Texas Governor and GOP presidential candidate Rick Perry is booked on all the major morning shows tomorrow, and with good reason.
After two months of
gaffes,
impolitic stands, and
bizarre speeches that quickly waned his
once-strong odds of winning the Republican nomination, Perry went into Wednesday's
CNBC debate sorely needing a win... only to deliver
a tortuous, cringingly forgetful attempt [video] to recall just which three cabinet departments he'd vowed to abolish, a stunning failure political scientist Larry Sabato deemed
"the most devastating moment of any modern primary debate" in his memory.
While Perry's slow-motion flameout has
boosted the fortunes of dark horse candidate Herman Cain, the unlikely challenger is facing troubles of his own in
a volley of sexual harassment claims -- an
oddly ineffective scandal Cain is doing his best to
(somewhat dubiously) disavow. If Cain collapses, former House Speaker Newt Gingrich
may reap the benefits, but his moribund campaign
has issues of its own. Pawlenty, Bachmann, Perry, Christie, Cain, Gingrich... the base is loathe to rally round him, but after so many failed, flawed, or forfeited challenges,
can anyone topple Mitt Romney?
posted by Rhaomi
on Nov 10, 2011 -
208 comments
Russia's
Gazprom and Nigeria's oil company
NNPC are forming a joint venture. Hmmmm...what do you call such a thing? GazGeria? Nah, Nigeria should come first. How 'bout
NIGAZ? Perhaps unsurprisingly, some people have
a problem with this.
posted by codswallop
on Jul 3, 2009 -
44 comments
KaBOOM! This past Friday, the
MythBusters exploded 500 pounds of ammonium nitrate (25% of the same material used in the
Oklahoma City bombing,) at a rock quarry in Yolo County, CA for an upcoming episode. But the explosion was apparently a wee bit bigger than they expected. It
shattered windows in nearby Esparto and was large enough to be picked up as a "small event" ground tremor by National Geographical Survey sensors. Which myth were they busting, you ask?
[more inside]
posted by zarq
on Mar 26, 2009 -
73 comments
Whenever a system becomes completely defined, some damn fool discovers something which either abolishes the system or expands it beyond recognition. There's a
Murphy's Law for most fields of endeavor.
[more inside]
posted by netbros
on Oct 19, 2008 -
24 comments
Enough bad news, enough gloom and doom. You remember that
Asteroid 99942 Apophis that we were afraid might hit Earth in 2029? Ain't gonna happen. But it will get close enough for Earth's gravity to alter its orbit and there's a chance it could hit the next time around in 2036.
But only a tiny chance: "
less than 1 in 45,000 using standard dynamical models". according to NASA. Oh wait... NASA just got
skooled by a 13-year-old German Astronomy Geek who says the chances are more like
1 in 450. Still a tiny chance, and the official numbers were only off
by a factor of 100. Oh yeah, we're doomed.
posted by wendell
on Apr 16, 2008 -
60 comments
The "Nuclear Nav." On March 11, 1958, Captain Bruce Kulka was the navigator on an Air Force B-47 Stratojet carrying nuclear bombs to an airfield in North Africa. Somewhere over the southeastern US, the captain sent him to back the bomb bay to check on a cockpit warning light. As he climbed through the narrow space around the
Mark 6 nuclear bomb, Kulka grabbed the emergency release pin by mistake.
[more inside]
posted by gottabefunky
on Oct 10, 2007 -
21 comments
In January 2006, small amounts of genetically engineered rice turned up in a shipment that was tested ... by a French customer of Riceland Foods, a big rice mill based in Stuttgart, Ark. Testing revealed that the genetically modified rice contained a strain of Liberty Link that had not been approved for human consumption. What's more, trace amounts of the Liberty Link had mysteriously made their way into the commercial rice supply in all five of the Southern states where long-grain rice is grown. Aventis Crop Science had contracted with a handful of farmers to grow the rice, which was known as Liberty Link because its genes had been altered to resist a weed killer called Liberty, also made by Aventis. Then, the French pharmaceutical giant that owned Aventis Crop Science decided to sell the U.S. biotech unit and abandon the very emotional business of reengineering the foods we eat. "We didn't want to take any chances," says a former Aventis executive. "We burned and buried enough rice to feed 20 million people." Last November, the USDA retroactively approved the Liberty Link rice for human consumption.
posted by Kirth Gerson
on Jul 23, 2007 -
92 comments
Do You Live Near a Brothel? It turns out that I do, and they're at Sacramento State's Art Department, the local office of NOW, and the Sacramento Film Commission, among others. Dubya, as it turns out,
lives near a bunch of them as well, including the Center for Public Integrity and the local branch of the DC Public Library.
You can find out the houses of ill repute near you, too, by simply entering your zip code and the word "brothels" in the Google Maps search box. It's supposed to be returning destinations for that type of local business. Oops.
Google has no comment.
posted by robhuddles
on May 13, 2005 -
52 comments
Someone needs Photoshop classes. Cat Schwartz, TechTV vixen, posted some pictures of herself on her blog. Due to an obscure bug in Photoshop, she also inadvertently posted pictures of herself nude. Oopos.
Warning: Minor nudity enclosed.
posted by manero
on Jul 24, 2003 -
89 comments
This might be taking the war on terrorism a little to far. Royal Marines get lost or should I say
vamos. (Parden my french).
posted by FidelDonson
on Feb 19, 2002 -
8 comments
Oops! A plaque intended to honor James Earl Jones at a Martin Luther King Jr. celebration said: "Thank you James Earl Ray for keeping the dream alive.''
posted by quirked
on Jan 16, 2002 -
9 comments
Ben Brown once had this thing called Teeth Magazine. I don't know how long it lasted. But visiting ye olde Glassdog, I saw a random adzert for it. Intrigued, I clicked on it. And
it's a bit different now. Anyone else have funny lapsed-domain stories?
posted by solistrato
on Aug 21, 2001 -
16 comments
Oops! Drugs awareness officer dies from overdose.
I just saw 'Traffic' tonight...
posted by black8
on Jan 6, 2001 -
3 comments
Tonight, I was thinking of replacing my old North Face fleece jacket, so I went to
their site to shop for a new one. Instead of a product catalog or online store, I learned that their copy of Apache worked! Wow, that helps me out.
posted by mathowie
on Dec 28, 1999 -
1 comment