The largest evacuation in Germany since WW II is underway in the town of Koblenz, Germany, after an unexploded 4000 lb “air mine” from WW II was discovered on the banks of the Rhine river. The prison, 2 hospitals and 45,000 residents have to be evacuated this weekend, so that experts can defuse the rusty, […]
Today the US Senate rejected the Udall Amendment to the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) and decided to bring this country closer to marital law than ever. The NDAA contains language that declares that the United States is a battlefield and that the US military has the authority to detain ANYONE for ANY reason and […]
As the Left in the US has become quite disillusioned with the Obama administration, and the conservative Tea Party movement is deflating, Occupy Wall Street and the entire Occupy movement managed to shine a huge spotlight on the biggest problem in America: corporate greed. Occupy’s actions bring focus to populist anger about the “1 percent” […]
Letter from Kurt Vonnegut to Marianne Brown shared on Letters of Note. Kurt, we miss you.
Partytime! Tapping a keg of Foothills Sexual Chocolate Stout and grilling goat sausages down by the pond. Good fun! Dan poured the first pint on 11/11/11 at 11:11 AM EST. Funny: that keg was filled at Foothills Brewery on 1/10/11. […]
In the NY Times, Christopher McDougall writes about barefoot running and raves about the merits of a 100-year-old training exercise called 100 Up: It was five months since I discovered W.S. George’s “100-Up,” and I’d been doing the exercise regularly. In George’s essay, he says he invented the 100-Up in 1874, when he was an […]
11/1/11 (or 1.11.11) – crazy date today! And most likely we’ve also crossed the 7 Billion mark in earth’s human population and we’re now gunning it for the 8 Billion mark sometime around 2020. Is it time to panic? Depends on which estimate in the graph below becomes a reality. The reality is also that […]
Turns out P. T. Barnum never did say “There’s a Sucker Born Every Minute” … this is the crazy story of the Cardiff Giant From 1866 until 1868 Mr. George Hull, of Binghamton, New York studied archeology and paleontology. Over this period of time Hull contemplated how to pull off a hoax. It seems that […]
Yesterday I went on a bit about how I think how cool Durham is. Little did I know that Durham is in fact Apple-cool. World-series level. Two fine Durham business establishments make a cameo appearance in the World-series Apple ad for the new jesus-phone. The ad features a new voice assistant called Siri and the […]
This afternoon was one of those Durham-is-cool moments. When I got off work and I was waiting for Julia, I saw that they were unloading a truckload of vintage Porsches from a truck parked across the street. One of the cars was an original 1950s Type 550 Porsche Spyder – worth about $1 Million! DSA was just […]
Last Saturday, October 8, at 11:30 PM Laura’s mom, Dolores, died at Eaton Community Hospice in Charlotte, MI. She had been in the hospital, then in rehab for a broken hip, when a CT scan revealed that she had advanced pancreatic cancer. When we found out, Laura managed to get her mom into hospice fairly […]
At the #OccupyWallStreet protests today, one of the 700-or-so entrapped and arrested protestors was a 13-years-old girl, wearing a green GIR hat in the video below. Really, NY Police?! Really?!
Happy International Blasphemy Day!
This guy takes the Second Amendment to a whole new level: Stephen Forthman shoots first and asks questions later. He wears a shirt proudly displaying the words “I don’t dial 911” next to a picture of a hand gripping a sixshooter. When it comes time to contact local emergency services for assistance, he’d rather just […]
Romero Studios is the side business of musicians Roderick and Anisa Romero (founders of the 1980s-1990s trancey/alt.rock group Sky Cries Mary) The tree houses they build are not only gorgeous, they are also made almost entirely from reclaimed lumber. They have built tree houses for artists like Sting, Trudie Styler, Julianne Moore, Val Kilmer and […]
Today, I ran along Guess Rd, five miles North to the Citgo gas station at S. Lowell Rd, and back … 10 miles (16KM). The weather was beautiful, but the road seemed a bit busier than normally on a Sunday morning. I was only planning to add a single mile to last week’s 8M run, […]
This horse is CRAZY! He’s a KILLER!! Seriously … a couple of weeks ago Wally attacked me and Laura. He tried to kick me, backing up to me and kicking in my direction and then he bit Laura! But why? Usually he’s a gentle soul, always trying to please. Sometimes he can be stubborn. But […]
A few weeks ago, they finished repaving Guess Road from Umstead Road to the Orange County line and I was really happy to see the nice, wide shoulder they built. They added about 2-3 feet on either side of this fairly busy rural, 2-lane highway. I used to bike up Guess Road to Little River Park […]
This morning, Irene made landfall near Cape Lookout on the North Carolina coast as a Cat 1 hurricane. We’re about 180 miles (290 KM) inland from Cape Lookout and so Irene was not a big threat to us. Still, we stocked up on food, gas for the grill and gasoline for the chainsaw. Just in […]
Today, at 1:51 PM I was in the bathroom getting ready to take a shower after a long run this morning and an hour of horseback riding, when the damn house started shaking. “Wow – that’s an earthquake” I thought. I was right – it was a 5.9 earthquake in Virginia that was felt all […]
