hubble, funnies, rivers underwater, gizmodo sucks

• some cool hubble pictures - space can be a cool place, but I don't know if we need to spend billions of dollars to explore it.
• I don't know how or why, but someone felt it was necessary to teach a some sort of animal to ride a pony
• this makes me really sad:

• In case you have been keeping up with the Gizmodo/Apple fiasco, the latest update is that the police raided Gizmodo editor Jason Chen's house.  lol to the max.  I'm not a big Apple fan, but Gizmodo crossed an ethical line in my opinion and I hope they get what they deserve for trying to break the "big story."
• A RIVER? UNDERWATER?!?!

Is being a good Samaritan worth it?

New York passers-by leave good Samaritan to die

I've read some similar stories, and it makes me both sad and angry at how seemingly selfish some people can be.  If you're walking down the street and see a man keeled over in his own blood, how can you just ignore him? Does this kind of stuff happen in NYC so often that people just ignore it now? I can't imagine, but I also can't rationalize their actions anyways.

The story tells of a homeless man who saved a woman from an attack, and got stabbed in the process. My immediate reaction is, what happened to the woman? Did she not notice that he got stabbed several times, so she didn't bother to call 911?

My only guess is that the passer-by's just didn't notice he was stabbed, and assumed he was a passed out homeless guy, even though he was apparently lying in a pool of blood. I would hope that here in Austin we have a bit more remorse for homeless people, given that we have famous ones.

maverick, motorcycle, mass effect 2, music

Those M's have been the sum of my Saturday.

Maverick has had an upset stomach the past couple days, so I've had to keep an eye on him to make sure he goes outside when he needs, to prevent any "accidents."  A few days ago he was chewing on a deer antler bone,  and it sounded like he had finally chewed it down to a small enough chunk to where he could swallow it. It turns out my instincts were right, because when I approached him to take it away, he knew, so he just swallowed it right then. Awesome. Sure enough, a couple days later he is suffering the effects of the bone chunk now. Enjoy your diarrhea, dog.

Now that we've finally had a nice weekend, I decided to take my motorcycle out for a spin around the neighborhood. It has been several months since I've last ridden, so I need to ride around and slowly warm myself back up. I'm well aware of the dangers of riding my motorcycle, so I'm generally overly cautious. I won't just jump back onto my bike and start riding to work immediately; I will practice around the neighborhood and busier streets here first to make sure all my reflexes are still intact. Riding a motorcycle is easy, but being prepared for anything is a totally different story. You have to have all sorts of reflexes ingrained into you, so that if some moron turns out from a side street right in front of you, you know what to do. The worst thing you can do is target fixate, which is what happens to everyone almost naturally. If a car pulls out in front of you, your natural tendency is to stare it down and keep focusing on this "danger." This is a habit that you have to learn to break, because the unfortunate side-effect is that your motorcycle tends to go where you're looking. This actually extends past motorcycles to anything, really, but can be especially dangerous on bikes. You have to snap yourself out of staring, and instead look at where you need to go. At any rate, I'm glad riding season is finally back.

The remainder of my day has been spent playing Mass Effect 2 and listening and playing along to music. Nothing noteworthy there.

Tonight we are possibly going to dinner, but definitely going downtown to celebrate Andrea R's birthday. Should be fun, although we just went downtown last night. I can't remember the last time I went downtown in two consecutive nights, man I think I've already become a grandpa.

some links for you

Whoops I have been slacking with the links, nothing much interesting going on these days I guess...

New $100 bill - only two new features?
They announced the new $100 bill which will start circulating in February 2011.  The current $100 bill was designed in 1996, and since then they've only come up with two, ugly security features since then: a stupid inkwell with a bell that shows up when you tilt it, and a giant, ugly blue "ribbon" that runs down both sides.  That's the best you guys could do in 15 years?

Garden of Cosmic Speculation
Sweet looking garden

According to Iran cleric, promiscuous women cause earthquakes
Iran is really impressing the world these days

third base with your mom, game 2!

We had our second kickball game last night, against the Underachievers who beat their first opponent 12-3.  Some of us were worried that they were going to be a tough opponent.  Pffft, I knew better!

We dominated most of the game, winning 8-2.  In reality, the score should have been 9-2 because the ref forgot to tally one of our runs.  I went and tried to explain that to him, and he was about to agree with me when some girl on the other team contradicted me.  We all knew we didn't get the point, but the ref then agreed with the other team, thinking that he did in fact update the score.  WRONG.

No big deal though, it didn't end up mattering at the end.  I can't contain my competitive fire though, I will argue over everything.  Sometimes I feel bad because it's a super social league and it's just supposed to be for fun, but I can't help it.

Also, I think we should all get in the habit of stretching before the games.  Unfortunately, Taylor pulled a muscle right off the bat when running her bases.  She still played hard the rest of the game, but it probably would have been more enjoyable if she hadn't pulled a muscle.  Last season, we had a couple injuries, too, because of the lack of stretching.  Maybe one day we will learn?  I'm going to try to remember for the next game.

Finally, shout out to Mark for helping us out by replacing one of our team members.  I think he enjoyed it, and will be more willing to join our leagues in the future.

Great pictures... beautifully done, rather sad

I don't know the original source, but I found them on the image uploader here (click for original sizes): http://imgur.com/a/N0JK9/time_passing

today's interesting links

Teens text way too much

Pew Internet has done a study on mobile phone usage by teens.  It's pretty interesting, and a little bit scary.

Supreme Court voids law prohibiting depictions of animal cruelty

I am against animal cruelty (duh), but I agree with the First Amendment protection here... I think.  I can see instances where they would even have value, for example in documentaries or Animal Planet specials.

Cool ocean creatures

The ocean is a strange place

The story of the spying Philadelphia school

In case you haven't heard, a Philadelphia school issued "mandatory" laptops to students which can be and apparently was used to spy on students.  That's pretty messed up.