News-Record.com

Can't wait one more second for this abysmal 2008 to end?

Well, I am afraid you don't have any choice.

From our friends at the NYT:

On New Year’s Eve, the international authorities charged with keeping precise time will add a single second to our lives. It will be the 24th “leap second” since 1972, and the first since 2005.

If that doesn’t sound like a big deal, consider that in one second a cheetah can dash 34 yards, a telephone signal can travel 100,000 miles, a hummingbird can beat its wings 70 times, and eight million of your blood cells can die.

I plan to spend my New Year's thinking up things that humans can do in one second. Any ideas?

So, it's come to this.

From the ad copy:

"Here's This Season's "Must-Have" iPod Accessory That All The Celebrities in Hollywood Are Clamoring For.

Just fold out the blow wand and exhale into it for at least 5 seconds. 2 seconds later, this amazing tool let's you know if you're within the legal limit to drive. It even houses a timer that can be set from 1 minute up to 8 hours in order to remind you when it's time for the next test."

I'm from the "If you're wondering if you can pass a breathalizer test, don't drive" school myself -- but if potential drunk drivers will listen to their iPods and realize it's a bad idea to get behind the wheel, I guess it's progress.

Writer/director Michael Crichton, best known as the author of "Jurassic Park," has died of cancer at age 66.

Crichton wrote best-sellers that blended science, adventure and social commentary. Some of his best known novels became hit films, including "Jurassic Park," "Congo," "Rising Sun" and "Disclosure."

He was also the director of such movies as "The Great Train Robbery" and "Westworld" and the co-creator of the long-running hit TV drama "ER."

Everything about the man seemed to be outsized -- he stood 6'9'', was married 5 times, wrote his first best-seller ("The Andromeda Strain") while completing his studies at Harvard Medical School.

He was also a foe of the theory of global warming and a critic of the American media.

He was like a character from one of his own novels -- large, fascinating and somehow not quite believable.

It looks ugly as sin -- but you could say the same thing about a Volvo.

But who cares? The new car from Zero Pollution Motors can run on compressed air, gasoline (106 miles per gallon), diesel, biodiesel, ethanol or vegetable oil. Also: Indian carmaker Tata is going to market them in the U.S. at $20,000 a pop.

It can go 35 mph running on just compressed air and can go highway speeds for 800 miles at a stretch with the motor running on any of the other fuels it accepts.

We could see them as soon as 2011.

Cracked.com has a hilarious (and surprisingly educational) list of The 5 Greatest Things Ever Accomplished While High.

The list includes Coca-Cola, Psychoanalysis, the discovery of the DNA and (wait for it...) The Ten Commandments.

It also includes the following caveat: "To make the cut, an accomplishment has to be considered great by people who could pass a field sobriety test. So no Grateful Dead music."

ASHEVILLE (AP) — A 10-year study has found more than 6,000 species of plant and animal life previously unidentified in Great Smoky Mountains National Park.

The Asheville Citizen-Times reported today the All Taxa Biodiversity Project also discovered nearly 900 species that are new to science. The results of the study were discussed Monday during a Senate subcommittee field hearing in Asheville.

The project began in 1997 to inventory all species in the park which covers more than 800 square miles in the mountains of North Carolina and Tennessee. More than 1,000 scientists have studied species in the park, identifying a total of more than 16,000.

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And not one of these thousands of effing new species excretes some sort of incredibly efficient, clean-burning fuel on which I can run my car for less than $4 a gallon?

Great. Big whoop.*

* These comments may not represent Mr. Killian's true views on nature and may, instead, be informed by an intense post-gas-station-fill-up bitterness.