The Hovind dissertation
Someone has finally gone and done it. Someone got hold of a copy of convicted felon “Dr.” Kent Hovind’s doctoral dissertation and posted it on the interwebs for all to laugh at. I’ve read it before (no, I wasn’t the one who leaked it) but now at last we can all share in the hilarity.
Myself and jail-bird "Dr." Dino.
Of course it represents exactly the sort of scholarship one would expect from a high class educational establishment like Patriot University (Hovind’s alma mater) seen here in their latest location:
Go. Read. Laugh. Or for an excellent overview see Karen Bartlet’s review. And here is John Lynch’s take on it.
Halloween Yard Haunt 2009
Well, this year was bittersweet. I (mostly) finished a large new addition to our haunt (‘The tomb of the mummy’), however between that and the other little things I tried to do, I bit off way more than I could chew. The result was I didn’t properly finish anything and didn’t even get the old stuff dressed right (no glowing monster eyes, or spooky music etc., etc., etc.). Nor did I get the street signs up to attract more traffic.
Sigh…
I guess I just have to look at it as everyone keeps telling me: “hey you’re all ready for next year now.”
I’m not though. I still have to put finishing touches on several of this years additions and then there are the plans for next year that were already thought of but put off due to lack of time and money.
Still I want to acknowledge the help, not only physical and financial but also artistic, that our friends Don and Gaynell Frack gave us. I also want to thank them for putting up with my near meltdown when as the sun was going down I realized we weren’t going to make it to a proper finish. Thank you both!
Anyway here are some pictures (all taken by Don Frack):
Happy Halloween!
I hope everyone has a spooky one…
Bow-chicka-bow-wow
And now ladies and gentlemen…, some HOT parrot on man action:
Or more specifically Kakapo (Strigops habroptila) on man action.
Is that not one of the funniest things you’ve ever seen?
Halloween Sarcophagus
A short video showing my progress so far on an Egyptian sarcophagus (to hold a life-sized mummy) for our Halloween yard haunt.
Metal Crocoduck!
Two things I enjoy: Heavy Metal and mocking clueless antievolutionists like Ray Comfort and Kirk Cameron.
[Via Pharyngula]
Diane Blackwood on her alligator encounter
Vodpod videos no longer available.
Here’s another longer TV news story on the incident:
Vodpod videos no longer available.
Scary stuff!
Diane Blackwood, wife of my friend Wesley Elsberry, was attacked by an alligator in a park in St. Petersburg Florida while taking one of their dogs (Ritka) for a walk!
Diane & Ritka
Wesley tells the story on his blog (The Austringer):
This past Monday, Diane was out house-hunting. She checked out a listing for a house that was interesting in part because it was close to a park. After looking at the house, Diane went over to the park to have a look at it, too. This was Sawgrass Lake Park in St. Petersburg, Florida, near I-275 and Gandy Boulevard. She took Ritka, our Vizsla, walking with her. Diane and Ritka were near the water’s edge at about 4:30 PM when Diane saw the water churn. She immediately called to Ritka and started moving away from the water. Ritka’s usual behavior is to run ahead, and that’s just what Ritka did. Diane, though, slipped on the slope and fell to her hands and knees, perhaps in part due to the slip-on “Crocs”-like shoes she was wearing at the time. The churning water was, indeed, a sign of a gator making a lunge, coming out of the water. The gator didn’t connect with anything on his first lunge, but he grabbed Diane’s left calf with his second lunge.
Fortunately Diane kept her wits about her and was able to escape with relatively minor injuries (‘minor’ only when considering how bad it could have been).
Diane turned and grabbed the gator’s jaw to discourage it from ripping her calf muscle. The gator then released her calf, but when it snapped its jaws shut the second time, Diane’s left thumb was caught there by a tooth. She says that she didn’t care to play tug with a gator, not with just her thumb as the part in the middle. She reached over with her right hand and grabbed the gator’s eye ridge. Diane says that after maybe 30 seconds to a minute of this standoff, the gator opened his jaws, releasing Diane’s thumb. Diane released the gator’s eye ridge. She says that she briefly had considered trying to hold the gator’s jaws closed and using Ritka’s leash to tie it up, but that she didn’t think that she was up to any more tussling with the gator. So the gator headed back to the water and Diane on up the bank and away.
Another bit of good news is that the authorities were apparently able to apprehend the offending (6+ foot) crocodilian:
This is one of those stories you hear about on the news but don’t think about happening to people you know personally. Very scary!
My, and my wife Kathy’s, best wishes go out to Diane and we hope for her speedy recovery.
Making Halloween “sausage”
Halloween is coming on fast and I am already behind. This year we have a nice new mummy (with glowing eyes) to add to our yard haunt and I have decided to make him a Papier-mâché sarcophagus and some other props and make a whole display of it.
Here is the sarcophagus lid as it is so far, just a, hum, ‘skeleton’ if you will.
Funny thing I just noticed. In the display cabinet on the left side of the picture you can just make out a miniature souvenir Mayan sarcophagus lid that my parents brought me back from a trip they took to the Yucatán.
And here is a “little” obelisk awaiting some paint and hieroglyphics:
Have to hurry up and get these done so I can maybe work in a little sphinx to go along and then I want to try and get this ghost effect I being thinking about for a couple years working.
Playing Chess with Pigeons 