind. Then, you get a picture of a yellow ribbon on a tree in Los Angeles! A picture of a yellow ribbon! Think of it! A yellow ribbon! How great is that? That must be an awesome feeling! Fuck, I wish I was one of the troops just so I could feel the greatness of knowing somebody put a fucking yellow fucking ribbon up in reference to me! Ribbons of Yellow!

Mmmmmm, Bacon

Bacon-flavored ice cream

Ah, memories

Mrs. Turtle used to live right next to this. Classy!

Turtles All The Way, Ph.D.