The amazing (?) Newton household robot, from 1989.

from www.paleofuture.com posted with vodpod

“When we got it, it was two hunks of metal stuck together. We couldn’t even tell it was a hard drive. It was burned and the edges were melted,” said Edwards, an engineer at Kroll Ontrack Inc., outside Minneapolis. “It looked pretty bad at first glance, but we always give it a shot.”

Data from Columbia disk drives survived the shuttle accident - Yahoo! News

And at a university, of all places:

MY RACIAL HARASSMENT NIGHTMARE - New York Post

Some Hawaiian activists who miss their former monarchy are making a nuisance of themselves.

Let’s just hope they don’t give those Texian holdouts any ideas. Remember the Alamo!

It’s Saint Joseph’s Cat again!

Originally uploaded by bcostin

I’m sure Saint Joseph is an awesome guy, being a saint and all. But he really needs to tell his cat to stop calling us.

Speaker Pelosi’s favorite Earth Day Biblical passage has drawn some attention:

Biblical Scholars Challenge Pelosis Scripture Quote — 04/23/2008

I suspect her verse appears right after Ezekiel 25:17, or maybe somewhere before Armaments 2:21.

It’s easy enough to check these things using free online concordances, if accuracy is important to you. Of course there’s really no need to attribute it to the Bible at all.

Another cool project from master modder Ben Heckdorn

I missed this yesterday, but it’s worth reading to prepare for next year’s festivities:

Classical Values :: The Songs Of Distant Earth Days

To paraphrase Glenn Reynolds, environmentalists have predicted 8 of the last 0 planet-ending disasters. Between the man-made industrial ice age, crushing overpopulation, acid rain, lethal oceans, and Venus-like clouds of toxic smog cloaking the surface of the planet we should all be dead a couple times over. Yet dare express skepticism of their accuracy or question their motives in some circles, and you become a “denier” deserving only scorn, ostracism, and punishment. That’s they way the environmentalist movement has behaved for decades. It’s not the way science works; it is, however, exactly how religion works. Funny, that.

I mostly agree with this analysis:

The Jawa Report: The Two Wars in Iraq & Mistaken Republican Support for Obama

I also agree with the view that in a broader historical context, all three Iraqi wars (including Desert Storm back in 1991) are really just individual battles in a much longer, larger war against the multinational forces of Islamofacism. Just as the Korean War and Vietnam were part of the much larger Cold War fought against the Chinese and Soviet spheres of global Communism.

A very nice vintage camera photography blog: Boxes & Bellows