kiss the sun and walk on air

Stephen Colbert kicks ass at White House press corps dinner: "Cory Doctorow: Stephen Colbert's routine at last night's White House Press Corps dinner sounds like one of those perfect moments of comedy and commentary -- someone, find me a transcript!

Colbert, who spoke in the guise of his talk show character, who ostensibly supports the president strongly, urged the Bush to ignore his low approval ratings, saying they were based on reality, 'and reality has a well-known liberal bias.'

He attacked those in the press who claim that the shake-up at the White House was merely re-arranging the deck chairs on the Titanic. 'This administration is soaring, not sinking,' he said. 'They are re-arranging the deck chairs--on the Hindenburg.'

Colbert told Bush he could end the problem of protests by retired generals by refusing to let them retire. He compared Bush to Rocky Balboa in the 'Rocky' movies, always getting punched in the face--'and Apollo Creed is everything else in the world.'

Link (Thanks, Stefan!)

Update: Thanks to Butter71 for links to the transcript and video! w00t!

Update 2: Here's a high-quality torrent of the video. "

(Via Boing Boing Blog.)

i noticed this lonesome egg sitting in our bird feeder a few minutes ago. it wasn't there when i woke up this morning. perhaps leela gave one of them a big scare?

its blizzard'ed last night!

Wasp performs roach-brain-surgery to make zombie slave-roaches: "Cory Doctorow: Ampulex compressa is a wasp that has evolved to tackle roaches, insert a stinger into their brains and disable their escape reflexes. This lets the wasp use the roach's antennae to steer the roach to its lair, where it can lay its egg in it. Parasite Rex author Carl Zimmer tells the story in gooey, graphic detail:

The wasp slips her stinger through the roach's exoskeleton and directly into its brain. She apparently use ssensors along the sides of the stinger to guide it through the brain, a bit like a surgeon snaking his way to an appendix with a laparoscope. She continues to probe the roach's brain until she reaches one particular spot that appears to control the escape reflex. She injects a second venom that influences these neurons in such a way that the escape reflex disappears.

From the outside, the effect is surreal. The wasp does not paralyze the cockroach. In fact, the roach is able to lift up its front legs again and walk. But now it cannot move of its own accord. The wasp takes hold of one of the roach's antennae and leads it--in the words of Israeli scientists who study Ampulex--like a dog on a leash.

The zombie roach crawls where its master leads, which turns out to be the wasp's burrow. The roach creeps obediently into the burrow and sits there quietly, while the wasp plugs up the burrow with pebbles. Now the wasp turns to the roach once more and lays an egg on its underside. The roach does not resist. The egg hatches, and the larva chews a hole in the side of the roach. In it goes.

The larva grows inside the roach, devouring the organs of its host, for about eight days. It is then ready to weave itself a cocoon--which it makes within the roach as well. After four more weeks, the wasp grows to an adult. It breaks out of its cocoon, and out of the roach as well. Seeing a full-grown wasp crawl out of a roach suddenly makes those Alien movies look pretty derivative.

Link

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(Via Boing Boing Blog.)

"It must be changing something about the internal communication in my brain. Whatever my inner process is that lets me solve problems, it works differently, or maybe different parts of my brain are used, " said Herbert, 42, an early employee of Cisco Systems who says he solved his toughest technical problems while tripping to drum solos by the Grateful Dead -- who were among the many artists inspired by LSD.

(via LSD: The Geek's Wonder Drug?

i don't know what it is with me and birds..

when we woke up this morning, it had snowed! the poor birds couldn't get to their feeder.. so i had to refill it.. and pretty soon, we had a ton of birds! they must value easy-to-find food :)