ONLY FOUR BILLION YEARS LEFT

Our pal Bernard sent this item from The Guardian in London
“The white band of the Milky Way is visible on a clear night, but the Andromeda galaxy is more than 2m light years away and rarely seen by the naked eye. They are hurtling towards each other at a million miles an hour and could meet within fewer than 4 billion years - but it is highly unlikely that planets or stars from Andromeda will hit those in the Milky Way. The space between them is equivalent to a football field between grains of sand. While the stars and planets will pass each other, clouds of dust and gas will smash into one another, creating enormous shockwaves that force particles together so violently they form new stars.”

Click here for a simulation of galaxy crash, and here for a longer one.

The secret word is Wow!

SMOKE IF YOU GOT ‘EM

The actor on the Godzilla suit takes a break for a cigarette. The picture quality is rotten but the concept is infinite.

BEES LIKE COKE

Munz sent us this fascinating item…
To learn more about the biochemistry of addiction, scientists in Australia dropped liquefied freebase cocaine on bees’ backs, so it entered the circulatory system and brain.
The scientists found that bees react much like humans do: cocaine alters their judgment, stimulates their behavior and makes them exaggeratedly enthusiastic about things that might not otherwise excite them.
The bees however would seem to be cheap dates where coke is concerned. A gram will keep a bee happy for two years. (Click here for more)

The secret word is Buzz

FAQ

“How did I get into this sick fuck’s fantasy?”

WHO'S MINDING THE STORE?

A massive rift in the way the US political system functions in the 21st century has finally been revealed. Maybe the fact that the country remained effectively leaderless for some two and a half months following a presidential election didn’t matter in the days of stage coach, railroad and the telegraph, but, in the brave new electronic century, when every nano-second counts, a superpower cannot simply drift on the tide of events with no one minding the store. With two more weeks still to go before Barack Obama is inaugurated, we have already seen the militantly lame duck Bush administration do everything it can to booby trap the future with their legislative scorched earth tactics, seven hundred billion dollars of public money has been effectively disappeared into the banking system, while the global economy still spins to perdition, and now Israel using this weird post-election dead zone to go a-howling into Gaza with artillery blazing. And few days still remain in which Dick Cheney can destroy the planet.
How is it we never noticed this before? The answer is that 2008/9 is the first smooth transfer of presidential power in the 21st century. In 2000/1, the hung election and the Florida recount filled up the dead air between November and January as they went all the way to the Supreme Court. In 2004/5, of course, Kerry failed to unseat Bush and no power was transferred. This is the first time the world and the White House has had the full chance to do their worst.
Can this be rectified? Who the hell knows apart from a handful of constitutional scholars. But obviously something needs to be done or everyone from the Taliban to the Somali pirates will be well aware that when America changes presidents there’s a seventy-five day window to wreak all manner of havoc. (Or maybe it doesn’t matter because capitalism has collapsed already, but is too dumb to lay down.)

PSILOCYBIN VINDICATED

Lucy sent over this report on a Johns Hopkins study on magic mushrooms. It’s from CNN but surprisingly balanced. (And there's extra stuff on the end.) Click here.

Or conceivably OUT.

The secret word is Oblique

LIZ ON SUNDAY

I think, in the movie, the scene actually played out on a Sunday morning. And on the subject of Butterfield 8, here’s a memorable clip that recalls how, even in 1960, love was a many splendored thing. (Click here)

REMEMBRANCE AS AN AVOIDANCE OF REALITY

This may require some explanation.
When I saw this image on a visit to one of my favorite websites – If Charlie Parker Was a Gunslinger, There'd Be a Whole Lot of Dead Copycats – my memory was forcibly prodded into a long-gone haze of what could only have been late infancy, or at least to a time when I had just started to read. I can recall such posters on the platforms of British railway stations as my mother and I waited for the 10.25 to grandmother’s house (change at Paddington) and destinations of that ilk. Even as a child, I can recall finding something insinuatingly grotesque about the ancient fat mariner leaping a sand puddle and a starfish in his rolled down boots, and the slogan “It’s SO bracing!” I think the poster alone was enough to engender an innate and lifelong resolve to avoid Skegness unless actually paid to go there. I’m sure it’s a very nice town, but the poster was just too much.
I have much clearer memories of teenage, Goon Show/Bonzo Dog shock parody my with school buddies whenever the name Skegness was mentioned, and our dismay at what had once been our oppressed elders’ benighted idea of enjoyment. To advertise a vacation resort as “bracing” was surely only something the English, in the pre-Elvis cultural poverty of the 1950s, could come up with. The idea that one might find satisfaction walking in a raw wind that was whipping of the North Sea, after blowing all the way from the frozen fiords – with nothing more than pints of stout and mild, cod and chips, and the Beverly Sisters at the Pier Pavilion after the exercise – was incalculable to a generation that aspired to cocktails in semi-tropical cabana while girls in Brigitte Bardot bikinis walked by. Even that early there was a vast gulf of consciousness.

But why do I bring up all these yesterdays, and why now? I guess because this is the last Sunday of idleness until the full horror of 2009 really kicks in. Tanks are supposedly rolling into Gaza, another fire is being extinguished with gasoline, more slaughter is underway, but I’m trying to avoid thinking about that – and all the other New Year slings and arrows – for another 24 hours.

The secret word is Coward

THEY DON'T STAGE SHOWS LIKE THIS ANY MORE #12

HAMSTER DOING WHAT?

Four million people have watched this. Plus it’s a slow day, so why be different? Click now.

No hamsters were harmed in the uploading of this post.

2009

Is this the 40th year of Zentar?

NOT SO UNIQUE

By way of a greeting, Munz sent us what is maybe the greatest ever piece of social indignation in a movie, and a reminder that our current global woes are just more of the same. (Click here.)

The secret words are Mad As Hell

OUR WHACKY UNCLE BILL

On the first day of the year, Uncle Bill is unhappy with his new metal shelves.

IN THE COMING YEAR THIS BLOG WILL STILL BE PROTECTED BY...