Interesting point. So you mean to say that because a car that's going 60 MPH burns 1,125 calories in a minute, and because a human moving at 3 MPH burns only 4.6 calories in a minute, the human body is more efficient, right?
At the end of one minute, the person has moved 264 feet, which is 1/20th of a mile. The car has moved 1 mile. At the end of an hour, the car has gone sixty miles and the person has gone three miles.
The car has used 67,500 calories to move twenty times farther than the human did on 276 calories. The car uses 245 times the energy to move 20 times faster than the human does.
...of course, while moving 20 times faster than the human the car also weighs twenty times what the human weighs. Any ideas on how many calories an elephant consumes per minute when moving at a comfortable pace? How about a whale? Compare those figures to those for ants.
The force due to aerodynamic drag rises as the cube of speed. The car requires more energy to shove air out of the way at that speed.
Finally, consider how much Tour de France athletes eat while they're participating in the race--this is humans moving bicycles as fast as they can; they eat like horses because they're expending a lot more than 4.6 calories per minute.
This comparison is meaningless.
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This is also bullshit. They found some extremophile bacteria living on a volcano at 19,00o-odd feet, and the article's lede says "New extremophile organisms have been found high in the Atacama desert, the region of Earth that most resembles the conditions seen on the planet Mars."
WTF. The atmosphere of Mars is mostly carbon dioxide and it barely even qualifies as an atmosphere: surface pressure on Mars is 1 kilopascal, which is one percent of the pressure of Earth's atmosphere, 0.15 PSI. At 19,850 feet above Earth's surface, the air pressure is nearly 7 PSI--which is some forty-eight times higher than Mars' surface pressure.
The conditions there might be the most like Mars of anywhere on Earth, but they are not like Mars conditions. They're not even fricking close.
* * *
"Cocaine"? Get that writer out of the 1980s. WoW is as addictive as a hybrid of tobacco, crack, and meth! The game should be called "World of Warcrack".
WTF.
* * *
I think I want to read this book.
During the Clinton years I established "The Dan Quayle Presidential Library" which consisted of the writings of various conservatives. I seem to be hankering to revive it--what with my growing collection of Ann Coulter books. (Bought Guilty on that horrible trip home from Maine.)
* * *
Carameldansen. The characters: Mai and Mii from Popotan. The song?
I don't know. I want the version of the song that was used for this animutation. I tried to find it and can't. *sigh*
* * *
It looks as if dissent is no longer patriotic. Apparently some liberal talk show harpy thinks it's "treasonous" to want Obama's policies to fail.
It wasn't treasonous to want Bush's policies to fail, so piss off, bitch.
* * *
Seconded! Resign, Michael Steele! You think the GOP resembled a bunch of Nazis at the convention last year, remember?
The last thing we need is the nominal head of our own freaking party calling us Nazis. Jesus!
* * *
Publishers don't tell all the truth about islam. Why? They're "afraid".
...they're not afraid of Christians because Christians don't blow shit up when they get mad.
I'm just sayin'.
* * *
Target is my employer. Hopefully this will continue. If they're opening 27 new stores they must have the money to do so, right? Which means not cutting people? Right? Right?
* * *
If Bush had been unable to go anywhere without a teleprompter the criticism from the left would have been deafening. Liberals would have cited it as another "example" of how "dumb" he was and how it meant he was unfit for office.
But since it's Boss Tweek, who's a Democrat, it's not even remarked upon.
Except here.
His use of the teleprompter makes work tricky for the television crews and photographers trying to capture an image of the president announcing a new Cabinet secretary or housing plan without a pane of glass blocking his face.If he were a Republican, the cameramen wouldn't bother trying to avoid the thing; they'd just take the picture with the teleprompter screen plainly visible.
* * *
Hey, here is a human rights group that understands how barbaric islam is. Awesome!
What's that? "Don't be so hard on them?" When islam joins the rest of the world in the 21st century I'll consider it. Until the honor killings and the stonings and the suicide bombings and the roadside bombs and the other terror attacks stop, though, I'm not going to be nice. Why should I?
If the world's islamic leaders were denouncing the violence--not just saying "Islam is peace!" but actually saying things like "Those guys who perpetrated the 9/11 attacks are burning in hell, not enjoying paradise"--until muslim leaders start saying things like that, they are tacitly approving of all the violence and horror perpetrated in Mohammed's name. That's barbarism and I refuse to pussy-foot around the issue any longer because someone's religion might be "offended".
You know what? My religion is offended at least once a week by people who claim to have a monopsony on tolerance and acceptance--and who are, in fact, the most intolerant people on the face of the planet. Maybe that's why leftists love muslims so much--they see eye-to-eye on the concept of civilized debate.
* * *
Amazon.com sent me an e-mail telling me that I can get the new Kindle. Problem is, I don't want the new Kindle.
That's not entirely right. I do want one--it's about 80% of what I think an ebook should be, right down to the wireless access to on-line encyclopedias!--but the price is prohibitive.
Maybe in 20 years I can have something like that.
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Today's bit of humor: