Vexillological World Cup: Group H

Chile: God bless Texas.









Spain: Would be better without the seal.








Honduras: This is a good group.











Switzerland: Make it square, man.








Runner-Up: Switzerland

Winner: Honduras

StarCraft 2 strategy

First person Super Mario Bros.

Vexillological World Cup: Group G

Ivory Coast: Like Ireland but Africanier.









Portugal: In actual soccer terms, this is a very tough group. In flag terms, no.







North Korea: Looks like something GI Joe would fly.








Brazil: Gross colors, complicated image. It is vurry recognizable though. Progresso is a soup.






Runner-Up: North Korea

Winner: Portugal

Vexillological World Cup: Group F

Paraguay: I think its obverse and reverse sides are slightly different. Neither is very good.








Italy: Doesn't do much other than make me hungry.







New Zealand: Slightly worse than Australia but good enough for this group.







Slovakia: We don't just hang ANY flag on our wall.






Runner-Up: New Zealand

Winner: Slovakia

I love you, I love you, I love you, I love you, I love you, Night Man

Vexillological World Cup: Group E

Denmark: Oldest flag ever. Or something. The nordic cross would be sorely missed if it weren't for this ole girl.











Japan: And that's a period. Gross.









Cameroon: Sigh. Africa.








The Netherlands: Turn France sidways? I'm in!







Runner-Up: Holland

Winner: Denmark

Dolphins

Or that would have been that, except word of the catch reached the ears of Colonel George Montagu, who lived in patrician seclusion on his estate some ten miles down the road. Montagu, veteran of the American Revolution (and at the time the world’s leading expert on the taxonomy of British sponges), was a corresponding member of several societies for natural history, and he set out to recover what was left of the carcass, which had been briefly exhibited at the county fair before being boiled down for oil—the bones unceremoniously dumped back in the river. A little diligent muckraking revealed the skeleton of what Montagu eventually decided was a little whale not previously seen on the English coast, so he wrote up a detailed anatomy and preserved its toothy skull.

Though Montagu stepped on a rusty nail a few months later and promptly died of tetanus, his final dissection outlived him: published posthumously, his account represents the first recognized scientific description of the bottlenose dolphin, a creature Americans generally think of as “Flipper,” but which those in the know call Tursiops truncatus. The skull of the Dart River Beast remains to this day in a drawer in London’s Natural History Museum—the eternal type specimen for the species as a whole. If, therefore, you wish to grasp the essential nature of the bottlenose, you should, technically speaking, start here, pulling item number GERM.353a, and looking down that bony beak into a pair of empty orbits. Alas, poor Yorick!

Actually, though, knowing the bottlenose is a good deal harder than that. Neither Colonel Montagu nor those rough-handed boatmen could have had any idea that the creature they dispatched to scientific apotheosis in 1814 would go on to lead such a queer and dramatic life in the collective imagination of modernity. Tursiops truncatus—a slate-gray, slick-skinned net thief, which coastal fishermen of the late nineteenth-century Atlantic sometimes called the “herring hog” in disgust—would, by the 1970s, leap in the vanguard of the Age of Aquarius, enjoying an improbable secular canonization as the superintelligent, ultrapeaceful, erotically uninhibited totem of the counterculture. And to this day, for many, the bottlenose—mainstay of aquatic ecotourism, beloved water-park performer, smiling incarnation of soulful holism—represents a cetacean version of our better selves. If, as Thoreau wrote a few years after the slaying of the Dart River dolphin, “animals . . . are all beasts of burden, in a sense, made to carry a portion of our thoughts,” then there are few creatures that have done more hauling for Homo sapiens in the twentieth century than Tursiops truncatus.

A Mind in the Water

Vexillological World Cup: Group D

Germany: Das Heillage!







Australia: I don't mind the various flags with the Union Jack in the canton. This is a tough group though.






Serbia: Deceptively busy little seal there.








Ghana: We get it, you're black people.






Runner-Up: Serbia

Winner: Germany

Theme for the weekend

Yo yo trick scam

Oh man I love this guy.

Vexillological World Cup: Group C

Algeria: Surprisingly effective.







Slovenia: 3E likes the slavic flags that follow this general template. We think this might be the weakest of the three in the tournament.







USA: Busy. We need fewer states.










England: Classy.






Runner-Up: This was a tough call, but since we're sure at least one of the other Slavic flags will make it through, we're going with Algeria.

Winner: England

Vexillological World Cup: Group B

Argentina: You again! I can't say no to a pretty face.






Nigeria: Not as garish as most Sub-Saharan flags. Simple but uninspiring. It will soon become painfully apparent that 3E much prefers horizontal stripes to vertical ones.








