Paul's blog

Archive for June, 2007

Leave the Tinky Winkies alone!

Yelled by Hustler Magazine’s publisher Larry Flynt in a telephone conversation with … Jerry Falwell, referring to Falwell’s warning to parents that “the purple Teletubby character was, in fact, gay”.

In 1988, Jerry Falwell sued Larry Flynt for $50 million for libel, after Flynt had published a parody on then popular Campari ads where he had Falwell describing his “first time” as having been with his mother, “drunk off our God-fearing asses,” in an outhouse, while obviously referring to having sex, rather than the ads’ “first times of drinking Campari”.

Flynt lost the case three times in a row, but, to his own astonishment, won the case in Supreme Court.

Yet these two men … became ‘friends’. A more unlikely friendship is hardly imaginable.

And maybe ‘friends’ is stretching it a bit. It’s not that there was ANY form of mutual respect or admiration, but Falwell would visit Flynt whenever he was in California, and Flynt had a ‘direct’ line to Falwell and called him personally whenever he thought they needed to discuss certain issues.

Read Larry Flynt’s own account of this unlikely ‘friendship’ here: –link-.

I bet Larry Flynt misses the late Jerry Falwell … maybe we should hook ‘m up with Fred Phelps! Now THAT would be interesting!

WHERE was this picture taken? (Yes, it’s snow, and yes, it was taken July (added correction: NOT July, obviously, but June!) 27th, 2007)

(Thanks to Tim de Waal for providing this picture)

I have decided to post more ‘diary’ entries: posts about nothing much else than what I’m doing or did on a certain day, no matter how boring or irrelevant to others (or myself). I even created a new category for it ‘diary’.

Take today: The morning started fairly early for a Saturday: Dawnell left early for her yoghurt class, gleefully reminding me of my excursion to the vet. Her smile, when she left, screamed the German word ‘Schadenfreude‘!

I saw her again at the vet, where she dropped by when the kids were already safely back in the carrier, while the vet and his assistants were changing their shredded and blood soaked scrubs. She was on her way down to Jupiter to meet her daughter Laurilee who needed a new ‘ensemble’ for her interview next week, and God knows, a 30 year old child can NOT buy clothes all by herself.

So I was all by myself for the rest of the day.

What did I do?

Absolutely nothing!

So. There you have it.

Let me break it down for you.

First, since I had to get up in the middle of the night (9 am) to take the kids to their annual torture, I went back to bed.

Then, after having felt REALLY pittyful and sorry about himself in the closet for a while, Clyde snuggled up with me and informed me he would forgive me if I would give him ‘wet’ food for the rest of the week .. and not just a serving he had to share with Bonnie, but FULL portions.

I concurred, but now we have to find a way to hide this from Mamma, who does NOT condone such bargaining tactics, and calls Papa a ‘pushover’ whenever he falls for what is called here ‘the faces!’.

After that … I went into the pool, swam ONE lap, then drifted on my floating throne, beer in hand, for a LONG time, got out, read a bit, dried up, went into the pool, skipped the swimming and went straight for the chair with a fresh cold beer, drifted around for a LONG time, got out, read a bit, dried up, went back into the pool … enfin, you get the idea… all the while listening to Beethoven in the background.

Then I conceived of this ‘diary’ idea, went to my office, typed this post, and now I’m getting back to the pool, after making a slight but necessary detour, passing by the fridge to grab another fresh ice cold beer.

Life is good.

And if it’s not good, you have to MAKE it good.

But it’s good.

And short.

So let’s keep it good.

Our cats Bonnie and Clyde were due for a visit to the vet.

This is something that my wife usually takes care of, but last time I received reports about extremely bad behavior by Clyde, involving biting the vet and a note in his file that said ‘patient declined procedure’.

So, I wasn’t totally surprised when it was announced the other day that it was MY turn to take the kids to the vet. Which I did. This morning.

