I’ll be watching this in subtitles (Hopefully). Honestly, I’ll watch it either way. This is going to be so good. From master animator Hayao Miyazaki (Castle in the Sky, My Neighbor Totoro, Princess Mononoke, Spirited Away, and Howl’s Moving Castle)! I love the ocean/water theme of this one too. Kind of my element. August is going to be a awesome film month.
Plain City, Utah Police in Utah say a 7-year-old boy led officers on a car chase in an effort to avoid going to church.
This kid can drive! He has a definite future in race car driving. Apparently he drives so good due to the car racing video games he plays. I saw the family interviewed on the Today Show.
Ok, the last one isn’t a billboard, but still…
Billboards: For the Lulz originally appeared on My[confined]Space on July 30, 2009.
Belarus’ Odd Military Skills originally appeared on My[confined]Space on July 30, 2009.
MillerCoors LLC has begun testing the sale of $20 draft-beer systems for consumers to drink at home, part of a string of new products and package innovation from beer giants grappling for market share in a crowded, slow-growing industry.
MillerCoors, the second-largest U.S. brewer by revenue, has begun testing the 1.5-gallon “Home Draft” for its biggest brands — Miller Lite and Coors Light — in about a half-dozen cities, including Dallas, Phoenix and San Diego. The boxed product, which is designed to fit into refrigerators for drinkers to consume periodically, rather than for one-time party use, comes amid packaging overhauls by the U.S. units of Heineken NV and Anheuser-Busch InBev NV.
via MillerCoors Tests a Draft-Beer Box for the Fridge – WSJ.com.
this is a good idea. Now I can just buy a couple of these every month and be set for a good time!
Although, they better have some kind of technology in there that’s better then the ‘mini kegs’ that I can already buy at winn dixie. Cause those taste like ass after about 2 days of sitting in the fridge.
While they’re shooting for the ‘we like draft better’ crowd I don’t see how they’re going to capture that “just carbonated 2 seconds ago’ taste.
Beretta U.S.A. Corp. announces outstanding June results. “We are extremely pleased by our commercial pistol market salesâ€, said Gary Ramey, Vice President of Sales & Marketing, “June sales are up 219% compared to last year. All of our pistol families are performing very well, with the Px4 Storm family up an amazing 451%. Our Cx4 Storm Carbine is also doing extremely well, up 1249% compared to last yearâ€.
via Beretta and Ruger both selling A LOT of guns | The Firearm Blog.
I knew that gun sales were up, but holy shit, 219% increases? 451% increases? What does this say about the state of the world that people are….oh wait, that’s right they’re afraid that Hussein Obama is going to take their gunz away.
/sigh.
Nerduo presents: The Battle — T-Shirt.
At the end of every G.I. Joe cartoon that was on during the 80′s there would be an educational bit about what to do when you see a fire or get pushed off a cliff into deep water. It would always end with “and now you know, and knowing is half the battle!”
yep. the other half is violence.
Fifteen years ago today, the game industry got on the same page for one shining moment to propose the video game ratings organization, the ESRB, to Congress.
Holy craps, has it really been 15 years since they started rating video games? I remember when it all started and I thought to myself “hey, that’s going to be pointless” and check it out, the ESRB is one of the most pointless ratings organizations out there. When was the last time you stopped to look at the ratings on a video game?
Explanation: Was Devils Tower once an explosive volcano? Famous for its appearance in films such as Close Encounters, the origin of Devil’s Tower in Wyoming, USA is still debated, with a leading hypothesis holding that it is a hardened lava plume that probably never reached the surface to become a volcano. The lighter rock that once surrounded the dense volcanic neck has now eroded away, leaving the dramatic tower. High above, the central band of the Milky Way galaxy arches across the sky. Many notable sky objects are visible, including dark strands of the Pipe Nebula and the reddish Lagoon Nebula to the tower’s right. Green grass and trees line the moonlit foreground, while clouds appear near the horizon to the tower’s left. Unlike many other international landmarks, mountaineers are permitted to climb Devils Tower.
APOD
Kinda cool. I had no idea there was such an interesting story behind it.
Even as the Obama administration moves ahead with modest plans to tackle global warming, the public relations battle on the issue is as fierce as ever. Some recent scientific stumbles haven’t helped. In fact, they have given fodder to climate change skeptics, some of whom have seized on the errors to attack the credibility of scientists and sway public opinion.Many scientific organizations, such as the NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies, now put data (some near real-time) on their Web sites. The information ranges from raw numbers from weather stations to computed values of, for instance, monthly global temperature anomalies, which represent temperature deviations from a historical average. Typically researchers make corrections and adjustments as they check equipment and replicate experiments.
