The Battery That Wouldn't Die

According to this story, this battery has been producing electricity since 1950. I have a story that is slightly different. This is the story of the zombie battery that came back from the dead.

My grandmother had a simple, battery-operated wall clock in her house. When she died in the late 70s, my mom took it to our house and hung it on the wall. Not long after, it's pair of Eveready D batteries died and the clock stopped. She never replaced the batteries, nor got rid of the clock. It just hung on the wall, I suppose as a reminder of her deceased mother.

I'm guessing around 1990 or 91, one night mom called me, breathless and a little scared. She said, do you remember Mamaw's old clock?

Yes, I said.

It's running, she said.

She just happened to notice that the time had changed, and upon closer examination saw that the second hand was moving. No telling how long it had been running, but the old clock continued running for several more hours on 15 year old dead D batteries, before stopping again. It's still on her wall, but it has never run since.

Common sense says that batteries that have been dead for 15 or so years don't just suddenly recharge themselves. Yet that's what they did. There's no rational scientific explanation for it. E pur si muove.

I Hear Dead People

According to a new study, nearly 1-in-10 children, ages 7-8, hears disembodied voices on a regular basis, but there is no evidence that this is a signal of impending schizophrenia, according to the scientists.

Uh. That's good to know. However, it does leave unanswered the question, why are they hearing voices?

It is proven that, like dogs, children can hear sounds that adults can't hear. If it's perfectly reasonable that kids can hear a ring tone that adults can't hear, why is it suggestive of possible mental illness that they hear voices that other people can't?

Maybe they really are hearing voices. Did anyone ever consider that possibility? 

I suggest an experiment. Give these kids electronic audio recording devices, disguised as event counters, and tell them to press the counter button any time they hear voices. When the button is pressed, the recorder turns on for 60 seconds. After a month, collect the recorders, play back the devices and see if they picked up anything.

Seems a worthwhile experiment if you aren't in the least interested in the future of your scientific career.

Wooooooooooo! Wooooooooooo!

El Nino, or El Gulfo?

UK freezes in South Pole weather


(UKPA) – 1 hour ago

Temperatures in big-freeze Britain are on a par with the South Pole after the country suffered its coldest night of the winter so far.

The mercury sank to minus 21.6C in the Scottish Highlands early on Friday - close to the minus 22.9C currently at the southernmost part of the globe.

I wonder, is this El Nino? Or is the flow of the Gulf Stream failing?

It's currently 12° F (-11°C) in Memphis.

Rollin' on the River

Google's satellite maps are teh awesome. Check out this whirlpool on the Mississippi River.

I'm No Astrologer, But...

... doesn't a planet in a highly elliptical retrograde orbit seem more likely to be a captured planet than one whose orbit has been reversed by a close call with another planet?

Mr. Conspiracy Wants to Know

Why would the government suddenly and inexplicably classify all information about meteors gathered by spy satellites? This data, which has no national security implications, has been available to scientists for ten years.

A person of a conspiratorial frame of mind can come up with all manner of explanations. Perhaps it is to prevent scientists from detecting an incoming impactor. Let's be honest. If there were a giant meteor headed our way, news of our impending doom would not be constructive to the orderly decimation of the human population. What better way to keep the information secret than to promise those who know three hots and a cot in the secure bunker? Who in their right mind would talk? But the more people who know, the greater the chance of it leaking. An unsubstantiated leak is no big deal, but one backed up by satellite data - now that's a whole different bag of space rocks. If word were to get out, it would make it very difficult for the 144,000 to quietly disappear in the days before the impact.

On the other hand, if one were expecting an uptick in visitations by alien spacecraft, such spacecraft visits might be captured by these satellites and the data fall into the hands of a scientist who would then publish it for all the world to see. Better to put blinders on the satellites for a few weeks or months (much as they have done in the past with the SOHO observatory), until the silent invasion of earth is complete.

For a double whammy, maybe the alien spacecraft are coming to remove the "Select" before the giant meteor impact.

On a more mundane, but equally conspiratorial level, if you or one of your allies were planning to launch a nuclear first strike against an enemy nation's nuclear development facilities, and then use the radioactive blast as proof that they were illegally developing nuclear weapons, you wouldn't want any pesky scientists teasing contrary information from your publically available spy satellite data, now would you?

Ah, the trifecta of conspiracies - the nuclear conflict will be timed to distract attention from the secret arrival of the alien fleet that will rescue the 144,000 from the asteroid impact. I think I have the plot for my next book!

One thing is clear. The only reason to classify this information now is to hide something that didn't exist before (or existed but not noticed), but that can now be detected in the data. What that is is anybody's guess, because now there is no data.