Of course, the calm, relaxed and protecting father figure I am, I was sure they would completely trust me and we’d be home before they’d notice we’d left.

There was only one minor issue that I’d overlooked:

Clyde does NOT like having his temperature taken with a rectal thermometer and is NOT shy about making this clear.

To make a long story short .. as early as next week, they start redecorating, if not completely rebuilding, the Minton Animal Hospital.

(It’s now 3 hours later, Clyde is in the closet and hasn’t spoken to me yet .. all I get are dirty looks: I think next year we should try to trick daughter Laurilee in taking them – IF the vet still ‘invites’ them, which is by no means certain -)

EDWARDS AIR FORCE BASE, California (AP) — Atlantis and its seven astronauts took a cross-country detour and landed safely in the Mojave Desert Friday

I just woke up.

It’s a wonderful day here in Florida, close to Cape Canaveral: Sunny, no wind, and not a single cloud!

Had Mission Control waited another 24 hours with bringing Atlantis home, NASA would have saved 1.7 million bucks.

AND we would have experienced our beloved two ‘booms’.

On the other hand, we now get to see the shuttle return home on top of a Boeing 747, hopefully doing a low level flyby at Cocoa Beach again.

Always an amazing sight.

(link to article –link-)

A New Zealand couple, who wanted to register their newborn child, has been told that their selected name for the boy ‘4real’ is against the rules: Names cannot start with a number.

Registrar-General Brian Clarke said the rules are designed to prevent names that are “likely to cause offense to a reasonable person.”

How a name that starts with a number is likely to offend a reasonable person is anyone’s guess.

Anyway, if the rule is going to be enforced, I’d like to suggest to the new parents to use Roman numerals:

IVREAL

(Link to story –link -)

As promised: some more info on Professor John Searl, who invented the Searl-Effect Generator: a ‘free energy’ device.

The Professor was born May 2nd in 1932 in Berkshire, England.

At an early age he had some dreams that inspired him, as a teenager, to start working on the creation of a perpetuum mobile.

According to his biography (link) he started his professional career as an electrical apprentice, rewinding electric motors. He also worked as a projectionist in a cinema, helped out in a pharmacy, has been a trainee nurse, and, in 1983 retired … his last job … being a machine worker for 20 years.

Said biography does not include information about how John obtained a departmental or personal chair at a university, which would justify the title ‘professor’. Something that, to quote (out of context!) Christopher Hitchens: “ought to arouse suspicion in even the slowest minds”.

The professor has been jailed for 10 months for stealing electricity from the local power plant. By his own account he had not: he was just using the energy from his own ‘free energy’ generator … for years! According to witness accounts: the local power plant a) demolished his house but never found the device, but nevertheless,  b) stole it, put it on a plane, and was never seen again. (And then there’s the story of his wife burning down the whole place… which, wouldn’t you have it, destroyed all his research papers).

He is said to later have built TENS -if not more- of similar devices. Unfortunately, all these devices had the nasty side effect of having very strong anti-gravity properties, so they all flew off in space and were never seen again (sounds familiar?).

It is not known why this didn’t happen to the device that landed him in jail. It could be, that he nailed that first device to the floor, but it’s anyone’s guess why the genius professor chose not to do so with the ones that are now ‘halfway the galaxy’ (maybe that little ‘bolting down’ trick was in the lost research papers). *note to self: if I ever invent a free-energy device, make sure to bolt it firmly to the floor!*

In an interview, asked about the ‘space travel’ capacities of his SEG machines, the genius professor acknowledged these capabilities, and claimed that the device could get to the Moon in an hour, to Mars in several months, and reach space in 20 minutes.

Curious claims indeed. To the Moon in an hour means a top speed of way over 230,000 miles an hour. That’s impressive! That means it would take about 9 days to get from Earth to Mars … Yet we learn from the genius professor that THAT would take ‘months’ (which it would take with current technology). More puzzling is that it would take 20 minutes for the device to reach space. Space is considered to start at about 65 miles above sea level on Earth. So it would take 20 minutes to reach 65 miles, and the remaining, oh roughly, 230,000 miles to the Moon would take only twice that. Quite an acceleration! But why doesn’t that work for Mars? Somehow I’m getting the impression that the professor’s chair is NOT in astronomy.