In today’s politically charged environment, though, these routine corrections have become ammunition in the warming war. For example, last November Internet users found that raw data erroneously replicated from Russian weather stations contributed to a suspiciously high temperature anomaly that Goddard published. Two years ago the blog Climate Audit, run by amateur scientists and self-described “science auditor†Steve McIntyre, found that an error in a computer algorithm had ranked 1998 as the warmest U.S. year, instead of the correct 1934. (The change did not significantly affect global values: 1998 was still the earth’s warmest year as ranked by satellites, although Goddard has 2005 as slightly warmer.)
But perhaps the mistake that got the most publicity for skeptics happened in February as an automated system of the U.S. National Snow and Ice Data Center (NSIDC) published information on the extent of Arctic sea ice. It contained a small but strange hitch indicating that enough ice to cover California was suddenly gone. Internet readers pounced, sending e-mails to the center and also to skeptical bloggers such as meteorologist Anthony Watts. His blog, Watt’s Up with That?, is read daily by about 21,000 people around the world (according to Quantcast, which compiles Web site statistics), and Watts’s post about the error mushroomed across the Web. Within hours the NSIDC withdrew the data, ultimately finding that the glitch resulted from a faulty sensor on a satellite. The NSIDC scientists admitted the mistake, corrected the problem using a different sensor and audited all past data.
But the public-relations damage was done. Skeptical bloggers and their readers called the NSIDC’s competence into question and accused it of tweaking data. The NSIDC sent out a press release pointing out that real-time data are always less reliable than thoroughly reviewed archived data.
Word of the otherwise prosaic issue spread via news reports, and the NSIDC took its lumps. “We were too naive,†admits Walt Meier, a researcher at the center. “We weren’t prepared for how closely people were watching.†The science community knows that such adjustments happen all the time, he says, but “the undermining of public confidence in our data comes from ignorance of use.†But he still believes that open-source data are “ultimately a great thing.â€Marc Morano, executive director of the dissenting site Climate Depot, says, “I think the fluctuations and errors of a few data sets are important.†But drawing attention to these errors, he argues, is not the main reason skeptics are gaining ground.
Rather he believes that “lack of warming in recent years†has helped his cause—although this decade is the hottest in recorded history, there hasn’t been a record-breaking year in 10 years. Moreover, recent papers suggest that natural climate fluctuations might continue to mask the expected warming trend for up to three decades. He also notes the “sheer number of scientists speaking out to dissent for the first time,†although a University of Illinois survey in January of some 3,000 scientists found that 97 percent of them think humans play a role in climate change.
tl; dr?
Climate change: One step forward; Two steps back.
Scientific American<
Media Matters.org
Egypt is now Iraq? Fox News fails once again.
A pint of the black stuff a day may work as well as a low dose aspirin to prevent heart clots that raise the risk of heart attacks.
Drinking lager does not yield the same benefits, experts from University of Wisconsin told a conference in the US.
Guinness were told to stop using the slogan decades ago – and the firm still makes no health claims for the drink.
The Wisconsin team tested the health-giving properties of stout against lager by giving it to dogs who had narrowed arteries similar to those in heart disease.
They found that those given the Guinness had reduced clotting activity in their blood, but not those given lager.
I ♥ Guinness and Stout Beer in general.
tiki’s balls originally appeared on My[confined]Space on July 26, 2009.
Vintage Lingerie Ads originally appeared on My[confined]Space on July 26, 2009.
The second one reveals a lot. Cannot wait for this movie! The alien weapons are going to be awesome!
Also found the original short film that the movie is based on. I haven’t watched it because I want this movie to be completely fresh to me. Still here it is if anyone wants to watch it.
He’s only kind of bitter, which I think means he’s actually handling his life very well, all things considered, but man — he just keeps rocking slowly back and forth, like a bomb victim, still reeling from shell-shock.
via Topless Robot – Not the Phantom Menace’s #1 Fan.
If there were one thing in my life that I would love to see is for Wil Wheaton to impart how he overcame the Weasley Crusher hate and the fans’ reaction to that character. Jake Lloyd is a perfect candidate for the next generation’s Wilw: he had a serious role in a serious movie that a lot of people didn’t take seriously, and now he’s feeling a tad bit bitter because of the experience. I hope the best for Jake!
The trailer for Marvel’s February 2010 direct to DVD release Planet Hulk debuted at the 2009 San Diego Comic Con
via Planet Hulk Direct to DVD Animated Trailer : Superheroes-R-Us.
