It's a ridiculous world out there... and it's nuts too.

Not him but an actor playing the role

A nine-month-old was recently charged with attempted murder of a police officer in Pakistan. So the most logical question is: will authorities try him as an adult?

The police officer made the collar after the boy's father and grandfather reportedly tried and failed to kill him... and since the child was there too, the officer must have figured the infant was the "brains" of the group.

Happy ending, a diaper was changed and the "brains' was released to poop in freedom.

The San Antonio Spurs of the NBA will not be staying at a certain California hotel any more. Ghosts! Several players have experienced the spirit and to make matters worse, Harold Ramis, the man who wrote and starred in Ghostbusters isn't around to save them anymore... he recently died... and may now be part of the problem. Great movie though.

Science marches on: Recent actual and expensive medical studies have revealed that 1) drinking too much alcohol and/or excessive use of cocaine makes it really hard to drive an 18-wheeler; 2) there is a connection between stress and premature aging... stress doesn't help; 3) men like to look at curvaceous women but not necessarily face first; 4) athletes rarely are as smart as brain surgeons; 5) though more people are killed by bee stings than shark bites, most would still prefer to be stung by a bee. All of this raises the question: would you rather have a poke in the eye with a stick or a broken leg? I dunno, surprise me.

Wrigley Field, the home of the Cubs, just turned 100. And even better, the Cubs are ONLY 10 games out of first place on their march to another yet another World Series championship. The Cubbies are anxious to have someone who saw them win their last title--a mere five years after the Wright brothers' first flight--throw out the first pitch in their next championship, but no one living today was born yet... except some really old guy in Italy, and his arm is gone. Just you wait til Next Year!

     A first grade teacher admits to her class that she is a die-hard Cub fan. She asks her students to raise their hands if they 
      are Cub fans too. Not really knowing what a Cub fan is but wanting to be like their teacher, their hands explode 
      into the air.

     There is, however, one exception. One girl has not gone along with the crowd. The teacher asks why. "Because I'm 
     not a Cub fan," she says.

     "Then,"  asks the teacher, "what are you?"

     "I'm a Chicago White Sox fan."

     The teacher, a little perturbed, asks why she is a White Sox fan.

     "Well, My Dad and Mom are White Sox fans, and I am too."

     The teacher, somewhat upset, says, "That's no reason, What if your Mom was a moron and your dad 
     was a moron. What would you be then?"

     "Then," says the girl, "I'd be a Cub fan."
 

It is against the law in Liberty, NY to be annoying. Really! So a lead-footed hot-head, mad about a speeding ticket, sent his fine in with a note: "Bleep YOUR bleeping TOWN!" The town rejected the payment and charged him saying his note was "likely to cause annoyance or alarm."

I want one of those laws for my town too... but I'd amend it to include being a jerk too.

Chicago, in a NYTimes poll, was found to be the funniest city in the United States. No contest... Chicago has the Cubs so a sense of humor is essential. Boston, Atlanta, Washington D.C., Portland OR, New York, Los Angeles, Denver, San Francisco and Seattle were the top 10.

If you live in Virginia Beach, get a life. You were the least funny in all of America. Jacksonville, Miami, Tulsa, Arlington TX, El Paso, Ft. Worth and San Antonio are at the dourest bottom. Hmm, Texas has four. Wonder if that means anything?

You sourpusses better get with it. Monkeys have a better sense of humor than you do. Primates don't just laugh, they crack jokes. Koko, a gorilla, knows more than 2,000 words and and signs 1,000. She was recently asked, "What can you think of that's hard?" She signed "Rock" and "Work." She once tied her trainer's shoelaces together and signed "Chase."

Why do waiters like gorillas better than flies? Have you ever heard a customer complain "Waiter, there's a gorilla in my soup?"

One more Cub joke:

     Einstein invented a machine to reduce intelligence of the super smart so they could better fit 
     in with society.

     He strapped the apparatus on the head of his first genius volunteer test subject and turned 
     the machine on low, not sure of its power. After 30 seconds, he turned it off and anxiously asked 
     a test question: "What is the numerical equivalent of pi?"

     "3.14159 to infinity," the genius said.

     "Hmm," mused Einstein. Needs more power. So he set the machine to medium and tried again.

     "Now, he asked, Who was the 16th president of the United States?"

     "Lincoln, of course. Followed by Andrew Johnson and Ulysses S. Grant."

     Getting impatient, Einstein set the machine on high and let it rip. Strangely though, the machine 
     did not shut off automatically. As Einstein frantically tried everything, he finally had to smash the machine with a 
     hammer to make it stop. It had run on and on and on for more than five minutes.

     "Oh my God," he said concerned as he shook his subject., "Say something to me... say anything."

     The man shook his head and finally opened his eyes. Looking at an anxious Einstein, he hollered "HOW 'BOUT
     THEM  CUBS"

Confession: Don't tell anyone... I'm a Cub fan.


    

Science does it again!

Science digs up so many vital bits of information that you might wonder what we would know if it wasn't for science... and the funding that we provide for these critical studies that brings such vital information to us. Now we're pretty sure that giraffes can swim--if they want to-- even though no one has ever seen a giraffe swim. Why knowing that is important is beyond me... except maybe it will be a question on the new version of Trivial Pursuit.

When a giraffe's weight, body surface, natural buoyancy, muscle mass, etc. was calculated and put into a computer for extensive analysis, it proved giraffes can swim... theoretically. We also have evidence that some crazy giraffes were found on an island surrounded by deep water while trying out for a part in Lost, so those tall buggers can either swim, or fly.

But now, thanks actual photos found on the website Naked Forum, giraffes can not only swim but water ski and fly! And, by God, we are better off knowing this than not.

Thanks Naked Forum for making our lives richer.

If you want to see what giraffes actually do around water, watch this 56 second video:

What is the largest machine in the world?

No. It's not my toaster which I bought cheap. It's really 18-inches square... pretty big for a toaster.  But it's not that.

It is the Large Hadron Collider, (left: blogger's guess of what it might look like.... but probably not. May not be to scale) built to unlock the deepest secrets of the universe. (Of all the stars and sky we see-- millions of light years into space-- we see less than 4% of the universe's total mass.) This machine, built 300-feet underground near the Swiss/French border,  is basically a connected 17 mile circular tunnel. It contains two large tubes lined with powerful magnets and is helium-cooled to near absolute zero. It's sole purpose is to slam two infinitely tiny particles the size of the center of an atom (and yes, they are way too small to inscribe the Lord's Prayer on. You are, no doubt, thinking of the head of a pin) into each other at almost 186,000 miles per second. (This translates to going around the 17 mile loop 11,000 times per second.)

The cost is modest-- but only if you compare it to all the money in the world-- $10 billion. It's purpose is to try to recreate the Big Bang that scientists believe made our universe happen a mere 13.7 billion years ago. This is so sci-fi-incredible that some physicists say, if we are wrong in our calculations, this could trigger the destruction of earth.  But enough of this happy talk.

Some impressive work has already been done by an atom-smasher in the U.S. The pipsqueak 2.4-mile-wide Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider in Brookhaven, NY has smashed two super cooled, high-speed atoms into each other to create a temperatures of 7.2 trillion degrees-- 250,000 times hotter than the sun's core.

But really, how hot is 7.2 trillion degrees?  Well, the human body is 98.6 degrees; iron's melting point is 2,800 degrees; the Sun's core is 27 million degrees; a supernova is 180 billion degrees; one microsecond after the Big Bang, 7.2 trillion degrees; one millionth of a microsecond after the big bang, 18,000 trillion-trillion degrees.  I just can't imagine how long it would take to toast a marshmallow, but if you are an impatient sort, your s'mores are ready when you are.

Remember physicists, plenty of sun tan lotion... and wear those shades. (Seriously, pretty mind-boggling. Right?)

Sorry to keep bugging you...

... but God, isn't this incredible?

I guess I'm somewhat impressionable when it comes to the enormity of space. We (me and the rest of all the people on earth) have just discovered an infant solar system in the Orion Nebula. It is relatively close to us, a mere 1,200 light-years to the north. (That is, 5.9 trillion miles x 1,200-- why that's even more, if it were dollars, than our national budget!) This cloud of newly discovered hydrogen gas shows the birth of 42 new stars.

And no, I don't have a clue as to what all these terms mean. I just know that there are a lot of stars and a lot of space. In fact, if our earth were to be represented by a tiny grain of sand, there would not be enough room to produce a scale model of our solar system on the face of this very small, eensy-weensy planet! Whew.  (PS: the photo came from NASA.. it would have been less blurry but somebody moved.)

Bigger than a breadbox...

Who would'a believed that, with more than 100 billion billion (yep, that's right) stars in our known universe, we needed more? Well, we found 'em anyway.

Using a new technique that measures gravitational pull on known stars, scientists have uncovered about 400 new stars... so far. More discoveries are anticipated. Latest find are 32 planets, all more dense than any in our solar system. The largest is 7.1 times more dense than Jupiter... our largest. None are thought able to sustain any life as we know it.

Seven times more dense than earth? That means, hypothetically, Miss America would weigh about 750-800 pounds on Gliese 667 C. (Catchy name for a new planet, right?) What a babe!

More amazing... all of these new planets are REALLY CLOSE to Earth... about 30 to 150 light years away. With our universe estimated to be 5 to 6 billion light years across, these are right on our doorstep.

The enormity of our universe just blows my mind.

Wanna see something no-one alive today will ever see again?

By the end of August, mars, the Red Planet, the subject of so many of our solar myths and sci-fi flicks, will be closer to earth than ever before.

As our respective orbits come closer, mars will continue to brighten in our sky and by late August, the two planets will be a mere 34,649,589 miles apart... a hair's breadth away in space terms!

Mars will rise in our late August sky at about 10 pm (EDT) and reach its peak at 12:30 am. Now here's the good part. It will look as large as our full moon to the naked eye! Imagine that.

Martians for dinner, anyone? Oh, it's a cook book.