Here it is, kids: Tod Holton, Super Green Beret.

The good people over at Saint Aardvark the Carpeted have provided this handy timeline discussing the disembodied, floating head of Ayn Rand and her (its?) exploits through the last fifty years or so, at least up to that ugly episode at the Montreal Olympics. Enjoy.

It’s also worth noting that these guys have the best 404 error page I’ve seen yet.

Ladies and gentlemen, now there’s a company that can service all your leech-related medical needs.

A Swedish study suggests that any two people could be connected by a chain of only 2 or 3 sexual relationships.

Make up your own joke.

Apparently, if you’re cool enough and have enough money, you, too can take a ride on the infamous Vomit Comet.

And, if you’re also a famous magician, you can ride with Billy Gibbons. Cool.

Reuters reports that Mississippi blues legend John Lee Hooker died today (21 June) in San Francisco. He was 83 (according to the Reuters story, which lists no birthdate) or 80 (according to the bio at the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, which claims 20 August 1920). We’re running out of blues legends. If you get the chance to see B. B. King, Koko Taylor, Bo Diddley, or Gatemouth Brown, by all means go.

Somebody’s got a little too much free time, and I think they spent it all watching the Journey episode of Behind The Music. Well, at least the time they didn’t spend on this. I know it’s cheesy, but stick with it. At least to the moose part.

Tom Stoppard has a great piece in the Times Literary Supplement about the nature of art and the role of the artist. It’s short and thought-provoking; check it out.

I found this pleasantly odd. We’re all very used to seeing publicity or concert photos of Jim Morrison, but candid snapshots aren’t typically part of the mix. These photos were taken in June of 1971, about two weeks before he died (or, if you’re one of the faithful, “about two weeks before he went underground to await Elvis.”).

Presumably, this is what happens when unresolved childhood Pinewood Derby issues resurface in the power tool department of Home Depot. Or something. (Thanks, Mikey!)

Ladies and gentlemen, I give you Cooking with Bigfoot (episode 1).

The Sunday Times notes that certain Bond gadgets have become a reality — and at less than twenty large.

They’ve got all sorts of cool stuff, and all if it’s better than what we’ve got — better cell phones, neater gadgets, funnier government, and even square watermelons.

A lovely collection of signs, some of which are amusing (some, alas, are not).

Modern life is difficult, and it’s hard to know which way to go — but Journey understands.

A guy in the UK has set up his consumer-grade telescope and web cams in such as a way as to capture very cool images of, among other celestial objects, the International Space Station. Well worth checking out (big page, though).

Richard Yates was a fine writer, an exemplar of the postwar ennui just under the surface of the booming 50’s economy. His work is sort of a precursor to the minimalism and tiny heartbreaks of Raymond Carver and others, but few have read his amazing books or short stories.

I got to know Yates when he was a visiting writer at the University of Alabama; I was still an undergraduate. He liked it there, and stayed until his death in 1992. By then, most of his work was out of print — the worst of all possible literary fates.

Just now — May, in fact — Holt has published his collected stories, which you should buy and read. Additionally, perhaps his finest novel is actually still in print: Revolutionary Road may break your heart, but it’s one of the finest novels I’ve read. William Styron called it a “deft, ironic, beautiful novel that deserves to be a classic,” and Vonnegut referred to it as “The Great Gatsby of my time . . . one of the best books by a member of my generation.”

In any case: James Crumley has a fine rememberance in the Boston Review; a few months ago, Stewart O’Nan had a piece there as well. Don’t miss either. If that’s not enough, I’ve reposted an essay I wrote about him about six years ago.

I’m amazed — and pleased — at the attention I’ve received from far-flung friends and family about the Houston flooding. The answer is: I’m fine, and everything I own is precisely as dry as it should be. Thank God. For a while my street was more of a small river, but my it appears my townhouse is both far enough back and high enough (maybe 12-18″ up from the street) that water never seriously threatened my home. The Intrepid Dr. Science Girl wasn’t quite so lucky, and had water enough in her bedroom to soak her carpet, but no real property damage (or, rather, no damage to property that belonged to HER).

Perhaps the most amusing bit is this: many folks got marooned in bars Friday night, and were unable to leave until six-ish on Saturday morning. Oh, Damn!

A few links with flood photos. Some are quite dramatic, particularly the ones of US 59 and Interstate 10 (best at the Chronicle and the personal site).

• Houston Chronicle
• Dallas Morning News
• Another news site
• A personal site of someone I don’t know. This page takes a while to load, but the shots of 59 are particularly dramatic.

Years ago, when Java first came out, we joked about Java-enabled toasters. Turns out, it’s not such a joke.

