Philibuster

Yeah so more than a year ago I lost my multi-tool. I lost at a party at my old house where I was using it to open up and shotgun beers. So yeah I was just a little bit drunk by the end of the night.

When I woke up the next day it was no where to be found and for the life of me I couldn’t remember where the last place I had it was. After looking everywhere in the house I figure someone had walked off with it and resigned myself to buy a new one. Last night I popped open a beer with my new one and sat down to watch some TV. After that beer I got up to grab another beer and couldn’t find the multi-tool. I knew it had to be in the house, I mean come on it was only one beer thus far. Ah, obvious idea it must have come off my belt loop while sitting down watching TV. I walk over and feel around and in about 3 seconds pull it out of the chair. I do a double take wait a minute this doesn’t look like my multi-tool but it was. Shaking off the confusion I suddenly realize that this is the one I lost more than a year ago.

A second wave of confusion hits me. Why would it just be sitting there pretty much sticking out between the cushions when I have since moved, lost many remotes, etc in the same recliner and successfully found them all by searching for it. Surely I would have found the lost multi-tool in the interim with all the digging in there I’ve done. But no there it was sitting right there more than a year later.  Then weird part of it number two, I couldn’t find the new one.  Nowhere to be found. Checked the recliner and now armed with the knowledge that if the one from a year ago could elude capture for that long the new one had to be in there somewhere and I was going to find it. I turned the thing over went at it from the bottom. Nothing. Tried from the top the sides felt everywhere I could get my hand/arm in, but nothing.

So I sat down to continue watching TV, drink my second beer and contemplate the existence of trans dimensional wormholes that eat and crap multi-tools. About an hour later or so and after several back and forths with the recliner I tried again and this time found the new one pretty easily.

Meh, weird. Still surprising that the old one stayed in there that long esp with all the hunting I do in my house for lost remotes and video game controllers.

Too bad that wormhole doesn’t take farts to a different universe.

Alright if you need gift ideas here you go. Buy me these, or at least make me some. I think they would fit right in at my house. They are coasters, although real ninja stars are always welcome too. Mine are getting a little old and beaten up.

Please?

via Cool Material

Researchers have found a gene that seems to remove pain from mice when they snip that gene out. The mice still react to heat and pressure though.

One of the biggest problems some people have with eating meat is how horrible the conditions are in the meat factories. Now I love me some meat, enough that regardless I’m going to keep eating it, but I do feel that there is a line that should not be crossed when getting me that meat. Animals do feel pain/fear and there is no question about that. Any method that goes overboard in the slaughter of animals for consumption should be curtailed as to not cause undue suffering.

I believe that slaughter should be quick and clean as possible. Of course however you do it there will be that little problem with the pain aspect. Cost vs efficiency is always a debate with any product or service. Which has lead some scientists to wonder if we are just approaching the subject the wrong way. How about we just bred the animals so they don’t feel pain? If the animal doesn’t feel any pain then it opens up a lot of options for slaughter. There is still the fear aspect but that’s a lot easier to control when the animal just doesn’t feel pain.

Now of course this brings up some interesting points to consider that will probably render this idea to the mental trash can before anything comes out of it. It’s all well and good to make it so the animals don’t feel pain when they die, but they have lives too. Pain, while annoying at best, is a useful tool. It tells us to get the hell out or stop whatever the hell you’re doing because whatever it is, it’s fucking shit up. The care for animals who will happily walk into whatever danger because of a lack of pain, will probably be complicated to say the least. There will be/is the concern about the life condition and mistreatment of the animals. Which is right now a large talking point already. The slaughter houses end up hiring people who don’t really care about the animals and with lacks policy enforcement there will be mistreatment, just like there is now, but with the added difference of the removal of guilt. “Hey I can beat the crap out of this animal because it doesn’t feel pain.” That is not the goal nor something that I would nor do endorse.

In the end I think that this is not really the best option at all. There are too many problems with it and it doesn’t really accomplish what can’t and isn’t already being done. Something that the holier than thou vegans don’t tell you is that not every plant is a hell hole. Most slaughter houses do a fine job on making sure the animals die humanely. I’ve seen videos on various different mass farming plants for many different types of animals and have been quite impressed with with what I’ve seen. I have also seen the bad stuff as well and yeah I agree that kind of stuff should not happen. Not every farmer is a dumb animal hater who just got into the business in order to torture.

