Video: The entire Appalachian Trail in just 4 minutes

Ever had the urge to hike the Appalatian Trail? Check out Kevin Gallagher's four-minute video-hike through the trail, which is 2,181 miles in legnth and spans 14 states. You might also want to check out "A Walk in the Woods" by Bill Bryson, a very humourous account of hiking on the trail that should be required reading on the trail.

Some facts about the trail:

• Lowest elevation: 124 feet – near the Trailside Museum and Zoo at Bear Mountain, New York
• Highest elevation: 6,625 feet – on Clingmans Dome in Tennessee
• Approximately 165,000 white paint blazes mark the Trail's route.
• More than 10,000 people have reported hiking the length of the Trail.
• It takes approximately 5 million footsteps to walk the entire length of the Trail.
• More than 6,000 volunteers contribute about 200,000 hours to the Appalachian Trail every year.


Green Tunnel from Kevin Gallagher on Vimeo.

Burrito price increase has customer shooting up restaurant

Image by Lester Of Puppets via Flickr

An enraged Taco Bell customer in San Antonio, Texas fired a BB gun at an employee after finding out the price for the seven burritos he ordered has gone up in price. Restaurant patrons hit the floor when the man started shooting an the manager called the police and locked the door when the man fled. The manager saw him put an assault rifle and a handgun on the roof of his car. When police arrived he fired at them with an assault rifle and then barricaded himself in a nearby motel for three hours. Police finally lobbed tear gas into the motel and the man surrendered –– without ever getting his burritos. The Beefy Crunch burritos had been sold for 99 cents each as a promotion, but the promotion had ended and the price had gone up to $1.49. Now that is one cheap hombre!

Paul Shaffer says Jerry Seinfeld wanted him to play George

Paul Shaffer says in the interview (video below), that Jerry Seinfeld wanted him to play the role of George on the hit show Seinfeld. He received a message from Castle Rock Productions (actually Castle Rock Entertainment), Rob Reiner's company, from Jerry Seinfeld asking him to play the part as his sidekick in a new series.

Shaffer didn't recognize Seinfeld's name so never answered the message.

 It's not that Shaffer hasn't done well for himself as David Letterman's musical sidekick, but missing out on Seinfeld is sort of like being the fifth Beatle.

Libya "no fly" zone should be "no go" zone for the west

Image via Wikipedia

How quickly things change. Just months ago U.S. President Obama, Italian Prime Minister Berlusconi and French president Sarkozy, among others, were engaged in photo ops cozying up to the seemingly insane despot Colonel Muammar Gaddafi. Not such a bad guy after all it seems. Flash forward. Now they are happily bombing his country in what appears to be essentially a civil war. We can get caught up in the terminology: popular uprising, revolt, civil war, tribal conflict – all are true descriptions – yet essentially the west is becoming embroiled in what is an internal matter within a sovereign state. There seems to be no rush for the west to intervene in Bahrain who have brought Saudi forces in to help them with their 'crisis' and have been firing on their unruly citizens.

Absent among the interveners rs are the Arab states. They seem not to be rushing in to help depose Gaddafi.

This is not surprising given that these states themselves are ruled in much the same manner Libya is. The United Nations have 192 nation members, yet only a handful of the trusty western democracies are involved in the assault on Libya. Where are the rest?

If the west is truly interested in intervening in civil clashes and preventing slaughter, one only has to look at the dismal record in Africa to understand that that intervention on the continent is largely inept and ineffective, when it happens at all.

This is a sad and desperate time in Libya, yet it's not up to the U.S. and its allies to pick a side in a civil war. If Gaddafi had asked the U.S. to help him impose the rule of law in Libya, it's inconceivable that they would intercede. It's called choosing sides, and while we can cheer from the sidelines, we need to let the Libyans choose for Libya. 

Unrest in the Middle East - country by country look

It's getting tough to keep up with all the unrest in the Middle East an North Africa. CNN had put together this excellent interactive map that give you the key news. Click on the map to go to the interactive version on CNN.

Woman sues Starbucks over coffee scalding – Starbucks says fake

Image via Wikipedia

No free drinks from Starabucks for Riffat Qureshi. Qureshi, 36, married mother of four, doctor and self-described as a "professional model" claims she was doused with boiling water which scalded her belly when a Starbucks barista in New York slid the drink across the counter, shouting, "Catch the cup."

Starbucks says Qureshi is faking her injuries and that the woman's physician testified that he diagnosed her with a rash and skin infection. Either way, this is great material. The model, the doctor, the scalding coffee and the "Catch the cup" line. I'm proposing this one for a sitcom to NBC.

Sammy Hagar's brain abducted by aliens

Cover of Sammy Hagar

Now it's all clear to me. I wasn't the booze and drugs that got to Sammy – it was the aliens. Former Van Halen singer Sammy Hagar believes his brain was taken over by aliens. Hagar, who is flogging his new book "Red: My Uncensored Life in Rock" dropped the A-word during an interview on MTV. Hagar admits this just might make him "sound like a crazy person" to some readers.

In the interview he was talking about dreams he claims to have had about UFOs when the reporter asked whether he believed he had been abducted. Hagar answered: "I think I have."

"It was real," Hagar said, according to MTV's Hive website. "They were plugged into me. It was a download situation ... or, they uploaded something from my brain, like an experiment."

"This was long before computers or any kind of wireless. There weren’t even wireless telephones. Looking back now, it was like, “Fuck, they downloaded something into me!” Or they uploaded something from my brain, like an experiment. “See what this guy knows.”

We are likely safe from alien attack for the moment, since they decided there was no intelligent life on earth after connecting with Sammy.

Is Justin Bieber a cyborg?

