44 years later, Centralia, PA is still on fire.

In 1962, workers set a heap of trash ablaze in an abandoned mine pit which was used as the borough’s landfill. The burning of excess trash was a common practice, yet at that particular time and place there existed a dangerous condition: an exposed vein of anthracite coal. The highly flammable mineral was unexpectedly ignited by the trash fire, prompting a quick effort to put it out. The flames on the surface were successfully extinguished, but unbeknownst to the fire fighters, the coal continued to burn underground. Over the following weeks it rapidly migrated into the surrounding coal mines and beneath the town, causing great concern. […] In 1969 — seven years after the fire was started — a more involved effort was made to contain the fire using trenches and clay seals, but the attempt was met with failure. In the 1970s, concerns over the severity of the extensive subterranean fire were stirred when a gas station owner noticed that the contents of his underground fuel storage tank seemed hot, so he measured the gasoline’s temperature, and found it to be a troubling 180 degrees Fahrenheit. […] The fire still burns today beneath about four hundred acres of surface land, and it’s still growing. There is enough coal in the eight-mile vein to feed the fire for up to two hundred and fifty years, but it may burn itself out in as few as one hundred years.

It’s not a total loss, though. Centralia is the inspiration for the Silent Hill game and movie franchise.

You know that old saw about a frog placed in tepid water not noticing as you raise the heat, and then eventually being boiled alive? We first heard it at a Baptist camp used in a tortured analogy about pop music, which made us pretty suspicious even at 12. As it turns out, it’s pretty much bullshit.

Apparently, dorodango are all the rage. What are they, you ask? Shiny mud balls, that’s what.

No. Really.

Found over at Wil Wheaton’s place, but he’s quoting this guy:

If more Americans read books every night instead of watching TV, we’d live in a more productive society. If more Americans watched the news and read real newspapers and magazines, instead of crappy programs like American Idol, then I’m confident that George Bush would not be our president. But heck, that’s what our leaders really want deep down… a mindless, uneducated populous that will work 40 hours a week so they can earn enough money to buy things to keep them distracted from the evil deeds that our leaders and suits in Fortune 500 companies are conducting everyday under your noses.

Today, the Former Heights Attorney reaches enlightenment, i.e. the answer to life, the universe, and everything. Wish him well.

This is a picture of Sam from this entry back when Sam’s parents had an engagement crawfish boil in 2003. Sam liked the crawdads so much he’d eat them when they were still pinchy, which is both hilarious and nasty.

This week Sam was diagnosed with a grossly enlarged heart, cause unknown, and pretty unusual for a dog as young as Sam (he was about six?). Mrs Heathen and I spent last night and Thursday night hanging out with Sam and Joy and baby Gwen, partly as a favor to Joy, and partly because we loved him, too. His breathing was terribly labored, but he seemed to like having people near him.

About an hour ago, Joy and Carl called us to tell us he’d passed on at about seven this morning.

Bye, Sam. Lots of people miss you.

Our generation, Heathen, will have much to answer for and much to explain as we grow older. The 80s were an odd time; the west was in thrall to vicious right-wing philosophies promulgated by Reagan and Thatcher, and the world of the arts reacted accordingly. It is possible, we presume, to explain 80s-era covert military adventurism like Iran-Contra and the like as an outgrowth of the culture of fear that thrived in the Cold War. After all, we watched films about how to handle post-nuclear-exchange fallout in gradeschool, and bravely tried to pretend such an exchange wouldn’t destroy the world as we knew it, and that it also wasn’t in some way inevitable. But this, too, is understandable in the socioeconomic and geopolitical wake of the second World War, and the subsequent cooling of the US-Soviet relationship that probably peaked at Yalta.

Still, much remains of the 80s that children today cannot hope to understand or even sympathize with. They will look back on these things with horror and revulsion, and be utterly incapable of reacting in any way that does not include wholesale dismissal and damnation, and there is no excuse or justification we can offer.

We speak, of course, of this guy’s hair, and all sort of related crimes preserved forever by the Intarwubs. Children of today, we’re sorry. Especially for this, too. And also this.

But not for this or this. Not at all.

Update: Final link fixed.

Vern has joined the choir invisible.

Those close to Heathen are of course aware that we spent part of the week in Dayton, Ohio. Of Ohio, we say only this: It is not a coincidence that the Wright Brothers are from Ohio. Only a place like Ohio could push men to find new, faster methods of transportation, presumably in their search to put Dayton, et. al., behind them.

Hat tip to M.A.D. for pointing this out.

In Wolfsburg, Germany, Volkswagen has a fully automated garage made up of 20-storey cylinders wherein new, undelivered cars are stored. A robotic car-picker fetches the vehicles when the owners arrive. (Via BoingBoing.)

The United Church of Christ, a fairly normal Christian church, created a spot emphasizing their inclusive nature. The pseudochristian Right spends so much time talking about who’s going to hell, they must’ve figured it was about time someone associated with a Christian church said something in public that actually had something to do with Christ’s teachings. It’s a brilliant and lovely spot, and you should watch it.

However, you can pretty much only see it online, since NBC, CBS, ABC, Fox, et. al., have all refused to air it. Tthey’ll cheerlead for the Administration and the war, but the idea that God loves everyone is too “controversial” for TV. We’re not sure how that worked, but we’re pretty certain the degree to which the ad would’ve made the right wingers apoplectic played a role.