Friday, September 23

The Best Place for a Bird is On My Plate.

Instead of doing my homework this morning, I was trolling Wired.com ( I know this is where 90% of my material comes from, but it's a cool site) when a headline caught my fancy. "Bird Plus Plane Equals Snarge." WTF is Snarge?!? Oh I have to read this. Common, you can't tell me you aren't slightly curious of what is this snarge they speak about. I know what Bird + Plane equals: a whole lotta soup. So I read on and find out that snarge is the technical term for "bloody goo" as lab scientist define it. Or as the head of the Smithsonian lab Carla Dove (great name for snarge expert) puts it "It's bird ick." Yea, this lady has been hanging out with good ole Bush too long for using termanology as 'ick.' Their basic job is to determine the species so they can map what areas are highest risk of certain types of birds. In other words Blah blah blah bladddy blah blah. Get back to the snarge talk already. Ahh, here we go, "Jet engines must now be able to withstand the ingestion of an 8-pound waterfowl without failing (this is tested in the lab by firing a chicken from a cannon at point-blank range)." Now that is a fun job. Go to work every day with a chicken cannon; and yes, I have seen the Mythbusters episodes where they shoot frozen and thawed chickens at panes of glass. The absolute best paragraph in the entire article, possibly even better then the invention of the word snarge, is the last paragragh, where I will now copy exactly as to not loose anything.
And its not just birds. Sometimes jet-stream encounters can take a page from the X-Files. "We've had frogs, turtles, snakes. We had a cat once that was struck at some high altitude," said the Smithsonian's Dove. She says birds like hawks and herons will occasionally drop their quarries into oncoming planes. "The other day we had a bird strike. We sent the sample to the DNA lab and it came back as rabbit. How do you explain to the FAA that we had a rabbit strike at 1,800 feet?"

Wow, this article kicks butt. I mean, snarge, flying rabbits, What more do you want?!
Oh yea, there are also some sweet pictures here at http://www.wired.com/news/technology/0,1282,68937,00.html?tw=wn_tophead_2

I like chicken.

Saturday, September 17

Water Logged Presidents and Sizzling Style

A story making it's rounds is of the good ole Pres asking permission from Rice to use the loo. The guy is human. When nature calls, you don't tell it to piss off. At first, I was under the impression that he needed her to sign off on his unschedualed potty break. However, I have seen the video on cnn.com and it is simply asking her if she can fill in for him and keep his seat warm while he is gone. I'm not going to hound the guy and try to make him sound like an idiot. It was a well written note with no slang and semi large words such as possible. My second amusing antic for which I have stumbled upon comes from Ruters as well.

SYDNEY (Reuters) - An Australian man built up a 40,000-volt charge of static electricity in his clothes as he walked, leaving a trail of scorched carpet and molten plastic and forcing firefighters to evacuate a building.

Frank Clewer, who was wearing a woolen shirt and a synthetic nylon jacket, was oblivious to the growing electrical current that was building up as his clothes rubbed together.

When he walked into a building in the country town of Warrnambool in the southern state of Victoria Thursday, the electrical charge ignited the carpet.

"It sounded almost like a firecracker," Clewer told Australian radio Friday.

"Within about five minutes, the carpet started to erupt."

Employees, unsure of the cause of the mysterious burning smell, telephoned firefighters who evacuated the building.

"There were several scorch marks in the carpet, and we could hear a cracking noise -- a bit like a whip -- both inside and outside the building," said fire official Henry Barton.

Firefighters cut electricity to the building thinking the burns might have been caused by a power surge.

Clewer, who after leaving the building discovered he had scorched a piece of plastic on the floor of his car, returned to seek help from the firefighters.

"We tested his clothes with a static electricity field meter and measured a current of 40,000 volts, which is one step shy of spontaneous combustion, where his clothes would have self-ignited," Barton said.

"I've been firefighting for over 35 years and I've never come across anything like this," he said.

Firefighters took possession of Clewer's jacket and stored it in the courtyard of the fire station, where it continued to give off a strong electrical current.

David Gosden, a senior lecturer in electrical engineering at Sydney University, told Reuters that for a static electricity charge to ignite a carpet, conditions had to be perfect.

"Static electricity is a similar mechanism to lightning, where you have clouds rubbing together and then a spark generated by very dry air above them," said Gosden.

Now that is an electrifing experience. How could you not notice 40,000 volt electricy arcs comming off of your crappy suit. I mean, it sounded like firecrackers. I like how the firefighters confiscated the crappy jacket and stuck it in their courtyard. Wow this guy must have been stupid. He lights a hotel on fire then tries to drive home with a jacket that could.... oh nevermind. I'm going to bed.

Thursday, September 8

I'm Happy

My laptop is back; with a new motherboard. I'm happy.

Tuesday, September 6

Sorry for the lack of updates.

It's been a while, all my faithful minions, however, I have been having some trubles. See, this is the THIRD friggan week that my laptop has been away for repairs, and it has all of my usernames and what not stored on it. SO, I compleatly forgot what my username and password was for this site. Don't get all excited now, I STILL don't have my computer. I just used some common scents (I know, wrong kind of scents) and used a few dozzon combonations to figure out how to crack my own site. Problem is, I don't remember what it was to do the trick. Gotta run to programming now, Hope I have brightined your week.