The Number 23

So, over the weekend, I saw the new film The Number 23 ,which stars Jim Carrey as a man driven to madness by the persistence of the number 23 in his world, or perhaps in the greater nature of things altogether. I did some research, and there are in fact studies about the odd statistical frequency of this number in mathematics. But is it cause for a freak-out? Just deal with it, dude. It's a number. Kurt Cobain died in 1994. 1 + 9 + 9 + 4 = 23. WHOA. Hmm.... but it was April 8th. 4 + 8 + 1 + 9 + 9 + 4 = 35. Bummer.

I found myself trying to find at least one 23 in my own life and came up empty. Not a birthdate, anniversary, or even dentist appointment came up 23. Does this mean I am immortal? I'm going to bet YES.

Return of the Beavers

"Beavers return to New York City after 200 years

NEW YORK (AP) -- Beavers grace New York City's official seal. But the industrious rodents have not been seen in the flesh here for as many as 200 years -- until this week.

Biologists videotaped a beaver swimming up the Bronx River on Wednesday. Its twig-and-mud lodge had been spotted earlier on the river bank, but the tape confirmed the presence of the animal itself.

"It had to happen because beaver populations are expanding, and their habitats are shrinking," said Dietland Muller-Schwarze, a beaver expert at the State University of New York College of Environmental Science and Forestry in Syracuse. "We're probably going to see more of them in the future." "

(Excerpt from http://www.cnn.com/2007/US/02/23/beaver.bronx.ap/index.html)

Instead of Liberal Arts...

I dreamt last night that I was back in college. Instead of majoring in Liberal Arts, I decided to do something else for the first 2 years to help me figure out what to focus on...

I sat in my boxers in a big, red, plastic tub full of water and slid around campus in it. Just slid all over the place. Everyone thought I was so cool because nobody else was doing it.

Then I went into a park and started a conversation with another student. He asked "Are those scorpions?" Turns out we were both covered in tiny brown scorpions. I screamed and screamed and woke up drenched in sweat.

So just like that, I go from the coolest guy on campus to being covered in stinging scorpions.

Get a Life

Man, I used to love this show!

So, We Have 30 Years to Live.....

"U.N. urged to take action on asteroid threat

SAN FRANCISCO, California (Reuters)—An asteroid may come uncomfortably close to Earth in 2036 and the United Nations should assume responsibility for a space mission to deflect it, a group of astronauts, engineers and scientists said on Saturday.

Astronomers are monitoring an asteroid named Apophis, which has a 1 in 45,000 chance of striking Earth on April 13, 2036."

I, for one, am gonna start drinking more.

(Excerpt from Associated Press article http://www.cnn.com/2007/TECH/space/02/19/asteroid.deflector.reut/index.html. Photo courtesy of www.thunderbolts.info.)

To Sir, With No Love

I'm not knocking English gentry or American broadcasting, but I am knocking our sycophantic disc jockeys and ass-kissing TV-tabloid hosts who insist on prefacing Elton John with Sir. Yes, he's a knight—in the United Kingdom. And I respect that John "earned" his knighthood through admirable charity work. On this side of the pond, however, Elton's a pudgy, half-crazed pop singer who ruined a string of excellent songs with the musical abomination known as "Crocodile Rock."

Yet ever since Queen Elizabeth tapped John's shoulders with a sword, obsequious talking heads in this country kow-tow to English protocol as if the American Revolution never took place. There's nothing knightly about an out-of-control spend-a-holic who admitted to dropping almost £300,000 on flowers.

And look at that photo. Is that the stuff of knighthood? Had Sir Francis Drake sailed into battle dressed as Donald Duck, the Oxford English Dictionary would be written in Spanish.

Sir Paul McCartney? Hey, just for "Uncle Albert/Admiral Halsey," I'll call Paul His Royal Highness and let him use my back as a step-stool for climbing into his Rolls. But as for Elton John...well, DJs and broadcasters, this is the Land of the Free and the Home of the Brave, not the Land of the Spree and the Home of the Knave—this madman across the water doesn't rate a Sir on these shores.

Crappin' Lightning

"A WOMAN has suffered severe burning to her anus after being struck by lightning that hit her in the mouth and passed right through her body.

Natasha Timarovic, 27, was cleaning her teeth in her home in the Croatian city of Zadar when lightning struck the building. She said: 'I had just put my mouth under the tap to rinse away the toothpaste when the lightning must have struck the building. I don't remember much after that, but I was later told that the lightning had travelled down the water pipe and struck me on the mouth, passing through my body. It was incredibly painful, I felt it pass through my torso and then I don't remember much at all.'

Doctors at the city hospital where she was treated for burns to the mouth and rear said: 'The accident is bizarre but not impossible.'
She was wearing rubber bathroom shoes at the time and so instead of earthing through her feet it appears the electricity shot out of her backside," a medic told local newspaper, 24 Sata. "

(Excerpt from "Lightning Exits Woman's Bottom", http://www.news.com.au/story/0,23599,20548077-13762,00.html)