I can't help it. This video of a Beluga whale blowing air-rings makes me smile.

Click on 'Whale of a Time...' to load the video.

Belugas look like big babies.

Posted by: LauraW. at 06:59 AM | Comments (10)
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"A Christmas Story" trailer, recut to look like a horror movie. Or an episode of The Night Stalker.

Thanks to Boston Irish.

Posted by: Ace at 06:27 AM | Comments (8)
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He attributes them to Walt Disney-- they weren't; they were MGM -- but forget it, he's rolling:

Tom and Jerry, the lovable cat and mouse locked in cartoon combat, is a Jewish conspiracy, according to an Iranian official.

Prof. Hasan Bolkhari, a cultural advisor to the Iranian Education Ministry, delivered the news last week on Iran's Channel 4 during a broadcast of film seminar where he was lecturing. An excerpt of the video was translated by the Middle East Media Research Institute.

"The Jewish Walt Disney Company gained international fame with this cartoon," said Bolkhari. "It is still shown throughout the world. This cartoon maintains its status because of the cute antics of the cat and mouse – especially the mouse.

"Some say that the main reason for making this very appealing cartoon was to erase a certain derogatory term that was prevalent in Europe."

According to the professor, "Tom and Jerry" was created to irradicate the association between mice and Jews created in the minds of Europeans by Hitler.

"If you study European history, you will see who was the main power in hoarding money and wealth in the 19th century," continued Bolkhari. "In most cases, it is the Jews. Perhaps that was one of the reasons which caused Hitler to begin the anti-Semitic trend, and then the extensive propaganda about the crematoria began. ... Some of this is true. We do not deny all of it.

"Watch 'Schindler's List.' Every Jew was forced to wear yellow star on his clothing. The Jews were degraded and termed 'dirty mice.' 'Tom and Jerry' was made in order to change the Europeans' perception of mice. One of terms used was 'dirty mice.'

"It should be noted that mice are very cunning ... and dirty."

And also: mice are notoriously tight with a dollar, you know.

Posted by: Ace at 08:13 PM | Comments (41)
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Scan down for the last update.

This has happened before. Ricin is derived from castor beans, and some tests to determine the presence of ricin merely indicate the presence of castor beans or its non-toxic derivatives.

I posted a while ago about a big ricin scare up in New Hampshire that just turned out to be castor beans, too.

Posted by: Ace at 08:05 PM | Comments (8)
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Brett sends this link to Pandora.com, which supposedly will build your own radio station by asking what sorts of music you like and then playing that sort of music. You can guide the program by giving a thumb's down or thumb's up to certain songs.

I just started using it ten minutes ago, so I don't know yet how well it works. Supposedly I like Richard Hell. I don't think so, but I guess we'll see.

Posted by: Ace at 02:19 PM | Comments (25)
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Science:

THE modern gentleman may prefer blondes. But new research has found that it was cavemen who were the first to be lured by flaxen locks.
According to the study, north European women evolved blonde hair and blue eyes at the end of the Ice Age to make them stand out from their rivals at a time of fierce competition for scarce males.

The study argues that blond hair originated in the region because of food shortages 10,000-11,000 years ago. Until then, humans had the dark brown hair and dark eyes that still dominate in the rest of the world. Almost the only sustenance in northern Europe came from roaming herds of mammoths, reindeer, bison and horses. Finding them required long, arduous hunting trips in which numerous males died, leading to a high ratio of surviving women to men.

Lighter hair colours, which started as rare mutations, became popular for breeding and numbers increased dramatically, according to the research, published under the aegis of the University of St Andrews.

“Human hair and eye colour are unusually diverse in northern and eastern Europe (and their) origin over a short span of evolutionary time indicates some kind of selection,” says the study by Peter Frost, a Canadian anthropologist. Frost adds that the high death rate among male hunters “increased the pressures of sexual selection on early European women, one possible outcome being an unusual complex of colour traits.”

