If you are into Campbell Farms Gourmet Rice (and who in their right mind isn’t?!?), they posted some photos of this years harvest, which is a bumper crop.  Alison updated their blog today while preparing for the possibility of hurricane Gustav.

You can pick up the rice locally at Kirkham Systems, 3000 Old Greenwood Road, Fort Smith - Map

I gotta get me one of these!  Its supposed to be about $1000., which is much better than the original that fetched over $300,000 in a 2002 auction.

For all of you photo buffs, here is a link to 45 great motion inspired photographs.

Updated:  Oops, forgot the link.  Fixed.

Fairly decent run-down of dead-tree media’s attempts to move onto the World Wide Web.  Most of the dead-tree news missed the boat with radio and television, too.  This time, it might be different once the Internets becomes ubiquitous.

One of the commenters observes that often the online service is run by the same people running the dead-tree side of the house and the web site is intentionally sabotaged to make the print business look good.  Wow.  I’ve never seen that happen.

Get a load of this.  This arrogant Wisconsin woman did not return two library books for over a year, did not respond to 2 phone calls and 2 letters from the library to return the books, so the library turned the issue over to the police.  Her words:  “I said, what could they possibly do? They can’t arrest me for this… I was wrong,” 

She was arrested, then failed to appear in court, saying she completely forgot about it.  Wow.

She paid the fine of $170, but she is not returning the books:  “I still have the books and I don’t plan to return them because they’re paid for now,” Dalibor said. 

Something tells me she is not going to win any community awards anytime soon.

***WARNING - POLITICAL RANT***

While I don’t think China aspires to be some sort of new Nazi Germany, it is discomforting, yet perhaps inevitable that the United States will become the #2 or lower economic power in the world in a generation or two.  At least Zahid Fakaria thinks so in his book, The Post-American World.

I’ve been seriously Lucid on this topic for some time, as we watch our country’s politicians do nothing more than pander to their constituents; we watch our fellow americans vote themselves money from the public trough; then the culmination of disaster with easy credit in a consumer-driven economy coupled with a huge spike in natural resource and food prices creates an economic mess.  Bozo the Clown or a freshman economics major could tell you THAT was coming.

Everyone wants term limits, but not for their Congressman.  Everyone wants nuclear power but not in their backyard, everyone wants "free" health benefits, but don’t want to pay higher taxes (tax the rich!), everyone wants the government to pay retirement benefits, but no one wants to actually save money to take care of themselves.  Everyone wants the government to fix everything for them.

What happened to personal responsibility, privacy, and small government?  What happened to free enterprise?  The truth is, we don’t "deserve" cheap gas.  What we deserve is the very principles of free enterprise that this country was founded upon to entice consumers to drive more economical cars, use less power at home, and generally be less wasteful.  The government can no more control gas prices than it can change the path of a hurricane.  Take care of yourself, and let the market decide.  Hell, its not that hard to figure out.

We spent years telling the rest of the world to adopt free enterprise and capitalism, then regulated and legislated ourselves into socialism just as the rest of the world began adopting the very idea we began abandoning. 

Welcome to a new world of American socialism and the discarding of self-responsibility and self-determinism. Our founding fathers would roll over in their graves if they knew what had happened with their new government.  The American people deserve neither Obama or McCain in the White House.  We deserve better, but it begins with self-education.  Study economics, study history, study government, study capitalism.  please.  Become Lucid on the topic.  Wal-Mart is not evil, and neither is Exxon-Mobile.  There is no conspiracy.  Even if there was a conspiracy, someone would tell.  Get over it and quit being sheep.

There.  Now I feel better.

ThinkGeek :: Stuff for Smart Masses

Well, I am totally surprised that the Bigfoot Press Conference did not exactly reveal any proof, just another announcement about the supposed creature.

Am I just totally stupid, or do people really believe that a creature of that size could exist for centuries in the United States, Canada, etc. and never be found before.  No remains, no live specimens, nothing, nada, zip.

And before you go off spouting about Gorillas, etc not being discovered until relatively recently, remember that they were not in a heavily populated land with modern communication, surveillance, and other things like rifles.  Believe me, a hunter in Georgia would have shot one of these things during an out-of-season, beer-fueled spot-lighting trip a long time ago if they existed.

Here is a link to the purported bigfoot.

One of the most inspiring TED talks I have seen.  Bill Stone challenges all to mount and support an expedition to water-rich Shackletons Crater on the moon.  Not just a trip there and back, but a dangerous, one-way trip for explorers that if successful, will open another range of human journey and civilization growth that is difficult to imagine today.  And, he wants to do it in 7 years.

"Men Wanted: For hazardous journey. Small wages, bitter cold, long months of complete darkness, constant danger, safe return doubtful. Honour and recognition in case of success." - Sir Ernest Shackleton

Find out what weird stuff ThinkGeek Customers have to say. Check out The Fortunes!

I’m no Luddite, but putting a rat brain into a robot and using it to not only control the robot, but feeding it, and watching it grow and learn just creeps me out a little.

From CNet article:

"We feed them every couple of days, a pink liquid with nutrients not too dissimilar to what the Olympians might drink for energy. It keeps the neurons alive and allows them to grow. Within twenty-four hours they make connections. Within a week there is a brain-like activity. If you stimulate one electrode you get spontaneous firing. We then use that basic operation by linking it up to the robot body,"

What is a pinch?

[From Basher]:  "A pinch is a device which creates, like, a cardiac arrest for any broadband electrical circuitry. Better yet, a pinch is a bomb - now, but without the bomb. See, when a nuclear weapon detonates, it unleashes an electromagnetic pulse which shuts down any power source within its blast radius. Now that tends not to matter in most cases, because the nuclear weapon usually destroys anything you might need power for anyway. But see, a pinch creates a similar electromagnetic pulse, but without the fuss of mass destruction and death. So instead of Hiroshima, you’d be getting the seventeenth century."

The article does not mention Basher, or whether the device would be useful for Oceans 14.

Find out What’s New at ThinkGeek!