Greece: Recognizable but not really for any positive reason. The blue should be darker. Might just end up being the second tallest building in this Wichita of a group.







South Korea: White background with stuff smattered about it. Usually not a success story.





Runner-Up: Greece.

Winner: Argentina.

Facebook and privacy

In three handy links.

An obnoxious little game

Everybody Edits, which is just like the internet: some people build stuff, some people ruin stuff, some people draw swastikas.

Vexillological World Cup: Group A

Uruguay: I usually hate the sun but this one has won me over.








France: Simple is good, but the colors lack creativity. Still, better than...





Mexico: Busy little birdsealthing in the middle. Would be better without it, but the colors would still look so... Mexican. <\subtle racism>







South Africa: There's a fine line (get it?) between fimbriation and infibulation. Then again, there's really not.





Runner-Up: France

Winner: Nothing here really stands out and it doesn't look good for the knockout rounds to come, but we're going with Uruguay.

Tri Epsilon Spring Meeting Report

Success!

The best film of 2009

Nature is weird

Zoologger is a blog about weird and unusual animals. This is my favorite one I have looked at so far:

In a grassy field on the edge of a patch of woodland, some ants are escorting a pink caterpillar to their home. Once it has been guided into the depths of their nest, the caterpillar begins feeding the ants with sweet fluids.

It may sound like a touching story of interspecies love, but it ain't. Over the following year, the caterpillar will eat its way through hundreds of ants, eggs and larvae. So voracious is the intruding caterpillar, there is a good chance that the ant colony will be wiped out.

This deceitful ant-muncher is the caterpillar of the large blue butterfly – in adult form, a strikingly beautiful creature with iridescent, spotted wings. But in order to reach adulthood, the caterpillars must infiltrate the ants' homes, and they have an arsenal of less than beautiful tricks for that purpose.

That led me to this video:

Expansion

The irregular Pete Fiutak on conference expansion:

Sooner than later, I foresee a day when the little guys are squeezed out completely and moved to another division. Eastern Michigan just can’t compete with Michigan when it comes to attendance, funding, and in every other way a you want to compare football programs. The big boys are going to realize the money to be made by creating an uber-division of elite teams and conferences, and the Big Ten is getting the ball rolling now. After all the dust settles from expansion and realignment, here’s my best guess (with the new schools in each league in bold) for how the college football world will look ten years from now …

[...]

SEC – Alabama, Arkansas, Auburn, Florida, Georgia, Kentucky, Louisville, LSU, Ole Miss, Mississippi State, South Carolina, South Florida, Southern Miss, Tennessee, UCF, Vanderbilt

Nope. There is no conceivable way that the SEC expands to include those four teams. If the SEC does expand, Louisville is a distinct possibility, and South Florida is probably not impossible, but UCF and Southern Miss add absolutely nothing to the conference. They actively harm it. Clemson, Texas, Hawaii, Sorbonne, and Mars University are all as or more likely. (His estimates for the new Pac-10 teams (Boise State, Colorado, Fresno State, Nevada, San Diego State, UNLV) are equally far-fetched).

Super Mario Crossover Saturday

Oh man, Super Mario Crossover is a. awesome and b. sounds like a Nintendo basketball game. That guy's name was Bill R.? Whatever, he is far and away the best.

Friday music game

BallDroppings. Very musical.

Friday music

postin'

aw yeah. postin'

Autoantonyms

Autoantonyms are words that have two opposing meanings, so that they are effectively their own antonym. My favorites include:

bolt(verb)
• to secure in place
• to dash away suddenly

cleave (verb)
• to adhere; stick together
• to cut apart; divide

rent (verb)
• to lend; lease out
• to borrow; hire

screen (verb)
• to view; show
• to conceal; shield

I'm the kind of G the little homies want to be like

Old games

1. 95 Old School Games You Can Play Online (some of these links seem to be obsolete)

2. Abandonia

How many times has THIS happened to you?

Every Calvin and Hobbes

Starting here. I am not sure if anyone who is interested in this (after all, it's been out of print for 15 years) will need it, as there are a number of great collections, but the searchability is nice.

Folk Metal Monday

Mad Farmers

Give your approval to all you cannot
understand. Praise ignorance, for what man
has not encountered he has not destroyed.

Ask the questions that have no answers.
Invest in the millenium. Plant sequoias.

From "Manifesto: The Mad Farmer Liberation Front"

Card trick

Lamp

suburban seattle + rural tennessee = radiovoice

Tits, tits, tits!

Feagles retires

Jeff Feagles, the New York Giants punter, is supposed to retire. He has punted for 54,225 yards in his career. Why is it a big deal that the NFL's oldest player is about to retire? Because he's the only active player* who was in Tecmo Super Bowl, the best football video game ever.