Meanwhile... Blondes Dying Out In Japan: Or at least bottle-blondes:

Ten years ago, a stroll through central Tokyo could leave travelers wondering what country they were in as they watched a parade of tanned, fair-haired women walking tall in precarious platform shoes.

Now fashion has moved on and hairdressers say bleached blonde tresses are going the way of fake tans, although a dark brown tint still seems more popular than natural black.

10,000 years later, and women are still fretting about how to attract men. I likes it.

Posted by: Ace at 01:45 PM | Comments (195)
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Steyn. Only Steyn:

In five years' time, how many Jews will be living in France? Two years ago, a 23-year-old Paris disc jockey called Sebastien Selam was heading off to work from his parents' apartment when he was jumped in the parking garage by his Muslim neighbor Adel. Selam's throat was slit twice, to the point of near-decapitation; his face was ripped off with a fork; and his eyes were gouged out. Adel climbed the stairs of the apartment house dripping blood and yelling, "I have killed my Jew. I will go to heaven."

Is that an gripping story? You'd think so. Particularly when, in the same city, on the same night, a Jewish woman was brutally murdered in the presence of her daughter by another Muslim. You've got the making of a mini-trend there, and the media love trends.

Yet no major French newspaper carried the story.

This month, there was another murder. Ilan Halimi, also 23, also Jewish, was found by a railway track outside Paris with burns and knife wounds all over his body. He died en route to the hospital, having been held prisoner, hooded and naked, and brutally tortured for almost three weeks by a gang that had demanded half a million dollars from his family. Can you take a wild guess at the particular identity of the gang? During the ransom phone calls, his uncle reported that they were made to listen to Ilan's screams as he was being burned while his torturers read out verses from the Quran.

This time around, the French media did carry the story, yet every public official insisted there was no anti-Jewish element. Just one of those things. Coulda happened to anyone. And, if the gang did seem inordinately fixated on, ah, Jews, it was just because, as one police detective put it, ''Jews equal money.'' In London, the Observer couldn't even bring itself to pursue that particular angle. Its report of the murder managed to avoid any mention of the unfortunate Halimi's, um, Jewishness. Another British paper, the Independent, did dwell on the particular, er, identity groups involved in the incident but only in the context of a protest march by Parisian Jews marred by ''radical young Jewish men'' who'd attacked an ''Arab-run grocery.''

This little stinger is good:

adical young Muslim men are changing the realities of daily life for Jews and gays and women in Paris, Brussels, Amsterdam, Copenhagen, Oslo and beyond. If you don't care for the Yids, big deal; look out for yourself. The Jews are playing their traditional role of the canaries in history's coal mine.

Resolved: As long as Muslims are going to murder Jews outside of Israel, they must admit the need of such a state to serve as sanctuary.

Thanks to Craig again.

Posted by: Ace at 10:55 AM | Comments (46)
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They're going to stall themselves into a bomb. Hopefully one of ours. Or actually hopefully 100 or ours.

Iran has reached a "basic" agreement with Russia on jointly enriching uranium, officials said on Sunday -- but there was no immediate sign that it would suspend home-grown enrichment to allay fears that it is developing nuclear weapons.

It was unclear what this basic agreement involved and both Russian and Iranian officials identified serious obstacles to a full deal.

These principally concerned a suspension of Tehran's home-grown uranium enrichment work, the main demand of Western powers who are threatening to press for UN sanctions.

Posted by: Ace at 10:42 AM | Comments (12)
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Not juggling rocks, but juggling to rock (well, are the Bealtes rock? I don't know). Specifically to Golden Slumbers/Carry that Weight/The End.

Pretty damn good. Kind of makes juggling look cool.

Thanks to Craig.

Link Fixed, I Hope. I now link directly to SondraK, who has a working link. I think.

Posted by: Ace at 10:36 AM | Comments (12)
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Weird. I just mentioned him.

Thanks to Mrrmm.

Posted by: Ace at 11:25 PM | Comments (30)
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