Well, first it looks a lot like scientists may have managed to exceed the speed of light, but only sort of. Senior NoGators physics correspondent Dr. Carla Finch points out that:

“This sounds kind of fishy to me. It seems to use a similar phenomena to that was used to ‘stop’ a light pulse. This whole methodology requires using pulses of light, not beams of light. A pulse or a wave packet of light or of matter is a whole different creature from a basic beam or ray. A pulse actually consists of several different light waves superimposed to create a discrete package.

“The apparent time travel described has all the markings of aquantum mechanical effect. As much as we would like to describe the worldof matter and light as ball and stick figures, we know that in realityposition and momentum are quite fuzzy. (Heisenberg Uncertainty and allthat.) The ability for a particle, especially a particle having no mass, tobe in two places simultaneously does not break any major laws of physics.According to quantum mechanics there is some probability that the particleis in an infinite number of positions simultaneously. As for travelling 300times c, I imagine that the quantum mechanics involved in dealing with aphoton wave packet could allow the information needed to reconstruct thatwave to be broadcast well in front of the actual packet. There is all sortsof weirdness allowed when it comes to space-time and information travel. Essentially, when an electron tunnels through a barrier there is no evidence of it ever being within the barrier, and yet it somehow appears onthe other side. My imagination would allow me to believe that if matter waves can transmit over a measurable distance then light waves shouldlikely transmit over much longer distances.”

So did they do it? I thinks she means “Sort of.”

In other (dramatically funnier) news, The Onion is reporting that Haggar physicists have developed ‘Quantum Slacks’. No word yet from Dr. Finch on the implications of these developments. Watch out for the anti-pants.

There’s just no room in my world for things like this.

David Manning, a film reviewer for the Ridgefield Press, seemed completely normal — if curiously vapid. His blurbs appeared in marketing material for several Columbia films last year. Manning raved over “Hollow Man,” “Vertical Limit,” “A Knight’s Tale” and “The Animal,” which strikes me as almost comically bad at best and an example of movie-review payola at worst.

Actually, that wasn’t the worst. Manning does not in fact exist. He was invented by [Columbia parent] Sony’s marketing department. It’s not as if they don’t essentially buy reviews already with gravy-train perqs like free trips, posh meals, and the like for much of the movie press — maybe these films were so bad even bribery couldn’t generate good ink. The scandal here, as MSNBC points out, isn’t so much that Manning didn’t exist — that’s clearly unacceptable. The troublesome bit is what IS acceptable.

I don’t know about you, but I’m pretty sure I know who’s gonna win this face-off.

I always thought my mom was being paranoid when she wouldn’t sit on hotel bedspreads. Apparently not.

This guy is all about figuring out both the secret to immortality AND world peace! Somebody call the Nobel committee!

See title. Always Mount a Scratch Monkey

Ladies and gentlemen (and Mr Young): I present text mode Quake.

Billy Joe Shaver has had one hell of a year — and a hell of a life before that. MSNBC is running a long piece on him right now. I’ve been a fan for years; if you don’t know him, check him out. Here is a good place to start: his 1996 album Tramp On Your Street, featuring his son Eddy on lead guitar.

Eddy died last New Year’s Eve.

This is just about the coolest thing I’ve heard of in quite some time. Check it out. (New York Times, free registration may be required)

If you’re anything like me, you just can’t get enough Silly Putty.

Apparently, Glen Larson — 1970’s-era TV god behind McCloud, The Six Million Dollar Man, Quincy, BJ and the Bear, Buck Rogers, Magnum PI, and others — is a Mormon. Which isn’t all that interesting in and of itself unless you take the time to check out The Mormon/Battlestar Galactica Connection.

Douglas Adams died Friday morning from a heart attack. He was 49.

Suffice it to say that, thanks to the Internet, it’s now possible to be a paranoid schizophrenic in a very, very public way.

Micromachines are incredibly tiny devices, almost imperceptible to the unaided eye. We’re talking about something the size of a grain of pollen. There are all sorts of implications of this kind of technology, but one is particularly, er, creepy.

And Sandia Labs, they’ve got pictures of bugs on their micromachines. Tiny, tiny bugs. Mites, really. But damn they’re creepy.

I admit it: I enjoy the newish trend of goofily edgy advertising — except the ones for Old Navy. Sometimes, it’s fun to watch. Though I can’t imagine that any of these ads make me more likely to consume whatever it is they’re hawking.

Lipton’s latest take on this concept is covered in the New York Times today. By way of enticement, all I can say is this: a commercial involving Loni Anderson, Mr. T, and George Hamilton playing a video game.

Confused by Kandinsky? Baffled by Pollock? Just plain don’t get modern art? Turn your bewilderment into objective judgement! Here’s a guy who purports to illustrate which artists are just plain bad in his Rogues Gallery of Bad Art and Non Art. Charlatans! Frauds! Give me some more pretty pictures! Out with Duchamp! More Dogs Playing Poker!

