There was a piece in the Scotman last year about Stalin’s experiments with creating an ape-man hybrid for use as an ultimate warrior. A History Channel piece last night cast doubt on that assertion, and apparently Stalin had no use or desire for such experiments.

The show claimed Dr. Ilya Ivanov really did attempt creating the hybrid, but without specific direction from the government. Stalin did give Ivanov a scientific grant, but he gave out a lot of cash to anyone who was trying to advance science, so the money didn’t imply Stalin’s personal interest in that particular project. Ivanov’s main motivation was to curb the influence of the strong Russian church, from which he was afraid of persecution.

A small amusing portion towards the end involved a scientist questioning whether humans were indeed the most intelligent species on the planet. He said something to the effect of “I may be able to do calculus and play the piano, things that we’d associate with intelligence, but how useful would they be in the jungle?”, and so forth.

Look, in the last 10,000 years, humans have developed stuff like writing, agriculture, the crossbow, the Theory of Relativity and have walked on the moon. The extent of our closest competitors’ technology is using pointy sticks as weapons. Chimps and gibbons may be smart, but they’re not THAT smart.

l3rucewayne, I’m sorry that you lost.

Likely, many of you have seen this already…in fact, I may have shared this on my old blog (which I gave up trying to retrieve a few months ago–there were only a few truly memorable posts, anyway). [The Mascot says: It's not like there've been any memorable posts on this site, either. Well, except the ones I'm in.]

Anyway, it’s the Ultimate Showdown of Ultimate Destiny! Right up your alley if you’re interested in seeing whether Abraham Lincoln can knock off Batman. Just watch it. It’s weird and wonderful.

ARRRRRRRRRRRGGGGGGGGGHHHH! NO! UGH!

I forgot to make a theme for United Nations Day!

On this day in 1945, the United Nations was formed. In honor of this holiday, today’s look was [supposed to be] redone to simulate a UN vehicle. We’ll celebrate the impact the United Nations has had in our world today, and what they’re doing to continue to keep us safe.

Here are some ways you can celebrate:

• Wear a baby blue pith helmet, just like a real peacekeeper.
• If you see a robbery, debate with your friends for 2 hours before deciding whether to call the police.
• Volunteer at a soup kitchen, but show up after they’re closed.
• Tell a homeless guy that you and your friends will give him $5. Then one of you contributes 72 cents, and the rest don’t contribute at all.

How will YOU celebrate United Nations Day?

Fred Kaplan of Slate has a fun article, Who Disbanded the Iraqi Army? These excerpts frighten me:

“The policy had been to keep the [Iraqi] army intact; didn’t happen,” Bush told Draper. Asked how he had reacted to Bremer’s reversal, Bush replied, “Yeah, I can’t remember. I’m sure I said, ‘This is the policy, what happened?’ “

Many stories have since been told about the dysfunctional nature of the Bush administration—the many instances when a decision would be made, in some cases by the president himself, only to be reversed or simply ignored by (most often) Rumsfeld and/or Cheney.

Despite the almost-certainty that John Kerry would not have been a great president, there are too many times when I wish he (or Gore in 2000) had won.

A week before the 2004 election, I’d planned on voting Kerry (see Kerry Haters for Kerry!), some reasons being it was time for a different face for international relations, not to mention Bush isn’t exactly president material. But when I saw that JFK wasn’t beating a weak GWB, that frightened me. How competent could someone be who has a tough time convincing people he’s better than Bush? Throw in that a couple Supreme Court justices would probably die soon, my decision was sealed (at that point, I’d rather have had the next justice be conversative). I voted for Bush.

If I had cast the election in its proper light—not Bush vs Kerry, but Kerry/Edwards vs Cheney/Rumsfeld—the decision would have been more obvious and less agonizing.

When a phrase sounds like gobbledygook, it probably is gobbledygook.

When you were a kid did you ever…

1. Try to figure out how many licks it took to get to the center of a Tootsie Roll pop?
2. Get a “kick me” sign stuck on your back? And actually get kicked?
3. Get confused because you associated “grimace” with happiness because of the McDonald’s character, just to find out something different from a vocab list?
4. Try to build an igloo in winter?
5. Get a guilt-trip from your parents about not eating awful food because of starving kids in Ethiopia?
6. Have an irrational fear of Mr. Glitch from Mathman?
7. Have other kids try to convince you there’s a ring around the Earth because the equator’s a yellow line on the globe? (I didn’t fall for it.)
8. Think Duck Tales was a good show?
9. Think America’s Funniest Home Videos was a good show?
10. Discover that…oh, I don’t have the guts to say this one.
11. Get a fingernail ripped off by performing a foolishly risky biking maneuver?
12. Have teenagers pretend to offer you cocaine when it’s really just a handful of snow?
13. Think you would ever get to be as old as you are now?

You think that clip art of a radio tower is crappy? Check out some of the radio ads we Miamians have to endure:

Headquarter Toyota: “You’ll feel like you bought from the factory!” That’s one way of warning their customers how dirty their showroom is. At least they’re not ashamed of it.

Some Other Random Car Dealership: “We accept all credit applications.” Well, that’s just swell. If they said they’d finance everyone regardless of credit, that might be something. All these guys really guarantee is that they’ll take 20 seconds to skim over Random Guy’s credit app (and only afterwards laugh in his face).

Since when did we live in the year 12X6?: Hearing a fishing store advertising compound bows was slightly jarring, and I wondered why 13th century bows would appeal to the fishing crowd. (I had confused them with composite bows, which were so effectively used by the armies of Genghis Khan. Compound bows were invented in the sixties and are used for hunting.)

Corona Beer: “Official Sponsor of the Timeout.” They spout consistently lame-o stories about how sports employees decided to drink Corona instead of doing their jobs. I feel sorry for Corona having to shell out money for a radio campaign guaranteed to drive people away from their product. Unless, of course, they created the ads in-house, in which case the perpetrators deserve the Howard C. Forman treatment.

Beverly’s Jewelers: Miami is the third poorest major city in the US. We don’t need to hear about jewelry that’s on sale for “only $3,495″.

Have you ever wondered how insects tell themselves apart? We can barely see a difference between one praying mantis to the next, yet we know that somehow, they manage to determine who’s who.

It’s just like old white guys in government. Look at the picture at the top, and tell me how the heck we can tell those Senators apart. If it weren’t for the different color ties, those guys be indistinguishable.

There is one thing I must congratulate Congress on. The webpage the picture’s from is proof positive that Congress does have some self-control on the budget, as they clearly have not hired anyone to update the page design since the mid-90′s. A few things my co-workers and I noticed:

• There’s still a link to Netscape Navigator
• Site is “optimized” for IE 4 and Navigator 4
• The senator pic uses imagemaps
• A 400KB 2500px wide pic is loaded to display a 421px wide pic

Physics Misconceptions: Don’t worry, it’s not rocket science. Mostly.

Bigelow launches its second inflatable space module: This is definitely rocket science.

Did you know Chef Boyardee was a real guy?

According to Grand Ayatollah Sistani, playing chess and “black gammon” (backgammon) are forbidden for a Muslim. For what I can gather, this is because they were used for gambling. However, horse racing is OK.

Right around 1812, after Napoléon I’s disastrous Russian campaign, everything started going downhill for the Bonapartes.