Vatican Makes Shocking Revelation

Today the Vatican admitted to the world than nuns--women who have purportedly walked away from worldly things to seek a life of service and devotion to God--are, in fact, a secret military arm of the Church.  And always have been.  

Don't believe us--or, more importantly, the Pope himself?  Here's some photographic evidence:

Nun special forces training

Nun counterinsurgency forces in Afghanistan

Nun flamethrower squad fighting Nazis in WWII

Nuns in basic training

Nun torturing/forgiving captive with Holy Waterboarding

One of the Vatican's manned (or nunned) ICBMs

* Images from the Vatican via Holy Taco.

NOVA: The Secret Lives of Scientists and Engineers

NOVA has a whole web series going on dedicated to "The Secret Lives of Scientists and Engineers" (tagline: "Where the lab coats come off"--sounds like they follow the Urkobold, huh?)  I've viewed a couple and thought they were interesting/amusing enough to share here:

Nazis in Sport

Herr Byron Scott mit dem Ball

Apples, Apples, and More Apples

Like apples?  Don't know the difference between a Jonagold and a Granny Smith?  Fret no more, for here is the Spectrum of Apple Flavors to guide you:

Via Blame it on the Voices.

The Power of Celebrity Status

Monkey Tuesday: Nazi Reincarnation

I Attend a Rock Concert

For my birthday, my brother bought me (and him!) tickets to the Rush concert on October 1 in Tampa.  Great show, and the technical skills of the band remain impressive.  They got in pretty much everything I wanted to hear, and they also played Moving Pictures straight through.

The tour is based on a "time travel" theme, which includes three video segments with the band in an alternate reality (to begin with) where "Spirit of the Radio" is a hard polka song.  Pretty funny.  Here's the video, shot by a fan at an earlier show:

Rays Win the AL East

Yesterday, the Rays won the AL East for the second time in three years, secured home field advantage through the playoffs with the best record in the AL, and invented a new game: Sip and Slide.

Go Rays!!!!

Sulu Friday: Breaking News! There is No Takei; There is Only Sulu!

Pictured: NASA Administrator Bolden trying--and failing--to do the Vulcan salute with both hands

At a press conference at the NASA headquarters in Washington, NASA Administrator Charles Bolden, Jr. shook the world with one of the most shocking revelations in human history: The individual heretofore known as George Takei is a fraud, a fictional construct, and is actually an astronaut from the 23rd century!

The exact details of this discovery are still somewhat unclear, but it appears that "Takei" discretely--but not discretely enough--used some sort of impossibly advanced, hand-held weapon to subdue a mugger in an assault he witnessed in Washington, where he has been performing on stage for the Washington Shakespeare Company in "By Any Other Name: An Evening of Shakespeare in Klingon."  

He was later detained by federal agents for questioning, who discovered a strange communications device along with the weapon.   At first, the lead interrogator--a fan of the old Star Trek program--took these devices to be props from the TV series: "Oh, those are just a phaser and a communicator--they're fake!"  But when another agent blew out the wall of the interrogation room with the "phaser", it became clear that something very unusual was going on.

After further questioning, Takei confessed that he was, in fact, Lieutenant Hikaru Sulu, an officer of an organization known as "Starfleet" and a victim of some sort of time-traveling accident.  According to Lt. Sulu, when he first arrived in our time in the 1960s, he became desperate to find some way of communicating to the future that he was trapped in the past.  He decided the best way was to create a TV series based on his real-life experiences.  Confiding some of the truth to Gene Roddenberry,  Lt. Sulu not only wrote each episode but also played himself on the series and provided technical advice.

Lt. Sulu is being held for observation at the Goddard Space Flight Center in Maryland, along with another Starfleet officer who apparently was also part of the "landing party" (Lt. Sulu described him as "one of those red-shirt guys").  The government is still trying to understand the implications of this amazing discovery and will be making a formal statement to the press later today.

Pictured: Lt. Sulu and Lt. Ricky in a clean room at Goddard

Morgan Freeman: The Early Years

No, not The Electric Company.  A commercial:

Viva Las Vegas Death Ray!

From The Las Vegas Review Journal (via io9):

The tall, sleek, curving Vdara Hotel at CityCenter on the Strip is a thing of beauty.

But the south-facing tower is also a collector and bouncer of sun rays, which -- if you're at the hotel's swimming pool at the wrong time of day and season -- can singe your hair and melt your plastic drink cups and shopping bags.
   
Hotel pool employees call the phenomenon the "Vdara death ray."

A spokesman for MGM Resorts International, which owns Vdara, said he prefers the term "hot spot" or "solar convergence" to describe it.

* * *

Chicago visitor Bill Pintas experienced Vdara's "death ray" recently. A lawyer, he was here on business for Preferred Capital Lending, which he co-owns. He also co-owns a Vdara condo.

Pintas told the Review-Journal that at midday Sept. 16, after a brief dip in the hotel pool, he was sunning on a recliner. He was on his stomach, relaxed, eyes closed.

But suddenly, the lawyer became so uncomfortably hot that he leaped up to move. He tried to put on his flip-flop sandals but, inexplicably, they were too hot to touch. So he ran barefoot to the shade.

"I was effectively being cooked," Pintas said. "I started running as fast as I could without looking like a lunatic."

Then he smelled an odor, and realized it was coming from his head, where a bit of hair had been scorched. It was about 12:20 p.m., as best Pintas can recall.

* * *

Viewed from above, the Vdara tower resembles a crescent. The crescent's southern-facing side is concave. There is no tall building farther south to block the sun's hot afternoon rays, so Vdara receives the full brunt. Its pool lies at the center of this southern-facing wall, on top of a low-rise building that is three stories tall.

A concave reflective surface can act "as a lens," according to Kerry Haglund at the Center for Sustainable Building Research, which is at the University of Minnesota. But she declined to speculate on whether the Vdara's wall is acting as one. Sophisticated computer modeling can determine whether its "facade configuration" and "reflective surface" interact in a way that creates a hazard for pool users, Haglund said via e-mail.

The Vdara -- and five other CityCenter buildings -- are LEED-certified, a prestigious designation that means the buildings are designed, built and operated to conserve resources and to reduce impacts on the environment. Rafael Vinoly Architects designed Vdara.

Yeah, I'm sure the building was "accidentally" designed to fire a death ray at hotel guests as they lay by the pool.  The giveaway is the LEED-certfication--the hotel was "designed, built and operated to conserve resources and to reduce impacts on the environment."  Right.  And what's bad for the environment?  People, especially people who fly and drive cars.  

Will the death ray scare off tourists, or is the sleazy lure of Vegas sufficient to overcome fear of being fried alive?  Only time will tell.