From http://cheese9.com/visualham/justin-bieber-cyborg:

Pittsburgh police find 'The most grisly murder scene' in 35 years but it turns out to be movie set

Scene from New Terminal Hotel

Image by Bree Bailey via Flickr

Firefighters responded to a call at the George Washington hotel in Pittsburgh and came upon "a blood-spattered room scattered with bottles of alcohol and a piece of a scalp with hair still attached". Yikes. Police were called in and one official called it "The most grisly murder scene he'd witnessed in his 35 years in law enforcement." Eight hours into the investigation, police realized the blood wasn't real and what they were dealing with was a left over movie set from "New Terminal Hotel", a horror film starring the late troubled actor, Corey Haim. According to the owner of the hotel, the set had been left untouched, in case they wanted to do any re-shooting. The film was released – not surprisingly – straight to DVD. It is described as "An exploration of the dark side of the Hollywood dream machine; a revenge story with an anti-hero who finds no redemption waiting on the other side. It's the study of the downward spiral."  You likely remember that Corey Haim, of Lost Boys fame and little else, died in 2010 of a suspected drug accidental overdose. I guessing this movie is now mandatory viewing at the Pittsburgh Police Academy.

Video: Everthing you ever wanted to know about crying

They must have had the The Cry Baby in mind when they made this video! The video actually explains some of the science behind tears, for example that tears consist of water, oil and mucus and that there are three types of tears: reflex, basal and emotional. This all has me crying in my scotch.


Infographic Crying from Andrej Preston on Vimeo.

The Queen of England on Twitter

Did you know the old gal tweets? Here you go –– the Queen's royal tweets:

Very clear chart shows radiation exposure levels in daily life and beyond

This chart prepared by Randall Munroe at http://xkcd.com is perhaps the clearest I've seen on radiation exposure in everyday life and in more extreme situations. Click on the chart to see the larger version.

Strangest action figures ever

Thisblogrules has compiled a list of the top ten weirdest action figures. To note is that the Steve Jobs and the Mark Zuckerberg figures are not included, possibly because M.I.C., the company producing the figures were told by Apple and Facebook to stop selling the figures. The list starts with the Albino Bowler. See them all here.

 

Very, very cool infographic showing every Mars mission

Chart: Deaths per energy source - nukes look pretty good

There's still much to worry about with nuclear energy and the plants are in dire  need of more robust design, but when it comes to actual deaths from nuclear energy,  nuclear power compares very well to other sources.

This chart was prepared by Dr. Mark J. Perry, a professor of economics and finance in the School of Management at the Flint campus of the University of Michigan.

Global warming linked to Cry Baby's bowel movements

Just reading the headline on the right makes me cringe. The words are from Clean Technica, and the article following the headline attempts to make a dubious link between global warming and earthquakes. It puts forward the idea that there has been a  recent increase in earthquake activity and hints that scientists are well on their way to establishing a link between global warming and and this perceived earthquake increase:

"At last year’s American Geophysical Union meeting geologists were already questioning whether there was a climate change link underlying the increasing frequency of unusually large earthquakes, according to  Mathew McDermott at Treehugger. The Haiti earthquake was then just the latest example."

Where to start! In the first place, where is the statistical evidence that there is any increase in the  frequency or severity of earthquakes? We live on a planet with shifting tectonic plates and earthquakes have been here since Earth was a planet. I have seen no statistical data showing any significant increase, and to take a couple anecdotal examples and call them scientific evidence is ludicrous.

Beyond this obvious flaw in the argument, we are dealing with two incredibly complex and unpredictable areas: Climate change and seismology.The vast number variables and lack of accurate forecast models alone, are reason enough not to try and invoke relationships between these incredibly intricate systems.

1906 San Francisco earthquake: pre-global warming paranoia

All this said, The Cry Baby does have a theory. My bowel movements and climate change are somehow related. Not quite sure how, but if we get enough scientists working on it, I'm sure we can find a relationship.

Ann Coulter: Radiation is good for you!

Ann Coulter explains to Fox News' Bill O'Reilly why radiation above the government's stated safe levels is good for you. She was promoting her latest column on her website, "A Glowing Report on Radiation." There is a bit of science behind this. The phenomenon is called hormesis and basically says what doesn't kill you will make you stronger. Perhaps, but I'd rather not put it to the test. Whack on Ann!

Map: Earthquake risks to humans worldwide throughout history

This map, from University of Sheffield, is a visulization of the risks of earthquakes on humanity using records from the past 4,000 years. A The map uses data ffrom database containing information on earthquakes from 2150 BC to the present day that meet at least one of the following criteria: moderate damage, 10 or more deaths, magnitude 7.5 or greater, or the earthquake generated a tsunami.

More technical information explaining what you are looking at: "The map was created using these records by calculating `kernel density´, an equation that shows the probability distribution of earthquakes, in order to visualise the areas most at risk from 2150 BC to the present day. The new earthquake map was then created by transforming the data in a way that highlights populated areas whilst eliminating depopulated regions. "

Credit: Benjamin Hennig

Try your hand at running a nuclear reactor - online game

Want to try your hand at running a nuclear reactor? Give this online game a try.

Scientists turn brains into stunning art

From MIT Technology Review: "Harvard scientists devised a way to make mouse neurons glow in a breathtaking array of colors, a technique dubbed “Brainbow.” Using a clever trick of genetic engineering genes for three or more different fluorescent proteins were combined like paints to generate different hues allowing researchers to create a system to make each neuron glow one of 100 different colors. Now, fruit fly researchers have a similar visual show on their hands. Last week, two Brainbow-based methods for making fly neurons glow customized colors—called dBrainbow and Flybow. " Have a look at this incredible art these processes  have created.

Credit: Phuong Chung, Stefanie Hampel, and Julie H. Simpson/HHMI