From Russia, With Love — and Polonium-210

The number of planes and trace radiation sources discovered keep going up. Nasty thing, that radiation. Leaves a trail. Right now, there’s a whole bunch of trails, which suggests more than one end target.

I was reminded yesterday in a radio article you can listen to here[NPR] that the day President Kennedy was assassinated, our spies handed off a device(s) to kill Castro with. One was a pen with some sort of poison, and another a diving suit with itching powder dusted inside it. Itching powder, Iocane powder, something like that.

And you think that Turkey you ate last week was bad…

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Updating the report yesterday that you could buy your own stash of Polonium-210 from the firm in New Mexico, they are reporting that a lethal dose would need about 15,000 orders of their $80 order, so don’t get your hopes up you can easily duplicate the methods of the guys who are really serious about exotic poisonings.

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Your Love Keeps Lifting Me Higher

Unlike the song (now firmly stuck in my head) some clever folk have put small bugs in a container and levitated them using sound waves. The levitated fish didn’t fare so well, as it was indeed a fish out of water.

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Paying your restaurant bill by text messaging?

It’s a new service that a company is trying out in Colorado.

Our grandkids will be wondering when people weren’t paying for stuff with eyeblink gestures.

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And no, I won’t be linking to the Danny DeVito “drunken antics on The View” video that seems to be everywhere.

DeVito has lost stature in my eyes.

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I’ve watched every episode so far of 3Lbs.

Apparently, I’m the only one who did. CBS canned it.

Yes, it was a ripoff of HOUSE, but that’s not the reason. The reason was, there was no story to be told. Tucci was a great “force of nature” with his unflinching attitude of being right and having to be right, but that isn’t enough to sell the show. Always ask, “who’s story are we telling?” and the answer better be involve the lead character. The mystery bit of the “Oooh, Tucci’s character’s brain has something wrong with it!” bit didn’t hold my attention either.

The show may have ripped a bit of the premise from HOUSE, but Tucci’s character is a more complete rip from Mandy Patinkin’s character on Criminal Minds.

The lack of a clear villain eliminated the drama to the point of making the show into nearly a Discovery Channel special. Discovery Channel shows are great, but they don’t have the ratings to cut it on CBS either.

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New Terminology Alert

If you use the Nintendo Wii gaming console to reenact a movie, such as the bowling scene beginning in The Big Lebowski [language warning]…

those videos are called Mii videos.

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If It Wanks Like A Duck

The “Think Crime” police are hard at work redefining child porn. Now, clothed pictures of underage children are porn. The “Child Modeling” sites do attract scumbags who pay to see underage types in various positions that suggest sexual positions, but the government has decided that these clothed children were posed in an “illegally provocative” manner.

This is a slippery slope that indeed starts with the scumbag sites and ends up with parents who can’t send photos of Little Suzie to her grandparents. Exaggeration? Tell me again how big of a tube of toothpaste I can take on an airline again?

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It’s time to make the jingle!

Know of a garage band that wants to sell out for some cheap attention?

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If you missed out on the initial Wii and PS3 console releases, you can now requeue at your local electronics outlets, because December 3rd is the next scheduled “drop” date for the Wii, and I believe the PS3 as well.

But those of you obsessed over this know it already.

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For Bekke, an early look into Sacha Cohen’s early TV career. [YouTube - originally broadcast on Brit TV]

His early attempts at Jewish humor consisted of leaning rabbis. Yeah. Leaning.

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And finally,
Taking The Scenic Route Ain’t All What It’s Cracked Up To Be

Zagreb, Croatia - A Croatian man miraculously survived a 700 foot fall down the side of a canyon after he lost control of his car and plunged into a ravine.

His car hit the rock wall of the deep gully twice before getting caught in the branches of a tree on the canyon floor 700ft below.
-Ananova

Seatbelt and airbags saved him, and the guy called for rescue on his mobile phone,
which worked at the bottom of the 700ft canyon –

…which means he gets better cellphone service than I do.