As per Lily's suggestion:
In the name of all pure and holy
Layne's author may be named Odin Soli
That name is a crime
For which he should serve time
And eat nothing but bad guacamole
Odin Soli, the man behind Layne
Has an imaginative and quick little brain
His next blogging trick
Will be a bi-sexual chick
Who works as a clerk somewhere in Bahrain.
It's time now to talk about global warming because, let's face it, this globe of ours is getting warm. There are many culprits responsible for this planet-wide threat, ranging from fossil fuel emissions, to CFCs to industrial pollutants. But perhaps no other threat promises to warm our globe faster than the unchecked and unforgivable burping of sheep.
Thankfully, however, according to this article, scientists are on the case.
Scientists have developed a serum to reduce methane gas in burping sheep, cows and other ruminants to combat global warming, a German magazine reported on Monday.
The Hanover-based monthly Technology Review will report in its July issue that Andre-Denis Wright, a molecular biologist at Australia's CSIRO Institute, has found a vaccine that reduced the methane emissions of sheep by eight percent.
This is groundbreaking news, people! No longer will you have to drive by a pasture of grazing sheep and turn away in disgust knowing that the peptic grazers are belching our planet's demise. No, now you can still turn away, but with eight percent less disgust.
I, for one, am greatly relieved to know that the scientific minds of the world are engaged in such important work as vaccinating burping sheep and discovering such important information as:
Sheep produce 20 grams of methane each day, or seven kg per year, the magazine with 80,000 subscribers reported. Cows produce about 114 kg per year of methane (CH4) -- a gas 21 times more powerful as a greenhouse gas than carbon dioxide, the main gas blamed for driving up temperatures.
Speaking of bodily emanations, the city of El Paso, Texas was recently named Yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story2&u=/nm/20040616/od_nm/life_sweaty_dc">America's sweatiest city.
Accordig to the article, another scientist with entirely too much time on his hands dedicated many precious research hours to make his discovery, research hours that could have been better spent addressing flatulating swine.
Research scientist Tim Long calculated heat indexes and relative humidity levels to come up with his top 100 sweatiest cities in America list.
By Long's calculations, in just four hours, El Paso's residents produce enough sweat to fill an Olympic swimming pool, with individuals shedding more than 36 fluid ounces of perspiration an hour.
You'd think El Paso would eagerly embrace such a lofty distinction, but no, they're fighting back hard.
"We enjoy over 300 sunny days a year with a very dry, temperate climate," said El Paso Mayor Joe Wardy, who is donating to charity what P&G said it is giving him for his city's dubious honor -- a year's supply of antiperspirant. "We were recently ranked as one of the seven best cities to retire in. Every one here knows that this publicity stunt is not based on good science."
Apparently, the good folks of El Paso don't realize that sweating is not necessarily a bad thing. In fact, in Nepal, it's something to be revered.
Priests offered special prayers as hundreds of devotees thronged a shrine in a remote Nepali village on Wednesday to appease a Hindu deity after its stone idol began "sweating," witnesses said.
Jessica Biel. Amanda Bynes. Amanda Bynes. Amanda Bynes. Hilary Duff. Hilary Duff. Hilary Duff. Hilary Duff. Alyson Hannigan. Alyson Hannigan. Alyson Hannigan. Alyson Hannigan. Sarah Michelle Gellar. Sarah Michelle Gellar. Sarah Michelle Gellar. Sarah Michelle Gellar.
"Sweating" of the deity at the temple in Dolakha, 140 km (90 miles) east of the capital, has in the past been followed by major political changes or tragedies in the world's only Hindu kingdom, villagers say.
Sex is also suspected. Hmm.. Can you believe it? Yes, I can.. Elisha Cuthbert, Didn't she play a pornstar in some move?, I think so., That was sexy.. Quite.. Yum..
The special prayers were offered after devotees saw a vaporous substance on the stone idol of the god Bhimeshwor, revered as Lord Shiva, third in the trinity of Hindu gods. Goats were also sacrificed as part of the prayers.
It was not immediately known whether or not the goats were belching at the time of their sacrifice.
Rachel Ray. Rachel Ray. Rachel Ray. . Rachel Ray. Rachel Ray. Rachel Ray. Rachel Ray. Rachel Ray. Rachel Ray.
Growing up, I had one primary fear, and that was of my older brother, Reg. I didn't fear him like the way you might fear a bear, or Michael Jackson, but I did fear him.
I feared Reg in the way that most siblings probably fear a brother who is four years older. Reg was always bigger and stronger than me, and he liked to prove that to me rather routinely.
For the most part, we would get along but, inevitably, the teasing side of Reg would emerge, and I'd basically be at his mercy.
During one winter morning, when I was about eight, with school running two hours late due to a snowfall, my parents were out of the house, and I was happily sleeping in. I was nice and warm and snug in my bed, blissfully unaware that Reg and I were the only ones in the house, and that Reg was feeling mischievous.
"Time to get up!" yelled Reg in a high-pitched voice, while barging into my room.
I tried to ball myself up all nice and protected in my blankets, but Reg was able to whisk them off me with relative ease. I wasn't dressed for a sibling round of teasing. I was wearing only a pair of Superman underoos which, despite their misleading packaging, did not imbue me with super-human strength. If anything, the only thing the underoos did was make me look pretty pathetic and teaseworthy. The only underwear I owned that looked even more pathetic were these pairs that featured little firetrucks and dalmations. They were soft and cottony, and Reg always taunted me with them, calling them "my little boy panties."
