Here is a striking collection of the most powerful images ever captured this century. Check it out, it’ll definitely move you.

I read this on Digg.com today, I’m still LOLing: 

The REAL truth about Santa.

No known species of reindeer can fly. BUT there are 300,000 species of living organisms yet to be classified, and while most of these are insects and germs, this does not COMPLETELY rule out flying reindeer, which only Santa has ever seen.

There are 2 billion children (persons under 18) in the world. BUT since Santa doesn’t (appear) to handle the Muslim, Hindu, Jewish & Buddhist children, that reduces the workload to 15% of the total - 378 million according to Population Reference Bureau. At an average (census) rate of 3.5 children per household, that’s 91.8 million homes. One presumes that there’s at least one good child in each.

Santa has 31 hours of Christmas to work with. This is due to the different time zones and the rotation of the earth, assuming he travels east to west (which seems logical). This works out to 822.6 visits/second. That is to say that for each Christian household with good children, Santa has .001 second to park, hop out of the sleigh, jump down the chimney, fill the stockings, distribute the remaining presents under the tree, eat whatever snacks have been left, get back up the chimney, get back into the sleigh and move on to the next house.

Assuming that each of these 91.8 million stops are evenly distributed around the earth (which, of course, we know to be false but for the purposes of our calculations we will accept), we are now talking about .78 miles/household, a total trip of 75.5 million miles; not counting stops to do what most of us do at lease once every 31 hours, plus eating etc. So Santa’s sleigh must be moving at 650 miles/second, 3,000 times the speed of sound. For purposes of comparison, the fastest man-made vehicle on earth, the Ulysses space probe, moves at a pokey 27.4 miles/second. A conventional reindeer can run, tops, 15 miles/hour.

If every one of the 91.8 million homes with good children were to put out a single chocolate chip cookie and an 8 ounce glass of 2% milk, the total calories (needless to say other vitamins and minerals) would be approximately 225 calories (100 for the cookie, give or take, and 125 for the milk, give or take). Multiplying the number of calories per house by the number of homes (225 x 91.8 x 1000000), we get the total number of calories Santa consumes that night, which is 20,655,000,000 calories. To break it down further, 1 pound is equal to 3500 calories. Dividing our total number of calories by the number of calories in a pound (20655000000 / 3500) and we get the number of pounds Santa gains, 5901428.6, which is 2950.7 tons.

The payload on the sleigh adds another interesting element. Assuming that each child gets nothing more than a medium-sized Lego set (2 lb.), the sleigh is carrying 321,300 tons, not counting Santa, who is invariably described as overweight. On land, conventional reindeer can pull no more than 300lb. Even granting that “flying reindeer” (see #1) can pull 10 TIMES the normal amount, we cannot do the job with 8, or even 9, reindeer. We need 214,200. This increases the payload - not counting the weight of the sleigh - to 353,430 tons. This is four times the weight of the ocean-liner Queen Elizabeth.

353,000 tons traveling at 650 miles/second creates enormous air resistance. This will heat the reindeer up in the same fashion as a spacecraft reentering the earth’s atmosphere. The lead pair of reindeer will absorb 14.3 QUINTILLION joules of energy. Per second. Each. In short, they will burst into flame almost instantaneously, exposing the reindeer behind them and create deafening sonic booms in their wake. The entire reindeer team will be vaporized within .00426 of a second. Meanwhile, Santa, will be subjected to centrifugal forces 17,500.06 times greater than gravity. A 250 lb. Santa, being very conservative in terms of guessing Santa’s weight, would be pinned to the back of his sleigh by 4,315,015 lb. of force. If Santa ever DID deliver presents on Christmas Eve, he’s dead now.

Karl Rove quit this morning.

Of course, this had nothing to do with his recent subpoena, or his position as the puppeteer in white house dealings. Nope, he just quit because he wanted to. Yeah…
Good riddance!

I’ve got a bunch of shows that I’m planning to watch this fall; if you want to join me in this pursuit, let me know.

Mon: Dancing with the Stars - Sept 24th, Weeds - Now!

Tues:

Wed: Southpark - October?

Thur: The Office - Sept 27th

Fri:

Sat:

Sun: Family Guy / American Dad - Sept 23rd

I bought the 1st season of the Showtime Show Weeds.  What a sweet show. It;s witty and vulgar and hip - everything I look for.  Check it out.

The theme song on season 2 is sung by a different artist each episode, too, which is very unique.

• Music from the show

What a fucked up event.

Just biked down there, took some pics, check them out here:

www.jasonthimmesch.com/bridge/1.jpg

www.jasonthimmesch.com/bridge/2.jpg

www.jasonthimmesch.com/bridge/3.jpg

Update:

Some guy on fark.com posted this pic of the underside of the bridge (where the homeless hang out)…..   check it out

I thought the iPhone hype would have permeated all parts of culture; I thought wrong.

Just right now, a shopped came up to me and asked:

Shopper: “Is there a new iPod type thing that… that… also works like a computer?”

Me: *dumfounded look*   “Ummm, you mean the iPhone?”

Shopper:  “Yes! Thats it.”

I was loling right after she left; I hope she didn’t hear me.

Alaskan Senator Ted Stevens home was raided today by order of a federal grand jury.

Rumor has it that he escaped through what appeared to be a truck, but ended up really being a series of tubes.

Hopefully any ‘internets’ sent by his staff don’t get tangled up again.

*chuckle* - I could go on for ages…

• It all started here
• Infamous song about Teddy
• TS’s oil connections - youtube

I recently started reading one of Alan Moore’s most famous graphic novels: The Watchmen. (wiki - amazon).

The book lives up to its hype: it is truly a masterpiece. I used to be slightly into comics when I was in my early teens, but that died out somewhat quickly. With the resurgance of movies based off of graphic novels (such as 300 and V for Vendetta), I have rediscovered a new genre of literature that is very interesting to me: comic books for adults.

Now, after dong some research on the web today, I have discovered that Warner Bros will be making a film adaptation next year, directed by Zach Snyder (of 300 fame). At first I was thrilled; but after my inital excitement set in, I pondered “How will the be able to recreate the ‘jumpiness’ of scenes that this comic book portrays?”. Even Alan Moore himself said that Watchmen would make a terrible movie - “You get people saying, ‘Oh, yes, Watchmen is very cinematic, when actually it’s not. It’s almost the exact opposite of cinematic.” I agree 100%.

But despite Alan’s wishes (or apparent anger, as was the case with V for Vendetta), I think Watchmen will be a successful flick.

If you haven’t read it yet, definitely pick it up on Amazon, or I might be willing to let you borrow mine.

Lost some posts due to a server move… it was my fault for delaying I guess.