Random Ramblings

trextrying:

T-Rex Trying to paint his house…
#TRexTrying
Hey everyone! To celebrate the launch of our new book, I thought I’d re-post the first cartoon that started it all.
If you don’t already have a copy, please order today from one of the great sellers below. THANK YOU!
http://www.amazon.com/T-Rex-Trying-Hugh-Murphy/dp/0452299020
http://www.skylightbooks.com/book/9780452299023
http://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/t-rex-trying-hugh-murphy/1111307454
http://www.indiebound.org/book/9780452299023

I lol’d.

T-Rex Trying to paint his house…

#TRexTrying

Hey everyone! To celebrate the launch of our new book, I thought I’d re-post the first cartoon that started it all.

If you don’t already have a copy, please order today from one of the great sellers below. THANK YOU!

http://www.amazon.com/T-Rex-Trying-Hugh-Murphy/dp/0452299020

http://www.skylightbooks.com/book/9780452299023

http://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/t-rex-trying-hugh-murphy/1111307454

http://www.indiebound.org/book/9780452299023

I lol’d.

bookshelfporn:

Reading a book and spending the day outside with someone you love are the rules for a perfect Analog Sunday.

Want to do this so badly! Need to decrease TV time, especially.

typostrate:

Leandro Senna

with a great video to the subterranean homesick blues from Bob Dylan.

Incredibly awesome.

The day after Columbine, I was interviewed for the Tom Brokaw news program. The reporter had been assigned a theory and was seeking sound bites to support it. “Wouldn’t you say,” she asked, “that killings like this are influenced by violent movies?” No, I said, I wouldn’t say that. “But what about Basketball Diaries?” she asked. “Doesn’t that have a scene of a boy walking into a school with a machine gun?” The obscure 1995 Leonardo Di Caprio movie did indeed have a brief fantasy scene of that nature, I said, but the movie failed at the box office (it grossed only $2.5 million), and it’s unlikely the Columbine killers saw it. The reporter looked disappointed, so I offered her my theory.

“Events like this,” I said, “if they are influenced by anything, are influenced by news programs like your own. When an unbalanced kid walks into a school and starts shooting, it becomes a major media event. Cable news drops ordinary programming and goes around the clock with it. The story is assigned a logo and a theme song; these two kids were packaged as the Trench Coat Mafia. The message is clear to other disturbed kids around the country: If I shoot up my school, I can be famous. The TV will talk about nothing else but me. Experts will try to figure out what I was thinking. The kids and teachers at school will see they shouldn’t have messed with me. I’ll go out in a blaze of glory.”

In short, I said, events like Columbine are influenced far less by violent movies than by CNN, the NBC Nightly News and all the other news media, who glorify the killers in the guise of “explaining” them. I commended the policy at the Sun-Times, where our editor said the paper would no longer feature school killings on Page 1. The reporter thanked me and turned off the camera. Of course the interview was never used. They found plenty of talking heads to condemn violent movies, and everybody was happy.

“

—	Roger Ebert (via ceedling)

mattfisher:

My Sister Paid Progressive Insurance to Defend Her Killer In Court

I’ve been sending out some impertinent tweets about Progressive Insurance lately, but I haven’t explained how they pissed me off. So I will do that here as succinctly as possible. There’s a general understanding that says, “insurance companies— oh they’re awful,” but since Progressive turned their shit hose on my late sister and my parents, I’ve learned some things that really surprised me.

I’ll try to cleave to the facts. On June 19, 2010, my sister was driving in Baltimore when her car was struck by another car and she was killed. The other driver had run a red light and hit my sister as she crossed the intersection on the green light.

Read More

Tragic…

ikenbot:

Saturn’s Rings are Back

NASA | JPL-Caltech | Cassini Solstice Mission | CICLOPS

It’s been nearly two years since NASA’s Cassini spacecraft has had views like these of Saturn’s glorious rings.

These views are possible again because Cassini has changed the angle at which it orbits Saturn and regularly passes above and below Saturn’s equatorial plane. Steeply inclined orbits around the Saturn system also allow scientists to get better views of the poles and atmosphere of Saturn and its moons.

Cassini’s recent return of ring images has started to pay off. A group of scientists has restarted the team’s studies of propeller-shaped gaps. These gaps are cleared out by objects that are smaller than known moons but larger than typical ring particles.

Cassini scientists haven’t seen propellers in two years. Matt Tiscareno, a Cassini imaging team associate at Cornell University, Ithaca, N.Y., and colleagues have been following these objects for several years. Because some of the propellers are exactly where models predicted they would be, scientists believe they are seeing some old friends again.

Gotta love how companies hide these things in their products…

mothernaturenetwork:

5 surprising everyday things that are toxic
Creepy chemicals are becoming so persistent that even items labeled ‘nontoxic’ and ‘all-natural’ can harbor harmful compounds.