Want to make millions without leaving your house? Ask me how!

Posted on December 18, 2006

Due to rising metal costs, the media recently reported that the value of the metal in U.S. coins has now surpassed that of the coins themselves. The metal contained in a penny, for instance, is worth approximately 1.12 cents at market prices, according to the U.S. Mint.

With that in mind, I would like to let you in on the ground floor of a potentially lucrative investment opportunity. From what I gather on eBay, I can get ahold of a decent smelter for around a thousand bucks. From there, at a profit of 0.12 cents per penny, we’ll only need 833,334 pennies (or $8,334) to cover start-up costs. From there, as long as metal prices stay high, it’s pure profit.

With a mere 834,166,668 pennies and a little hard work, we can clear a million bucks!

At current market values, we can obtain roughly 100 pennies for one dollar. That means we’ll need approximately $8,341,666.68 in investment capital to make our first million.

This is where all of you come into play. If you’d like to share in this unique investment opportunity and buy into the future of what I’m calling “penny-ante arbitrage,” please send a check or money order to:

For just (several thousand) pennies a day, you can’t lose!

…

What? The U.S. Mint already outlawed this?! Really? Ah, son of a crap. Never mind.

An Inconvenient Photo

Posted on July 15, 2006

Is it just me or does poor Al Gore look like some kind of demonic Jeff Goldblum on the cover of this week’s EW?

Creepy. But go see An Inconvenient Truth anyway.

Presidents need pee breaks, too

Posted on September 14, 2005

Reuters brings us what is quite possibly the best photograph ever — a shot taken earlier today of George W. Bush writing a note to Condoleeza Rice during the 2005 United Nations World Summit.

Let’s take a closer look at that note, shall we?

Priceless. Absolutely priceless. I’m glad to see that President Bush is getting a head start on writing his memoirs. I have to wonder, though, if Condi gave him permission to leave. Or does that require a hall pass from Kofi Annan?

Anyway, if it’s Photoshopped, somebody certainly fooled Reuters (see it here and here on Yahoo News). Links via Waxy.

Justice Jess

Posted on July 1, 2005

I’m taking this opportunity to officially throw my hat into the ring as a potential replacement on the Supreme Court for the retiring Sandra Day O’Connor.

Why do I think I’d be a good fit for this position? Well, I’m liberal (but not in that scary Michael Moore way), I’m relatively well versed in the Constitution and the workings of the Supreme Court (if not the law, per se), and I look rather dashing in a robe (those are provided free of charge, right?).

What’s my greatest weakness? Probably that I’m too much of a perfectionist.

If anyone from the Bush administration would like to contact me about the appointment, please leave a comment on this entry and I’ll get back to you at my earliest convenience.

On a related note, with O’Connor gone, does that make make Clarence Thomas the hottest justice on the bench?

Quote of the Whenever: No Disassembly Required

Posted on June 2, 2005

“It seemed like to me they based some of their decisions on the word of — and the allegations — by people who were held in detention, people who hate America, people that had been trained in some instances to disassemble — that means not tell the truth.”

I’m not trying to come off like Joe Vocabulary here, Mr. President, but I think you meant dissemble. You know, sometimes I think he’s just messing with us.

Legislators pass the darndest bills!

Posted on April 13, 2005

Ripped from the headlines:

That does it for this edition of Apropos of Something’s Kooky Legislation Round-Up. See you next time…

Quote of the Whenever: Canned Meat Edition

Posted on March 30, 2005

“I’m torn between my love for Vienna Sausages and my love for state services.”

Feel free to play along at home and fill in the blanks! “I’m torn between my love for ______________ and my love for ______________.” Personally, I’m torn between my love for Doritos and my love for non-orange fingertips.

Baseball players seize control of Capitol Hill

Posted on March 18, 2005

Reports from Washington, DC, indicate that a group of major league baseball players led by slugger Mark McGwire seized control of Capitol Hill on Friday morning, taking several members of Congress hostage for currently undisclosed reasons.

The small cadre of superstars — including McGwire, Curt Schilling, and Rafael Palmeiro — were on Capitol Hill to testify before a Congressional committee investigating allegations of steroid abuse in professional baseball.