*The Saints' John Carney is a "kicking consultant" and might get some time as a holder or something, but I don't count that.

Thursday links

1. Miranda lullaby

2. SeppuKuties

3. Shoelaces

4. Only cowards go down with the ship

5. The Alien Universe Timeline

Protips: Turning a Soccer Ball Into a Hat

1.

2.

3.

Now it's time for our wrap up

this just in

"And you're just the liberal arts major we need to lead that team."

"The Only Thing That Can Stop This Asteroid Is Your Liberal Arts Degree"

Sure, we've got dozens of astronauts, physicists, and demolitions experts. I'll be damned if we didn't try to train our best men for this mission. But just because they can fly a shuttle and understand higher-level astrophysics doesn't mean they can execute a unique mission like this. Anyone can learn how to land a spacecraft on a rocky asteroid flying through space at twelve miles per second. I don't need some pencilneck with four Ph.D's, one-thousand hours of simulator time, and the ability to operate a robot crane in low-Earth orbit. I need someone with four years of broad-but-humanities-focused studies, three subsequent years in temp jobs, and the ability to reason across multiple areas of study. I need someone who can read The Bell Jar and make strong observations about its representations of mental health and the repression of women. Sure, you've never even flown a plane before, but with only ten days until the asteroid hits, there's no one better to nuke an asteroid.

And you think you're so clever and classless and free

Monday game

Here is a link to the truly fantastic Steambirds.

A capella Saturday

Do it, Rockapella.

lolz

Friday links

1. Wikipedia vs. Predator

2. IDEA FOR A SHAKSPEAR PLAY: THE TRAGICALL HISTORIE OF THE DACHSHUND WHO WAS TOO SMALL TO BE KING

3. List of inventors killed by their own inventions

Tommie Frazier

Dr. Saturday was talking about the best undrafted players of the last few years, which led me to this video.



Frazier is my all-time NCAA quarterback.

This song was in Pulp Fiction

Africa and war

There is a very simple reason why some of Africa's bloodiest, most brutal wars never seem to end: They are not really wars. Not in the traditional sense, at least. The combatants don't have much of an ideology; they don't have clear goals. They couldn't care less about taking over capitals or major cities -- in fact, they prefer the deep bush, where it is far easier to commit crimes. Today's rebels seem especially uninterested in winning converts, content instead to steal other people's children, stick Kalashnikovs or axes in their hands, and make them do the killing. Look closely at some of the continent's most intractable conflicts, from the rebel-laden creeks of the Niger Delta to the inferno in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, and this is what you will find.

What we are seeing is the decline of the classic African liberation movement and the proliferation of something else -- something wilder, messier, more violent, and harder to wrap our heads around. If you'd like to call this war, fine. But what is spreading across Africa like a viral pandemic is actually just opportunistic, heavily armed banditry. My job as the New York Times' East Africa bureau chief is to cover news and feature stories in 12 countries. But most of my time is spent immersed in these un-wars.

Africa's Forever Wars

vaporized

Rumor: Ian Fleming said that David Bowie would be the best person to play James Bond

squid

I am a giant squid. I swam up from the briny ocean depths. I have a computer, with a specially-modified tentacle-friendly interface. I have a fast internet connection. I seek to learn about humans and about the world. I have read much on the internet. I have read your wikipedia and your dictionary.com. History sites and askjeeves. Yet still, I have many unanswered questions. And you must have questions of me. We have much to learn from one another.

To this end, I have developed the assortment of quizzes, games and activities you find before you. They form part of my ongoing campaign to facilitate improved human-squid relations. Try them out, you will most certainly learn something about squid.

squidsquid.com

The only planet as cool and blue as him is earth. And that's where he lives.

3E approves

kinda bizzzay.

We're through the looking glass here, people.

You do not simply walk into Eyafallajökull

Holy cow, have you seen the pictures of Iceland exploding?

SimCity 3000

More Metal Monday

Metal Monday

it feels like a little hummingbird is just... loving you.

Tetris-inspired games

1. Tetoris

2. 99 Bricks

3. First-person Tetris

Size

You can drop a mouse down a thousand-yard mine shaft; and, on arriving at the bottom, it gets a slight shock and walks away, provided that the ground is fairly soft. A rat is killed, a man is broken, a horse splashes. For the resistance presented to movement by the air is proportional to the surface of the moving object. Divide an animal’s length, breadth, and height each by ten; its weight is reduced to a thousandth, but its surface only to a hundredth. So the resistance to falling in the case of the small animal is relatively ten times greater than the driving force.

