RelentlesslyOptimistic

Priceless

House Speaker Dennis Hastert of Ill., center, gets out of a Hydrogen Alternative Fueled automobile, left, as he prepares to board his SUV, which uses gasoline, after holding a news conference at a local gas station in Washington, Thursday, April 27, 2006 to discuss the recent rise in gas prices. Hastert and other members of Congress drove off in the Hydrogen-Fueled cars only to switch to their official cars to drive the few blocks back to the U.S. Capitol.

As Sonia Zjawinski at Eyebeam reBlog, the source for this post, noted:

"Meanwhile, with gas topping $3/gallon in some parts of the country, ExxonMobil posted record profits of $8.4 billion in the first quarter."

Jedi Breakfast: "I use it to read"

How annoying would it be if your roomate used his light saber to read at the breakfast table?  Jedi Breakfast - destined to be a classic!

Via Good Morning Silicon Valley

Can I get a knitted leather jacket to go with it?

From Extreme Craft: Knit Motorcycle!

Who says art can't be fun? Theresa Honeywell knits motorcycles, tool belts, jackhammers and tattoos. Her work is at the Georgia Museum of Art. Check out Extreme Craft's photoset of some of the exhibit.

Via Eyebeam reBlog

For Earth Day: use Google Maps to identify pollution and sources

The folks at PlanetHazard have taken EPA air pollution release data and combined it with Google Maps so that you can see what's coming at you from where. Browsing through the list you learn that the typical sources are power plants, dry cleaners, cement manufacturers and printers. Kansas City's top ten includes the lovely coffee aroma from the Folger's plant at 6th & Broadway.

While this map illustrates part of the problem, it doesn't show the single largest source of some forms of air pollution: automobiles. It's easy to point fingers at these companies, and many of them could do more to control their emissions. But we have to look at our own behavior, too. When you buy clothes do you consider whether it needs dry cleaning? Do you turn off lights or do other things to conserve energy? Do you contribute to environmental groups? Want to learn more? Go to the Earth Day celebration today in Shawnee Mission Park.

Via Google Maps Mania

Earth Day special: Sexi Tree Game

It takes more than using sex to have a good marketing title for your game, and the makers of Spatially Explicit Individual-based Forest Simulator (SExI-FS) need to work on theirs. Sim-tree? Grand Theft Sunlight? This SExI tree game is actually designed for tree farmers to model the effects of light and space on tree growth so that they can optimize growth, so maybe they don't need a better name. You can download it after free registration.

Via Download Squad.

"You can't help feeling corrupt and proud and decadent" Peeps Diorama contest becomes international event!

Continuing the alliterative examination of people's passion for Peeps, the Pioneer Press got 40 entries in the first year of its Peeps Diorama Contest four years ago. This year's contest received over 400 entries.

"Entries came from coast to coast, with submissions from New York City, San Francisco, Missouri and Arkansas. There was even an overseas entry from Paris."

In an article that accompanied the slide show of winning entries, the paper examines the phenomenon of what they called a Peeps fetish:

Hundreds of Web sites are devoted to using the iconic candy in ways as varied as works of art, gruesome pseudoscientific experiments and mythic dioramas.

A new book (...in which a celebrity family of Peeps goes on a vacation to Easter Island and gets trapped in a chocolate egg...) that's part pop-culture parody/part homage to Peeps came out this year.

Hilary Liftin, author of the memoir "Candy and Me (A Love Story)...said when eating something so artificial, processed and unwholesome looking, "you can't help feeling corrupt and proud and decadent."

"The craziest Peep-related candy I've ever gotten is a chocolate egg with a Peep inside it,"  [Steve Almond, author of "Candyfreak: A Journey Through the Chocolate Underbelly of America] wrote in an e-mail. "Someone went to a lot of trouble to make that, which strikes me as both beautiful and pathetic." Peeps, however, are not one of Almond's joys. He calls them "a candy that encourages the notion that it is acceptable to eat child offspring."

Perhaps it's that rebellious unacceptability that attracts people. The Pioneer Press holds no illusions about those who enter, though:

"...we were impressed by the creativity and profound weirdness of those who use squishy Easter candy as an artistic medium."
"Contestants expressed pathetic thanks to the Pioneer Press for enabling their Peeps obsession..."
"Themes for the Peeps diorama are a sort of candy-coated lens of the cultural zeitgeist."
"And possibly the ultimate weirdness, dioramas showing Peeps as food"

Via Neatorama

IRS to allow sale of tax return info

The IRS has proposed a change in rules to allow tax preparers to sell any and all information from income tax returns. According to the Philadelphia Inquirer "accountants and other tax-return preparers will be able to sell information from individual returns - or even entire returns - to marketers and data brokers."