So much for transparent government, not to mention science. Yes we can!

Department of Duh

Researchers have discovered that big mammals, unlike Congressional Democrats, are able to adapt to a changing environment. They don't starve to death when one food source disappears, as long as it is replaced by another food source. Congressional Democrats, on the other hand, still behave, and feed, and cower in terror, as though they are still the minority party. They have yet to realize the saber-toothed Republicans are on the brink of extinction.

I believe it was either Jeff Goldblum, or Triumph the Comic Dog, who summed up this concept a number of years ago when he said, Life finds a way...



...to poop on you.

I'm No Scientist

But I do wonder...

How do you unearth a 1 million year old mammoth skeleton in a 286 million year old coal deposit?

Call me crazy, but these numbers just don't add up. Isn't this rather like finding an Egyptian mummy buried in a Cadillac El Dorado?

Either the mammoth is a lot older than the dinosaurs, or coal is a lot younger than is currently believed. But both dates can't be true.

They just can't.

That Settles It

What do Jimmy Carter, Ronald Reagan, Richard Nixon, J. Edgar Hoover, General Douglas McArthur, Mikhail Gorbachev, Stephen Hawking, The Vatican, various rocket scientists, a former astronaut, a British Air Marshal, and the director of Project Blue Book all have in common?

The last one should give it away - belief in flying saucers piloted by beings from another world.

Why would the government cover this up? Because of the Book of Revelations.

Hope. Change.

The president spoke tonight.

But my hope for the future lies not with politicians or economists. Saving the banks isn't going to save the world economy. If you can even save it, or want to save it, which I doubt. And don't.

My hope for the future lies in the revolution that is currently taking place in energy technologies. The revolution proceeds apace.

And when these technologies finally come online, everything is going to change. Literally everything. The only question is, can we hold things together long enough? I think that is the question President Obama is trying to answer, but without actually acknowledging that the question exists.

Exclusive Prophecy!!! The Date When Christ Will Return

Using the sign of the cross and a 10-key keypad, I have just calculated the moment of the Second Coming of Jesus Christ.

5/15/2333 at 11:59:59 PM

To all you end-timers out there, sorry. The Rapture ain't gonna happen in your lifetime.

Might as well pray for the Powerball.

Don't Miss Near Miss Day

It's coming up, March 23, in "celebration" of a big asteroid that passed Earth at twice the distance from the moon.

Of course, that can't compare to the one that passed at twice the distance of a communications satellite Monday, with absolutely no warning. We will always remember March 2, 2009 as the day we almost ended global warming in one swell foop. And California.

Speaking of near misses, did you know that in March 2005, workers at a nuclear weapons facility almost accidentally exploded a nuclear bomb in Amarillo Texas?

Why does everything happen in March?

Is There a Scientist in the House?

via Livescience:

"By examining sediment layers, the team found that the crater impact appears to have occurred about 300,000 years before the K-T boundary, with virtually no effects to biota.

"There is essentially no extinction associated with the impact," Keller said.

I have a simple question - how the hell is that possible?

How is it possible that a meteor impact of that size could be nothing more than a blip in the biosphere? Doesn't that go against nearly everything we've been told about the danger of asteroids?

I mean, I can understand the desire to make your theory The LAST WORD on dinosaur extinctions, but to totally dismiss the other theory seems... irresponsible.

Is there a scientist in the house who could clear up this mystery? Have we been misled about the relative dangers of asteroids and volcanos?

Squirrel Blogging

Washington and Northern Virginia oak trees don't seem to be producing acorns this year. No acorns at all. It's a bonafide mystery. Reports from around the country indicate this is more than a local problem. Soon the squirrels will invade the peanut stalls, taking hostages, issuing demands for more nuts. Next thing you know, chaos. Didn't Edgar Cayce predict something like this would happen?

Well, all I know is the oak tree in my front yard has plenty of acorns, and if the squirrel nut zippers in Washington want them, they'll have to pry them from my cold dead paws!

What Do Zombie Microbes Eat?

Brains, of course.

A Theological Question

Do you think God condemns the bonobos to chimpanzee hell because of their licentious greeting rituals? Or are they merely acting the way God made them?

And if so, why is God pleased with uninhibited hairy monkey humping but offended by uninhibited hairless monkey humping?

Maybe what really offends God is hairlessness, not uninhibited humping.

Yes, I know bonobos aren't monkeys. They're apes. Here are some more apes - the truly offensive kind.

Anatomy of a Lightning Strike

Here are 12 sequential video frames captured from less than half a second of film I took earlier this evening.















The images above are of the leading edge of the tornado below, which hit the Hickory Ridge Mall. I took this image probably less than a minute before the tornado hit the mall.


More here.