The perfect response in every situation

(via xkcd)

1903 film footage of Princeton-Yale football game

No forward passes, no instant replays, no skycams, no two-way radio in the quarterback's helmet...Is this even football?


(via Kottke)

Light barrier still intact

You may recall the announcement in September of last year that scientists may have succeeded in accelerating subatomic particles faster than the speed of light. Well, the results are finally in. The verdict? Pretty much what everyone suspected.

Better luck next time, guys.

"Your perfectly pristine papers, please"

If you're going to be traveling abroad, you'll want to make sure your passport is in pristine condition. One Denver family found that out the hard way.

Kyle Gosnell, his wife Dana, and son Kye were on their way to Belize on vacation. They went through airport security in Denver without any problems and received boarding passes all the way through to Belize city. While switching planes in Dallas, however, Kyle was told his passport was mutilated, and therefore unacceptable. The family was not allowed to board their plane, and American Airlines put them up in a hotel for the night.

It seems that if an airport employee has a difficult time scanning a passport, he or she can refuse passage. (Why is the Bridge of Death scene from Monty Python and the Holy Grail suddenly springing to mind?) The Gosnells, meanwhile, just want to see some changes made so that airport policies regarding passports are more uniform.

On the bright side, the family got a partial expense-paid night in Dallas. Yeehaw.

Ice Age squirrel key to resurrecting ancient species of plants?

It was the blood from ancient mosquitoes trapped in amber that led to the resurrection of dinosaurs in the movie Jurassic Park. In Russia, scientists have revived a plant believed to be at least 30,000 years old, and they have a bushy-tailed rodent to thank for that:

It was an Ice Age squirrel's treasure chamber, a burrow containing fruit and seeds that had been stuck in the Siberian permafrost for over 30,000 years. From the fruit tissues, a team of Russian scientists managed to resurrect an entire plant in a pioneering experiment that paves the way for the revival of other species.

The Silene stenophylla is the oldest plant ever to be regenerated, the researchers said, and it is fertile, producing white flowers and viable seeds.

The experiment proves that permafrost serves as a natural depository for ancient life forms, said the Russian researchers, who published their findings in Tuesday's issue of "Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences" of the United States.

"We consider it essential to continue permafrost studies in search of an ancient genetic pool, that of pre-existing life, which hypothetically has long since vanished from the earth's surface," the scientists said in the article.

Squirrels! Who would have thought that those dreaded vermin could actually do something useful?

Nuclear bombs on America's highways

If ignorance is bliss, that would explain why Americans are so happy. We love our hot dogs; we just don't want to know how they're made.

The same could be said of the inner workings of our government. We want transparency, but we still want to be able to sleep at night. If you fall into that category, you may not want to read on.

A show of hands: How many of you stopped to think about how nuclear weapons and other radioactive material were transported across the country? Not many. For those of you who did, you probably thought it was in secret military cargo planes flying in the dead of night. Think again:

As you weave through interstate traffic, you're unlikely to notice another plain-looking Peterbilt tractor-trailer rolling along in the right-hand lane. The government plates and array of antennas jutting from the cab's roof would hardly register. You'd have no idea that inside the cab an armed federal agent operates a host of electronic countermeasures to keep outsiders from accessing his heavily armored cargo: a nuclear warhead with enough destructive power to level downtown San Francisco.

That's the way the Office of Secure Transportation (OST) wants it. At a cost of $250 million a year, nearly 600 couriers employed by this secretive agency within the U.S. Department of Energy use some of the nation's busiest roads to move America's radioactive material wherever it needs to go—from a variety of labs, reactors and military bases, to the nation's Pantex bomb-assembly plant in Amarillo, Texas, to the Savannah River facility. Most of the shipments are bombs or weapon components; some are radioactive metals for research or fuel for Navy ships and submarines. The shipments are on the move about once a week.

