| You Are a Boston Creme Donut |
 You have a tough exterior. No one wants to mess with you. But on the inside, you're a total pushover and completely soft. You're a traditionalist, and you don't change easily. You're likely to eat the same doughnut every morning, and pout if it's sold out. |
The headline "Unnatural gas bill says man owes $14,000" says it all. Delmarva messed up and billed this man $14,000 for his gas bill, far and above the correct amount for his three bedroom home. The first line of the story is hilarious:
Science magazine reports the results of a study of preserved figs from 11,400 years ago in the Lower Jordan valley. They provide convincing evidence that the figs they studied are different from the wild figs that were around at the time and that these differences are explained by the domestication of the fig tree. This date puts the domestication of the fig at almost 5000 years before other fruits like grapes, olives and dates, and even preceded cereal domestication by a millennium.
I am not a big fan of figs, but with 11,000 years of work already under our belt producing this fruit, perhaps I should reconsider my stance.
The truth is that drugs are effective. The issue may be in getting that message out to the general public and being heard over the shrill complaints of populist politicians and the media trying to drum up a story. The other plain simple fact is that in our economic system even the pharmaceutical companies have stockholders and if these companies don't make profits, no one will invest in them, the companies go away and no drugs will be made. That extreme result is not going to happen, but this data presents a perfect climate for someone (politicians for instance) to step in with yet more regulation with no objection and maybe even assent from the general public. They would get to make a name for themselves whether regulation would be wise or not.
Our good friend Cthulu is one of the Elder Gods "of which we must not speak" from the Lovecraft mythos. It's Lovecraftian if it focuses on humanity's insignificance in the face of an evil hidden world, behind this one, with forbidden knowledge and an old dark evil best left undisturbed. This disturbing picture, The Miracle of Cephalopodization, comes from Joan Fontcuberta's Miracles & Co. One guess as to who it reminds you of. Since he must have dragged Cthulu out of his bed in R'lyeh for this picture, please make a saving throw against death or go insane. At least that's what my AD&D Deities and Demigods encyclopedia says to do.
Hellboy seems to be the latest movie that is on constantly in the cableverse and probably set me on this current unspeakable collection of Lovecraft tidbits. It makes some pretty obvious references to hidden knowledge and black, cold universes where an unimaginably old dark evil waits for its chance to consume our life force and destroy our planet. The "gods" in Hellboy are suitably tentacled, and the magic is appropriately arcane, though Hellboy's traditional horns-on-the-head demonic visage might be a little too Judeo-Christian to exactly fit into the mythos. Ron Perlman is absolutely perfect as the eponymous Hellboy.
I just finished reading the terrific novel "Declare" by Tim Powers. Powers takes the history of World War II and the Cold War and underlays a secret history of government spy agencies with battling internal cliques vying to either help free powerful (Lovecraftian) beings older than mankind itself or prevent them from escaping their prison. The narration jumps right into the middle of the story with a retired spy reactivated to complete a task he failed 20 years before. The author successfully weaves in a love story between the conflicted heroes who are both repelled and attracted to the power wielded by the unspeakable horrors they must contain. (Why do these novels always actually speak of the unspeakable horror? Isn't that hypocritical?) Charles Stross was warned not to read this book while he was finishing the Atrocity Archives because of some similarities, but I feel the comparison is superficial. There is only one instance of the word "ersatz" in Power's book and it only referred to coffee. Power's "Declare" is a worthwhile read.
To establish my bona fides I first needed to get a guest spot preaching at a local church. I think that recipes for summer barbecues using a little hellfire will really draw the crowds.
I finally settled on the Richard Science Fiction Reading Room, because it is something I really believe in. I have a plaque for the sanctum sanctorum (holy of holies), the library, and one worshipper. And now a church sign.
I can see this Cool Church Sign generator producing a ton of hoaxes out there on the intarwebs (wait for some more). This saying, "Celibacy is not hereditary", used to be on the sign board of a restaurant called B. Rathbone in Norristown, PA. I resurrect it in honor of them.
Poor Ruth Ann Minner, Governor of Delaware, keeps getting calls from telemarketers on her "secret" Homeland Security Hotline phones. If you only expect the hotline phone to ring when it is a Homeland Security emergency (or the police commisioner from Batman, or Nikita Khrushchev) and what you get instead is a solicitation for changing your long distance service, I expect that can be a little disconcerting. Maybe after a while you stop answering the phone. From the article:"Every time that phone rings, it's telemarketers," grumbled Gov. Ruth Ann Minner, whose secret homeland defense hot line sits in her office, ringing occasionally with offers of time share condominiums and great deals on long distance.
"I wonder about the security of that line," said Minner, noting that other governors have reported similarly unwelcome intrusions on the hot line phones that are supposed to ring only in the event of a national catastrophe.The governor asked that all of the phones be put on the Do Not Call Registry. One wonders why the secret Department of Homeland Security phonelines are not so secret. Could someone remind us of why are these guys in charge of our security again?
As a chemical engineer, I just had to stop and take a picture of a town sign with Chloride emblazoned across it. Although it seems the perfect town for the chemical or chemical engineering minded, the name Chloride does not recall the acid in your stomach, or the worse half of table salt (the better half would be the positive sodium ion, Na+, get it?), but silver chloride which was mined there and created the town in the first place. Learn more about Chloride, AZ here, or about chloride, the ion, here.
John Barentine presented pictures of a petroglyph in the White Tank Mountain Regional Park in Arizona which he claims is a historical record of a supernova from 1006 AD. He suggests that the Scorpion symbolizes the constellation and indicates the part of the sky in which the petroglyph artist saw the bright supernova. The scorpion is on left top of the picture and the eight pointed star at the right represents the supernova.
Here is an enigmatic picture of two men. 
Or is it two aliens? Here is a closeup of the left one, complete with snake (or squiggle), and eerie bulbous eyes.
Close up inspection shows some little people they both seem to be shepherding along between them.
This man, or shaman, or god, has two snakes on either side, and a strange monkey like shape worshipping one of the snakes. Is there a petroglyphist in the house to help with interpretation?
This series of figures in Temple Wash Utah is slowly breaking away from the wall, and is now missing the top half. Many of the petroglyphs are at risk from this kind of decay.
The piece of a spiral to the left of this figure may have been a target for a sliver of sun shining through a crack in the rocks that only lined up at a particular time of year, producing a crude solar calendar.