Daily Blend: Monday, August 02, 2010

“Capsalou” That doesn’t look like water … [source: WebDesignBooth]

• The End is upon us again! … on May 21, 2011. As predicted by Harold Campaign, who, you may remember, also got it wrong back in 1994. Just remind me when the new date rolls around so I can permit myself a lazy little chuckle.
  (via Dispatches from the Culture Wars)

• House of Representatives passes bill to establish a commission to review and hopefully revamp the broken US criminal justice system. Note that the Innocence Project strongly supports this as well, which may indicate this is the real deal.
  (via Dispatches from the Culture Wars)

• Most common marijuana test, NarcoPouch, may be critically unreliable and responsible for tens of thousands of wrongful convictions. When you get sent to jail due to a faulty test that said you’d used a harmless drug … there’s a problem.
  (via The Agitator)

• Problem is, she’s probably gonna get several calls.
  (via The Agitator)

• Doggycide: Cop responds to mistaken 911 call, shoots and kills family dog on-sight. Lawsuit alleges “excessive force, damage to property and deliberate indifference”.
  (via The Agitator)

• Is there anything more amazing than long exposure photography ^[pictured]? Sure, but not much.
  (via The Agitator)

• What does 70,000,000,000 pixels look like? Something like this.
  (via @ebertchicago)

• Hemant Mehta points to two examples where atheists are making money off of the gullibility of fundy Christians, one where they promise to safeguard their pets should they get Raptured, and another that’s the same, but for their children. Hemant asks if this doesn’t breach ethics in some way. I say: No. It’s not lying, conning, stealing or otherwise cheating if you convince people to pay you for a service that you genuinely would perform, but that you know that you’ll never have to. They aren’t double-crossing the theists; merely playing their own silly beliefs to their advantage. Sneaky, maybe, but legit.

• This is one reason why I love Rachel Maddow. Cool, geeky and classy, all at once. Now that’s my kind of journalist. (And, yes, you know this is only in this link dump because I couldn’t embed it, dammit.)
  (via Fark)

• Robots now know how to flip pancakes. How long before they get rid of us with rat poison in our soups and take over the world?
  (via Fark)

• Apply for a promotion, get fired (and lose your credit score and house).
  (via Fark)

• The Miranda warning going through death by a thousand cuts.
  (via @todayspolitics)

• Great piece by Lawrence Krauss in the Scientific American about how religious leaders ought to be held accountable for the ignorance and irrationality they spread.
  (via @rdfrs)

As always, if you have any story suggestions, feel free to send them in.

Tags: Doomsday • Rapture • Apocalypse • End of the World • Harold Campaign • House of Representatives • criminal justice system • Innocence Project • marijuana • NarcoPouch • false convictions • death threats • classified ads • lawsuits • dogs • photography • Budapest • atheists • ethics • Eternal Earth-Bound Pets USA • pets • Rapture Orphan Rescue • children • Rachel Maddow • lightsabers • funny • robots • pancakes • Rory Armstrong • Miranda warning • Lawrence Krauss • ignorance • science