Prof Chandra Wickramasinghe, of Cardiff University, said new research “overwhelmingly” supported the view that human life started from outside our Earth.

The faceless masses foundering in filth, coated with corruption, SLATHERED IN SHIT?

I can buy that.

Addendum: The above is pretty much just law-of-averages thinking.  There are 300 million persons in the U.S., and almost all of these 300 million have their hand(s) in their cracks at least once a day. Even if we suppose that 90% wash their hands thoroughly after No. 2 (a very generous estimate), that still works out to 30 million “Goldfingers” spreading their butt juice around, day in and day out, 365 days a year.

Addendum #2: It suddenly occurs to me that this soda-jerk phenomenon may, in certain locales, correlate with the upsurge of interest in fisting as a form of sexual gratification and as a subject for various “low budget” cinematic productions. The casino buffets in Las Vegas might be a good place to check.

Addendum #3: Case Study: I posted this way back when here at the fist. It describes another potential “vector” for distribution of fecal coliform bacteria ( As an aside, illustrating our headspace here at The Fist, I recall that the comments on this clip addressed how the way she ["nutcheese"] pronounces her “s,” with a slight “sh,” as in “ashcrack,” is hawt, being reminiscent of the way Gillian Anderson pronounces her “s.”)

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SODA FOUNTAINS SQUIRT FECAL BACTERIA, STUDY FINDS

Experts Say Infections Could Spread If Fountains Are Not Cleaned Properly

By LAUREN COX
ABC News Medical Unit
Jan. 8, 2010

Those soda fountain machines found in restaurants and fast food joints may be squirting out liquids contaminated with fecal bacteria, a small study found.

Whether it was self-serve or behind the counter, nearly half of all sodas dispensed from a sample of 30 machines in the Roanoke Valley in Virginia had coliform bacteria — a group of bacteria banned in drinking water by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) because it indicates the possibility of fecal contamination.

“The EPA regulates our drinking supply, and there can be some bacteria, but one of the things that is not allowed is coliform bacteria,” said Renee D. Godard, professor of biology at Hollins University and a co-author of the paper published in the January print issue of the International Journal of Food Microbiology.

“We can’t have that in our drinking supply. But they’re coming out of these soda fountain machines,” she said….

Read more

I just discovered the Star Wars Weather Forecast website.  You enter the city, and it tells you what Star Wars planet it most resembles.

For example, Sydney Australia:

Have fun!

In lieu of doing the traditional 3 Sentence Movie Review of 2012, I’d like to do a list of potential alternate titles.

• John Cusack Surfs a Wave of Desrtuction
• Roland Emmerich Blows Up Famous Shit
• Speed
• OH, NUH-UH!
• Planes, Trains, Automobiles and Boats
• I Know Who’s Gonna Die
• Near Miss
• Luckiest Man Alive
• Tool – Ænema
• We’re Fucked

That being said, not a bad movie, over all.  It’s boilerplate characters and plot, but the shit blows up REAL nice.  I found myself tense and breathless, despite my logical mind knowing exactly what was going to happen.

Via tesladownunder.com

This is the same mechanism that keeps you safe inside a car during a thunderstorm (the bit about the rubber tires being the protective factor is a myth – it’s the metal body of the car acting as a Faraday Cage that protects you).

click for larger image

The following is a short story. A very short story, by Terry Bisson, with the provocative title “They’re Made of Meat.”  I first read it in the late, great Omni magazine (the best thing Bob Guccione ever did, imho), many years ago. The story offers one possible “resolution” of the question posed by the Fermi Paradox, i.e., “Where is everybody?”

Terry Bisson

THEY’RE MADE OUT OF MEAT

“They’re made out of meat.”

“Meat?”

“Meat. They’re made out of meat.”

“Meat?”

“There’s no doubt about it. We picked up several from different parts of the planet, took them aboard our recon vessels, and probed them all the way through. They’re completely meat.”

“That’s impossible. What about the radio signals? The messages to the stars?”

“They use the radio waves to talk, but the signals don’t come from them. The signals come from machines.”

“So who made the machines? That’s who we want to contact.”

“They made the machines. That’s what I’m trying to tell you. Meat made the machines….”

Keep reading

Click on the solid black thumbnail for larger (much larger) image. To see the planetary geometry that made this shot possible, see the originating page.

What does Earth look like when viewed from Mars? At 13:00 GMT on 8 May 2003, the Mars Global Surveyor (MGS) Mars Orbiter Camera (MOC) had an opportunity to find out. In addition, a fortuitous alignment of Earth and Jupiter—the first planetary conjunction viewed from another planet—permitted the MOC to acquire an image of both of these bodies and their larger satellites. At the time, Mars and the orbiting camera were 139 million kilometers (86 million miles) from Earth and almost 1 billion kilometers (nearly 600 million miles) from Jupiter. The orbit diagram, above, shows the geometry at the time the images were obtained…. (read more)