res ipsa loquitur

Fifth points for courage and wanting to save a dog. Minus fifty for mixing LSD with DXM, and another minus fifty for not taking basic psychedelic precautions like having a sober friend around.

Troopers: Man mixing LSD and cough syrup saves dog from imaginary fire (WNYT NewsChannel 13)

HALFMOON -- A Halfmoon man allegedly broke into his neighbor's house to save the family dog from a fire, Thursday night. However, there was no fire. Troopers say he was on LSD and hallucinating.

Troopers say 43-year-old Michael Orchard of Inglewood Drive told them he mixed LSD with cough medicine Thursday afternoon and they found him, standing heroically with a dog in his arms outside of what he thought was a giant inferno.

"He believed that the residence was on fire and he was rescuing the dog," said Trooper Mark Cepiel, Troop G Spokesperson.

From the "maybe my job isn't so bad" department: research published in Frontiers in Zoology demonstrates that dogs have small but definite preference to line up with the Earth's magnetic field with doing their doody:

Frontiers in Zoology | Abstract | Dogs are sensitive to small variations of the Earth's magnetic field

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.)