Scribal Terror

The Night Owl Is Curious

About pranks and hijinks, musings and mutterings. And the door is open all night.

Awwww. Am I Sweet or What?

You Are 16% Cynical

Cynical? Not even close! If anything, you're a bit naive. Overall, you enjoy life and try not to be paranoid. Even if you've been burned before.

How Cynical Are You?
Once again, Lisa leads the way in quiz finding.

New Orleans Is Sinking

A study published in Nature shows that the city of New Orleans had been sinking -- in some areas more than an inch a year -- over the three years prior to Katrina. The areas of greatest subsidence correspond with some of the sites of levee failure.

A Contest! A Contest!

With money! With money! At FIU in honor of their 100,000th hit:

The most creative punishment for spammers will be awarded $10 to spend at Amazon.com. Put it in the comments and the FIUers will choose a winner. This contest will run through Friday the 2nd (entry deadline at midnight 6/2).

Real cash... and all the winner needs is a valid email.

Funny, you'd think after 100,000 hits, they'd be too mellow to care.

Coffee Break

Off to conspire with Julie over coffee at Panera, after she makes me move furniture for a while.

Oh well, never mind. We're having tornados.

What, No Cabana Boys?

MILF to hunt down Islamic militants in Mindanao
--H/t Tim Blair
 

Oh, Mr. Coffee!

How could you?

“The Mr. Coffee machine that every Texas legislator has near his desk has three violations of the law [against personal possession of lab equipment that could be used to manufacture methamphetamines] built into it: a filter funnel, a Pyrex beaker, and a heating element."
--Shawn Carlson, qtd in Wired

Ethical Dilemma of the Day

Is it OK to deal in MAMMOTH ivory? Conversely, is it any OKer to pass laws that would put people in jail or confiscate their money or property just for dealing in mammoth ivory? (Mammoths, BTW, are not endangered; they're extinct.)

Terrorism in a Jar

In Florida:

Detectives say it's an act of local terrorism. An adult bookstore is cleaning up after a chemical attack by a homemade device that investigators are calling a "weapon of mass destruction." . . .

The device, discovered Sunday morning, was made of two gallon-size sports drink jugs connected by hoses. Someone set it on top of the store's window air conditioning unit.

Detectives say that person then strung one hose from a water spigot on the outside of the building, and pushed another hose into the building through a gap above the air conditioner.

"That water hose would churn it up, mix it up in the gallon jug, and enter it into the building," said Alachua County Sheriff's Sergeant Keith Faulk. Investigators say one of the jugs had a harmful substance inside that flowed into the store along with the water.

"We haven't identified what was actually in the bottle, in the system that delivered it into the building. We do know that it was caustic, it was corrosive, it had a high pH level," Faulk said. . . .

Under state law, by the book, deputies say the device is a weapon of mass destruction.

"They're looking at hundreds of thousands of dollars in fines, and... 30 years in jail," Faulk said.

"You're trying to hurt people. You're trying to change their ideas or instill fear. And that's exactly what the terrorists do. So this person is a local terrorist," he said.

Pressing Issue

A new record has been set in my favorite sport -- extreme ironing. This one was underwater. H/t Nothing to Do With Arbroath