Pigeon Impossible

Pigeon: Impossible is the tale of Walter, a rookie secret agent faced with a problem seldom covered in basic training: what to do when a curious pigeon gets trapped inside your multi-million dollar, government-issued nuclear briefcase.

This six minute animation by Lucas Martel has won all kinds of awards and now it's viral on the Internet. Watch it full screen and turn up your speakers to get the best of the the fabulous big-band sound track. And then go here to see videos on how Pigeon: Impossible was made.

Putting Newfoundland Back On The Map

I've posted before about the Island of Newfoundland not appearing on a map of the world published by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. Well, less than a week later, the big map now includes Newfoundland. It's a bit of a copy and paste job and the orientation of Newfoundland with the compass is, er, mysterious, but it's there, proving that emails and blog posts actually can work. Thanks Mr. and Mrs. Gates.

Canada Among Least Corrupt

Good old boring Canada. I had never heard of Transparency International until they published this report today. From the National Post:

Canada is viewed as one of the least corrupt countries in the world and is an "inspiration" for the U.S. and other nations in North and South America.

Canada's score, as high as 9.0 [out of 10] in 2002, slid to 8.4 in 2005 as a result of the Liberal sponsorship scandal. It bounced up to 8.7 in the 2007 TI index, a level it has maintained in the two subsequent TI studies.

Stupendous Soviet Flying Machines

Over at the indispensable English Russia, photo-realistic renderings of 1930s Soviet designs for monster airplanes. Some of these actually look like they might be able to fly, but the battleship turrets are a bit much. The Nazi flying saucer is way cool.

Come to think of it, this is kind of like the stuff I liked to draw in study hall. And by the way, don't blame me if you come up for air at English Russia and discover days have gone by. Not necessarily safe for work.

An Anti- Smoking Vaccine?

Pharmaceutical giant GlaxoSmithKline has signed a potential $500M licensing deal with Nabi Biopharmaceuticals for Nabi's new anti-smoking vaccine NicVAX.

NicVAX is an experimental therapy for the treatment of nicotine addiction and the prevention of smoking relapse. The vaccine is designed to stimulate the immune system to produce antibodies that bind to the nicotine molecules. Once bound together, they are too large to cross the blood-brain barrier. In this way, the nicotine is blocked from reaching the receptors in the brain that cause the highly-addictive pleasure sensation experienced by smokers and users of nicotine products.

Conrad Black On Teaching In Prison

Publishing magnate Conrad Black is still in a US prison, waiting, as he says, for "the U.S. Supreme Court’s disposition of the 15% or so of the charges made against me four years ago that survived the trial."

 

In the National Post (a paper he ironically used to own), he writes a wonderful essay on the unexpected rewards of teaching his fellow inmates.

Open Message to Google - Newfoundland Street View

Looking at the VOKL Sitemeter logs I see lots of hits from people trying to find out about Google Street View in Newfoundland. I've been interested ever since I saw a Google Street View camera car near St. John's on August 31st. I suspect we are not a high priority. They've published Halifax, but they haven't published PEI, Winnipeg, Regina or Edmonton yet. So this is an open message to Google Street View - what are ye at, b'ys? It could be worse. The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation has wiped Newfoundland clear off the map.

The Real Environmental Crisis

As I have written before, people often think that those of us who do not believe in the religion of global warmism automatically care nothing for the environment at all. And as I said, that is absolutely false.

Compared to what is actually happening in China right now, the theory of global warming is a poor joke. In that previous post I showed you a satellite picture of gross air pollution in China. Here, via Instapundit, are some frightening pictures of environmental armageddon in China, right on the ground, right now.

I just hope their economy grows fast enough that they begin to clean up their mess. As has already happened in the west.

Update: An interview with Lu Guang, the photographer.

LCROSS Made A Splash Afterall

New analysis of data from LCROSS, the spacecraft NASA intentionally crashed into the Moon last month shows evidence of "significant" water in Cabeus crater.

"We are ecstatic," said NASA's Anthony Colaprete,  "Multiple lines of evidence show water was present in both the high angle vapor plume and the ejecta curtain created by the LCROSS Centaur impact. The concentration and distribution of water and other substances requires further analysis, but it is safe to say Cabeus holds water."

Das Auto Ist Nicht Ein U-Boot

Das Auto ist ein $1.6M Bugatti Veyron. And if pelicans and cell phones distract you that much you probably should not drive it near a salt water lagoon. Salt water: submerging the value of your investment no matter how fast you bail it out. Sort of like GM come to think of it.

