If you’ve never seen concrete proof before that the bottom of an extended Slinky will not drop one single millimeter before the rest of it catches up, well, you have now.
This Week In Particularly Preternaturally Potent Porcine Products
First up, the Flaming Bacon Lance Of Death, nuff said:
Next up, Brit scientists prove bacon sandwiches cure a hangover. Oh, bless the Brits!
Lastly, science cannot put a name to the awesomeness of, well, just look:
The Boing Boing commenters on the original story helpfully suggest “Noodledogs”, “Cthulhu bits”, “hot doodle”, “doghetti”, “pork calamari”, “pighetti” and a whole host of others. Mmmm-mmmm!
Mythbusters Mouthpalm. Oh My.
UPDATE: And like that, *POOF*, the video’s gone. Pulled from YouTube. D’oh!
UPDATE 2: Thanks go out to Andy II for the working YouTube link.
Watch for Adam’s reaction to the following excellent experiment. That was me for, oh, I don’t know, a good two minutes or so after watching this clip:
Mythbusters is the best show in the history of ever. Seriously.
Your Daily Dose Of “…What The Crap?”
[With apologies to Scott Johnson, of My Extra Life fame, for his coinage of phrase.]
Dear President Obama, what the crap?
Obama Considers Zany Climate Engineering Gadgets to Fight ‘The Warming’.
Obama is apparently considering using a machine that would suck up smog and shoot it into the upper atmosphere—reflecting the sun’s rays—as a way to fight global warming. I’m not joking.
Dear IRS, what the crap?
Tax deductions you’ve never heard of, including allowances for kidnapped children:
Back in 2000, the Internal Revenue Service issued a ruling that members of Congress called “cruel, heartless and anti-family.” It said that parents of a child that had been kidnapped could only claim the child as a dependent for the year in which the child had been kidnapped, not for later years. Congress threatened to write a law to remedy the situation, but the IRS quickly revised its ruling. Now parents whose child has been kidnapped can continue to take all credits and exclusions for which they would be eligible if the child still lived with them, until the child would be 18 years old or is found dead. The one caveat: the child must have been abducted by a stranger and not a family member.
We have a really screwed up tax system…
Continue reading “Your Daily Dose Of “…What The Crap?””
CPU Vs. GPU, Mythbusters-Style
By way of Extra Life, we have this awesome (albeit scientifically suspect) demonstration of traditional in-order execution on CPUs vs. the multi-core/GPU massively-parallel execution that is the New Hotness:
Awesome, just awesome.
Your Tax Dollars At Work: NASA Redefines “EPIC FAIL”
Sure, it’s no $400 million weather satellite, but NASA’s test of the new Orion vehicle’s parachute system is certainly up there in the “ouch” department — the high speed fall from 25,000 with precisely zero successful chute deployments is downright hilarious to watch. One can almost envision Buster being pulled from the wreckage with all of his shock stickers broken wide open.
*grin*
You’ve Been… THUNderSTRUCK!
Whoa. Somebody got ahold of an extremely high-speed camera and captured footage of a lightning bolt, from cloud-borne inception to final strike. Dig it:
“Do You Remember When We Were Chasing The Germans…”
Here’s a few videos to help you through the morning on this lovely gray, rainy Thursday. 
First up is a skit featuring metric football and Indiana Jones, from That Mitchell and Webb Look:
Next up is footage of an insane German water slide featuring many shots of German men in atrociously small bathing suits. Still, the slide looks fun.

Ever wanted to visualize magnetic fields? Then does NASA have the video for you!
Philadelphia Metro Residents: Get Thee To The Franklin Institute
For lo, Star Wars: Where Science Meets Imagination is currently running and is eminently check-out-able.
(CrunchGear has pictures to prove it.)
Man, Pat Sajak Must Be Ticked!
I will say this for working with a bunch of geek fellow travelers: you learn a lot of interesting things during lunchtime conversations, such as the fact that Monty Hall has a probability problem/”paradox” named after him.
The problem, simply stated, is that contestants on Let’s Make a Deal! have a 2/3rds probability of winning the non-booby prize when offered, post-revelation of one booby prize, a chance to switch the door they’ve chosen and not a 1/2 probability as one might assume. Who knew gameshows involved actual, you know, game theory?
(Click through to the ‘Pedia link above to read the full explanation.)