Quote of the Day

Despite the neutrality of his diction, Martinez’s choices are idiosyncratic. Everything he sees reveals him. And syntactically, though he bends every rule to the breaking point, you can’t bust him.

From The Art of the Police Report by Ellen Collett, via Kick Him, Honey. Read the whole thing. It's kinda long, but it is smooth.

The Teapots, er, UFO's, Are Coming!

ALIEN SPACESHIPS TO ATTACK EARTH IN DECEMBER!

Stu sent me the link, and I could not not post it. Weekly World News - The World's Only Reliable News. I think that about says it all.

Update February 2017 replaced missing image.

Russell's Teapot

Stu mentions Russell's Teapot. Thinking it is some kind of geometric figure, I looked it up. It's not, it's something Bertrand Russell made up to illustrate an argument:

If I were to suggest that between the Earth and Mars there is a china teapot revolving about the sun in an elliptical orbit, nobody would be able to disprove my assertion provided I were careful to add that the teapot is too small to be revealed even by our most powerful telescopes. But if I were to go on to say that, since my assertion cannot be disproved, it is an intolerable presumption on the part of human reason to doubt it, I should rightly be thought to be talking nonsense. If, however, the existence of such a teapot were affirmed in ancient books, taught as the sacred truth every Sunday, and instilled into the minds of children at school, hesitation to believe in its existence would become a mark of eccentricity and entitle the doubter to the attentions of the psychiatrist in an enlightened age or of the Inquisitor in an earlier time.[1]

 But this got me to thinking, what if there is a teapot out there in space, orbiting the sun? OK, very unlikely, but if a space faring civilization has ever been here they may have left some evidence floating around in space, and if we ever expand our sphere of influence outside low earth orbit, we might find some evidence of that.

There is the theory that the asteroid belt was once a planet, or tried to be a planet, or something. It could have been a planet, I mean, we have theories, but no one really knows what happened. And there could have been a civilization there and they may have left artifacts behind. And being as they are floating in space, out of the reach of the natural forces found on the surface of a planet, they would be like they were when the planet was destroyed. Maybe.

P.S. Russell was 80 years old when he wrote this teapot story.
P.P.S. Even if it was a fricking enormous teapot, we still would not be able to detect it with our current instruments. I mean, even with the Hubble we can't even see the stuff we left on the moon. The smallest thing the Hubble can pick out on the moon is 300 feet across.

Neighborhood Kid

Jets QB opens up about his ongoing battle with drug addiction and mental illness.
I don't think I ever met Erik Ainge, but he grew up a couple of blocks from here and was friendly with our oldest. We saw him play football for the local high school when he was a senior there. I never heard anything but good things about him.

Trivia

Steve sent me this list. It's all useless, but it is good for maintaining your perspective.

Geography & Natural Resources

• More than half of the coastline of the entire United States is in Alaska.
• Percentage of Africa that is wilderness 28%. Percentage of North America that is wilderness 38%.
• Siberia contains more than 25 percent of the world's forests.
• The Amazon rainforest produces more than 20 percent of the world's oxygen supply.
• The Amazon River pushes so much water into the Atlantic Ocean that more than one hundred miles at sea, off the mouth of the river one can dip fresh water out of the ocean. The volume of water in the Amazon River is greater than the next eight largest rivers in the world combined and three times the flow of all rivers in the United States.
• Antarctica is the only land on our planet that is not owned by any country. 90% of the world's ice covers Antarctica. This ice also represents 70% of all the fresh water in the world. As strange as it sounds, Antarctica is essentially a desert. The average yearly precipitation is about two inches. Although covered with ice (all but 0.4 percent of it), Antarctica is the driest place on the planet, with an absolute humidity lower than the Gobi desert.
• In the Sahara Desert, there is a town named Tidikelt, which did not receive a drop of rain for ten years.
• Canada has more lakes than the rest of the world combined.
• There are no natural lakes in the state of Ohio, everyone is man-made.
• Istanbul, Turkey is the only city in the world located on two continents.

Names

• Brazil got its name from the nut, not the other way around.
• Canada is an Indian word meaning "Big Village."
• The term "The Big Apple" was coined by touring jazz musicians of the 1930's who used the slang expression "apple" for any town or city. Therefore, to play New York City is to play the big time: The Big Apple.
• St. Paul, Minnesota was originally called Pigs Eye after a man named Pierre "Pig's Eye" Parrant who set up the first business there (bootlegging).

Inhabitants

• Damascus, Syria, was flourishing a couple of thousand years before Rome was founded in 753 BC, making it the oldest continuously inhabited city in existence.
• The first city to reach a population of 1 million people was Rome, Italy in 133 B.C. There is a city called Rome on every continent.
• Next to Warsaw, Chicago has the largest Polish population in the world.
• There are more Irish in New York City than in Dublin, Ireland,
• more Italians in New York City than in Rome, Italy, and
• more Jews in New York City than in Tel Aviv, Israel.
• The smallest sovereign entity in the world is the Sovereign Military Order of Malta (SMOM). It is located in the city of Rome, Italy, has an area of two tennis courts, and as of 2001 has a population of 80, 20 less people than the Vatican. It is a sovereign entity under international law, as is the Vatican.

Roads

• Woodward Ave. in Detroit, Michigan, carries the designation M - 1, because it was the first paved road anywhere.
• Chances that a road is unpaved in the USA ~ 1 percent Chances that a road is unpaved in Canada ~ 75 percent.
• The Eisenhower interstate system requires that one mile in every five must be straight. These straight sections are meant to be usable as airstrips in times of war or other emergencies.

No More Linked-In For Me

It seemed like a good idea when I first got laid off, but it has been nothing but an annoyance ever since. Seems like every time I wanted to do something with it, they wanted me to sign up for their premium service. Anyway, I'm cutting back on non-essential stuff. I still have four e-mail accounts, but I only use G-mail. I suppose I should figure out how to close those accounts I am not using, though I am not sure it can be done. I do post random stuff on Facebook, mostly videos, because it's quick and easy, and I still post stuff on this blog, though my real life seems to be interfering with that.

Good Morning

Def Leppard - Rock Of Ages (1983)
There is another version on YouTube that is almost identical, but the volume is much reduced. This one is better. The video portion is nothing to write home about, but the song itself is glorious, especially for Monday morning. Weird how you can get the song with the video for free, but not just the song by itself.

Update August 2015: Replaced missing video.

Update March 2021: Replaced missing video.