Good News Wednesday XXIX: They're Coming Back!

These tumultuous times finally seem to be good for something. More and more heathens are returning to church.

The New York Times ran a piece a few weeks ago that says, "since September, pastors nationwide say they have seen such a burst of new interest that they find themselves contending with powerful conflicting emotions — deep empathy and quiet excitement — as they re-encounter an old piece of religious lore: Bad times are good for evangelical churches."

See you Sunday!

Top 100 Science Stories of 2008 (part 2)

Discover Magazine, a perennial EIGN favorite, has just put out their top science stories of 2008. Being a fan of both science creationism and year end lists, I spent the better part of an afternoon flipping through the 100 stories and was absolutely amazed at how many of those top 100 stories we've covered at EIGN in our first 9 months on the beat.

Here's part two of a two part series about the stories we covered that Discover considers the most important science stories of the year:


Number 45: Huge Population of Lowland Gorillas Found

Number 44: The Baffling Bee Die-Off Continues

Number 20: The “Doomsday Vault” Stores Seeds for a Global Agriculture Reboot

Number 2: The Large Hadron Collider. We've never talked about that thing before.

Their number one was something about the end of oil. Whatever the hell that is.

You can find part one of this story here.

Top 100 Science Stories of 2008 (part 1)

Discover Magazine, a perennial EIGN favorite, has just put out their top science stories of 2008. Being a fan of both science creationism and year end lists, I spent the better part of an afternoon flipping through the 100 stories and was absolutely amazed at how many of those top 100 stories we've covered at EIGN in our first 9 months on the beat.

Here's part one of a two part series about the stories we covered that Discover considers the most important science stories of the year:

Number 55: Polar Bears (Finally) Make the Endangered Species List

Number 46: FDA Approves Food From Cloned Animals

Number 7: Invisibility Becomes More than Just a Fantasy

Number 5: Nations Stake Their Claims to a Melting Arctic.

Stay tuned for part 2, including the number 1 science story of the year. Even the casual EIGN reader should know what that is.

Next Big Exercise Fad: Keeping Me Angry And Awake All Night

The holidays are a busy time for everyone, EIGN staff included. Between traveling, eating, drinking and socializing with old friends and neighbors, we're all a bit run down and tired. Yet none of this even compares to the personal hell I suffered through on Christmas Eve night. I got to see the sun rise on Christmas morning out the window; Laying on the floor 10 feet away from me was EIGN co-founder and my brother, Pete, snoring so loudly that I was unable to fall asleep for 4 hours. Happy holidays! So I guess it was irony or coincidentalally or funny or just the universe fucking with my head that I came across an article from the bbc yesterday about snoring.

According to the BBC "people with bedtime snoring and breathing problems may be using up far more calories while they sleep."

This throws us into an unusual paradox. Fat people snore more. people who snore more burn more calories. people who burn carlories lose weight. people who lose weight snore less. fat people that lose weight eat more. people who eat more get fat. Fat people snore more. What a weird cycle.

All of this is not to say that my brother is fat, just an asshole.

Merry Christmas

"A man dressed as Santa who had been having marital problems opened fire at a Christmas party, leaving more than three people dead in a home that then caught fire, authorities said." (wapo)

Merry Christmas, from EIGN.

Women Are More Promiscuous Slutty Than Men

According to some magazine in the UK named More, “Young women are more promiscuous than men, according to a survey that claims the average 21-year-old has had nine sexual partners compared with seven for men.” (telegraph.co.uk) This goes against common sense. This also means you should move to the UK if you’re a young male who doesn’t think they are getting any here in the US. However I do not think moving to London is going to solve your particular problems.

“The poll of 2,000 [sinners] also found that one in four young women has slept with more than 10 people, compared with one in five men who had done the same.” (telegraph)

You are all sinners.

Guest Post: World of War(craft) Drop Outs

This guest post was written by friend of EIGN jg3.

