IED made out of batteries. I love it.

I'm actually kinda suprised no one has tried to make an IED out of Li-ion batteries. Then again, the explosive force is nothing compared to a block of C4, or rocket ordinance.

I wonder if an exploding Li-ion battery generates enough heat to ignite thermite.

Exploding mobile battery kills Chinese welder | The Register

A long time ago, far away on the planet of Cybertron, a war was being waged between the noble Autobots (led by the wise Optimus Prime) and the devious Decepticons (commanded by the dreaded Megatron) for control over the Allspark, a mystical talisman that would grant unlimited power to whoever possessed it. The Autobots managed to smuggle the Allspark off the planet, but Megatron blasted off in search of it. He eventually tracked it to the planet of Earth (circa 1850), but his reckless desire for power sent him right into the Arctic Ocean, and the sheer cold forced him into a paralyzed state. His body was later found by Captain Archibald Witwicky, and before going into a comatose state Megatron used the last of his energy to engrave a map, showing the location of the Allspark, into the Captain's glasses, and send a transmission to Cybertron. He is then carted away by the Captain's ship. A century later, Sam Witwicky, nicknamed Spike by his friends, buys his first car. To his shock, he discovers it to be Bumblebee, an Autobot in disguise who is to protect Spike, as he bears the Captain's glasses and the map carved on them.

This movie fing rocks BIG!!!!!! You must see it in theater!!!

Transformers The Movie!!!!!!!!!

Love the game? Now love the magnet set which has been adapted from the classic computer puzzle game that had us so addicted to conquering the never-ending stream of falling blocks back in the 1990s.

Tetrius stick to a fridge, an office whiteboard or any other metal surface. The set itself comprises seven different color blocks

These are cool. I think I will have to get a few sets. There are also sets of pillow tetris for small children (shown below) where they can build with them and then climb on it which is kinda interesting.

Tetris for your home

Today, of course, the United States finds itself in much the same position as Britain in 1781. Distracted and diminished by an irrelevant, costly and probably unwinnable war in Iraq, America could ultimately find itself challenged by countries like China and India.

by

Michael Rose, a retired British Army general, commanded the United Nations forces in the former Yugoslavia from 1994 to 1995.

This is an interesting perspective on the American Revolutionary War that you don't hear often over here. Adam originally recommended it but he linked the second page, so I'm linking the first instead.

The defeat that made Britain great - International Herald Tribune

"Disappointing" is a word I don't like to use about a video game--mainly because this means I was just "disappointed" out of fifty bucks when this happens, but nonetheless it applies to EA's new Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix game.

Not even the magic of the Wii-mote could save this one, because somehow EA's code manages to have trouble differentiating frantically waving the thing in counter-clockwise circles from frantically waving the thing in clockwise circles. This is pretty dire, considering that I've got at least three other games that handle this task just fine.

It is neat to see characters which mostly resemble the ones from the movie on your screen and presumably vulnerable to said frantically-waving wand, but no... except for a few rather baffling (because of the hideous wand-movement parsing and lack of effective tactile feedback) battle scenes, you're not allowed to zap anyone at any time. The best you're allowed is to point your wand at people and look at them menacingly to make them run away. This is important because the AI controlling the other characters makes them about as aware of their surroundings Helen Keller, so you'll be shooing students out of your way on a regular basis--including your two ever-present tag-alongs, Hermione and Ron. Rest assured, it won't take you long to decide that perhaps if one of them were to "fall" and wind up in the hospital wing, it wouldn't be such a terrible thing.

Gone is, sadly, most of the plot from the book, which might explain why it is that the thing feels like a mood-stabilized, Disney-esque version of the book. It also might explain why it is that Sirius Black is somehow now a cheerful, upbeat guy. (For those of you who have forgotten, Black has just spent the last several years being tortured around-the-clock by Dementors in Azkhaban). There's a moderate-length cutscene near the end where Dolores Umbridge gets taken away by the centaurs, which makes no real sense at all, and somehow a screwey-looking giant is involved in this, making his second blink-and-you'll-miss-it appearance, which seem to be glaring evidence that at one point there was a lot more game planned here than was actually shipped. Adding insult to injury is the "Room of Rewards"* which contains the now-standard plethora of useless junk meant to represent you having seen all 9/9 of the Jade Thimbles Of Sewingness and having set new records in the nostril mining mini-game--roughly half of these "rewards" are simply trophy items which you're shown close up for almost two full seconds (not exactly long enough to admire much). The other half are basically the anemic stepchildren of DVD "extras" about the already lackluster video game where you get to see things like Emma Caufield gushingly admit that the game showed her new levels of realism in how video games can be. Clearly, Ms. Caufield has never played a video game before this one--or perhaps it's more of the w... [ Read More (0.2k in body) ]

Game Review: Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix

Today, of course, the United States finds itself in much the same position as Britain in 1781. Distracted and diminished by an irrelevant, costly and probably unwinnable war in Iraq, America could ultimately find itself challenged by countries like China and India.

by

Michael Rose, a retired British Army general, commanded the United Nations forces in the former Yugoslavia from 1994 to 1995.

The defeat that made Britain great - International Herald Tribune

If I had a cat, and it made noises like this, ever I don't think I could continue living there without laughing constantly.

Cats gone insane

For some reason (I suspect insanity) Cheney is attempting to argue that the Vice President's office is not within the Executive Branch of gov't, and therefore is exempt from the regulations for safeguarding classified national security information.

I suppose it's really only a matter of time now before Cheney and Bush formally declare the formation of the new Maniacal Overlord branch of government (which, rather obviously, has no checks on it's behaviour) to go along with the "signing statements" Bush uses to ignore all the checks and balances from the Legislative branch.

So I guess this is why he thinks it's okay they lost all those emails they were supposed to keep. Well, all but the 500 or so really incriminating ones they accidentally mailed to a third party...

But seriously... this is fucking ludicrous.

Cheney secedes from Executive Branch

"I understand their disappointment," said Senate Democratic leader Harry Reid of Nevada. "We raised the bar too high."

This pisses me the fuck off. You raised the bar too high? Fuck you, Harry. Dems took congress because people were fed up with the war, and then on the first major opportunity, a giant funding bill you could have simply refused to pass, you FUCKING CAPITULATED to the president.

I'm sick of this bullshit talk about working together. The Republicans didn't give a flying fuck about working together when they were in power, and they're using current Democratic good will to continue fucking the country in the ass. It's time to stop being polite. It was time about 5 years ago.

Fuck them. Don't pass any more funding for the war, period. Make the public understand that the reason there's no money for domestic priorities like health care, research, roads, or anything else is because Bush and the Republicans refuse to listen to the American public and GET THE FUCK OUT NOW. Stonewall until we get what we fucking elected you for.

God damn congress.

'Voters are going to be mad with us until we end the war.'

For those people still on the fence about what should be done about Global Warming, or if anything should be done at all, here's a video that will explain a very simple, and well-nigh irrefutable chain of logic that leads to one and only one conclusion on the subject...

...that we'd damn well better do something about it.

Global Warming and Logic