Police currently have the Capitol surrounded, and are considering options to rescue the trapped members of Congress while minimizing casualties. “It’s not an easy decision,” says Police Chief Lloyd Anderson. “Those guys in there are monsters. If this morning’s events have taught us anything, it’s that one could snap at any moment.”

Witnesses say that Friday’s hearings started off normally enough before quickly descending into violence.

“We were in the middle of the hearings when Sammy Sosa just jumped up out of his seat and started wailing on Chairman Davis (R-Virginia),” said Annie Woofter, one of a handful of support staff workers who escaped the fracas unharmed. “Before long, [the baseball players] had overrun the entire Capitol building. One of them threw Liddy Dole (R-North Carolina) halfway across the Senate chamber. I don’t know if it was ’roid rage or what, but it was absolutely crazy. I’m lucky that I got out alive.”

Some studies have suggested that performance-enhancing steroids not only increase muscle mass, but also produce heightened levels of aggression in abusers.

Witnesses say that former Oakland Athletics star Jose Canseco bowed out of the assault early after he strained a ligament in his arm while beating Ted Kennedy (D-Massachusetts) senseless with a baseball bat. Canseco has been placed on injured reserve pending an MRI later this afternoon.

The players have yet to disclose any demands, although McGwire briefly emerged from the Capitol at 11:05AM EST to proclaim, “Come, son of Bush. Kneel before McGwire!”

Added Schilling, “Me am king of Congress now! Grr!”

Hold the crunch berries

Posted on February 15, 2005

Do you miss being back in college and surviving on nothing but Cap’n Crunch for three meals a day? If so, have I got the restaurant for you! Via WebMD:

A restaurant that serves nothing but cereal? It may sound like a scheme from a Seinfeld episode, but the concept is now a reality — a cereality, that is. Diners at the Cereality Cereal Bar and Cafe in Philadelphia can feast on their favorite flakes for breakfast, lunch, and dinner. As if ordering a sundae at an ice cream parlor, patrons choose from more than 30 brand-name cereals and a multitude of tempting toppings, including fruit, nuts, cookies, and candy. Pajama-clad “cereologists” prepare the custom blends in a homey kitchen setting.

If they’re serving Cinnamon Toast Crunch, I’m so totally there.

Hat-tip to my wife, who actually reads WebMD on a regular basis — unlike her husband, who’s more likely to be found pouring over page-six celebrity gossip in the online edition of the New York Post.

His love is real, but he is not

Posted on February 5, 2005

Aware of my concerns about the increasing likelihood of a robot-dominated dystopic future, Richard alerted me to this recent article from the Guardian:

Kim Jong-Hwan, the director of the ITRC-Intelligent Robot Research Centre, has developed a series of artificial chromosomes that, he says, will allow robots to feel lusty, and could eventually lead to them reproducing. He says the software, which will be installed in a robot within the next three months, will give the machines the ability to feel, reason and desire.

Kim said: “Robots will have their own personalities and emotion and — as films like I, Robot warn — that could be very dangerous for humanity. If we can provide a robot with good — soft — chromosomes, they may not be such a threat.”

Although he admits his ideas sound fantastic, Kim is no crank. In the mid-1990s, the professor launched the robot football world cup, which has since become one of the most popular means for robotics researchers to measure their progress against competitors from around the world.

Emotional robots capable of reproducing? Why don’t we just teach them ninjitsu while we’re at it? Oh, and only in Britain would the fact that a professor launched the robot football world cup be considered incontrovertible evidence that he’s not a nutcase.

Take one down, pass it around

Posted on January 28, 2005

Are you tired of severe winter weather? It could be worse. You could be trapped under an avalanche and forced to urinate your way to freedom. From Ananova:

A Slovak man trapped in his car under an avalanche freed himself by drinking 60 bottles of beer and urinating on the snow to melt it.

Rescue teams found Richard Kral drunk and staggering along a mountain path four days after his Audi car was buried in the Slovak Tatra mountains. He told them that after the avalanche, he had opened his car window and tried to dig his way out. But as he dug with his hands, he realised the snow would fill his car before he managed to break through.

He had 60 half-litre bottles of beer in his car as he was going on holiday, and after cracking one open to think about the problem he realised he could urinate on the snow to melt it, local media reported.