Via Io9

I like that we live in such a weird and crazy world that there are parallels in real life to a lot of the weird and crazy stuff in comics and movies. Not all things mind you. Hollywood does need more science in their movies. Real science not that crap that is left after everyone has thrown out the bits they don’t like.

The premise of wolverine is a pretty crazy one. Super fast healing, and claws that shoot through his own skin when he pulls them out. Yeah ow, but how’s this for real life. The Spanish ribbed newt goes all I’m going to fuck you up when in danger, but the trouble is that it doesn’t really have much in the way of an arsenal. It’s pretty small and doesn’t really have nice big sharp claws. It does however have poison and some nice sharp rib bones. The pesky thing about ribs is that they are inside rather than outside. Can’t do much damage there can they and by the time your attacker gets to them well he’s already gone through you at that point. “Haha, I cut your lip while you were eating me” doesn’t work as a catch phrase.

The solution to this is to simple take a nice big breath and shove those sharp ribs through your own skin and then into whoever is attacking you. Oh yeah and use that poison on the ribs as they come out. “Haha bet you didn’t see that coming did you I just killed you with one of my own ribs.” How’s that for hardcore. The wounds recieved from this defense heal pretty quickly too as amphibians are known to heal well.

Wow, there are some seriously cool dads out there. Check this out.

Wow that is one awesome bed. I mean for a 10 year old. I’m totally happy with my water bed. Yeah.

But what strikes me is the layout of the room and potential for other uses. Ok say you don’t like star wars or you know, want to get laid in your own room. The rest of that room looks like it would be a pretty nice pad, if a little sterile for me. Just change the Y-wing out with something in the similar shape and you could have a little floating seat for two instead of the cockpit and you could mount a tv or whatnot in front. Wouldn’t be a bad setup for any age.

Via Gizmodo.

Awesome the LRO is taking more pictures and now it has some of the Apollo landing sites.  Link. Go look at them. I’ll wait.

Good ok well I hope you aren’t disappointed because all they are are a few dots on a picture of the moon. Because if you are I’m going to smack you for not understanding the real importance of the photos. It is enough to see that yes there is stuff up there, and have a picture of the most historic event in human history. Just like that blurry not awesome picture of your kid doing something special it’s not the quality of the photo but what’s in it that matters. Besides we’ll get some better photos once LRO has reached it’s final orbit. It’s still a little far away at the moment. They say it will get three times as clear. Awesome. It’s a pretty we don’t have HiRise up there because that would be even better. Meh, what I want is Moon landing and travel to be so common that we go back to the same site and see how it changed up close and personal. That won’t happen for awhile, it’s expensive and hard so why go back to the same place go somewhere new and well NASA has been stupid (Though most of the blame lies on the government and the public) and been stuck in low earth orbit.

We need to go back to the moon and elsewhere.

Alright so I’ve briefly talked about miracle berries here and mentioned that I would throw a miracle berry party. Well I bought some and put together a little gathering at my house. The plan was for about 10 people myself included to show up at my house and drink and eat a bunch of sour stuff after using the berries. (I’m going to just keep on calling them berries even though they were the tablets you can buy off of think geek.)

I bought a bunch of stuff for this event and well out of the 10 people that I had thought of a few of them canceled a day before so I had some open slots, I invited two other people from work but it was on short notice and they couldn’t come. I understood I did tell them like the same day and they work late, but the other two people from work that I gave good notice for didn’t come citing excuses but I seem to hear that all the time. They suck, and the berries turned out to be awesome so it’s their loss.

Total turn out four people plus a baby. I really need to get some more reliable friends. But anyways.

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It’s crazy what you can find on the internet. Take this for example if for some reason you have a burning desire to hear what’s going on in our skies you can listen in on air traffic controllers. It’s a live feed too. Pretty cool huh? I’ve added it to the awesomely awesome links page.

Remember that awesome papercraft castle I posted about a little while ago? Well it’s gonna burn. The artist has decided to move his work of art out of this world in a roaring inferno. Quite a send off. But it will only be worth it if they train high speed slomo cams on it from every angle, piece it together with a kick ass heavy metal song and post it on the internet for free so I can view it. Otherwise, what’s the point.

I feel, after seeing this, that I can not call myself skilled or creative in any way shape or form. Of course I am because I’m awesome, but I do have to give respect where deserved and this deserves a lot of it.

God Damn! That is some crazy freaking work. It has it’s own lighting and moving train system. This will probably be the only time I get blown away by nothing more than paper.