Critters of the sea

Some serious ugliness going on underwater. Instapundit links to Real Life Sea Monsters - 24 Bizarre Creatures of the Deep. Remember the Dana octopus squid, from a while back? Here it is, not just etherised, but dead, upon a table:
From this picture, we can gain a better sense of scale. That's a good-sized serving of bioluminescent calamaro! There are bigger ones at the link. Poisonous octopodes as well.

Numa numa!

After watching the CNN YouTube Democratic candidates debate, I need something sweet to get the bitter taste of all that ambitious foolishness out of my mouth. So: Dragostea Din Tei!

Darn, I love this song! I love it even better in the original Romanian. Because I don't understand Romanian.

Here's the original Romanian language video. Way cool airplane! (Link may not last, Warner is on a campaign to keep you from appreciating their products. I have had to change two of these links in the last couple of days.)

A live performance at the Star Academy. This includes a dancing dinosaur, a "zero-g" spaceman, and plenty of bouncy audience members who join in the dance.

Another live performance by Buffy, with Spike on drums, and Willow dancing in the red-and-black striped top. [That link doesn't work any more, try this. Not as good video quality, but the same live performance.] Oh, no, sorry, that's not Buffy, it's Paula Mitrache. Another by Paula Mitrache and her group Haiducii [Outlaws], with lyrics in Romanian and English in the sidebar.

Here it is in English. Kind of loses a little of the mystery. Update: Now that I have found the transcriptions and translation of the original lyrics, I see that this is a completely different song, to the same tune. The original has much more depth and poignancy.

A couple of versions using World of Warcraft characters: In this one, a character does the Macarena; this one has a lot of babes in bikinis, with swords.

Wikipedia has a an article on the song that seems pretty thorough, with some interesting ideas for possible variant translations of the title. The repeated "nu ma, nu ma" seems to mean, "don't want, don't want." So is the song related to LOLcats in some way? Were LOLcats involved in this? No wonder it's so popular.

Sen. Byrd testifies in favor of repeal of the 17th amendment

That's the amendment whereby Senators are elected by popular vote, rather than by the state legislatures. Video, and comments. Again, speaking on a different topic: "Barbaric. Barbaric. Barbaric. BARBARIC !"

Update: Ted Kennedy, too. Again.

Dog story, non-shaggy

Yaacov Ben Moshe writes about four dogs. Real dogs, not shaggy dogs. There's a Liberal dog, a Progressive dog, a Conservative dog, a Libertarian dog. I'd love to see an illustrated version of this story, featuring Michael Moore as a toy poodle. That would be funny. This story is not funny, well, it has funny bits, but overall, it is moving, and worth reading in its entirety. (The rest of the posts over there are also worth reading. If I didn't think so, it would not be on the link list. But this one has dogs.)

This is a true story of hardships survived, pampered lives and the courage to face danger for the things and people you love. It is also an object lesson in how your philosophy affects your ability to survive.

It also has coyotes.

Captain Nemo, your ship is here

Instapundit links to this, which led me to Google around a bit and find this: Wow, it's the Nautilus! (That's a very large jpg.) Or close enough. More streamlined, with more viewports. Only $80 million or so. I suppose one could install a pipe organ.

Terrorist logos

An incomplete collection. There is much arguing in the comments about which groups should or should not have been included. Still, a resource. Thanks to The Corner.

Gnomes

The good kind. I have to be careful playing the CD in the car because it makes the miles melt away; wouldn't want to miss a turn, wind up in Philadelphia by mistake.

Rubber duckies sailing around the world

This is amazing:

Thousands of rubber ducks to land on British shores after 15 year journey

They were toys destined only to bob up and down in nothing bigger than a child's bath - but so far they have floated halfway around the world.

The armada of 29,000 plastic yellow ducks, blue turtles and green frogs broke free from a cargo ship 15 years ago.

Since then they have travelled 17,000 miles, floating over the site where the Titanic sank, landing in Hawaii and even spending years frozen in an Arctic ice pack.

And now they are heading straight for Britain. At some point this summer they are expected to be spotted on beaches in South-West England.

Found in Jerry Pournelle's mail.

Happy Birthday, U.S.A.!

Fourth of July fireworks in Ocean City were postponed to the 5th on account of wind. Having the holiday on Wednesday seems to extend the mood to the whole week.

That post a while back about John Kessel's musical, Faustfeathers, led me to an anthology called Feeling Very Strange. I'm about half-way through it now. I don't feel any different …

.ubɐʇɥ,ɟ ɐı ǝǝɟɟoɔ ǝ1ʇʇı1 ɐ ǝqʎɐɯ 'ɥbnoɥʇ ʇsɐɟʞɐǝɹq ɹoɟ ʞɐǝɹq oʇ ǝʌɐɥ ı

*

More Gore, they cry

For a value of "they" < 2. But that's enough of my readership that the call for more Gore-bashing must be answered. Briefly this time, though, with links.

Ponder the Maunder is the website of 15-year old Kristen Byrnes. As an extra credit project for Honors Earth Science at Portland (Maine) High School, she wrote up a point-by-point critique, a demolition really, of An Inconvenient Truth. While looking around for that page, I found her posting on Physics Forums [which appears to be a homework-help site], a little about how the appearance of "consensus" is being maintained, to the extent that it is.

Government scientists such as those with NASA JPL or GISS gave me the okay to acknowledge them in my paper that would be turned in to my teacher, but would not approve of the same in the on-line version.
Within the scientific community there is a fear of being harrassed by political activists, creationists, peers and etc. They also fear having their funding cut. As for the influence of the fossil fuel industry, it seems that there is no money directed to scientists who are not directly employed by the fossil fuel industry. Sceptical scientists do not want to accept fossil fuel money because they would be plastered all over the press as "shills" for the fossil fuel industry and their careers ruined.

So that's how that is going.

I compared Al Gore to a revival preacher in Another Gore campaign event. Roger L. Simon compares him to a couple of Sinclair Lewis characters, and also finds that Maggie's Farm had this idea way back in February, and with a terrific graphic, too. I'm sure it was just coincidence that Dodsworth was on TCM last night!

And I see that AGW has made it to the comic strips! The link is today's Dilbert, too big to be legible here. More jokes! Let us have more jokes. Maybe this thing can be laughed to death.