American Stock Car Gets 81 MPG!

"Have you driven a Ford, lately?" As a charity stunt, Ford had specially trained drivers drive an unmodified stock 2010 Ford Fusion (mid-size sedan) to beat 1,000 miles in a single tank of gas. They reached 1,445.7 miles in 69 hours of driving around the D.C. area on surface streets and highways. "Your mileage may vary." Ford readily admits that this was a stunt, and the details of how it was done are available in many places, like here. Oh, and details about why are here. The car is normally expected to get about 40 miles per gallon under everyday conditions.

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Avoid Swine Flu, the Science-Guy way!

Swine flu has captured the attention of the nation, including calls from European health officials to restrict travel to the US. It's all rather overblown, because almost everyone* has the ability to avoid the flu and it's symptoms. Just follow the directions in the video, courtesy of Bill Nye, the Science Guy! * the exception is immune-compromised individuals.

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Atheism, Humanism, or Other

There was a time in this country that an open admission of atheism could get a person severely hurt in any given community. Ostracism, mainly, which over time can be very damaging. But like so many other "out of the mainstream" life choices, this too is no longer the case. According to this article in the New York Times, "No Religion" has more than doubled on surveys in the past ten to twenty years. Now, that does not mean all these folks are atheists or agnostics. It means, quite specifically, that they align themselves with no organized religion. Some folks might wonder at the difference. What is having faith if not in the context of a religious umbrella? When I was fifteen I left the church. I'd been educated in a Lutheran school and received a healthy indocrination in that faith. After entering public high school, I found myself growing less and less involved or interested. There was in this no profound personal insight or revelation. It was adolescent laziness. I'd never been a consistent Sunday church-goer, and although there had been a year or two when I actually practiced Testifying, born out of a powerful belief in Christianity, other factors managed to draw my interest away.

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ANZAC Day – lest we forget

Today, April 25, is ANZAC Day in Australia & New Zealand. A most reverent & sacred day in this part of the world, it commemorates the day in 1915 when Australia and New Zealand Army Corp troops (the nominal ANZACs) made a landing at Gallipoli on the coast of Turkey (a place now called ANZAC Cove). The day certainly isn't a celebration of a great victory - the Gallipoli campaign (the brainchild of a young Winston Churchill, then chief of the navy) was an abject failure and cost tens of thousands of ANZACs their lives before their eventual withdrawal by British high command after having gained mere yards. A mistake by the planners meant that instead of landing at a lightly defended beach, the ANZACs landed at a steep, mountainous cove peppered with Turkish machine-gun positions. With the advantage of height and numbers, the Turkish guns made a complete mess of the troops storming the beach. The ANZACs were tenacious, made small gains, dug in and held on as they were ordered to for months, but made no appreciable ground and were pulled out months later, their ranks decimated by superior numbers and by the privations of trench warfare. But why remember such horror? Our troops had certainly been involved in military action before and with more success, in places like the Crimea and during the Boer War. Well, despite having first been colonised by the British in 1788, Australia didn't become a federated nation until 1901. ANZAC Day marks the first time Australian troops went into battle representing their own nation and not just a colony of Imperial Britain. It is considered by some an important step in the building of our national character - the baptism by fire of our fledgling democratic nation in international conflict. Others see it as a warning not to simply do the military bidding of another nation (a warning that's rarely been heeded). These days it has chiefly become a day of rememberance and for thanksgiving for the sacrifices of all our fallen soldiers, sailors & airmen and a day to spare a thought for those currently serving around the world. Today, Australians & New Zealanders will be attending parades or watching them on TV, having barbecues (thought it is autumn and getting chilly), playing two-up, going to church services, many will be in Turkey at ANZAC Cove itself for a dawn service, or just taking a minute whenever they can to remember Australians that risked or gave their lives for our country. Far from glorifying war or violence, ANZAC Day is a day of quiet reflection, of appreciation of sacrifice ... and to remember how those bastard Brits shafted us at Gallipoli.

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Olbermann offers Hannity $1,000 per second to be waterboarded.

Hannity mouthed off and Olberman called him on it. Now we'll watch as Hannity tries to figure out how to get out of keeping his promise. Consider that Christopher Hitchens actually subjected himself to the process, giving him credibility when commenting on waterboarding. Unlike the detainees, Hitchens knew the entire time that he had the power to immediately stop the process . He lasted about 15 seconds.

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