Ex libris
EXLIBRIS MUSEUM. We've done ex-libris bookplates before, but trust me, this site far surpasses anything you've ever seen. Just go to the Gallery and click on any of the names. Vereshchagin, for instance. Or Karol Felix. Or... hell, just dive in, you can't go wrong.
Posted by SV at 6:11:00 AM in Art, Books | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)
Friday, Mar 4, 2005
Andy Borowitz: martha shocker
MARTHA'S PRISON REPORTS 12-MONTH WAITING LIST by Andy Borowitz
Beats Out Harvard Business School as Top CEO Destinations
Domestic diva Martha Stewart, who saw the value of her stock soar since she began serving a five-month sentence at Alderson Federal Prison, has apparently now worked her magic on Alderson itself, which today reported a twelve-month waiting list of CEOs eager to do time there.
"Our phone has been ringing off the hook, and a lot of these CEO's haven't even committed a crime yet," said Alderson spokesperson Lucinda Colwin. "I'm like, rob a liquor store and then we'll talk."
Randall Trestman of the University of Minnesota's Graduate School of Business said that Ms. Stewart's stunning comeback has turned Alderson into "the place to be" for America's top corporate leaders.
"What Harvard Business School was in the eighties and the Internet sector was in the nineties, Alderson is today," he said.
CEOs whose companies' stock have sagged in recent months may face increasing pressure from shareholders to commit crimes in order to snag a precious one-way ticket to Alderson, Mr. Trestman said.
"Becoming a convicted felon is no longer a stigma for CEOs," he said. "It's their fiduciary responsibility."
Across the country, crimes involving CEOs, from accounting fraud to car theft, have surged over nine thousand percent in the past two months - a trend that does not surprise Mr. Trestman.
"If, instead of buying Compaq Computer, [former HP CEO] Carly Fiorina had stolen a Compaq computer from a Circuit City store, she might still have her job today," he added.
Elsewhere, after circling the globe without being able to eat, sleep or move, millionaire Steve Fossett said now he knows how it feels to fly coach.
Posted by SV at 6:16:00 AM in Columnists, Humor | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)
Great Advertising
3M advertises for it's "Security Glass".
3M puts its money where its mouth is. Yes, that *is* real money ...
Posted by SV at 6:09:00 AM in Fun, Info, Tech/Science | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBack (0)
Thursday, Mar 3, 2005
The profits of freedom
Iran gets bombed June 2005. "George W. Bush has received and signed off on orders for an aerial attack on Iran planned for June 2005. Its purported goal is the destruction of Iran’s alleged program to develop nuclear weapons"
Posted by SV at 6:16:00 AM in Info | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBack (0)
Wednesday, Mar 2, 2005
guess?
A young and foolish pilot wanted to sound cool on the aviation frequencies. So, this was his first time approaching a field during the night time. Instead of making any official requests to the tower, he said: "Guess who?"
The controller switched the field lights off and replied: "Guess where?"
Posted by SV at 6:03:00 AM in Humor | Permalink | Comments (2) | TrackBack (0)
oh the pilots!
Passengers on a plane are waiting for the flight to leave. The entrance opens, and two men walk up the aisle, dressed in pilot uniforms. Both are wearing dark glasses. One is using a seeing-eye dog, and the other is tapping his way up the aisle with a cane.
Nervous laughter spreads through the cabin, but the men enter the cockpit, the door closes, and the engines start. The passengers begin glancing nervously, searching for some sign that this is just a little practical joke. None is forthcoming.
The plane moves faster and faster down the runway, and people at the windows realize that they're headed straight for the water at the edge of the airport.
As it begins to look as though the plane will never take off, that it will plow into the water, screams of panic fill the cabin. But at that moment, the plane lifts smoothly into the air.
Up in the cockpit, the co-pilot turns to the pilot and says, "You know, Joe, one of these days, they're going to scream too late, and we're all gonna die."
