Filling Nigerian inboxes this week...

I didn't write this--but if I had, I would have included more typos. Actually, now that I think about it, why hasn't anyone contacted any of the exiled Nigerian princes to help with the current situation? It could be a win-win (-win?) situation.

SUBJECT: REQUEST FOR URGENT BUSINESS RELATIONSHIP

DEAR AMERICAN:

I NEED TO ASK YOU TO SUPPORT AN URGENT SECRET BUSINESS RELATIONSHIP WITH A TRANSFER OF FUNDS OF GREAT MAGNITUDE.

I AM MINISTRY OF THE TREASURY OF THE REPUBLIC OF AMERICA. MY COUNTRY HAS HAD CRISIS THAT HAS CAUSED THE NEED FOR LARGE TRANSFER OF FUNDS OF 800 BILLION DOLLARS US. IF YOU WOULD ASSIST ME IN THIS TRANSFER, IT WOULD BE MOST PROFITABLE TO YOU.

I AM WORKING WITH MR. PHIL GRAM, LOBBYIST FOR UBS, WHO WILL BE MY REPLACEMENT AS MINISTRY OF THE TREASURY IN JANUARY. AS A SENATOR, YOU MAY KNOW HIM AS THE LEADER OF THE AMERICAN BANKING DEREGULATION MOVEMENT IN THE 1990S. THIS TRANSACTIN IS 100% SAFE.

THIS IS A MATTER OF GREAT URGENCY. WE NEED A BLANK CHECK. WE NEED THE FUNDS AS QUICKLY AS POSSIBLE. WE CANNOT DIRECTLY TRANSFER THESE FUNDS IN THE NAMES OF OUR CLOSE FRIENDS BECAUSE WE ARE CONSTANTLY UNDER SURVEILLANCE. MY FAMILY LAWYER ADVISED ME THAT I SHOULD LOOK FOR A RELIABLE AND TRUSTWORTHY PERSON WHO WILL ACT AS A NEXT OF KIN SO THE FUNDS CAN BE TRANSFERRED.

PLEASE REPLY WITH ALL OF YOUR BANK ACCOUNT, IRA AND COLLEGE FUND ACCOUNT NUMBERS AND THOSE OF YOUR CHILDREN AND GRANDCHILDREN TO WALLSTREETBAILOUT@TREASURY.GOV
SO THAT WE MAY TRANSFER YOUR COMMISSION FOR THIS TRANSACTION. AFTER I RECEIVE THAT INFORMATION, I WILL RESPOND WITH DETAILED INFORMATION ABOUT SAFEGUARDS THAT WILL BE USED TO PROTECT THE FUNDS. YOURS FAITHFULLY MINISTER OF TREASURY PAULSON

20,800,000th floor, please

Already the leaders in reliable automobiles and ninja robots, the Japanese have decided to build an elevator to orbit.

Yes, it requires technology that just barely exists at this point. And a bunch of money. And customers. But it already has the most important ingredient: Badass concept art.

I hope the music is good.

A space elevator might even be affordable enough for my ambitious "journalist in space" program.

Fun with meteorology

When I was a kid I had this idea that if you encircled a city with giant upward-facing flamethrowers, you could dissipate tornados as they approached.

Fortunately, no one ever put this innovation into practice.

But aiming weapons at the sky is not, apparently, just the purview of imaginative second-graders. According to this bit I found on CNN, a bunch of folks feel that shooting a (projectile-less) cannon into a storm prevents hail. As you can imagine, it also prevents their neighbors from liking them much.

"It sounds like artillery fire," said Gregory Connors, a 38-year-old software designer whose children have been woken up by the booms. "I'm up for everybody's right to farm. We support local farmers. But the technology and the way it's being utilized is not acceptable."

Personally, I don't think this goes far enough. Think of the additional applications of fighting weather with firepower. Stop earthquakes with lasers! Defuse hurricanes with nuclear blasts! Evaporate tsunamis with machinegun fire!

Wait, we could make it into a video game....

Pixels from a simpler time

Remember when video games basically consisted of watching a block--representing, perhaps, a bullet, an airplane or a frog--bounce across the screen? Wasn't that fun? For whatever reason, these simple games managed to convince millions of kids that they were not, in fact, merely manipulating a picture tube, but were instead saving the world or killing their enemies or something.

