For those who missed the Jake G monologue and would like to see, here it is: [link]

Thanks for that, Matt. (I didn't know he could sing!)

I must have been tired last night -- I laid down around 8:30 and didn't wake up until a half hour ago.

I've been up and twitchy for nearly an hour. I really really hate the jazz on Jazz After Hours and why I got an extra hour of it, rather than Speaking of Faith, I don't know. Fastest ways to wake me up? Bad jazz or political coups.

I think I'll go back to bed now.

I am awake. This may be my major accomplishment for the day.

I'm up to stay. Did I mention that I left a perfectly fun (if crowded and noisy) SF convention last night to go home and sleep? I know I was really tired if that seemed like a better idea.

Ball lightning explained! (probably)

EWAdams writes to point us to a New Scientist report that the mysterious phenomenon of ball lighting has now been created in a Brazilian research lab. The phenomenon has long been reported anecdotally but never explained or understood. Scientists have devised numerous possible explanations, including mini black holes left over from the Big Bang, but have had little success in producing working examples. From the article: "A more down-to-earth theory... is that ball lightning forms when lightning strikes soil, turning any silica in the soil into pure silicon vapor. As the vapor cools, the silicon condenses into a floating aerosol bound into a ball by charges that gather on its surface, and it glows with the heat of silicon recombining with oxygen. To test this idea, a [Brazilian] team... took wafers of silicon just 350 micrometers thick, placed them between two electrodes and zapped them with currents of up to 140 amps. Then... they moved the electrodes slightly apart, creating an electrical arc that vaporised the silicon. The arc spat out glowing fragments of silicon but also, sometimes, luminous orbs the size of ping-pong balls that persisted for up to 8 seconds."

[link]

Hm. That doesn't explain how they form inside a building, though. And the ones in their movie don't look like the one that appeared in my kitchen years ago. The things act like they're alive.

So here's an... odd photo: [link]

Apparently it's a sheep race. Each sheep has a little stuffed sheep for a rider.

The fairies make the house kind, silly.

The fairies make the house kind, silly.

My theory: spontaneous house-elf combustion.