Biomes Blog

Entry #3087: Slinky Workout

Albino Monday: A zoo in Cornwall, U.K. has bred its second albino antelope.

Please enjoy 3 1/2 minutes of a slinky on a treadmill.

How to fix Washington. Five things we are doing that we shouldn’t and four things that we should be doing but aren’t.

Entry #3086: Race and Ethnicity Maps

Robert Reich clearly explains how private equity firms, like Romney's Bain Capital, work in eight easy steps.

Christian values.

This series of race and ethnicity maps shows the makeup of the major American cities based on the 2010 census. Each dot represents 25 people, red is White, blue is Black, green is Asian, orange is Hispanic, and yellow is Other. This one is New York City (click to embiggen).

Entry#3085: Phone Heist Fail

The Lord of the Rings movies set depicting the shire of Hobbiton is now home to a lot of sheep.

Katy McCaffrey had her iPhone stolen by an employee during a Disney cruise. She has an app that automatically downloads any photos taken with her camera. She’s made a facebook page out of them, until she gets her phone back.

Joe Salter completed a triathlon in under two hours. He juggled tennis balls the entire time.

Entry #3084: Airship

The Hindenburg, 75 years later. Here’s some video footage of the actual disaster. It doesn’t say here, but I read somewhere that the famous “Oh, the humanity!” report was dubbed in later and wasn’t the reporter as he was actually witnessing the event. 

Lance has a nice review of The Avengers up.

Who would play the real life Woody and Buzz Lightyear? I’m going with Clint Eastwood (as Woody) and Bruce Willis (as Buzz).

Entry #3083: Sock a Knee

Mittens promises to “...lead us out of this debt and spending inferno”. Except, like everything else conservative,  it’s based on a lie.

How many of these hard-to-pronounce company names are you saying wrong? The only one I got right was Stella Artois.

See where you fall on this theist/agnostic/atheist venn diagram. I clearly fall in the green section (agnostic atheist). Since you can’t prove a negative, I don’t think anyone could honestly say they are in the brown section. And you’d have to be insanely delusional to claim to fall in the maroon. So purple and green are really your only choices. Click to make the venn diagram bigger.

Entry #3082: Teddy

White House dot gov has a very nice biography of each of the U.S. presidents. Start with G.W. (the competent one). If I erased everything I know about American history and rated the presidents solely by these biographies, I’d pick Teddy Roosevelt as the one who outshines them all.

Doug is bad at small talk.

Animal of the week: A snoring dormouse, although I think it's asthmatic. 

An accidental optical illusion.

Entry #3081: Sleep

37 47 11. When Romney took over Massachusetts the state was 37th in job creation. After his term it ranked 47th. After Patrick (D) took over it rose to 11th out of 50.

Twenty-four policies that Republicans supported before they were against them.

Giraffes only sleep for 1.9 hours a day. Brown bats sleep 19.9 hours. And there’s a whole bunch of data points here.

These animals are extremely disappointed in you.

Entry #3080: Calvin Goes National

Cheetahs are the only mammal to become extinct on the Indian sub-continent (thanks to the British colonists). A plan to reintroduce African cheetahs has been blocked by the courts because the two populations are genetically different.

Here’s a good take on the Curt Shilling mess here in RI. I’m relying on this same office to provide part of my expansion funds, but for a very, very tiny fraction of the amount this grifter received. If it affects my loan I’ll have one more reason to despise baseball.

The news report about me and my calico lobster was picked up nationally by CNN.

Entry #3079: Billionaire Parasites

Facebook has been one of the most remarkable tools I’ve found in marketing my business and getting my customers personally involved and feeling part of the Biomes community. In fact, it has been a major force in actually creating a Biomes community. Regarding my personal facebook, which I check maybe twice a month, I hate it. With most posts on my wall I think, “I don’t really know you and I don’t care what you had for dinner and stop sending me those damn farm animals”. Reading this post, about the selfish parasites the founders have turned out to be, makes me want to chuck the whole thing.

Now we’re cookin’: How to make orange chicken.

Pet corner: How a dog's drinking appears gravity-defying. Watch it in slow motion.

Entry #3078: The Dictator

Sascha Baron Cohen's new film is less crude than "Borat", but even funnier. And it ends with a devastating speech on democracy which holds a mirror up to what we allowed to happen to it during the Bush/Cheney years. Here's Ebert's take.

Morford: Collapse of the shiny pretty things.

I love TEDTalks, but they were cowards for folding under right-wing pressure into pulling this video (not that they could keep it off YouTube). The guy talking is a billionaire.