With a tip of the 'ol fedora to SIA, we should note that the head of the FCC (and why the FCC is beyond me) is blaming the addictive nature of the video game World of Warcraft for the huge rate of college dropouts. (PDF, Page 10 ... and note that although she cites her source for a lot of the statistics she uses she gives no hint as to which orifice she pulled that "fact" out of)

While this is, on its surface plausible, sad, and humorous, the possibility that she might be wrong is even more terrifying. I mean, it might be possible that our country's compulsory education system is such a horriffic failure that kids who get to college today are too stupid to handle the requirements. Is it possible that our public school system has taken all of the innate joy out of learning for our children and once they get to college, with a room of their own and a high speed internet connection and a meal plan, that none of their classes are anywhere near as cool as shootin' dudes online?

Maybe?

I can only hope that these young dropouts have figured out that America's now-depleted military forces need an influx of new people who know how to use computers and guns. Despite being the stupidest, we can still be the safest superpower on earth.

Maybe.


jg3 is the creative force behind the hilarious, if rarely updated, slack-hacker blog. Do yourself a favor and read it now. It is way funnier than this site.

Women Prefer The Internet Over You

The species is doomed. It has been doomed for a while, but here's proof from a reputable source known as a blog (well it is a blog run by the wall street journal, but whatever). Women no longer want to procreate.

An online survey commissioned by Intel has found, among other things, that 46% of women would rather go without sex for two weeks than give up the Internet for that long. (wsj via alleyinsider.com)

However it's not just the ladies that are willing to give up sex. A full 30%+ of men would also give up sex for the internet.

The survey was commisioned by Intel. What is Intel doing taking sex surveys you may ask? Faster computer chips mean faster access to pornography for more people.

Would it suprise you to learn that this is the least popular web site on the internet for these sexually deficient people? I wonder why.

Polaroid Film Goes Extinct

Polaroid film is about to go away. And people are sad.

"For me, watching a Polaroid picture develop is like watching a memory form right before your eyes," [Sean] Tubridy wrote on his Web site.

"With instant film, you don't get to make the choice of whether or not a picture is 'good enough' to make a print. You can't just hit delete because someone was making a weird face, or the framing wasn't quite right or in some way the image doesn't live up to the unattainable idea of perfection...

"It's life, and chances are, we'll find it in a box years later and be thankful that we have it -- dirty shorts, nervous smile and all." (cnn)

Stock up now, you only have a few months left. There may be a few options after the film finally disappears, but it's not the same.

check out savepolaroid.com for lots more pictures|news|links|stories|love.

[actual polaroid image courtesy of HST]

Acorns Missing

Around the greater north eastern part of the country, and parts of canada, acorns have disappeared this year. What does this mean for squirrels and other small mammals around the area? Nobody really knows. Acorn watchers (yes there are such people) can't seem to find any, in some cases. And here's what's happening, "calls started coming in about crazy squirrels. Starving, skinny squirrels eating garbage, inhaling bird feed, greedily demolishing pumpkins. Squirrels boldly scampering into the road. And a lot more calls about squirrel roadkill." (wapo)
As for ideas, "many skeptics say oaks in other regions are producing plenty of acorns, and the acorn bust here is nothing more than the extreme of a natural boom-and-bust cycle. But the bottom line is that no one really knows. 'It's sort of a mystery,' Zell said." (wapo)

Who cares about a squirrel that can't eat this year? Not me, but I don't need to tell anyone what happens if the trees stop reproducing.

Spared Until June, The LHC Won't Be Back Online Until Summer

Good news out of CERN's Large Hadron Collider's press department: we're safe until at least June of 2009.

From the press release:

'The top priority for CERN today is to provide collision data for the experiments as soon as reasonably possible,' said CERN Director General Robert Aymar. "This will be in the summer of 2009.'
The initial malfunction was caused by a faulty electrical connection between two of the accelerator's magnets. This resulted in mechanical damage and release of helium from the magnet cold mass into the tunnel.
'We have a lot of work to do over the coming months,' said LHC project Leader Lyn Evans, 'but we now have the roadmap, the time and the competence necessary to be ready for physics by summer. We are currently in a scheduled annual shutdown until May, so we're hopeful that not too much time will be lost.'

Question: this thing cost billions of dollars and they take annual shutdowns for 6 months? That sort of seems like a waste of money... At least we have another 7 months before those mini black holes suck the earth into oblivion.

