Five O'Clock Five

Via just about everybody, Tim Blair fisks a WaPo piece that scores about a 91 on the Unintentional Comedy Scale.  Iowahawk is in the house as well, natch.

Here are two articles about people who are tougher than most of us. The first is about C.J. Howard, an amputee who recently clocked a 1:23:59 half marathon. That's faster than most two-legged people I know. (Using one common predictor, that's about a 2:57 marathon.) The second is about Scott Johnson, who had a double lung transplant in 2001 due to cystic fibrosis.  He's also a competitive triathlete.

I hope you're all enjoying the worst day of the year.  I thought this was nonsense when I read it, but merely waved it off.  Thankfully, we have people like Michele to get to the bottom of junk science like this.

According to a new study, those horrible greenhouse gases that are certain to lead to catastrophic climate change may actually have prevented an ice age.  (Link via Instapundit.) Michael Crichton, call your office!

My Dad visited over Christmas.  We were watching football and a Campbell's Chunky Soup commercial starring Donovan McNabb and his mom came on.  Dad guessed that Mrs. McNabb probably got $500K for doing the ad (which is Dad's favorite game, by the way -- guessing how much so-and-so makes or what such-and-such cost), to which I responded that she was an actress.  (I figured it couldn't be his real mom since she's the second mom McNabb has had in those commercials.)  Dad was crestfallen.    Turns out I was wrong, according to the NYT, and the journalist made the exact same mistake I did.  And now I'll have to apologize to my Dad.