'Moooooooommmmmmmm!!" I screamed, as Reg dragged me down the stairs.
"Mom can't help you now," said Reg, laughing. "Neither can Dad. It's just you and me."
I kicked and flailed to no avail. I didn't know what Reg had planned for me, but when he started opening the porch door, I had a pretty good idea.
With a heave and a toss, I found myself enveloped in a soft blanket of freshly fallen snow. A little known fact about Superman underoos: they don't offer much in the way of warmth. I scurried back to the front door, only to discover that Reg had locked me out. I caught a glimpse of him in the window, laughing maniacally.
I figured I still had a chance of getting to the back door before Reg locked that, too, but that would have meant pushing through waist-deep snow, and that would be really, really cold. Still, I had to try something. After all, there I was, practically naked for all the world to see, save for a skimpy pair of Superman underoos, which were quickly becoming wet and soggy thanks to the melting snow.
Crying at the top of my lungs, I started to make my way around the house to the back door. That's when it happened.
As I stood in the middle of the yard, bawling, in sopping wet Superman underoos, two school buses went by, each one packed with fellow elementary students who, if you're at all familiar with elementary students, were always on the lookout for ammunition with which to tease and taunt other students.
Well, you couldn't ask for much better taunting and teasing ammunition than a bawling third-grader, standing in the snow in a pair of soaking Superman underoos. That's some taunting and teasing gold right there.
When I finally made my way to the back door, I found Reg standing there, and he informed me I had to recite a verse extolling his greatness before he let me back in. I can't remember it verbatim but, through my pathetic, gasping crying, I managed to say something like this:
"My brother, Reg, is the greatest brother in the whole world, and I'm ugly and stupid and not worth poop."
With that, Reg let me back in the house. The whole ordeal probably only lasted about five minutes, but it had been the coldest, most embarrasing, most miserable five minutes I could remember.
When I got to school, I wasn't there for more than ten minutes before one of my classmates came up to me and said "Up, up and a-wahhhhhhhhh!" And the day didn't get much better after that.
In retrospect, I think I owe my brother some payback for that little episode.
Brace yourself, folks, because I'm about to emerge from my self-imposed hiatus from political blogging to air some of my musings, which, I'm sure, Joshua will no doubt take umbrage with, thus initiating a lengthy comment thread.
I mention Joshua, by the way, because this post is brought to you by The Red Pages.
As much as I hate to trot out a worn analogy, I feel I must jump back into the wayback machine to 1941. Oh, say, December 7, 1941. Something happened around that time, starting with Pearl and ending with Harbor.
Imagine, if you will, in the days, weeks and months following Pearl Harbor, that the U.S. sat on its hands, taking a timeout to really address and discuss the core reasons why the Japanese hated us enough to bomb Pearl Harbor.
"Oh, if only we hadn't stopped shipping them our scrap iron, this never would have happened!! If only we better understood them, they wouldn't have attacked us!! We should be building schools for the Japanese while working to address and dispell the core reasons things have gotten to this point!!"
It sounds ridiculous, doesn't it? Couldn't have happened. Not a chance. The idea that we should have responded to Pearl Harbor through diplomatic feel-goodism is just idiotic to its core.
And yet, today, there are those who can say, with righteous indignation, that 9/11 was simply the expected punishment we shouldn't have been surprised to have received. If you just look at our past foreign policy missteps, they say, we should have seen it coming.
Sorry, folks, but on that rather cool yet bright September morning--and you can call me a idiot on this if you want--I didn't see that coming, and I certainly didn't think we deserved it, not even just a little. And I still don't.
I graduated with a minor in history, but I didn't really start learning about the history of the Middle East until Sept. 12, 2001. It was kind of the massive rap on your wrists with a ruler that prompts you to bury your nose in your homework.
I've learned a lot, since then and now: about Israel, about Saudi Arabia, about Iraq, about Iran, about Palestine, about the Taliban and about Islam and Fundamentalist Islam in general. And, you know what? After three years of intensive study on the topic, I can say, with strong conviction that, had I known all of this information on Sept. 10, 2001, I would never have guessed that the next day was going to unfold the way it did. I just wouldn't have seen an attack like that coming, and I certainly wouldn't have thought we deserved it for some reason.
All of this is a hamfisted way of getting back to The Red Pages post that irked me. It's a great historical look at the Israeli/Palestinian situation. It points out, correctly so, that Jews were historically persecuted by the Christians far more than by Muslims. It points out, correctly, that the animosity that exists between Jews and Muslims today can be traced to the establishment of Israel and the turning of the back to Palestine. It points out, perhaps correctly, that Islamic Fundamentalism didn't always exist to exterminate the West. It wasn't always the case that Fundamentalist Islamic terrorism was our enemy. That's only the case today because of failings and mistakes and exercises in political expediency along the way.
None of which really matters.
The Japanese, prior to WWII, weren't generally considered an enemy. The road that led to Pearl Harbor was gradual, and nuanced and, in retrospect, it's not surprising that it happened, but it was certainly surprising at the time, and we certainly didn't deserve it.
Perhaps, 60 years from now, we'll read about the War On Terror, and we'll be treated to a historical perspective of the build up to 9/11, and we'll see all the causes and effects, and then we'll close the book and put it back on the shelf, secure in the knowledge that, despite the mistakes that may have been made, even by our own country and its leaders, leading up to the war, we'd still know that it was a war that needed to be fought. And won.
