A group called the X Foundation is planning to award $10 million to anyone who can design a commercially viable car that can get 100 miles per gallon.
I realize that the shapes of hybrid car are based on aerodynamic efficiency. But I have to ask myself what percentage of the improved gas mileage is directly due to the car being shaped like a whale’s penis? Wouldn’t it make more sense to design the car to be 2% less energy efficient, 100% more attractive, and thereby sell 300% more of them? Are these car makers even trying?
Yeah, yeah, I know that Leonardo DiCaprio drives a hybrid, and he’s sleeping with supermodels. But I guarantee that they make him wear condoms. Probably two or three at a time. And I’ve yet to see a paparazzi get a picture of both Leonardo AND a supermodel going on a date in a Prius. If a supermodel gets photographed in a Prius, her next assignment is pointing at rugs in the JC Penney catalog.
If the X Foundation contest ends up designing a car that gets 100 mpg, the car company that buys the patents will produce a car that looks like a cancerous spleen. And they’ll name it something like the Toyota Nonads.
Saudi's on U.S. in Iraq: 'illegitimate foreign occupation'
Topic: Current Events
11:21 pm EDT, Mar 29, 2007
King Abdullah's harsh -- and unexpected -- attack on the U.S. military presence in Iraq could be a Saudi attempt to signal to Washington its anger over the situation in Iraq and build credibility among fellow Arabs.
"In beloved Iraq, blood is flowing between brothers, in the shadow of an illegitimate foreign occupation, and abhorrent sectarianism threatens a civil war," said Abdullah, whose country is a U.S. ally that quietly aided the 2003 U.S.-led invasion of Iraq.
A Saudi official said the king was speaking as the president of the summit and his remarks reflected general frustration with the "patchwork" job the Americans were doing to end violence in Iraq.
The king also wanted to send a message that Iraq is an issue that Arabs cannot turn their back on, the official said. He spoke on condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the issue.
Translation: Iraq is such a cluster fuck in the eye's of your average Arab that the even the Saudis need to disassociate themselves with us for fear an internal revolt against their already 3-day old monarchy.
Our allies in this region are asymptoticly approaching only Israel.
Counterterrorism Blog: Transcripts of Interviews of Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, Abu Faraj al-Libi, & Ramzi Binalshibh
Topic: Current Events
12:07 am EDT, Mar 15, 2007
Here are the transcripts of the interviews by the Defense Department of the three most senior Al Qaeda leaders in custody in the world, provided to us by Jean Charles Brisard. The Defense Department has posted more information at a special website.
This is a pretty cool website. We haven't heard a lot recently about enemy combatant trials and these transcripts provide insight that they appear to be as dull as standard legal proceedings: Lots of red tape, sprinkled with bits of interestingness.
We've made an update to MemeStreams that hopefully improves the look of the site. There are also some security fixes in here, as well as some new features which should help us fight spam more effectively going forward. In addition, I contributed some improvements to the MemeBox to make it easier to sort and keep track of new messages. We'd also like to thank Eric White for some HTML input that helped us improve the look of the site and Terratogen for some graphics work.
As always, let us know if you discover anything that isn't working right...
(Safari users may find some color misalignment. We're going to address that in a future update. We wanted this out and we decided to optomize for FF and IE for the time being. Safair literally displays some colors differently in some contexts.)
