res ipsa loquitur

In the Disney version of The Jungle Book, King Louie famously sings of his desire to master fire:

Now don't try to kid me, mancub
I made a deal with you
What I desire is man's red fire
To make my dream come true
Give me the secret, mancub
Clue me what to do
Give me the power of man's red flower
So I can be like you

Kanzi the bonobo not only shares this fascination with fire, but can use a lighter to start one, putting to rest the myth that the "dumb beasts" fear fire.

From the beautiful irony department: a South Carolina circuit court judge has ruled that New Beginnings Baptist Church, a "black church" according to the AP, owns the building housing the "Redneck Shop", a disgusting little business which runs a Klan museum and sells such winning merchandise as KKK robes and T-shirts with racial slurs.

The Redneck Shop runs out of an old movie theater in Laurens, about 70 miles northwest from Columbia. SC. It's been there since 1996, but in 1997 in-fighting within the KKK, and possibly someone seeing the light, resulted in one the Klansmen transferring the building to church ownership.

While a clause in the deed entitles proprietor John Howard, the former KKK grand dragon for the Carolinas who is the store's proprietor, to run his store in the buildng until he dies, the delightful-ness of this irony remains.

As the year opens, it's worth taking a moment to reflect on the subject of time.

Time-keeping is complicated. A great example is the recent movement of the international date line to put Samoa and Tokelau on the other side, as the U.S. declines in relative importance as a trading parter compared to Australia, New Zealand, and China.

Time exists at the intersection of cosmology, biology, culture, politics, economics, and technology. The cosmological aspects of time are tricky enough, with at least two different but useful ways to define a year, the "solar year" (or" tropical year"), and the "sidereal year". Neither year works out to an even number of days -- and there are slightly different ways to define "day", as well.

From the caveat emptor department...Slashdot points out an HDMI cable at Best Buy priced at $1095.99. A typo? Automatic pricing gone wild? No, Best Buy carries a whole line of insanely priced "AudioQuest" brand cables. (Another good reason to not send Best Buy your business.)

I've always been a bit fascinated by maps. When I was a kid, we had placemats with a historical/cultural map of the Chesapeake Bay, and being the "read anything in front of me" child that I was this may have been formative. I remember having a world political map on the wall, and later a world topographic map (including the sea floor) on my ceiling. I always loved looking at the maps of fantasy realms like Middle Earth and Earthsea that would show up in the front of books. (Yes, I am geek.) When I started driving, back in the days before GPS and smartphones, I had a good collection of ADC street atlases floating around the car.

I recently received a flier from the local neighborhood watch group, "Westchester Citizens On Patrol". I don't have anything against neighborhood watches, but I almost had to chuckle about the list of local crimes in this flier:

1. Assault and trespassing off of Norhurst Way

2. Motorcycle stolen at gunpoint off of Stonewall.

3. Murder on Meyers Drive.

4. Large rock thrown through car windshield near St. Paul’s Church and on Meyers Drive.

5. Alert from Wilkens Precinct regarding a spike in vehicle break-­‐ins

6. House egged on Norhurst Way North
...

I'm sure that folks having their house egged found it a mess and quite upsetting. But to put that in the same list with a motorcycle-jacking and a murder...that's a bit anti-climactic, to say the least.

According to CNN, Alex Trebek, 71-year-old host of famous quiz show "Jeopardy", ruptured an Achilles tendon while chasing a burglar out of his hotel room early Tuesday. First, I wish him a speedy recovery, and second, not only is the guy still working at 71, he's chasing down crooks -- this has to make him the most awesome game show host ever.

I thought this had to be something from The Onion, but nope, it's real: commenting on the massacre at Utoya, Glenn Beck said that "There was a shooting at a political camp, which sounds a little like, you know, the Hitler youth. I mean, who does a camp for kids that's all about politics? Disturbing."

Beck is apparently unaware that not only have the the Young Republicans had camps for teens, but the Tea Party followers who briefly catapulted him to stardom have done camps for kids -- modeled, not surprisingly, on vacation Bible schools, and full of the usual teabagger delusions about history and economics.

And so, having compared his own core consistency to the Nazis (accurately or not...), methinks that about wraps it up for Mr. Beck. Thanks for playing and we have some lovely parting gifts.

If you need conclusive proof that the Transportation Security Administration carefully picks the most ignorant and incompetent applicants, consider the words of Sabrina Birge, an airport security officer at at Nashville International Airport. When Andrea Fornella Abbott refused to have her daughter subjected to molestation or to radiation, Birge informed her that the scanner was not an X-ray but "uses the same type of radio waves as a sonogram."

That's right. She claimed they use the the same sort of radio waves as a sonogram.

The new backscatter scanners do, in fact, use X-rays, and the evidence is clear that the TSA has lied about the evidence for their safety.

Gil Scott-Heron, the pioneering poet and musician best known for his piece "The Revolution Will Not Be Televised", has died. Heron, who was 62, is often credited with being one of the forerunners of hip-hop. Sad news.