Here's a map of the most-traveled routes. You might want to refer to it when planning your next road trip:

(via The Tea Party Economist)

Girl texting while walking falls on live TV

No word yet on whether or not she was chewing gum at the time.

"Irrefutable evidence" of Siberian yeti?

I love a good Bigfoot story. Naturally, you can imagine my excitement when I read that researchers had found "irrefutable evidence" of the existence of the Abominable Snowman.

A group of international scientists set out on an expedition to the Kemerovo region of Siberia. There, they found footprints, a supposed bed, and various markers used by the yeti to mark its territory. All the evidence collected will be analyzed in a special laboratory.

OK, so this really isn't anything we haven't heard before. As usual, time will tell.

Confusing school zone speed limit sign

This is how they roll in White Lake Township, Michigan:

I think the point of the sign is to get drivers to come to a complete stop to read it. School zone speeding problem solved.

(via LewRockwell.com)

A Presidential Candidate - by Mark Twain

If you haven't signed up for The Library of America's Story of the Week, you should do so now. It's a weekly email that provides a fascinating glimpse into America's literary past. Today's feature: a deliciously humorous piece from 1879, written by my favorite American author of all time.

A Presidential Candidate
By Mark Twain

I have pretty much made up my mind to run for President. What the country wants is a candidate who cannot be injured by investigation of his past history, so that the enemies of the party will be unable to rake up anything against him that nobody ever heard of before. If you know the worst about a candidate, to begin with, every attempt to spring things on him will be checkmated. Now I am going to enter the field with an open record. I am going to own up in advance to all the wickedness I have done, and if any Congressional committee is disposed to prowl around my biography in the hope of discovering any dark and deadly deed that I have secreted, why—let it prowl.

In the first place, I admit that I treed a rheumatic grandfather of mine in the winter of 1850. He was old and inexpert in climbing trees, but with the heartless brutality that is characteristic of me I ran him out of the front door in his nightshirt at the point of a shotgun, and caused him to bowl up a maple tree, where he remained all night, while I emptied shot into his legs. I did this because he snored. I will do it again if I ever have another grandfather. I am as inhuman now as I was in 1850. I candidly acknowledge that I ran away at the battle of Gettysburg. My friends have tried to smooth over this fact by asserting that I did so for the purpose of imitating Washington, who went into the woods at Valley Forge for the purpose of saying his prayers. It was a miserable subterfuge. I struck out in a straight line for the Tropic of Cancer because I was scared. I wanted my country saved, but I preferred to have somebody else save it. I entertain that preference yet. If the bubble reputation can be obtained only at the cannon’s mouth, I am willing to go there for it, provided the cannon is empty. If it is loaded my immortal and inflexible purpose is to get over the fence and go home. My invariable practice in war has been to bring out of every fight two­thirds more men than when I went in. This seems to me to be Napoleonic in its grandeur.

My financial views are of the most decided character, but they are not likely, perhaps, to increase my popularity with the advocates of inflation. I do not insist upon the special supremacy of rag money or hard money. The great fundamental principle of my life is to take any kind I can get.

The rumor that I buried a dead aunt under my grapevine was correct. The vine needed fertilizing, my aunt had to be buried, and I dedicated her to this high purpose. Does that unfit me for the Presidency? The Constitution of our country does not say so. No other citizen was ever considered unworthy of this office because he enriched his grapevines with his dead relatives. Why should I be selected as the first victim of an absurd prejudice?

I admit also that I am not a friend of the poor man. I regard the poor man, in his present condition, as so much wasted raw material. Cut up and properly canned, he might be made useful to fatten the natives of the cannibal islands and to improve our export trade with that region. I shall recommend legislation upon the subject in my first message. My campaign cry will be: "Desiccate the poor workingman; stuff him into sausages."

These are about the worst parts of my record. On them I come before the country. If my country don’t want me, I will go back again. But I recommend myself as a safe man—a man who starts from the basis of total depravity and proposes to be fiendish to the last.