One of my dogs, Virginia, went blind late last year. I knew it was coming; she has glaucoma, and lost sight in one of her eyes a while before. We’d been keeping the other eye alive with lots and lots of medicine, but the vet told us it was just a matter of time. So, when the morning came and I found her running around crazily all over the house, nose to the ground, I shouldn’t have been surprised.
via Virginia, the Blind Dog – Boing Boing.
The story is pretty heart breaking and heart warming all at the same time.  I did have to lol at the squirrel chasing adaptation methods, lol
For now this is enough… At least you get the gist.
ASHEVILLE, N.C. — A driver, now identified as an Asheville firefighter, shot a bicycle rider because he was angry the man was riding with his child on a busy road, Asheville police said.
via Police: Asheville Firefighter Shot Bicyclist – Greenville News Story – WYFF Greenville.
I’ve gotten road rage before, but never enough to pull out my pistol and start shooting at bicyclists. I’m going to go out on a limb here and say that this guy likely has some anger management issues…
Pro police people are saying that it wasn’t racial since the 911 caller never identified the men as black, breaking in to the house. It sounded to me at the 2 minute mark that the 911 operator asked if they’re black or hispanic, white didn’t seem to be an option.
Daily Beast:
Here it is: the 911 call made by Henry Louis Gates Jr.’s neighbor, as she witnessed what she thought may have been a break-in. The caller does not describe Gates or his companion as “black.”
A New Zealand swimmer got into difficulty when a friendly dolphin stopped her returning to shore.
The woman had been swimming with the dolphin, called Moko, at Mahia Beach on the North Island. But the playful dolphin did not want the fun to end.
People at a nearby cafe eventually heard her cries for help, and rowed out to her rescue.
She was found, exhausted and extremely cold, clinging to a buoy. She said the dolphin had meant no harm.
The woman, who wanted to remain anonymous, was wearing a wetsuit. But even that eventually failed to protect her from the winter cold.
Panic
She told the Gisborne Herald newspaper: “I went out by myself quite late, which probably was not the wisest thing to do.
“We were playing around for a while but then when I wanted to go back in, he just wanted to keep playing. I became exhausted and started to panic.”
Map
Moko took up residence at Mahia Beach, south of Gisborne, two years ago, and has become a major attraction.
During the summer, hundreds of people take to the water to play with him. But there are fewer people around in the winter, and residents believe he gets lonely and bored.
Moko, a three-year-old bottlenose dolphin, gained worldwide fame in March last year, when he was seen coming to the rescue of two pygmy sperm whales.
The whales – a mother and daughter – were exhausted and confused, unable to find their way past a sandbar. Moko was seen guiding them down a narrow channel to safety.
But scientists are concerned about Moko’s welfare. In a recent study they found he had been scarred by boats and a fish hook.
They pointed out that of the 30 “lone” dolphins identified around the world, 14 had already been injured or had died as a result of their interaction with humans.
A rare whale was discovered wedged on to the bow of a cruise ship when it docked in a Canadian port.
The 70ft fin whale, a threatened species in Canada, was found when the Sapphire Princess docked at the Port of Vancouver, the cruise company said.
It said it had “strict whale avoidance” measures and it was unclear where, when or how the whale became stuck.
Tourists looked on as the dead whale was examined by fisheries department staff.
The cruise ship had arrived from Alaska about 0630 local time on Saturday.
“We are not aware that any whales were sighted as the ship sailed through the Inside Passage to Vancouver,” Princess Cruises said.
The whale was on top of the bulbous bow, the part of the bow that goes through the water, Princess Cruises said.
Its whale avoidance measures include altering course and reducing speed if whales are spotted nearby.
The captain was unaware of the whale’s presence until the ship docked, said a spokeswoman from the Department of Fisheries and Oceans quoted by the Vancouver Sun.
The whale could have been struck north of Vancouver Island since fin whales are not normally found in the Johnstone or Georgia straits, Lisa Spaven added.
She also said “vessel strikes are a very real threat to fin whales,” but were hard to quantify as incidents often went unreported.
The fisheries department will need to conduct a post-mortem examination to find out if the whale was dead or alive before the collision.
According to the Vancouver Star, two tugboats were hired by the fisheries department to nudge the whale from the bow.
It was then moved to a barge.
Ten years ago another cruise ship arrived at the same port with a whale on the bow, the newspaper said.
BBC
How do you not notice a 70ft, several ton whale, stuck to your bow?
