The Feynman Lectures

The Feynman Lecture series are now online and thanks to Bill Gates they are free to be viewed by anyone. The seven hour long lectures are a treasure for anyone who loves science.

(via Kottke)

I Never Thougth I'd Live This Long

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Originally uploaded by The Official White House Photostream

Willie Mays was my favorite player when I was growing up as a kid. Candlestick Park was a magical place for a 10 year old boy who loved baseball. I got to shake his hand just prior to a game once, and it was all I could talk about for months.

I love this picture.

Darwin Award Nominee

Sigh:

Maria Barbu, 17, of Brasov, Romania, is said to have been plugging her laptop into wall current at the time, after "the battery died during a long session on social networking site Twitter as she took a soak."

Additional details are lacking, and are unlikely to be forthcoming anytime soon. And it's unclear whether the laptop slipped from her hands or if she was so wet that the water dripping off of her closed the circuit and caused the shock.

(h/t rhythm7a)

CNBC's Muppet

I didn't realize Beaker had an on-air job with CNBC. Nevertheless, watch Chris Hays, Washington Editor for the The Nation pwn CNBC lightweight Dennis Kneale.

Sunday Night Awesome

Love from two twelve on Vimeo.

They Call It Puppy Love

(via John Cole)

A story from the Wall Street Journal about service dogs for veterans suffering from PTSD.

Like any other golden retriever seeking a treat, Tuesday nudged his owner’s hand with his snout one recent morning and waited expectantly.
Luis Carlos Montalvan got up from a chair in his small Brooklyn apartment and walked to the kitchen. Tuesday followed close behind, eyes fixed on a white cabinet. The retriever sat alertly as Mr. Montalvan, an Iraq war veteran with severe post-traumatic stress disorder, reached for a vial of pills, lined a half-dozen on the table and took them one by one.

The dog had gotten what he wanted: When the last pill was swallowed, he got up and followed his master out of the kitchen, tail wagging.

Tuesday is a so-called psychiatric-service dog, a new generation of animals trained to help people whose suffering is not physical, but emotional. They are, effectively, Seeing Eye dogs for the mind.

Contrast the difference in the quality of the marvelous reporting thoughout most of the paper and right wing drivel spilling from the Op/Ed page and one wonders how this cognitive dissonance came to exist, or was it always so?

Palin Did It For The Money

Some Taibbi Gold

My Three Friends

Who are the three people I would most like to get drunk with? Well two of them are dead but they are on my list anyway. I put Hunter S. Thompson and Molly Ivins on the list because loved reading their well written, often hilarious, and always insightful work. I wished they were still here. But the third on my list is Matt Taibbi who you may know from his work for Rolling Stone. He has a great piece in the latest issue about Goldman Sachs and their role in the current financial market meltdown. He also put up this response to some of the critics of the piece. It is pure gold Taibbi.

Why didn’t we write about Morgan? Because we didn’t. Because it’s your turn, you assholes. Maybe later someone will tell the story of the other banks, but for now, while most ordinary people are only just learning about the workings of the financial innovation era that blew up in their faces last year, the top dog in that universe is going to be first in line to get the special treatment. That might be inconvenient for Goldman, but it doesn’t make the things I or anyone else say about them untrue.

This Day in Chrisitanism

Last night I opposed yet another bill to erect another monument to slavery because it was used as a bargaining chip to allow for the actual depiction of 'In God We Trust' in the CVC. The Architect of the Capitol and liberal activists opposed every reference to America's Christian heritage, even to the extent of scrubbing 'In God We Trust' from the depiction of the actual Speaker's chair in the U.S. House of Representatives.--U.S. Representative Steven King (R-IA)

This is my favorite:

"The Earth has been here 6,000 years, long before anybody had environmental laws, and somehow it hasn’t been done away with. We need to get the uranium here in Arizona, so this state can get the money from it," - Arizona state Senator Sylvia Allen (R).

Both of these people are ELECTED officials. What is scarier--these two clowns, or the people who elected them?

Vegetable Bandits!

Woodchucks found our garden today! Well they didn't get much because we happened to notice them just they began feasting. We noticed the escape route so we can plug the hole in the fence.

History of the Internet

History of the Internet from PICOL on Vimeo.