Heh. A blog, reporting on the Pope/HIV/condom kerfuffle, called the Pope "Pope Bareback XVI."

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As opposed to Tars Tarkas stopping by for a visit.

Why does Tars Tarkas look like the name of a Division 3 NCAA Basketball coach?

I saw something similar on PBS. It was extremely speculative, with only the thinnest of evidence, accompanied by very selective reading of his texts.

It is an extremely speculative area of studies, but one which is currently relatively popular in some academic circles. There's not much evidence that there was a Catholic Conspiracy against the Tudors, but there was a lot of persecution of Catholics, including fines for not attending Anglican services etc. Shakespeare's father was fined for not attending services.

I think that Stephen Greenblatt makes a pretty interesting case for the idea that Shakespeare may have been a closeted Catholic.

(Not to defend the history channel!)

OK, time to start buying sharks, shark tanks, superglue, etc.

Military Laser Hits Battlefield Strength

Huge news for real-life ray guns: Electric lasers have hit battlefield strength for the first time -- paving the way for energy weapons to go to war.

In recent test-blasts, Pentagon-researchers at Northrop Grumman managed to get its 105 kilowatts of power out of their laser -- past the "100kW threshold [that] has been viewed traditionally as a proof of principle for 'weapons grade' power levels for high-energy lasers," Northrop's vice president of directed energy systems, Dan Wildt, said in a statement.

That much power won't get you a Star Wars-style blaster. But it should be more than enough to zap the mortars and rockets that insurgents have used to pound American bases in Iraq and Afghanistan.

From tommy's intellectual fights link:

In 1912, just three years before Albert Einstein published his theory of General Relativity [GR], Vesto Slipher measured the Doppler shift of a spiral galaxy and determined that almost all of these celestial ‘nebulae’ were receding from the earth at great speed.

Vesto Slipher? Surely with a name like that he must have been a Bond villain.

Yeah, I've seen a UFO, but my assumption is it was some kind of helicopter with an unfamiliar light pattern. As opposed to Tars Tarkas stopping by for a visit.

Watch out for falling mutilated cows the next time you see one.

Vesto Slipher? Surely with a name like that he must have been a Bond villain.

He could still be. Maybe ol' Vesto is a time traveler, or he never ages - so he could be a Bond villain for a movie set in the present.

Okay. Boredom is setting in.

Anyone have a funny, but cleanish joke? We're currently on a run of cannibal jokes at school (When does the cannibal leave the table? After everyone's eaten.)

He could still be. Maybe ol' Vesto is a time traveler, or he never ages - so he could be a Bond villain for a movie set in the present.

Or possibly the criminal mastermind between Moriarty and Blofeld.

No painkiller magic. Just the same one that's been making me very sick. New anti-nausea meds, but I don't think insurance pays for it. And, yeah, another procedure is being scheduled. I'm more than over this.

An excerpt from Bush's speech in Calgary.

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"I'm going to put people in my place, so when the history of this administration is written at least there's an authoritarian voice saying exactly what happened," Bush said.

I don't think that's exactly what he meant to say.

Also,

Bush seemed to enjoy himself even though the event started later than expected because of tight security. "I'll sit here all day," Bush said during a question-and-answer session. "I'm flattered people even want to hear me in the first place."

Frankly, I'm surprised people want to hear him too.