I’m so glad he’s cleared all that up for us. Maybe this means I can get a de Kooning on the cheap now.

If that wasn’t enough, by the way, more fun can be had by investigating the degree to which this guy embraces the technical/engineering stereotype the rest of us work so hard to escape. Hint: bad, 1994-esque web design; rabid prog-rock (Yes/Marillion/Alan Parsons) fandom; Rush-esque disdain for the Clintons; and (was there any doubt?) Ayn Rand worship.

(The really sad part: I’m sure he’s on the short list to head the Bush Administration’s National Endowment for the Arts.)

There exists a program on MTV called Total Request Live, or TRL. Apparently, it’s a big hit among the teeny-bopper set. The conceit is this: viewers request videos via the Internet, and the playlist is determined accordingly. Wonderfully ripe, of course, for a little subversion.

The plan: submit as many votes as you like via this site for Bhangra artist Daler Mehndi’s video for Tunak Tunak Tun (I don’t know what it means, either). My guess is that the core demographic for said program will have NO idea who this is.

Some poor guy working a call center somewhere in Texas has captured some of the real doozies that come across his desk, but with a twist. Instead of the “aren’t-these-users-stupid” jokes we’ve come to expect from the help desk crowd (and I’ve been there and done that), this particular site chronicles the absurdly bad trouble tickets written by one of his cow-orkers. It would be funny if it wasn’t almost certainly authentic.

Austin correspondent Mikey the Shiv brings us this fine video of, well, the elusive fighting chimpanzee. (Streaming MPEG).

Well, some of you might. New photos of a recent trip to Birmingham, featuring people you might know. But if you weren’t there, and you’re not Joy, Carl, Carla, Eric, Andy, Michelle, Clare, or a few others, odds are you won’t care.

This story is rich. First, Army Chief of Staff Gen. Eric Shinseki decided late last year that the whole Army should get new black berets as part of a morale-building effort designed to conicide with the Army’s birthday this June 14.

Predictably, the Rangers were a bit annoyed by this; heretofore, only their elite group was able to wear black berets. They understandably insisted that Army-wide deployment thereof would cheapen the emblem of their unit. Somehow, a compromise was reached allowing the Rangers to get some other color hat, which frankly still strikes me as wrong, but at least they still get to be unique.

Then is comes to light that the only way to get enough — 2.6 million — berets by the deadline would be to use foreign suppliers. Including China, who would be supplying 600,000 black hats. Once again, a PR issue ensued — “shouldn’t the Army buy American goods?” people asked. Lawmakers got nervous.

Not nearly as nervous, though, as they are now, since China has been elevated to Bad Guy in the wake of the mid-air collision last month. Tuesday night, the Pentagon announced that no Army personnel would wear Chinese-made berets, and directed the Army to dispose of all said berets with “Chinese content.”

That’ll show those pesky Chinese. “We’re gonna buy 600,000 black berets from you — and then throw ’em out!. Nyah Nyah Nyah!”

Link: Army Drops Chinese Berets Plan

Hard-hitting coverage of the ongoing fall of the Lowest Common Denominator.

There’s something wonderful about using the web to distribute a QuickTime short done in the style of Atari 2600 graphics.(QT 4 required)

This guy has some pretty cool pictures of the migration of a million-pound turbine from its point of manufacture (CT) to its eventual home in New Hampshire. The logistics of this sort of thing are pretty amazing — coordinating the highway department, state and local police, the telco, electric company, and the transportation contractor. According to the site, the convoy was about half a mile long and moved at about 1 mph.

The Intrepid Dr. Girlfriend and I have thus far built robots capable of frightening her dog. We are therefore shamed by this guy (you’ll probably have to scroll down), who has created a Rubik’s Cube solving machine using the Mindstorms kit.

It should be noted that it amounts to a computer controlled system, as a PC program creates the code based on the scrambled state of the cube, but it’s pretty damned impressive nevertheless.

(Thanks, Cory!)

Check out a similar list of goofy stuff over at Boing Boing: A Directory of Wonderful Things.

I promise that this is the best stick-figure martial arts sequence you’ll ever see.

Stan Lee Media may be on the ropes, but his influence is clearly felt on this site.

The hip among us area aware of India’s vibrant and growing film industry. The work of directors like Satyajit Ray is known by film buffs worldwide — the Academy even gave him an honorary Oscar in ’92 for his ongoing contribution to the art and craft of filmmaking.

Unfortunately, the directors of this gem were in no way acquainted with such concepts.

Finally, a peak inside Dubya’s preferred mode of transportation, Department Of Education One