Shrimp and Grits

Silly human! You thought the Hypnotoad was merely a fictional character from Futurama? You were wrong!

All hail the Hypnotoad! All glory to the Hypnotoad!

Hillary Clinton is in a bit of trouble these days. While she said she had to run from an airplane to avoid sniper fire in Bosnia, video showed her calmly stepping off the plane and being greeted by officials and a young girl. The young girl then read Ms. Clinton some poetry.

Oops!

Here’s what Clinton said when being confronted about her fabrication.

“I say a lot of things — millions of words a day — so if I misspoke, that was just a misstatement,”

Over at Steve Benen’s blog, a commenter makes an observation about Clinton’s statement.

UM, can someone really find the time to say “millions of words a day?”
Am I the only one that finds it sad, funny and ironic that she manages to exaggerate in a statement meant to forgive her for exaggerating?

Sad, funny, and ironic. Check. I’ll focus on the “funny”.

So I got to thinking - how long would it take to say a million words? To give Clinton the benefit of the doubt, I’ll choose a small word that can be said quickly. Let’s say … “fart”. I can manage to say the word “fart” about three times per second if I don’t have to take a breath. If I didn’t have to take any breaths, then …

… I’d get out the millionth word after well over three days. If I didn’t have to stop for a breath. And if I did nothing but say the word “fart” over and over for all 24 hours of each day. (A politician’s life is hard …)

How fast would Clinton have to talk to get out a million “fart”s in a day?***

11.6 words per second. If Clinton’s run for the presidency doesn’t work out, she can always replace this guy in the next series of Micro Machines commercials!

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***This calculation hinges on what the definition of “is” a day is. Clinton may have been planning to speak from Venus, where the day (depending on which kind of day you mean) is either 243 or 117 Earth days long.

As a chemist, I’m obliged to love chemistry humor.  From The Onion,

 Vice President Dick Cheney and his staff were briefed on the atomic situation in Iran Tuesday with the aid of colorful interlocking plastic models and a short film.

“The United States will not stand idly by while Iran gains the protons, neutrons, and whatever else they need to threaten the free world,” Cheney said at a press conference that afternoon. “Iran has demonstrated time and time again its ability to combine atoms of hydrogen and oxygen right out in the open, and we cannot allow that to go on any longer.”

Classic.  Reminds me of the dihydrogen monoxide scare…

In our town, we have a choice of shopping at either Wal-Mart or Target.  I usually avoid Wal-Mart (for many reasons) and do a fair amount of shopping at Target.

On the one hand, I’m rather fond of Target’s clearance sales.

On the  other hand, Target sells some annoyingy idiotic products.  The latest of these is - as PZ Myers points out - your own, personal Talking Jesus doll.

I think I’ve finally sorted this out.  Target has a pharmacy department that sells medicine.  They also have homeopathic remedies.  Finally, they have Talking Jesus dolls.  What’s the link?

A suffering customer comes to Target to buy some medicine.  If, for some reason, the medicine is ineffective, he comes back to Target to buy a homeopathic remedy.  When that fails (it will), the customer comes back again to buy a Talking Jesus, hoping that will cure him!

And that’s money in the bank for Target!

Now, I’ve gotta put my serious hat on and get back to teaching class!

After the carnage in college football yesterday evening, I thought I would check CBS Sports to see what they had to say about it all

Cute headline up at the top, considering the #1 and #2 teams both lost. But that’s not what this post is really about. Take a closer look at the headline circled in green.

That’s, ahh, not how I would have phrased that!

We’ve been on vacation to Myrtle Beach this week - specifically North Myrtle Beach - home of “family atmosphere, fishing piers reaching into the Atlantic, wide sandy beaches, and championship golf courses as well as being centrally located to a very wide range of neighboring attractions and entertainment.”

Here’s a view of North Myrtle Beach - taken at noon on July 4^th.

About the only thing you can’t see in this picture is … sand! This looks more like a scene from a Where’s Waldo book than a scene from our family vacation. In the spirit of the Where’s Waldo books, I’ve provided a high-resolution version of the above image. Just click the link - but you might have to wait a while if you’re on dial-up.

[Noon, July 4, North Myrtle Beach - 3449px - 1.2 MB]

See if you can:

• Find the red, white, and blue volleyball.
• Find the NC State logo.
• Find the American flag.
• Count the number of South Carolina state emblems.
• Find the black and white striped towel.
• Find a boy in an orange shirt.
• Find a wake board without a rider.
• Find a purple and orange umbrella.

