Snake bites Man? Boring.

On the other hand:

Man Bites Snake in Epic Struggle

. . . Mr Nyaumbe bit the snake on the tip of the tail during the exhausting battle in the village of Sabaki.

Police rescued Mr Nyaumbe and captured the 13ft (4m) reptile, before taking it to a sanctuary, but it later escaped.

The victim told police he managed to reach his mobile phone from his pocket to raise the alarm when the python momentarily eased its grip after hauling him up a tree on Saturday evening.

Mr Nyaumbe used his shirt to smother the snake's head and prevent it from swallowing him.

And that's why I always carry a cell phone. Yeesh.

My Hero . . . Does Science!

A short list of awesome things

1. This story about robots evolving and learning how to lie. Awesome and troubling at the same time.

2. The video game Bully. It's a less homicidal version of Grand Theft Auto. It's the first video game I have bought in a while, and it's been a blast.

3. This dream I had last night (or was it two nights ago?) where I was running for president and got into a verbal fight with Mike Huckabee in a parking garage overlooking Notre Dame's spring football game. Awesome because it gives a deep insight into my psyche and the things that occupy my brain power.

4. Antonin Scalia. It's really fun to see ostensibly liberal law students persuaded by sheer force of his reasoning. It's equally fun to see other liberal students trash him because they think they are supposed to, without actually addressing his arguments.

5. Eli Manning and the New York Giants. Simply because I don't think I could have stomached two weeks of Packer hype and Favre news converage without harming myself or others.

Amazing Grace

"Was blind, but now I see..."

For most of my life, my vision has been perfect. I was consistently measured at 20/15 or 20/20 vision. For some strange reason, it was actually a point of pride.

Over the past two years or so, I began to notice a deterioration in my vision. Gone was the ability to read street signs at a mystifying distance.

The result was my first full eye exam at an optometrist in my life. In addition to officially diagnosing me as colorblind, she also fitted me with a pair of sweet glasses.

Friends, I was once like you. Blind and in the dark. But I've come to tell you that today I see! I see the truth! I see the light! I see every blade of grass and every leaf!

And brothers and sisters, the world is beautiful! By the grace of God, we have a beautiful world!

Hallelujah! Holy shit! Where's the Tylenol?

Yea Humanity!

An article fraught with symbolism:

Scientists Find Oldest Living Animal, Then Kill It

Makes me want to go shoot some buffalo.

Sexual Harassament

I also saw the article Rico linked to. I think a line from the Item No. 10 deserves special illumination:

Sexual harassment cases of the hostile-environment variety result from sex differences in what men and women perceive as "overly sexual" or "hostile" behavior. Many women legitimately complain that they have been subjected to abusive, intimidating, and degrading treatment by their male coworkers. Browne points out that long before women entered the labor force, men subjected each other to such abusive, intimidating, and degrading treatment.

Welcome to the club, I guess.

A fun and interesting read

Originally from Psychology Today, I picked this up from The Corner.

Ten Politically Incorrect Truths:

1. Men like blond bombshells (and women want to look like them)
2. Humans are naturally polygamous
3. Most women benefit from polygyny, while most men benefit from monogamy
4. Most suicide bombers are Muslim
5. Having sons reduces the likelihood of divorce
6. Beautiful people have more daughters
7. What Bill Gates and Paul McCartney have in common with criminals
8. The midlife crisis is a myth—sort of
9. It's natural for politicians to risk everything for an affair (but only if they're male)
10. Men sexually harass women because they are not sexist

I'm In

Krauthammer does it again. This time on space travel.

A more serious critique of returning to the moon comes not from the Luddites but the purists. They want science, and they are right that robotic exploration is a more cost-effective way to get it. The science yielded by unmanned vehicles, such as past and future probes of the ice surface of Europa and the hydrocarbon lakes of Titan, is indeed thrilling. And pound for pound, dollar for dollar, manned exploration does bring back less science than robots.

But it still brings back science. Humans can discover things through intuition and pattern recognition that machines thinking in algorithms cannot. Imagine the scientific possibilities if today we had humans patrolling Mars rather than the brilliantly programmed but still limited golf carts now roaming the surface.

And then there's the glory. If you find any value, any lift of the spirit in a beautiful mathematical proof, in an elegant balletic turn, in any of the myriad human endeavors that have no utility but only breathtaking beauty, then you should feel something when our little species succeeds in establishing new life in a void that for all eternity had been the province of the gods. If you don't feel that, you are -- don't take this personally -- deaf to the music of our time.

I really like that last paragraph. Part of being human is to explore. It would be a shame to concede the greatest adventure possible.