Nowadays, of course, killing your enemies requires no imagination. Just an itchy trigger finger (or thumb, depending on your controller layout).

You can almost smell the cordite....

But what if it did?

... but these guys don't seem to have fingers. Or necks.

Those tanks look pretty fancy. Two colors! And I bet they move and everything. Check out more "Atari versions" of modern video games here. And wonder what "Pong" would look like in high-def.

"I was being drawn down a long tunnel toward Arthur Bryant's...."

It's one of those instances in which science follows science fiction: Researchers are going to study what it's like to almost die.

There is a movie I vaguely remember from my childhood--it wasn't that great, but I thought the premise was neat--in which scientists figured out a way to actually record experiences from brainwaves. Then one of them dies while wearing the recording gear. And suddenly the world has access to what it feels like to die.

Like I said, a neat premise.

Christopher Walken makes any movie badass. It's science fact.

Anyway, there is a little data on this already. It goes something like this:

"Previous research suggests about 10 to 20 percent of people who live through cardiac arrest report lucid, well-structured thought processes, reasoning, memories and sometimes detailed recall of events during their encounter with death.

One study found that people who reported peaceful feelings, bright light and out-of-body experiences during a brush with death are more likely to have had difficulty separating sleep from wakefulness in their everyday lives. Both before and after their near-death experiences, these people often have symptoms of the rapid-eye movement (REM) state of sleep while awake."

So maybe (the science fiction writer in me suggests) these people already have a thinner wall separating their consciousness--or their soul?--from whatever comes next. Maybe they are just a few high-powered psychotropic drugs away from actually seeing it for themselves.

Maybe I should start writing a script.

Two-for-one update: Black hole eats corn

First off, we're not all dead. Even though our (more or less completely unlikely) demise at the hands of miniature manmade black holes won't happen until next month anyway. But for those of you with skittish friends, send them here.

Second, we might all avoid becoming obese, thanks to the Associated Press. Corn's assault on reason did not go ignored.

The end is... a few hours away

Just to revisit the possibility of the Earth being swallowed by a horde of tiny black holes: The Large Hadron Collider will be switched on tomorrow.

A technician prepares to vaporize you, the mortgage industry and everything in between.

It won't start smashing stuff together for another few weeks, but I thought you might like some time to get your affairs in order.

Playing from memory

An interesting thing happened on the way home from work tonight.

I had my iPod plugged into the car stereo and my music library set on shuffle. The first song to play, dragged from gigabytes of tunes, was "Angel," by Aerosmith.

And within the space of a couple of power chords, I was...

... in grade school. On a school bus. Headed across Kansas to Hutchinson, where our field trip would touch down at the Kansas Cosmosphere. Seriously: This was a crystalline memory. I was two-thirds of the way back, on the passenger side. Listening to the radio on a Walkman with weakening batteries.

Both the young and older Gerry Doyles wanted to climb into this thing.

And that got me thinking, too, about all the people who were on that bus with me. I remain close with some of them, still, even 20-plus years later. What were we all thinking that day on I-70? I planned to be an astronaut and turned out a writer. Others hewed more closely to their dreams and got involved with law, politics, art or science. But I think we were all happy that day.

Anyway, what does this wool-gathering tell us? That sometimes tiny envirnomental details--like a song--stick in your head more thoroughly than you expect. And years later, when you're not even thinking about it... you're right back where you started.

Corn is trying to take over your brain

So there's this great book, "The Omnivore's Dilemma," that lays out a damning case against a plant so insidious that it is poisoning our society at its roots. You know what I'm talking about.

Corn.

The way it works is, we subsidize more corn than we can eat (but not at a price that farmers can make a good living from) and then turn the rest into... well... everything. The result is economic and ecological damage, not to mention high-fructose corn syrup, which makes us all fat and toothless.

But the word, apparently, has been getting around. I know it because I saw this on TV the other night. And I was SO TOTALLY READY to post it here on my blog, except somehow no one has posted it on YouTube yet.

So never mind. But really, in my mind, this is the beginning of the end, when two actors have to convince America that eating a frozen treat made out of hyper-refined sweetness is not just delicious, but a good idea.

Corn dogs, on the other hand, are the cornerstone of Western Civilization, and I will fight you if you disagree.