[UPDATE 1:28pm: An EIGN reader pointed out that today is Wednesday and that this is good news. So this is your weekly GNW (Good News Wednesday) story. hope you enjoyed it.]

[image via boston.com]

...The new black death with reactors aglow. Do you think your security can keep you in purity?

I was really hoping we'd here from EIGN co-founder, and rare commentator, Pete on this one, but he's been sitting on his lazy ass not doing anything for the last three months and I guess he isn't ready to start doing anything yet.

This headline last week in the UK telegraph is nothing short of terrifying: "21st century plague discovered by scientists" which is followed by the by-line: "A new disease that is passed from rats to humans via fleas, much like the Black Death, has been discovered by scientists." (telegraph.co.uk)
AWESOME.

Lets try and keep this new Black Death in Europe please.

Extra! Extra! Newspapers Are Going Bankrupt

Tribune, Co. (publisher of the Chicago Tribune, the LA Times, etc) is about to file for Chapter 11.
I'm sure there's a joke in here somewhere, but I'm not sure where. This does, however, serve as a reminder that I need to call my local paper and renew my subscription.

[UPDATE 4:51pm] They filed.
[UPDATE 2008-12-11 9:53am] I fixed a spelling mistake. Thanks everyone for pointing out the amazing work our editor is doing.

Another Holiday Death At Walmart

Last week we had this guest post about a worker at a walmart on Long Island being trampled to death on black friday. Yesterday brought news of another person at a walmart dying. This time an attempted robber was about to get away with $393 dollars worth of whatever crap walmart is selling these days when he was killed by a number of employees who jumped on top of him while waiting for the cops to show up. No charges are being filed. Really.

"In a reversal of the death of a 34 year old Wal-Mart worker last week under the feet of aggressive Wal-Mart shoppers, Donovan's death in Florida---three days after the Long Island incident---was at the hands of three Wal-Mart workers, who wrestled the alleged shoplifter to the ground, where the man died." (huff post)

Really.

Three Out Of Four Computers Get Virus On US Military Base

The largest military base in Afganistan apparently suffered a computer virus that infected 75% of all computers on the base. Smart.
Even better, it was China or Russia that did it. Great.

"Details are still sparse, but both the LA Times and the U.S. News and World Report are reporting that the intrusion was severe enough to raise the INFOCON status, the information security equivalent of the DEFCON alert, and also necessitate the briefing of the president. We also don’t know the source of the attack, but signs point to state rather than non-state actors, with the most popular contenders being either Russia or China." (zdnet)

So now USB and other remote/portable media are banned on all army computers world wide. There's a funny joke in there somewhere but this reporter is too sick to think of it.

Forget Mass-Suicide, Global Warming Is Killing The Lemmings

"Once famous for their numbers, Norwegian lemmings are disappearing, say scientists, who point an accusing finger at global warming." (discovery.com) Another species down the drain.

Guest Post: Black Friday Worker Gets Trampled To Death

This guest post was written by friend of EIGN jg3.

So perhaps you've seen this, but it was news under my rock this morning. Buy Nothing Day also called Black Friday was a very dark day indeed for one poor guy who worked at a Wal-Mart in New York. Just after the doors opened at 5 AM the surging crowd of shoppers trampled him to death.

I have to stop and think about this for a second. Here we have some schmuck who has to show up at 4 AM to make his $8/hour as a greeter -- clearly not hazard pay -- and the frenzied crowd "literally broke down the doors" to get in. That says a lot about their level of human-to-human courtesy and personal space all so they can get doorbuster deals on cheap, Chinese-made shit painted with lead. What the fuck, people? I know the economy is rough these days, but maybe you should just "buy less shit" rather than killing people in your rush to suck up the loss-leaders. Think for a second about what you're doing and why you're doing it! I'm all for the generous spirit of the season, but is it worth the life of Jdimytai Damour so you can save 20% off list price for a GPS? How about you just use a map!

Christ, get some Perspective, Man!

[Image: Garmin nuvi666 shows the fastest path to hell, with voce navigation! (credit: Garmin)]

jg3 is the creative force behind the hilarious, if rarely updated, slack-hacker blog. Do yourself a favor and read it now. It is way funnier than this site.