Everything I Need to Know About (Real) Robots I Learned from Transformers
Transformers don't care about people, period. That's what I learned growing up in the 1980s, religiously watching a race of robot Titans from outer space wage a secret war on Earth. Transformers didn’t even want to be seen by humans.
- Daniel Wilson, writing for Wired.com

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The 17-year cicadas are emerging in the American Midwest. Don't miss out on this opportunity! Go round up as many as you can and eat 'em!

Here's a link to a bunch of cicada recipes. The German Chocolate Cicada Cake seems the most promising.

If you don't want to go to the trouble of cooking an actual meal, at least catch a couple of the little buggers ( Read more... )

- The Teaching Company - purveyor of non-credit college courses on audio and video disc - has put up a complimentary audio lecture on the Jamestown Settlement. It's 45 minutes long. There's no form to fill out or anything like that. You just click on the link and download the file as an MP3 or an M4B.

- The Alaska Department of Fish and Game is ( Read more... )

The Mr. Fusion from Back to the Future may not be too far away...

According to the New York Times, Dr. Richard Gross is developing a vegetable oil polymer that can be used as a wrapper or container, then when it's fulfilled its purpose, can be easily converted into biodiesel fuel.  Garbage into oil!

(This is especially useful to the military. Several ( Read more... )

Kurt Vonnegut is dead at the tender age of 84. Here's the CNN article. Apparently he suffered brain injuries a couple of weeks ago following a fall. Funny that was never reported, but I suppose we were all too worried about Don Imus mouthing off and those racy pictures of Sanjaya's sister to be bothered with some old novelist bonking his head.

I ( Read more... )

Holy crap!

From CNN.com:

"A 66-year-old man saved his grandson from the grip of a 16-foot-long (5 meter) anaconda by beating the snake with rocks and a knife for half an hour, authorities said Thursday."

Suddenly, that episode of Bonanza where Hoss Cartwright pistol-whipped a grizzly bear doesn't seem so far-fetched...