This story is exactly the kind of thing I'd get yelled at for doing. I still think it's a good idea.

Also, who's reading my blog from Australia? I didn't know I knew anyone in Australia. Feel free to post a comment and say hello. Hi, Australia!

My Monday Night Halftime

So ESPN, now in possession of Monday Night Football, has added a mini-version of their popular television show, Pardon The Interruption, to the halftime show. Just minutes ago, one of the two stars of the sports debate show, Tony Kornheiser, said that OJ Simpson, who was recently arrested for allegedly stealing his own sports memorabilia, was "the most notorious person of our time."

At first I thought, "this must be some strange use of the word 'notorious' of which I was not previously aware." Then I looked it up. Definitions include:
1) Known widely and usually unfavorably; infamous
2) Widely known and discussed: famed, famous, leading, popular, well-known

And that's it. I'm going to assume they mean the first definition, as the second definition is clearly not true. So let's play a fun game in the comments. Name someone more notorious (in the infamous/known widely and unfavorably sense) than OJ Simpson, and perhaps try to name the most notorious person of our time. I'll get the ball rolling with a few suggestions:
Hillary Clinton
Terrell Owens
Osama bin Laden

My Future

The Associated Press reports that a scientist from Erie, Pennsylvania has discovered a way to burn salt water. It's a neat little trick he discovered while playing with a radio frequency generator.

I personally think this could be one of the most influential discoveries of the past 100 years, or more. Some of you are already giddy with excitement along with me, but for the non-scientists and slow learners out there, let me explain: if you can burn something, you can probably figure out a way to use it as fuel.

Right now most of our fuels come from oil, and a great deal of our nation's foreign policy--and consequently a huge percentage of taxpayer dollars--is directly or indirectly influenced by our need to secure a steady supply of oil. Now, let me paint you a picture with my imagination brush. We could live in a world where we have a choice between using saltwater or oil as the base for most of our fuels. Our political and industrial leaders start to wonder if there might be a convenient source of saltwater near us, one that wouldn't be controlled by terrorism-supporting nations, or any other sovereignty for that matter...and if we could get the saltwater for cheaper than 40 dollars a barrel, well, wouldn't that be a coup. Eventually even our leaders who couldn't find their own posteriors with both hands would make their way to the ocean...either with the power of their minds or carried by a mob of constituents who don't appreciate paying terrorists 4 bucks a gallon to fill up their Hummers.

Oh, and wanna know the kicker? 16 days ago I wrote about a guy who was using radio waves to fight cancer...IT'S THE SAME GUY. And even more amazingly, it's the same machine that led to both discoveries (which will of course be pursued by many more sophisticated scientists with much better equipment and bigger budgets, but still). John Kanzius may be a household name in a quarter of a century, for inventing a single machine that helped the fight against cancer...as a warm-up before helping to solve the world's energy problems.

Oh yeah, and he's willing to sell the saltwater-burning invention and let someone else run with it...so he can take the proceeds of the sale and reinvest it in his efforts to cure kids with leukemia. I'm not one to affix the "hero" label to someone willy-nilly, but in this case, John Kanzius is making a good case for being the Superman of our time, and he's doing it without ever ceasing to be mild-mannered.

Some links:
http://www.livescience.com/environment/070911_ap_salt_water.html
http://www.post-gazette.com/pg/07252/815920-85.stm

Video from local news:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aGg0ATfoBgo

This is obviously the very beginning of a long story with extraordinary potential, and I intend to keep an ear and an eye out for more developments. If I miss something, however, and one of my loyal readers (can I use the plural there? I'm gonna use the plural) sees more on the subject, please let me know.

My Links 3

I'm going to break this links entry into two sections. The first three links are interesting news updates.

The last three links are just amusing images.

News:

German town removes traffic lights and stop signs to cut down on accidents - This seems counter-intuitive, but I guess that if you have to be hyper alert all the time, drivers can't be lazy and follow guidelines. Still, this is one idea that wouldn't fly with America.

Study finds that liberal brains are smarter - This isn't all that well explained in the article, but the basic idea is that they put a bunch of people in front of terminals that give them easy questions they have to answer very quickly by pressing buttons, and 80% of the answers correspond to one of the buttons. The participants also rate their political leanings from -5 (liberal) to +5 (conservative). The researchers then looked at the 20% of questions whose answers didn't correspond to the button that the people were used to pushing. Sure enough, there was a different; the more liberal you were, the lower your error. According to researchers, liberals' minds are better able to adjust to and process and consider new things, politically and otherwise. The results were examined by an independent researcher at Berkeley who was unconnected with the experiment (and had nothing at stake).

Hormone linked to Autism - Levels of a male sex hormone in fetuses are positively correlated with the probability the resulting child will be autistic or have autistic traits. While it's unclear whether this is a cause or effect of autism, it's an important discovery in the ongoing investigation.

The Lighter Side:

The Safest Airline

Adorable animals made out of vegetables

Why My Kids Won't Be Allowed Online

I would totally go see this show if it existed.