Astute Readers Kim and Jen pointed me to The Poultry Site. There are so many things here I can’t begin to describe them all. If you’ve got the time, though, you can find out about every breed of poultry that exists, including all 6 gazillion types of chickens. For example, the Frizzles, the descriptive page of which shows a chicken bred to look like Sesame Street’s Big Bird. If you want to mix the sharp beak of a bird with the soft fur of a Persian cat, how about the Silkies? For you AOL’ers who got here by searching for pr0n, there’s a breed called Sex-Links. (I’m sure my daily traffic will triple once this entry gets indexed.) Of course, this site’s majesty is not limited to chickens… all the poultry are here. As well as a few sheep for good measure.

It’s about 20 degrees F here, with a windchill of about -5. I think I need some more malt-o-meal.

ObAthensLink: The Elephant Six Collective is a group of (mostly) Athens-based bands. A cross between a record label and a cooperative, the collective’s member bands are among the most original and conceptual in Athens. This page tells their story and has a sample from one of the highest-profile bands, Olivia Tremor Control.

More astronomy. The Hubble Data Archive contains over 100,000 Hubble Space Telescope observations of more than 20,000 targets. If you don’t mind digging a bit, you can find plenty of pretty pictures, including the famous deep-field shots showing uncountable numbers of galaxies. Please, try not to feel lonely and insignificant when you look at these. It’s tough not to, though.

While studying astrophysics at New Mexico Tech, I had many of the world’s best astronomy tools at my fingertips, ranging from the best astronomers in the world to the best observatories in the world. But, one thing I did not have was an F-18 Fighter Jet Mobile Telescope Platform. Dagnabit.

Today is the Feast of the Conversion of Paul. Today’s weather will indicate how the year to come will turn out (so said Europeans in the 15-1600’s). Fair weather = good year. Windy = war. Cloudy = plague. Here in Athens, it’s cloudy with bursts of wind. Dagnabit.

In my ever-increasing effort to bring this weblog to the masses, I give to you Malkovich’s Nest. Thanks to Malkovich Effect.

Robot Wisdom is now featuring a “Cam of the Hour”. There’s no telling how long Jorn will keep this up, but while it’s there you’ll find live camera shots from around the world. Already this morning we’ve seen a spectacular sunrise and a snow-covered Montana mountain.

So I come back from the high desert mountains of Colorado, where the weather was a balmy 50 degrees to Georgia and the worst ice storm in about 15 years. Something’s wacky about all that. Athens was hit pretty hard. Trees came down all over, and much of the city was out of power. Parts still are, including most of my apartment complex. Somehow my building stayed energized, but outside my windows, all was dark. I took advantage of the cold weather to stay inside, make a batch of sourdough pancakes, and fill a videotape with movies from the Independent Film Channel: Monster in a Box and _Gray’s Anatomy_, both monologues by Spalding Gray, Slacker, and The Pesky Suitor , a 30-minute short with Claire Danes.

Back in October, I linked to a page written by a person who claimed to have built a fission warhead out of radioactive material from discarded smoke detectors, and also planned to launch it on a model rocket on April 1, 2000. The page has since gone 404, but I’ve snagged a copy from google’s cache. My referrer logs show that this is a popular search topic now for some reason, so… here you go.