What George Washington would have tweeted on the eve of the Battle of Trenton

Check out Tom Hoopes' Top Ten Great American Tweets. Here are 9. and 10.:

10. George Washington, Dec. 24, 1776 … Yikes. Valley Forge=brrrr! FMAO! lol. Serious, though #YikesItIsCooold. Tomorrow-MerryChristmas @Hessians

9. Meriwether Lewis, Sept. 13, 1803 … Bleh. “R we there yet?” has been SO not funny since Missouri.

Check out the other ones here.

Scientists discover new element, and it's a big one

And it was right under their nose all this time:

Lawrence Livermore Laboratories has discovered the heaviest element yet known to science.

The new element, Governmentium (Gv), has one neutron, 25 assistant neutrons, 88 deputy neutrons, and 198 assistant deputy neutrons, giving it an atomic mass of 312.

These 312 particles are held together by forces called morons, which are surrounded by vast quantities of lepton-like particles called peons.z

Read the rest here.

P. J. O'Roarke angling for a newspaper bailout

Hello? Bailout people? Mr. Secretary of the Treasury Paulson? Aren't you forgetting somebody? Like me? I'm a print journalist. Talk about financial meltdown! Print journalists may soon have to send their kids to public schools, feed dry food to their cats, and give up their leases on Prius automobiles and get the Hummers that are being offered at such deep discounts these days.

The print journalism industry is taking a beating, circling the drain, running on fumes. Especially running on fumes. You could smell Frank Rich all the way to Nome when Sarah Palin was nominated. Not that print journalism actually emits much in the way of greenhouse gases. We have an itty-bitty carbon footprint. We're earth-friendly. The current press run of an average big city daily newspaper can be made from one tree. Compare that to the global warming hot air produced by talk radio, cable TV, and Andrew Sullivan. [more]

Hugh Laurie, on the solution to our problems

Thanks to Freddie at What's Wrong with the World for this one.

Scientific reductionism

Don't let the humor in this little presentation by John Cleese on scientific reductionism hide the very sophisticated observation he is making here--one which I have made before. It is a version of the "argument from self-destruction." Scientific reductionism is one of those philosophical beliefs that fails its own criterion:

I've heard of a "man bites dog" story before, but this one takes the cake

A Florida television station reports that an 11 year old Brazilian boy was attacked by a pit bull--and bit back. The dog attacked the boy, biting his arm, and the boy responded by grabbing the dog and biting his neck. The boy lost a tooth in the scuffle. It was a canine, of course.

If I could only write captions like these people

The people at despair.com have done it again:

Bush declares new threat: Zombies

This was pretty funny:

England is taking us back

This is hysterical: a letter from John Cleese informing us of why England is now taking us back and what we need to do as a result.