Enjoy!

I’ve recently been reading The God Delusion by Richard Dawkins. One criticism of Dawkins is that he doesn’t recognize enough of the good that religion does for society.

For example, here is an example of the good religion does that, as far as I know, is completely omitted from The God Delusion:

“Cleaning the toilet to attract luck” published this month is the latest in a series of books advising readers on how to attract good fortune using a brush and an array of cleaning fluids.

[...]

The books are inspired by Buddhist teachings and feng shui, a traditional Chinese belief that people’s fortunes are determined by their surroundings.

How can Richard Dawkins simply ignore the vast benefit to society that clean toilets provide? Isn’t a holy war now and then a small price to pay for a sparkling, sanitary crapper?

Dawkins fans might retort that this particular article was published well after The God Delusion went to press. Well, that’s no excuse.

The idea that a clean toilet can bring good fortune, or even make you more beautiful, has existed in Japan for many years, according to Yuka Soma of Makino Publishing in Tokyo, editor of one of the toilet books.

Such clear, unmistakable benefit from religion. It amazes me that Dawkins is unable to see it!***

***For the humor impaired, take a close look at the category where this post is filed. Got it? Good.

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Thanks to quork, a commenter over at Pharyngula for the link.

There’s a new web encyclopedia in town: Conservapedia, which seems to be trying to position itself as a “Fox News” version of Wikipedia. In other words, it caters to people who call themselves conservatives.

I think they’ve got the branding all wrong. If the site’s serious - and not just meant as a silly jab at conservatives - they ought to call it “Stupidopedia: Two-bit articles for two-bit minds”. Am I being harsh?

Here are some samples. I’m a chemist, so I’ll look up some simple chemistry-related topics.

Here is the entire, unedited Conservapedia entry for water.

Water is and oderless, tasteless, colorless substance. Its chemical formula is H2O. (That is two hydrogens and one oxygen. I apologize for the lack of subscipts.)

Here’s the atom

An atom is the smallest unit chemical matter in creation. The word atom comes from the Greek term for indivisible, átomos. There have been many ideas about how atoms may look. The current one is called the Quantum Mechanical Model, and is very complex.

Who writes this crap? Fifth graders? Compare with the Wikipedia entries for water and atom, which are just a bit more useful and well-edited.

I think the best chemistry Conservapedia article I’ve seen so far, though, is one that was discovered by The Disgruntled Chemist: The law of mass conversation. Do conservatives not know how to spell the word “conservation”?

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If the site wasn’t satire before, it’s satire now. Some folks have been spicing the entries up a bit. Now, the “The Law of Mass Conversation” entry says

Matter cannot be created (except by the Almighty during the Genesis creation event) or destroyed (except by the Almighty at the End of Days), it can only change form.

It really is extremely hard to tell parody from serious “efforts” to find scientific evidence for the biblical literalists. So, you make the call. Parody, or not?

From WorldNetDaily, here’s a Kentucky “science student” who claims to have scientific evidence for creation.

“If God spoke everything into existence as the Genesis record proposes, then we should be able to scientifically prove that the construction of everything in the universe begins with a) the Holy Spirit (magnetic field); b) Light (an electric field); and c) that Light can be created by a sonic influence or sound,” Samuel J. Hunt writes

(emphasis mine)

Behold your all-powerful and mighty god!

God

Bostonians! All y’all owe me a new laptop keyboard and another glass of sweet tea. In lieu of that, simply repeat after me:

In case you haven’t heard, the city of Boston went certifiably insane yesterday over some light-up signs advertising the cartoon Aqua Teen Hunger Force. Someone thought the signs were bombs.

Here’s one of the signs:

Inignot, from Aqua Teen Hunger Force: “I hope he can see this, because I’m doing it as hard as I can.”

The Massachusetts attorney general said

“It had a very sinister appearance,” Coakley told reporters. “It had a battery behind it, and wires.”

Rumors that the attorney general also added “Oh he did not do that! That dude back there just flipped me off!” turned out to be false.

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Update:

When you find yourself in a hole, it is generally advisable to stop digging.

It’s clear the intent was to get attention by causing fear and unrest that there was a bomb in that location,” Assistant Attorney General John Grossman said at their arraignment.

Yes, it was designed to get attention. it’s a circuit board with batteries that lights up to draw attention to itself. No, it was not designed to “cause fear and unrest” by making people think it was a bomb. It looks like a sign, not a bomb. STOP DIGGING!

Oh wait … this is Boston. Never mind. Carry on, then.