Update: Video of the crash. And not a pelican in sight. Must have been the cellphone, huh. If you are easily offended by language that people use, well, all the time to express sudden dismay, then turn off your speakers now.

More AGW Questions From The Times

Is this a trend? At the Times of London, more coverage of science contrary to the received wisdom of anthropogenic global warming.

I am fed up though, with the blatant Alinsky-isms "global warming deniers" and "climate change skeptics". These labels are used by the warmists to "freeze" and "polarize" their enemies. Why, if the science is so settled, do the warmists require such hard-left political tactics to support their cause?

From the comments:

Every scientist should be a skeptic, but since this is a political debate and not a scientific debate the real scientists are labeled as "deniers" and "sceptics." The true believers in the cult of MMGW should be labeled as "deacons" or "priests" or "grand poo-bahs" of Al Gore's made up religion.

Mikey's Missing Microbus Turns Up

A very pretty 1965 VW Microbus, stolen from an upholstery shop in 1974, has turned up in LA in sparkling condition. The ex-hippy who was, like, ripped off man, wants it back. An upholstery shop you ask? Why, that was to install the seats that could be made into beds, silly. See, it already had the big folding sunroof for letting out the smoke, er, letting in the starlight.

Sullenberger's Heroic Moment In 3D

Capt. Chesley B. "Sully" Sullenberger is the hero pilot who safely ditched his jetliner loaded with 155 souls in the Hudson River last January after multiple bird strikes killed his engines. His copilot that day was Jeff Skiles.

Now, ExoSphere 3D has created a stunning 3D reconstruction of the accident. You can watch the takeoff, bird strike and ditching in real time, overlaid with cockpit readings, real time transcripts of cockpit and air traffic control conversations. You can hear the icy calm of pilot Sullenberger and his co-pilot Skiles. And you can hear the helpless air traffic controller making alternate suggestions for runways right to splashdown. Gripping stuff.

25 Beautiful Macro Photographs

Expensive lenses and quite a bit of post-processing on display here, but stunning results. Also included, several links on macro photography, including one extremely useful one on how to get into macro photography without going broke.

Newfoundland Wiped Off The Map

Via Mashable, here's a map that shows where the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation has issued grants to scientists all around the world. If their map can manage to get in all those tiny little Arctic archipelagos, what became of the 15th largest island in the world?

Here is the website this map originally came from and here is an email address where you can raise cartographical hell, er, eyebrow.


UPDATE: Newfoundland is back on the map.

Have You Tried Bing Yet?

Bing is Microsoft's Google-competitor search engine. Bing was rolled out last June and has been steadily gaining a share of the search engine market which, except for Yahoo and other minor players, is virtually Google's private domain.

Yesterday Bing announced it will begin to integrate some search results from Wolfram Alpha, a more esoteric service which attempts to answer user questions. More from the New York Times.

And here, I posted some thoughts about how the Internet changes the way we think.

Rememberance Day

For Remembrance Day:

This is my grandfather L.J. Lawton of Bell Island, Newfoundland in September 1958. He is visiting the grave of his nephew - his sister's boy -  Myles Murphy, in Orléans, France.

Myles died on July 29, 1944. He was a Flight Engineer on a Sqdn. 570 RAF bomber that didn't make it back. He was 22.

The Pig Wins

A couple of weeks ago I blogged about George Bernard Shaw's advice: Never wrestle with a pig. You get dirty, and besides, the pig likes it. The context was the Obama administration's fight with Fox News.

Today the pig (Fox?) is grinning because the Mao-quoting White House communications director Anita Dunn, who first declared war on Fox, is quitting.

What A Croc

Via MSN Money:

Porsche is suing shoe company Crocs (CROX) because it doesn't like the way the company named one of its product lines the Crocs Cayman. That's because it would be so easy to, you know, confuse a luxury sports car with a rubber shoe.

Hotmail, Other Users, Got Phished

Last month, thousands of Hotmail, GMail and Yahoo users got phished. They were tricked into giving their passwords to a hacker who then uploaded them to an open website. An analysis of the published list shows some spectacularly foolish passwords and gives some hints on password security. From The Register:

The most common single password in the sample of 10,000 purloined Live ID login credentials ... was "123456", something only marginally more secure than the traditional favourite "password".

Perhaps it should be no surprise that someone who thinks "password" is a good password would also be easily tricked into giving it away.