Though I think a far more worthier mission would be sending him back in time to stop TERMINATOR 3 and TERMINATOR SALVATION from ever having been made, but that’s a horse of a different color. Whatever that means.

[Via Pundit Kitchen]

There is something mildly terrifying about this giant sinkhole that appeared in Guatemala after tropical storm Agatha had its way with the countryside.

According to Pensa Libre, the sinkhole (hundimiento in Spanish) is 15 meters in diameter and 20 meters deep (approx. 49 feet by 65 feet). A three-story building that housed a tailor shop used to occupy the space.

[Via BoingBoing]

Over on Flickr, a user by the name of Pargon has a set up called “Teabonics”:

These are signs seen primarily at Tea Party Protests. They all feature “creative” spelling or grammar. This new dialect of the English language shall be known as “Teabonics.”

I like most of James Cameron’s movies, AVATAR notwithstanding, and think overall that he’s a very talented filmmaker, but I also kind of think he’s an egomaniac. However, on this point he and I are in total agreement:

Asked what he thought about Beck during a junket appearance in support of the “Avatar” home-video release, Cameron said: “Glenn Beck is a fucking asshole. I’ve met him. He called me the anti-Christ and not about ‘Avatar.’ He hadn’t even seen ‘Avatar’ yet. I don’t know if he has seen it.”

[. . .]

“He’s dangerous because his ideas are poisonous,” Cameron answered. “I couldn’t believe when he was on CNN. I thought, what happened to CNN? Who is this guy? Who is this madman? And then of course he wound up on Fox News, which is where he belongs, I guess.”

Asked by THR if he felt the right wing’s attacks against him were continuing, Cameron replied: “They’re not attacks. They’re just people ranting away, lost in their little bubbles of reality, steeped in their own hatred, their own fear and hatred. That’s where it all comes from. Let’s just call it out. Let’s have a public discussion. That’s what movies are supposed to do, you know, you can have a mindless entertainment film that doesn’t affect anybody. I wasn’t interested in that.”

(Emphasis added by me.)

Can’t say I agree with Cameron’s assertion that AVATAR doesn’t qualify as “mindless entertainment,” or that it’s some great cultural achievement that will change the way the world thinks about the environment. Yes, it looked pretty and was innovative and made a buttload of money, but story-wise it wasn’t anything approaching original, and it certainly isn’t the first film to be environmentally conscious, or anti-war.

But boy howdy — I would greatly like to see a live debate between James Cameron and Glenn Beck. And moderated by Jon Stewart, because — why the hell not?

Beck, because he is an idiot and batshit crazy, would lose. But he would lose in the grandest, most rabid and entertaining manner possible. It would be the stuff of legend.

Cherie Priest sums it up succinctly and perfectly:

I sometimes wonder what kind of innovation renaissance the USA would undergo if it really did pass proper universal coverage. Who would start her own business? What would your neighbors invent, patent, and produce? I thrill to imagine people with the liberty to start over, try something new, to make things — without the stifling terror of being left uncovered or uncoverable. I dream one day of dancing on these eggshells, like the rest of the industrialized world.

In lieu of writing about my, like, totally boring life, I thought I’d post some links I find entertaining, links that I discovered on my journeys along dusty cathode tubes of the Internet.

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This was funny, if you know a little bit about comics and Jack Chick. I’ve heard this “Jack Chick” mentioned before, but only had a vague idea to what he was about. Turns out he was kind of crazy. Anyway, go see what might a collaboration between Stan Lee and Mister Chick might have been like.

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Continuing this geeky trend, I thought this bit of news was pretty damn cool:

An ancient astronomical calculator made at the end of the 2nd century BC was amazingly accurate and more complex than any instrument for the next 1,000 years, scientists said on Wednesday.

The Antikythera Mechanism is the earliest known device to contain an intricate set of gear wheels. It was retrieved from a shipwreck off the Greek island of Antikythera in 1901 but until now what it was used for has been a mystery.

[. . .]

The calculator could add, multiply, divide and subtract. It was also able to align the number of lunar months with years and display where the sun and the moon were in the zodiac.

