The McBournie Minute: It’s open season on all pythons

Perhaps you’ve heard that Florida’s Everglades are becoming overrun with Burmese pythons. If you haven’t, well, the Everglades are becoming overrun with Burmese pythons. Why? Because some people thought it was a good idea to buy an 8-plus-foot-long pet that can eat just about anything it looks at. After a while, these people figured it wasn’t such a good idea, and let their snakes go into the wild. Some may have arrived by plane.

The problem, or course, is that Florida isn’t Burma, though parts of it are as bombed out. That means these snakes were introduced into areas where they’re not supposed to be, and they are killing everything. Birds, deer, even alligators, are no match for these things.

So Florida’s fighting back the best way it knows how: by sending people into the Everglades with machetes in a hunting competition. Continue reading The McBournie Minute: It’s open season on all pythons

Biggest thing in universe, astronomers’ pants found

The discovery of the second largest observable object in the universe changes everything we know about the first: our penises.
The discovery of the second largest observable object in the universe, the Large Quasar Group (LQG), changes everything we know about the first largest: our gigantic dong stars.

Using data from the Sloan Digital Sky Survey, a team of international astronomers has discovered a cluster of quasars so large that it defies what science had believed was the largest object your mom could observe without it appearing uniform with the rest of the universe.

The Large Quasar Group (LQG) of 73 quasars — or young active galaxies — stretches across 4 billion light years. Or, as study leader Roger Clowes, an astronomer at University of Central Lancashire in England, said to put it in perspective: “About the size of my penis … if I folded it in half.”

The plan for now is to map the LQG more thoroughly with the telescopes that Gerard Williger, an astronomer at the University of Louisville in Kentucky, uses to see where he’s fornicating waaay over there.

“This structure is bigger than we expect based on the shockwaves formed in the universe after the big bang,” said Williger, adding, “That’s what she said.”

President Obama doesn’t like Empire people

Back in December, we gave you a heads up about how nerds made use of the White House’s petition website to ask for the construction of a Death Star. It seemed like such an outlandish idea that there’s no reason for President Obama’s administration to acknowledge it.

Wrong.

The White House has officially responded to the petition. Showing Obama’s rebel traits and fondness for the home planet of Jimmy Smits, Paul Shawcross, a science and space adviser, responded on the website that not only would the space station that’s not a moon would be too costly, but the creation of such would go against its stance on not supporting the blowing up of planets.

Also, there’s this:

a President who knows his way around a light saber and advanced (marshmallow) cannon

Beer is worth it

When you get to a certain age (22), you realize that you need to stop celebrating birthdays, because they really don’t matter anymore. But then, you get old enough that either you or those around you realize it’s important to celebrate your birthdays, because any one could be your last. A man in Germany knows what we’re talking about.

In Munich, a 94-year-old man decided to escape his hospital so he could have a belated birthday celebration in one of the city’s famous beer halls. Sadly, he didn’t make it–not because he died, but because someone found him. The man was found dazed in a subway station, waiting for a train. Someone noticed that he had a IV needle still in his arm, and called authorities.

When police returned the man to his hospital, his doctors gave him the OK to have a beer.

Prost!