Zero Gravity Bow Wow

Dogs, planes, and zero gravity. A new trend of case of airplane-incited pet abuse? Regardless, the Spankster finds this hilarious. What, do you think, is going through the dog's mind at this point?

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Objects in the mirror are closer than they appear

The pholks over at Learn.Genetics, a website from the University of Utah, have a great interactive graphic on the size of things. It starts out with a coffee bean and ends up with a carbon atom. It's a very effective look at relative size and allows you to get an idea of scale. Who knew that our antibodies were so small relative to the bacteria they beat up? Go team! Check it out.

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Facebook Scam Artists

Normally I'll blog about interesting, funny, or preposterous nonsense that I encounter in my varied travels across the internet-o-sphere. But today is not such a day. I am appalled at the breaking story at TechCrunch which details how Facebook games like Farmville and Mobsters is nothing more than an attempt to trick users into buying useless goods and siphoning off personal information to create further spam.

Although there are a variety of offenders by far the worst violator is Zynga. You think I'm making this up? Check out the very words out of the mouth of the CEO of Zynga as he spoke at a start up meeting in Berkeley: “I knew that I wanted to control my destiny, so I knew I needed revenues, right, [swear word], now. Like I needed revenues now. So I funded the company myself but I did every horrible thing in the book to just to get revenues right away. I mean we gave our users poker chips if they downloaded this zwinky toolbar which was like, I don't know, I downloaded it once and couldn’t get rid of it. *laughs* We did anything possible just to just get revenues so that we could grow and be a real business…So control your destiny. So that was a big lesson, controlling your business. So by the time we raised money we were profitable."

I will note that after this story broke that the Zynga folks were nice enough to say that they would consider not scamming you any more. After all, they will make 100 million dollars this year by suckering you and can stop being immoral now. Much appreciated.

So kidz, how could you possibly do anything about this? The power of the internet is in numbers and word-of-mouth. Pass this post onto your friendz. Urge them to stop playing Zynga games like Cafe World, Dragon Wars, FarmVille, Fashion Wars, Mafia Wars, Pirates, Roller Coaster, Scramble, Special Forces, Vampires, Word Twist, and YoVille! You have to hit them where it hurts: their pocketbook.

Now appearing on Twitter

Kidz, if you are a fan of the microblogging site Twitter, Phunkidz blog posts will now appear on Twitter under the user id @phunkidz. Sign up and get the scoop on Mr Spanky and the Phunkidz blog live!

Free Stuff

You kidz are always aware that the Spankster is on the lookout for the unusual, humorous, or other cool bits of mind candy. There is another side of Mr. Spanky that is cheaper than a Chinese Rolex. So when he finds something free he gets a special tingle up his spine. Over at amazon.com they are giving away free music: 1,351 songs to be exact. You'll need an Amazon account (ask your parents) but you can still get the songs for F R E E. It also comes with a nifty helper app that loads up the music into iTunes so that you don't have to: F R E E and E A S Y!

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Da Blob

In the 1950s, long before Mr Spanky was a gleam in his Daddy's eye, there was a great push for campy sci-fi/horror films. This involved close ups of spiders, cockroaches, large rubber dinosaur-like creatures and giant amoebas made from soap suds. Great titles like "Attack of the Crab People", "Creature from the Black Lagoon", "The Giant Gila Monster", "Teenage Zombies", and the aptly named, "The Thing That Couldn't Die" filled the movie houses with plots that usually involved teenagers investigating dark places filled with dangerous creatures after they had split up in order to make the searching more "efficient".

None was more famous than "The Blob", a creature that descends onto earth from space in the interior of a meteoroid and engulfs the town's residents including Mr. Andrews the local grocer. Generally, the film is recognized as being "quintessential", which for you kidz means that the special effects would put you into a boredom coma. You do, however, have to put things into perspective, there were no computer-generated graphics in the 1950s. No laptops, CDs, iPods, microwave ovens, cell phones, or internet. Entertainment was watching black and white TV or hanging around with your pal Potsie at the local hamburger joint. So you can imagine that folks at the time would go nuts over some brown jello shots.

Luckily, life imitates art. Or what passes for art. The folks over at National Geographic, who specialize in nature photography and exploration, have posted an article entitled "Giant, Mucus-Like Sea Blobs on the Rise, Pose Danger". That's an attention grabber for sure. It's even more interesting that these blobs can be 100s of kilometers long! And they've been around since the 1700s. What's new is that scientists have finally gotten around to studying them and have concluded that they are not good for you(TM). The harbor all sorts of pathogens, bacteria, and viruses including our old friend E. Coli. Fortunately, a scientist named Farooq Azam, has let on that "few people would purposely swim into a mucilage". That means that if you were frolicking in the Mediterranean you wouldn't dive into a blob of green slime but your brother might throw it at you if he got a chance.

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Adrift

There's something to be said about firsts. First in line, first in a race, first to create something that's never been seen before. How about being the first to be floating the farthest from a spaceship without a tether?

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