Edmunds and his colleagues discovered it had a dial that predicted when there was likely to be a lunar or solar eclipse. It also took into account the elliptical orbit of the moon.

(Read on.)

Theories like this make me wonder if Atlantis really might have existed existed (or at least if some analogous version did). If the Greeks were making shit like this over 2000 years ago, imagine the technologies that the Atlanteans possessed some 6000 years earlier. Consider the following: Atlantis had some huge catastrophe that wiped out most of its civilization. The survivors scattered, and some made it to Europe. The level of technology would have been difficult to maintain for more than a generation or two; imagine some disaster wiping out humanity’s electricity now — where would we be in a hundred years? Early industrial age, if we’re lucky. Now span this out over a thousand years, and watch as we slowly sink deeper into a technological slump. Then add in 5000 more years. We’d either be drawing on the walls of caves, or we’d have recovered to some extent. Perhaps like the Greeks did, with their ancient calculator? At the very least, it’s something interesting to think about.

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Lastly, I present a music video that you’ll probably still be humming or singing for the rest of the day, and possibly for the next several days too:

Catchy, eh?

JAB

New York Magazine has a really interesting piece up right now: “What If 9/11 Never Happened?”

They assembled a varied list of contributors — columnists, political advisers, public figures, even graphic novelists — to pontificate on what the world might be like had the terrorist attacks that day never happened. All of the speculations are very, very fascinating, and, perhaps not unsurprisingly, more than a little depressing.

My two — I hesitate to call them “favorites,” so I’ll go with the two I thought were the best, perhaps the most thought-provoking, are actually the first and last entries. Andrew Sullivan, former editor of the New Republic, contributed a series of alternate history blog posts relating very plausibly how a different, more deadly terrorist attack might have affected a different world.

The other highlight is by the aforementioned “graphic novelists” Brian K. Vaughan and Tony Harris, cocreators of the excellent comic book series Ex Machina. Theirs is probably the most striking too, consisting of one panel of art and one caption.

If you’ve got some free time I recommend reading the whole thing. If you don’t, then just read the ones I pointed out. It’s worth it.

JAB

Those crazy Iranians . . .

TEHRAN, Iran — Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has ordered government and cultural bodies to use modified Persian words to replace foreign words that have crept into the language, such as “pizzas” which will now be known as “elastic loaves,” state media reported Saturday.

The presidential decree, issued earlier this week, orders all governmental agencies, newspapers and publications to use words deemed more appropriate by the official language watchdog, the Farhangestan Zaban e Farsi, or Persian Academy, the Irna official news agency reported.

The academy has introduced more than 2,000 words as alternatives for some of the foreign words that have become commonly used in Iran, mostly from Western languages. The government is less sensitive about Arabic words, because the Quran is written in Arabic.

Among other changes, a “chat” will become a “short talk” and a “cabin” will be renamed a “small room,” according to official Web site of the academy.

An elastic loaf with round meat patties sounds awesome right now. I’m so hungry.

Via the Associated Press.

JAB

I wish I’d showed this much initiative when I was ten:

GARY, Ind. — A cafeteria worker thought it was odd that a fourth-grader would pay for his lunch with a $20 bill.

The cashier at Marquette Elementary School was right. The cashier, who also noticed that the texture of the paper wasn’t right, alerted the school’s police officer, Patrolman Greg Tatum, who asked the 10-year-old about the money.

“He reached into his front pocket and pulled out more,” Tatum said.

The discovery Tuesday led to the arrest of three fourth-graders at the Gary school, where police and school officials confiscated $179 in counterfeit money.

All three face juvenile charges of forgery and theft, Cpl. Nelson Otano after the students were brought to the police station.

Police found the bills in a trash can next to a computer when they went to the first boy’s home Tuesday, Gary Police Cpl. Nelson Otano said.

“It looked like they were trying to perfect them,” he said.

Police arrested two 10-year-old boys and a 12-year-old girl. In all, police identified seven fake 20s, three 10s, one five and four ones, Otano said.

Hell, I wish I had that much initiative now.

JAB