In true Orwellian fashion, the IRS announced the proposed change in a release with the headline: "IRS Issues Proposed Regulations to Safeguard Taxpayer Information." They claim that more protection is provided by requiring signed permission from the taxpayer before any non-tax use of information is allowed. Because we know that everyone will read every word of the dozens of forms they sign after having their taxes done, right?

It would be more efficient if the IRS just went into the business of selling the information themselves. Maybe they could make enough to fund another tax cut for upper income taxpayers.

Via Sunbelt Blog

Great lawn chair

Grow your own lawn furniture, but make sure you have it exactly where you want it, because moving it will be difficult! Just add soil and water.

The Grass armchair is self assembled, each pack contains 14 corrugated cardboard frames and 100g pack of grass seeds.

£65.00, about $114 from purves & purves. Via Make.

Make your workplace more fun

And never lose the whiteboard eraser again! Stuffed Toy Whiteboard Eraser

Via Instructables

Study undercuts claim that media is liberal

Media Matters - If It's Sunday, It's Conservative

Media Matters studied nearly 7,000 guests on three Sunday talk shows over an eight year period, and demonstrate a clear and sometimes overwhelming conservative bias to these news shows. By starting in 1997 the organization was able to demonstrate that the guest list is not tilted towards conservatives because the current administration is in power.

The study shows that whether the guests were politicians, administration staff or journalists, whether a panel member or an individual guest, conservatives were more prevalent.

Via Daily Kos

Peeps: A passion unlike any other near-food product

What is it about Peeps? For some reason the cute little yellow marshmallow chicks have spawned a variety of web sites unlike any other supposedly-edible manufactured product.

The latest: Cooking with Peeps. This isn't one of those lame sites that melts Peeps in the name of "research!" We get recipes and photos for a colorful crunchy salad or stir fry, along with tips for growing and harvesting your own Peeps.

I didn't know, for example, that you can plant parts of Peeps; like potatoes, as long as you include the eyes on the planted piece, a new Peeps plant will grow. The creator of the cooking site maintains the Peeps Blog for up-to-the-minute Peeps happenings and FAQS. Finally - Peeps news via RSS feed! Isn't technology great?

While marketing has created new forms of Peeps (Target Red!) and pushed them out to the stores around Halloween and Valentines Day, the classic little yellow chicks for Easter are still where most Peeps aficionados begin. More Peeps:

• Mystery Peeps Show (Peeps in bikinis!)
• Lord of the Peeps
• Peep Research (A classic!)
• More Peeps links

Vespa scooter will [not] be hybrid diesel!

This is great! Vespa will introduce a hybrid scooter that uses diesel fuel, opening the possibility of burning biodiesel. It will have a much faster top speed and cost only about $1300 more than the regular model.

Via Retro Thing, which has many more details.

Update: Oops. It turns out this was an April Fool's joke, but as the commenter below says, there are two non-diesel hybrid models coming out soon.

The Known Universe: Tax prep

The Known Universe is one of my favorite blogs these days for good writing, and I just added it to the blogroll. This great line is part of a tale of being audited after choosing the wrong tax-preparer one year:

"I didn’t think it was a good idea to pull out the pistol and start playing cowboy in front of the IRS agent"

The author, Jamie, always includes his terrific photos with each post.

The #1 name in flatulence odor control products

I try not to stoop to fart jokes, but there are times when something slips out that you just can't ignore. The Dogone Thong Dog Gas Neutralizing Pad is one of those. In three sizes for $20 from Flat-D Innovations, the self-proclaimed (since there's no authority on this) #1 name in flatulence odor control products.

Note that as of yet the Flat-D products don't appear to come in leopard prints; that innovation from Many Cats 4 Me in their Butt Barrier Photo.

Sensitivity disclaimer: Of course I recognize that flatulence can be a severe problem, one that can cause terrible embarrassment. So here's some dog fart resources (in addition to the thong above, I mean): a list of "Dog the FART most" (sic) and Treating dog farts.

Via Neatorama. Terry and Jen - this one's for you (I mean your dog, of course)!