Johnny Cash Sings of My Life

Johnny Cash sings Oscar the Grouch the song of me: Nasty Dan. Notice that at one point, Oscar says "Far Out!"

GOP: May cause discomfort

From the Sunday Times:

In an effort to "rebrand" the party, Republican leaders offered a risible new slogan: "The Change You Deserve".* Not only did it appear plagiarised from Mr Obama's "Change We Can Believe In", it was also the advertising slogan for the anti-depressant Effexor, whose side effects include sweating, nervousness and nausea.

Not a successful rebranding, if you ask me.

*It takes a great deal of effort not to [sic] stupid British punctuation rules

Good News for Great Tits

Species react differently to climactic change; witness the UK's Great Tits.

In other news, there's an animal called the Great Tit. And no one told me.

It Begins

Frogmen are just around the corner:

The Times via wired blog.

Scientists have created what is believed to be the first genetically modified (GM) human embryo.

A team from Cornell University in New York produced the GM embryo to study how early cells and diseases develop. It was destroyed after five days.

…

Ethicists warn that genetically modifying embryos could lead to the addition of genes for desirable traits such as height, intelligence and hair colour.

By "colour" they mean "color," for those of you who don't speak British.

No word on whether we can get prehensile tails or not.

What we need more of is science

Just to say we did it.

Japanese scientists and "origami masters" have received approval for up to $900,000 over three years to study the feasibility of building a paper airplane that could be launched from space and land safely without, you know, burning up.

Prototypes have apparently survived wind tunnel tests that simulate the ridiculous pressures and temperatures — 446° F and Mach 7 — the piece of folded paper would be subject to as it accelerated through the atmosphere.

The best part about the whole thing — there won't be any way to track the course of the paper airplane, so more will be learned from the development phase than the actual deployment, if that ever happens.

But once you develop a paper airplane that can endure 446 degrees and pressures that would make a person pass out if not die, you have to see it through to the end, right?

Just to say you did it.