Posted by SV at 6:00:00 AM in Humor | Permalink | Comments (3) | TrackBack (0)
February 28, 2005
jest for pun (February'05)
February '05 BlogThoughts
Every calendar's days are numbered.
I think we consider too much the good luck of the early bird, and not enough the bad luck of the early worm. -Franklin D. Roosevelt (1882 - 1945) He who builds a better mousetrap these days runs into material shortages, patent-infringement suits, work stoppages, collusive bidding, discount discrimination--and taxes.- H. E. Martz The surest way to make a monkey of a man is to quote him. - Robert Benchley (My Ten Years in a Quandary, 1936) geek and you shall find... Some folks are wise and some otherwise. - Josh Billings (1815 - 1885), American Humorist and Lecturer) I don't use drugs, my dreams are frightening enough. - M C Escher east or west India is the best Journalism is merely history's first draft. - Geoffrey C. Ward Let others praise ancient times; I am glad I was born in these - Ovid (43 BC - 17 AD) In elementary school, in case of fire you have to line up quietly in a single file line from the smallest to tallest. What is the logic? Do tall people burn slower? - Warren Hutcherson it's amazing how people take Valentines day to heart. The surest way to make a monkey of a man is to quote him. - Robert Benchley (My Ten Years in a Quandary, 1936) I not only use all the brains that I have, but all that I can borrow. - Woodrow Wilson (1856 - 1924) You can always reason with a German. You can always reason with a barnyard animal, too, for all the good it does. - P. J. ORourke (Holidays in hell, 1989) Some people love horoscopes to pisces. Books have the same enemies as people: fire, humidity, animals, weather, and their own content. - Paul Valery (1871 - 1945) lost in translation Utter originality is, of course, out of the question. - Ezra Pound A cube of cheese no larger than a die May bait the trap to catch a nibbling mie.- Ambrose Bierce (1842 - 1914) February 28, 2005 in Humor | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack
February 27, 2005
The Secret to Longevity in Tubeworms
With an incredible lifespan of up to 250 years, the deep-sea tube worm, Lamellibrachia luymesi, is among the longest-lived of all animals, but how it obtains sufficient nutrients -- in the form of sulfide -- to keep going for this long has been a mystery. In a paper just published in the online journal PLoS Biology, a team of biologists now provide a solution: by releasing its waste sulfate not up into the ocean but down into the sediments, L. luymesi stimulates the growth of sulfide-producing microbes, thus ensuring its own long-term survival.
From Penn State
The research team includes Erik E. Cordes, a postdoctoral researcher in the laboratory of Charles Fisher, professor of biology at Penn State, along with Katriona Shea, assistant professor of biology at Penn State, Michael A. Arthur, a professor of geosciences at Penn State, and Rolf S. Arvidson, an earth sciences research scientist at Rice University.
The sulfide this worm needs is created by a consortium of bacteria and archaea that live in the cold deep-sea sediments surrounding the seep where the worm lives. These organisms use energy from hydrocarbons to reduce sulfate to sulfide, which L. luymesi absorbs through unique root-like extensions of its body, which tunnel into the sediments. However, current measurements of sulfide and sulfate fluxes in the water near the vents do not match either the observed size of the tubeworm colony or the observed longevity of its individuals, leading Cordes et al. to propose that L. luymesi also uses its roots to release sulfate back to the microbial consortia from which it draws its sulfide. Without this return of sulfate, the model predicts an average lifespan of only 39 years in a colony of 1,000 individuals; with it, survival increases to over 250 years, matching the longevity of actual living tubeworms.
To date, the proposed return of sulfate to the sediments through the roots is only a hypothesis -- albeit one with much to support it -- that still awaits direct confirmation. By providing a model in which this hypothetical interaction provides real benefits and explains real observations, the authors hope to stimulate further research into the biology of the enigmatic and beautiful L. luymesi.
This research was supported by the National Science Foundation.
February 27, 2005 in Tech/Science | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBack
# posted by SV @ 3/05/2005 06:29:00 AM