Turtles All The Way, Ph.D.: December 2006

Woohoo!

Today I did dumbbell bench presses with 80-pound dumbbells for 5 reps. That's a personal best.

The hard part is keeping my balance on the bench, since the convexity of my shell tends to make me roll off.

World's tallest man saves dolphins

The world's tallest man has saved two dolphins by using his long arms to reach into their stomachs and pull out dangerous plastic shards.

Mongolian herdsman Bao Xishun was called in after the dolphins swallowed plastic used around their pool at an aquarium in Fushun, north-east China.

...

The heads of the dolphins were held back and towels wrapped around their teeth so Mr Bao could not be bitten.

He then extended his 1.06m-long arm into the mammals' stomachs.

Chen Lujun, manager of Royal Jidi Ocean World, said Mr Bao was successful and the dolphins were "in very good condition now".

The stupid! It burns!

This moron decided to write an article entitled Iraq needs a Pinochet: The general was no saint, but he's a better model to follow than Castro. Hm... Isn't that who we invaded Iraq to overthrow? There doesn't seem to be that much different qualitatively between Hussein and Pinochet in that they were both secular dictators. I'm not sure who racked up the higher body count, but that is a quantitative difference, and once you get past several thousand I don't think it's a good way to distinguish dictators.

Pretty Pictures

Cavolinia uncinata - a pteropod or pelagic "wing-footed" snail 7-10mm shell length. These feed by secreeting large feeding nets or bubbles to which foods sticks as they sink throught the water. They then suck in the net along with the food stuck to it.

Many more similar pictures (with explanations) can be found here and here.

Time to upgrade Acrobat Reader

From Adobe:

Critical vulnerabilities have been identified in Adobe Reader and Acrobat 7.0 through 7.0.8 that could — although Adobe is not aware of any specific code exploits at this time — allow an attacker who successfully exploits these vulnerabilities to take control of the affected system.

AK-47

An interesting article about the AK-47. It seems that it became popular not because it shoots well, but because it is so reliable. It was designed at a time when the Soviet Union's manufacturing capacity was not especially advanced, so it was built with a lot of tolerance for error, which makes it extremely reliable.

Now 85, tiny, feeble, nearly deaf, his right hand losing control because of tremors, Kalashnikov is often haunted by the killing machine he has bestowed upon the world. "I wish I had invented a lawnmower," he told the Guardian in 2002.

Jobs

Man do I hate looking for a job. It's a lot of work. Should I be saving that for when I'm getting paid for it?

This website posts summaries of Marmaduke comics. Marmaduke is horribly un-funny, but the commentaries are hilarious!

Turtles All The Way, Ph.D.