An insect, therefore, is not afraid of gravity; it can fall without danger, and can cling to the ceiling with remarkably little trouble. It can go in for elegant and fantastic forms of support like that of the daddy-longlegs. But there is a force which is as formidable to an insect as gravitation to a mammal. This is surface tension. A man coming out of a bath carries with him a film of water of about one-fiftieth of an inch in thickness. This weighs roughly a pound. A wet mouse has to carry about its own weight of water. A wet fly has to lift many times its own weight and, as everyone knows, a fly once wetted by water or any other liquid is in a very serious position indeed. An insect going for a drink is in as great danger as a man leaning out over a precipice in search of food. If it once falls into the grip of the surface tension of the water—that is to say, gets wet—it is likely to remain so until it drowns. A few insects, such as water-beetles, contrive to be unwettable; the majority keep well away from their drink by means of a long proboscis.

Of course tall land animals have other difficulties. They have to pump their blood to greater heights than a man, and, therefore, require a larger blood pressure and tougher blood-vessels. A great many men die from burst arteries, greater for an elephant or a giraffe. But animals of all kinds find difficulties in size for the following reason. A typical small animal, say a microscopic worm or rotifer, has a smooth skin through which all the oxygen it requires can soak in, a straight gut with sufficient surface to absorb its food, and a single kidney. Increase its dimensions tenfold in every direction, and its weight is increased a thousand times, so that if it is to use its muscles as efficiently as its miniature counterpart, it will need a thousand times as much food and oxygen per day and will excrete a thousand times as much of waste products.

On Being the Right Size

check it out...

It's an "eth!"

ð

Quigley's 2,000-word vocabulary has proven insufficient to express his emptiness

Protip: gardening

To keep away groundhogs and other such pests away from your bulbs and vegetable garden without ugly fences or dangerous chemicals, plant something that naturally repels animals. Cayenne pepper, peppermint and other strong or hot spices will keep animals away from leaves and fruits. Onions can protect vulnerable bulbs.

they say he's got to go

For free shipping

Amazon Filler Item Finder:

Certain items at Amazon.com qualify for free shipping, but sometimes the purchase falls short of the minimum $25 needed to receive the free shipping. Enter the amount you need to see a list of products that qualify for free shipping.

Map comparisons

Oh, wow, this is awesome.

MAPfrappe.

3E presents: Justin Bieber Week

Christmas list

3E presents: Justin Bieber Week

I woke up early this morn

My theme of the week: hard hard work.

Keep it in mind 3E.

What happened to that 'best things on the internet' list?

Mothra

1. In real life, how fast would Mothra have to beat her wings to stay afloat?

2. Mothra maintains a close telepathic contact with two small fairies. Its behavior patterns and communication abilities indicate an above average level of intelligence.

3. DJ Mothra

4.

Primate portraits

Adorable

“I don’t give a damn about your yellow buzzards.”

78 Things You Didn't Know About Johnny Cash



I actually knew several of those things, but I am still pleased to share.

Highway 3E

Found on the internet:



Who did this? What's your deal, Oklahoma?

I want some answers.

I don't know, Jeff.

There's fire down below

this just in

hump day!

the best thing about the NFL in years

This headline, re: the Donovan McNabb-to-Washington trade.

Honey trap

This latest report on Chinese corporate espionage tactics is only the most recent installment in a long and sordid history of spies and sex. For millennia, spymasters of all sorts have trained their spies to use the amorous arts to obtain secret information.

The trade name for this type of spying is the "honey trap." And it turns out that both men and women are equally adept at setting one -- and equally vulnerable to tumbling in. Spies use sex, intelligence, and the thrill of a secret life as bait. Cleverness, training, character, and patriotism are often no defense against a well-set honey trap. And as in normal life, no planning can take into account that a romance begun in deceit might actually turn into a genuine, passionate affair. In fact, when an East German honey trap was exposed in 1997, one of the women involved refused to believe she had been deceived, even when presented with the evidence. "No, that's not true," she insisted. "He really loved me."

Those who aim to perfect the art of the honey trap in the future, as well as those who seek to insulate themselves, would do well to learn from honey trap history. Of course, there are far too many stories -- too many dramas, too many rumpled bedsheets, rattled spouses, purloined letters, and ruined lives -- to do that history justice here. Yet one could begin with five famous stories and the lessons they offer for honey-trappers, and honey-trappees, everywhere.

The History of the Honey Trap

Protip: eggplant

To tenderize and reduce the bitterness of fresh eggplant, sweat it with salt. Cut the eggplant in half, cover it liberally with salt, and allow it to sit for half an hour. This will pull out some of its water content and keep it firm during cooking. After, rinse the salt off and cook as desired.

Metal Monday

I can't see no reason to put up a fight