I’m ALSO beginning to have some doubts about his other claims…

Anyway… there’s this American guy John Thomas, who started a company (Disc –link– ) to help John Searl build one more of his generators (of which, remember, he has built TENS already). For some reason, it is, apparently, not THAT easy anymore!

So.. they need YOUR money! And a lot of it.

Give!

Generously!

(Oh… and btw, I have some SUPERB swamp land here in Florida for sale, as well as the Brooklyn bridge!)

And hey .. I almost forgot.. the device has amazing healing properties too! 3rd degree burn wounds will disappear like snow before the sun… Professor John has the evidence! Look… ALL his burn scars are no longer there! But then, everybody knows that magnets have tremendous healing powers, right? *yawn*

What a shame there is this vaste governmental conspiracy to make sure that this device will never .. ever .. be produced! Imagine,  the government losing all those ‘oil’ profits… *sigh* .. but then, let’s face it .. history is very clear .. you CAN’T have a free energy device and NOT a government conspiracy to suppress it at the same time. Those two things ALWAYS go hand in hand…

There is a genus of trees in Asia and Australia called Myristica. One of its species bears fruit from which seeds (nuts) a well known spice is extracted: nutmeg. This well known (at least to the Dutch, who dominated the nutmeg trade in the 17th century) spice should only be consumed in very modest quantities, as ingestion of larger quantities of nutmeg causes the onset of ‘nutmeg poisoning’, an acute psychiatric disorder marked by thought disorder.

This last quality made me think of a new word … pronounced megnut.

But spelled “magnut”.

What is a magnut?

A magnut is a nutcase whose psyciatric thought disorder makes him think he can produce free energy by employing magnets.

And I’d like to introduce such a magnut to you, presented to me by someone commenting on my recent post about ‘free energy’ (link):

This person left a comment, claiming that ‘we people’ “didn’t get it”, referring to free energy devices. A notion I wholeheartedly, totally and utterly agreed with.

Said (I will resist writing ‘sad’) person used the name ‘John Searle’, which didn’t ring a bell to me. But his reference included a link to a site called ‘www.searleffect.com’.

Curious as I am, I followed the link: The site is owned and operated by American John Thomas, who, in turn, is a ‘disciple’ of the British Professor John Ray Robert Searl.

Who claims to have invented a machine that produces .. you guessed it: free energy.

Do I think that my commenter actually IS John Thomas or John Searl? No, of course not. Not only would both men know how to spell ‘Searl’, but the comment was posted from the Netherlands, possibly not too far from the town of Amersfoort. (Of course, John Searle could be my commenter’s real name, but as a gambler… I would bet against that proposition).

Anyway .. I did some simple Internet research on Professor John Searl, who invented the Searl Effect Generator …

It turned up some VERY entertaining stuff, although, at the same time, one could consider this sad… REAL sad stuff.

I will write more about Professor *cough* John Searl in an upcoming post.

In the mean time: keep your money and check books ready, because .. well.. as you will learn, the DISC company needs a LOT of money to complete the construction of such a machine (that Professor *cough* John Searl has already made MANY times, showed, demonstrated and offered for free to many countries, and even was jailed, in his own country, for using it, instead of purchasing energy from the local power plant.

It’s a story as silly as it is funny as it is sad.

Professor *cough* John Searl is my next Nutcase of the Week!

And my first Magnut …

“Make me one with everything”  …

 … requests the Buddhist monk

 … from the hotdog vendor.

We all know from our highschool math classes that:

1. x⁰ = 1 for any value of x (not very intuitive, but easy to prove)

and

2. 0^x = 0 for any value of x

Considering rule 1 and 2: what, then, is the value of

0⁰?