EHS?

And I thought I had heard about every medical condition possible. This gave me a good snort:

Imagine drifting off to sleep only to be roused into a sudden panic by a cataclysmic noise erupting inside your head.

The condition is known as "exploding head syndrome," and people who have been affected by it describe the sound as a violent explosion or an enormous roar "so loud it could kill me." Dr. Joel Saper described the unusual condition last year in a column in the Detroit Free Press.

Pick of the day...

I'm not making this up...really.

Picking your nose and eating it is one of the best ways to stay healthy, according to a top Austrian doctor. Innsbruck-based lung specialist Prof Dr Friedrich Bischinger said people who pick their noses with their fingers were healthy, happier and probably better in tune with their bodies.

He says society should adopt a new approach to nose picking and encourage children to take it up.

Don't mess with Richard!

Richard Simmons charged with assault? He may be old, but all that exercise sure has kept him in shape over the years...to smack your ass!

A fellow passenger recognized Simmons on Wednesday night at Phoenix's Sky Harbor International Airport as he was waiting for a flight to Los Angeles, police said.

The man "made the off-hand comment, 'Hey, everybody. It's Richard Simmons. Let's drop our bags and rock to the '50s,"' said Phoenix police Sgt. Tom Osborne. "Mr. Simmons took exception to it and walked over to the other passenger and apparently slapped him in the face."

Shark!

16-year old girl catches big-ass shark. Don't I feel like a wuss now. ;^p
</off to sleep>

Dark Tower 7 cover?

Ok, took a while to find it, but Michael Whelan is the M-A-N. Funny caption should be: "What do you mean, I wasn't supposed to pick the flower?"

Check out the UK covers, too....same background, different book-themed foregrounds. I might want that set.

Trek communicators and long distance wireless

Finally, we can have our Star Trek communicators:

Just as Captain Picard would do, Vocera badge wearers can touch the slim device they wear on their uniforms, say who they want to talk to and, assuming that person is wearing his badge, be connected.

Uses VoIP, too....now if only I could combine that with the ultra-range high-speed wireless service they're lanuching in Austraila, you'd have a multi-mile instant voice-activated communicator. Enough range for, oh say, a starship?:

An Australian company launched a wireless broadband service in Sydney this week that lets laptop and PDA users roam up to nine miles away from the base station and still get a speedy connection.

Damn Aussies!

Time to look up!

Yep, after lusting through most of my childhood, finally got the new telescope I've been drooling over. Just in time for a good year, and heck....a good March. Birthday present from self to self...heh.

All five classic naked-eye planets will be visible later this month. Venus continues its dazzling display in the western sky reaching its highest evening elevation for 8 years (northern hemisphere). Jupiter in the east (at opposition) is at its brightest and biggest all year. A small telescope will easily show Jupiter's clouds and its 4 bright moons. Saturn's magnificent rings, just past maximum tilt open, are another easy target for small telescopes. Mars, the host of robotic explorers Spirit and Opportunity, appears as a tiny orange-colored dot even in large telescopes. Finally, elusive Mercury can be found below Venus in the later half of March -- its best evening display in 2004.

Cidada time...

It's cicada time again! Are you old enough to remember the last batch back in 1987?

There are at least 13 broods of 17-year cicadas ... This year, it's time for Brood X, the so-called "Big Brood," to surface. Its range stretches from Georgia, west through Tennessee and to isolated pockets of Missouri, north along the Ohio Valley and into Michigan, and east into New Jersey and New York.

"This is one of those years we kind of dread," said Paris Lambdin, professor of entomology and plant pathology at the University of Tennessee. "We had an emergence a couple years ago around Nashville, but nothing like what we expect this one will be."

And with hundreds of them per acre in infested areas, the noise will be hard to miss.

Kerry? Bush? Bleh.

Now shots are being fired from both sides of the field...let the battle for '04 begin! Latest salvo:

The Democratic Party's presidential front-runner, Sen. John Kerry, D-Mass., has pledged that if elected he will abandon the president's war on terror, begin a dialogue with terrorist regimes and apologize for three-and-one-half years of mistakes by the Bush administration.

As with every election, you get to choose between happy tree-hugging Democrats or war-mongering Republicans. This year, with a free upgrade to an even more polarized presidential contest. Help! Can I get some moderate peeps in da house? Fo shizzle!

You make me feel like "gancing"...

Ok, the "Bo Peep incident" was fine (those of you in the "in" crowd will get the reference..Eric, Galit), but there will be absolutely NO "gancing" for me at the annual summer party, or for that matter, any party this year.

According to the upcoming issue of "Stuff" magazine, the hottest dance trend in New York clubs is "gancing," a term for when guys boogie oogie oogie together.

One popular "gance step" features one guy pretending to be a shark while his pal runs away in fright. Another manly move has the guys pretending to be kangaroos complete with pouches and Fosters beer.

Update: more "gancing" moves for ya...

LOTR Oscars and the quote of the day...

Well, you knew Lord of the Rings was going to clean up....11 Oscars, ouch.

Anyway, the quote of the day has to go to repeat-host Billy Crystal, commenting on his first Oscar show 13 years ago:

"Things were different. Bush was president, the economy was tanking and we'd just finished a war in Iraq," he said.

Oh, wait. Heh.