Martha Payne had some sad-ass lunches at her school in Scotland -- unsatisfying food that sometimes had more hair than vegetables. So the 9-year-old decided to start a blog with photos and vital statistics about her meals. Almost immediately, the blog got international attention, including from prominent school lunch busybody Jamie Oliver. Result? Martha's dad just met with the local council, and it announced that kids could have unlimited salad, fruit, and bread.
Artist's conception.
You couldn't have a one-ton snake today -- the climate's just too moderate for a cold-blooded creature that size. But back when the planet was warmer by nature, all kinds of terrifying mega-reptiles roamed the Earth. So, in anticipation of global warming, maybe we should start preparing for how to coexist with snakes the size of buses. Lesson one: Apparently they pal around with giant turtles.
Corn ethanol is a good idea in theory -- what's more renewable than a fuel source you plant and harvest every year? But corn is such an inefficient energy source that if we wanted to meet our biofuel goals with corn ethanol alone, they'd have to shoulder out every other crop. You know what yields more ethanol per acre than corn, though? Sweet potatoes. And you know what yields more ethanol per acre than sweet potatoes? GIANT MOTHERFUCKING SWEET POTATOES OF DOOM.
Oh sure, you could hang around with lizards and cavemen and pink-haired spy chicks and that irritating "Fran" woman, trying to save a few bucks. Or you could cut to the chase.
The Segway wasn't always just the transportation of choice for out-of-shape mall cops and tourists who can't be bothered to walk from the Washington Monument to the Lincoln Memorial. When it was introduced, the idea was that it would render cars obsolete, making "walking" so quick and effortless that urban planners would be forced to start building cities at human scale.
Instead, a decade later, we're asking "hey, is there any way we could have a similar technology, but even lazier?" Honda has your answer. Its Uni-Cub is battery-powered and balance-controlled like a Segway, but instead of steering by shifting weight from foot to foot, you sit down and steer by shifting weight from cheek to cheek. Phew! All that standing still was getting really exhausting.
The fabulous blog Letters of Note has been delving into the letters of Ronald Reagan, and posted this gem on Twitter. Just look at that disregard for the environment, denying federal relief funds for what is clearly a disaster area!
OK, this is the kind of extreme weather I can get behind -- the kind where every time it rains, it rains puppies from heaven.
I actually have a rough time with sad dog stories, even ones with happy endings; I tend to get all weepy because I can't have all the dogs in bow ties on a rainbow. But for you sane people who actually find heartwarming stories heartwarming, this is the heartwarmingest: This pup squirmed out of a hawk's talons midair, fell 30 feet, survived, and is now being happily bottle-fed by a wholesome seven-year-old and his family. Ugh, excuse me a minute, I've got something in my eye. It's a bunch of tears.
Photo by NASA.
The Western U.S. is getting an annular eclipse this weekend, which is an eclipse where the moon's shadow turns the sun into a "ring of fire." A swath of the country from Oregon down to Texas will see the whole enchilada, and most other Westerners will get to see at least a partial eclipse. Those of us on the East Coast are SOL until 2017.
Humanity has apparently given up on inventing new forms of junk food, and is instead nesting existing forms inside one another like some kind of hideous fast food Turducken. I was on vacation when the mini-cheeseburger crust pizza happened, so I was blissfully spared awareness of that until today, but I did not miss the hot dog stuffed pizza or the Double Down or the "everything KFC makes layered into in a sort of nightmare lasagna" ... thing. This trend was always bound to end in greasy, greasy tears, and thanks to this video, we know that those tears will fall upon cinnamon buns topped with mashed potatoes, gravy, cheeseburgers, and taco shells.
