Woolly Mammoth Cloning

Imagine a world where giant elephant-like beasts roam the vast plains of North America.

Perhaps someday this will be more than a long-lost memory. Perhaps within our lifetimes we will see this for ourselves.

An effort is currently underway to extract the DNA from a preserved woolly mammoth carcass, inject it into the living egg of a living elephant, and clone the long-extinct beast.

I don't have to point out how good of an idea this is.

Preferably, once the revived trunk enthusiasts have a viable breeding population, they can be re-introduced into the wild, so that they might reclaim their place in the food chain.

The January Thaw

By all accounts, Merle Haggard is an idiot. In his classical country and western masterpiece If We Make It Through December, he refers to December as "the coldest time of winter." This is blatantly false. For one thing, Winter doesn't officially start until the winter solstice, usually occurring sometime between December the 20th and and December the 23rd. If December were the coldest time of Winter, then why is most of it not even in Winter at all?

So his thesis is clearly resting on shaky ground, but let's look at some data to really elucidate the scenario. To give ole' Merle the benefit of the doubt, lets look at the climate of his home state of California:

City	Jan	Dec	Which is coldest?
Bakersfield	57/39 (14/4)	57/38 (14/3)	December
Bodie	40/6 (4/−14)	41/6 (5/−14)	January
Death Valley	67/39 (19/4)	65/38 (18/3)	December
Eureka	56/42 (13/6)	55/41 (13/5)	December
Fresno	55/39 (13/4)	55/38 (13/3)	December
Los Angeles	69/50 (21/10)	68/49 (20/9)	December
Sacramento	54/39 (12/4)	54/39 (12/4)	Tie
San Bernardino	62/34 (17/1)	63/37 (19/3)	January
San Francisco	58/46 (14/8)	58/47 (14/8)	Tie
San Jose	61/42 (16/6)	61/42 (16/6)	Tie
South Lake Tahoe	42/16 (6/−9)	42/17 (6/−8)	January

So in four places in California, December is the coldest month, in three places January is the coldest month, and in three places they tie. This is hardly conclusive evidence that December is the coldest month. If Merle Haggard had written "Either December or January is the coldest month of the year, depending on where you live in the Northern Hemisphere," then there wouldn't be much to argue about. Instead, he chose to write lies.

Fun Fact:
Did you know that people in the Southern hemisphere call summer winter, and vice versa? Crazy, eh?

Anyways, the point of all this is that December gets a bad rap and that January is actually the most brutal, wicked, nasty, and all-around unbearable month of the year. Your average january day involves prying yourself out of bed with an epic feat of willpower, sprinting to a lukewarm shower along icy-cold floors, a constant cycling of ingesting hot liquids and the subsequent urination, and a jail-like life of cold weather captivity. Some fools develop cold weather Stockholm syndrome, and take to activities like skiing and ice skating. Rest assured that these people are suffering from a mental illness, and should seek treatment from a doctor.

January weather does have one redeeming quality: there is usually a January Thaw. This refers to a span of days when the warmth of the heavens opens up to proclaim:

FEAR NOT MORTALS. HOPE IS ALIVE.

The effect of this is a buoying of spirits and jubilation in the streets anywhere cold weather is feared.

Snow Plows

Few vehicles exhibit a delicate synergy like the might snowplow. An intricate waltz takes place between the grunting, massive truck, and the groaning, massive plow. As the truck firmly forces the plow through all sorts of obstacles: snow banks, snow drifts, and various other forms of show, the plow reacts by firmly moving those offending forms of frozen water either to the right, the left, or sometimes both. A billowing chute of assorted debris is flung into the air, sent briefly aloft to whence it came. Where it will come to rest is a decision made by the plow artist.

Blogging Hiatuses

Hiatuses are the life blood of any good blog. Going dark for years at a time is a good way to find out who your real friends are. It's easy for a bunch of people to jump on board with a super-awesome blog while it's active and popular, but it takes a special breed of reader to stick with an inactive blog.

As a blogger, your main goal is always to separate the wheat from the chaff. But really, if your readers are a bunch of unfaithful trolls, what good is your blog? A lot of bloggers brag about their reader counts. "Hey, I've got 5324 subscribers. I must be pretty good." Yeah, but you've only got 5 half-decent readers. Meanwhile I have 0 readers and 0 excellent readers. Last time I checked, that's a better percentage.

Robot Unicorn Attack

You are a robotic unicorn, with incredible leaping aptitude, and the ability to turn into a rainbow composed of pure ramming energy. Your goal is to traverse a dangerous terrain for as long as possible, while listening to a sample from Always by Erasure.

Robot Unicorn Attack is a game that conjures a fantastic magical world, filled with graceful, mechanized, soaring equines, and whimsy. The gameplay is quite simple; there are two commands: jump, and dash. The Robot Unicorn has Jordan-like hang time, and has the ability to enact a second jump in mid-flight. The dash is a useful maneouver to implement when an obstacle blocks the horse's path. When dashing, your mare turns into a rainbow, and blasts through the blocking crystal star.

The game can be quite frustrating. As the unicorn accelerates into the ever more complicated environment, misadventure is more likely. A mis-step by your steed will result in a fatal robotic explosion. You are given three of these robots per round, and the goal of the game is to maximize the distance you can travel with those three.

The soundtrack is an integral part of the game; it sets the fantastic mood, and directs the experience to take on a magical quality.

All told, the game is a wonderful and joy-inducing experience. It should not be missed.

The Musical Stylings of Olivier Messiaen

Olivier Messiaen's music has wit, style, grace, poignancy, and allure. In its depths swim melodies and themes as beautiful as any of the exotic fauna found in the colourful reefs of the tropics. Such wonderous aural delights are born through the mating of years of experience and hard work.

Messiaen could illicit deep, unambiguous horror, or nerve-cutting ecstasy. His work graces some of the most relatable scenes in modern cinema, and much of our cultural debt is owed to him.

Red Dwarf

Here in Canada, we receive the best that television has to offer from around the world, it just takes a little while for it to get here.

Quality shows will eventually be picked up on cable, or shown on public broadcasting stations. Inasmuch, this quality programming isn't heavily advertised, and doesn't receive the kind of attention that it really deserves.

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One day, between 5 and 10 years ago, I was cruising the cable channels, looking to be entertained. I made a brief stop at The Comedy Network, hoping to let my time waft away on the gentle breeze supplied by a steady stream of comedic gaffs and gaffes. But on that day, it wasn't to be; what I saw was a very cheap set with a dirty man insulting a tightwad with a big shiny H on his forehead. The comedy was too dry for my liking, and I was not amused.

Thankfully, aging isn't all just homeostasis, and the subsequent gradual degradation of our body parts. We also become more mature and refined with age. And, as luck would have it, I was exposed to Red Dwarf again. This time I was not disappointed. What I saw was an introspection about introspection, and the story of a brave man calling out into the void against an indifferent universe filled with nothing but loneliness. It's a hilarious, heartbreaking, and genius thesis about life, and it's a story of rebellion against the infinity that awaits us all. Red Dwarf is surely one of the most poignant comedy series ever to be made. It's not to be missed.