He said: “I was scooping the snow from above me and packing it down below the window, and then I peed on it to melt it. It was hard and now my kidneys and liver hurt. But I’m glad the beer I took on holiday turned out to be useful and I managed to get out of there.”

Beer…is there any problem it can’t solve?

This one’s for you, Mom

Posted on January 24, 2005

There’s still no cure for cancer, but researchers nevertheless remain hard at work on explaining the links between housekeeping and your health. Via the BBC:

Failing to make your bed in the morning may actually help keep you healthy, scientists believe.

Research suggests that while an unmade bed may look scruffy it is also unappealing to house dust mites thought to cause asthma and other allergies.

A Kingston University study discovered the bugs cannot survive in the warm, dry conditions found in an unmade bed.

Apparently, I’ve been at the forefront of the global fight against dust mites for nearly 28 years now and I didn’t even know it. Now, if only a subsequent study would show that a seldom-mowed lawn is somehow beneficial to your health…

Weapons of mass seduction

Posted on January 14, 2005

Your tax dollars at work, via New Scientist:

The Pentagon considered developing a host of non-lethal chemical weapons that would disrupt discipline and morale among enemy troops, newly declassified documents reveal.

Most bizarre among the plans was one for the development of an “aphrodisiac” chemical weapon that would make enemy soldiers sexually irresistible to each other. Provoking widespread homosexual behaviour among troops would cause a “distasteful but completely non-lethal” blow to morale, the proposal says.

Other ideas included chemical weapons that attract swarms of enraged wasps or angry rats to troop positions, making them uninhabitable. Another was to develop a chemical that caused “severe and lasting halitosis”, making it easy to identify guerrillas trying to blend in with civilians. There was also the idea of making troops’ skin unbearably sensitive to sunlight.

The proposals, from the US Air Force Wright Laboratory in Dayton, Ohio, date from 1994. The lab sought Pentagon funding for research into what it called “harassing, annoying and ‘bad guy’-identifying chemicals”. The plans have been posted online by the Sunshine Project, an organisation that exposes research into chemical and biological weapons.

Spokesman Edward Hammond says it was not known if the proposed $7.5 million, six-year research plan was ever pursued.

Ooo, I wanna play too! How about a chemical weapon that forces enemy troops to speak using bad grammar, embarrassing and demoralizing them in front of family and friends? Or one that transforms bad guys into physical replicas of Latin singing sensation Charo? Or a chemical agent that makes them think they’re hot dogs, so they try to eat themselves? The possibilities are endless!

Galactic groove

Posted on January 13, 2005

Ananova reports that the European probe scheduled to touch down on Saturn’s moon Titan this Friday is carrying a four-track CD of rock music written by a pair of French musicians, intended to “leave some trace of humanity in the unknown and send a sign to any possible extra-terrestrial populations.”

Far be it from me to suggest there’s anything wrong with French rock music, but if you were in charge of selecting tracks for the CD, what would you choose?

Personally, I’d go with a selection of scary heavy metal songs — you know, tracks like Metallica’s “Enter Sandman” and “Black Sabbath” by, er, Black Sabbath. Hopefully, the CD would frighten any aliens who stumbled across it enough to make them reconsider any invasions of Earth they had planned.

I, for one, welcome our dancing, robotic overlords

Posted on January 12, 2005

Yahoo! News reports on the latest harbinger of humanity’s doom:

Promet the robot puts best metal foot forward to preserve ancient dance

TOKYO (AFP) - Japanese researchers said they had turned a humanoid industrial machine into a master of Japanese traditional dance in a bid to use a robot as a guardian of cultural heritage.

The 1.5-meter-tall robot HRP-2 Promet, which looks like an animation character wearing a visor, shuffled its gray metal feet and waved its hands in the air in synch with a woman in a kimono. Katsushi Ikeuchi, a professor of engineering at Tokyo University, said the robot, which is usually used at construction sites, was taught traditional Japanese dance to preserve the art for the future.

Maybe Promet was tired of seeing humans do “The Robot” and decided to turn the tables on us. Meanwhile, if a robot can learn an ancient Japanese dance, what’s to stop it from learning an ancient Japanese martial art? I think we can all see where this is heading: upstoppable ninja robots. When are these scientists going to learn? Thanks a bunch for doing your part to usher in a dystopic robot-dominated future, guys!

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