Another Wednesday linkfest

Some days are good days for drive-by links. Some days are bad days. Today was a good day.

1. If you really want to become a millionaire, don't bother following these rules. You'll become a millionaire in about 40 years, which doesn't really count if you adjust for inflation. Better advice: To become a millionaire, start with $2 million.

2. Why Heidi Klum fell for Seal. (via HotAir, with lots of comments) Hmmm, I wear bike shorts when I ride, and this never happens to me. Back at my high-school reunion, some people were talking about padded bras -- you know, the usual topic of conversation at high-school reunions -- and the gay "partner" of a classmate of mine explained to me that gay men often pad the areas that others are interested in. Not that this explains the Heidi Klum situation.

3. The math of teenage sex: "If you do the math—worthy of an SAT prep course, with fractions and large numbers—you'll find that early sex plus the Pill equals sexually transmitted disease and maybe even pregnancy."

4. There's something peculiarly Japanese about this: "Cell phone message warns train gropers." Huh? Well, read this: "The application flashes increasingly threatening messages in bold print on the phone's screen to show to the offender: 'Excuse me, did you just grope me?' 'Groping is a crime,' and finally, 'Shall we head to the police?'" The only thing more Japanese would be robots.

5. Does this campaign photo of the month remind you of this one -- I mean, the evil grin? (via HotAir, where Allah says, "Mitt should fire his advance team")

6. With the World Series finally underway, we have this year's best baseball injuries from Ken Levine (via Ace). Line of the day: "Somehow in June Washington reliever, Jesus Colome suffered an 'abscess on his right buttock'. The team's General Manager, Jim Bowden is quoted in the Washington Post as saying, 'We pray for his buttocks and his family.'" There's no link to the Post, but I've verified the Bowden quotation here. My own personal favorite baseball injury story was related in Lindsey Nelson's book from the mid-60s called "Backstage at the Mets." Grover Powell, a young left-handed pitcher who'd made a great splash for the abysmal Mets, injured his pitching arm while combing his hair. Casey Stengel quipped: "Greasy kid stuff."

7. If you're a kid who lives in Boston, they want to teach you how to duck to protect yourself against gunfire. (via Fark)

8. You might not want to meet this Australian barmaid in a dark alley, although rumor has it that she's very entertaining in the bar. (via about a million sites)

9. Yiddish makes a comeback in Lithuania, as demonstrated by this syntax: "I feel a very rich person by knowing this language." (via Fark)

10. I just had my 100,000th visitor at Pillage Idiot this evening. Needless to say, it was someone who had been searching for images of the Thai transvestite pageant, which I wrote about two years ago. Somehow that seems appropriate.

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Department of Stopped Clocks

When the man's right, he's right:

President Hugo Chavez railed against a new trend in beauty-conscious Venezuela, giving girls breast implants for their 15th birthday.

"Now some people think, 'My daughter's turning 15, let's give her breast enlargements.' That's horrible. It's the ultimate degeneration," Chavez said late on Sunday on his weekly TV show that lasted a record eight hours.

As with a stopped clock, Ol' Hugo is right twice: "Chavez, who happily describes himself as ugly, may struggle to change Venezuelans' mind-set to spending on plastic surgery."

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Kaboom!

Your explosive news on July 4 comes from yesterday's New York Times Science section. There's a summer camp for explosively minded high-school kids at the University of Missouri-Rolla.

Here's your video from the Times.

Take away quotation: "We don't look to throw rock through the air," Dr. Worsey said. "When you do that, you’re wasting energy."

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Course hazard

If your teenaged daughter calls you up to ask you how to get the car out of fresh cement, she may not be pulling your leg.

State Police say a teenage girl drove through construction zone markers on the West Virginia Turnpike and got stuck in freshly poured concrete.

* * * * *The minivan then sank in the concrete, Kincaid said. Concrete covered the two axles of the vehicle.

"She went in deep," Kincaid said.

Then again, you might be in the passenger seat yourself when this happens.

The 17-year-old girl from Durham, N.C., was driving a Dodge Caravan southbound Wednesday night when she came upon a construction zone near Mossy, Sgt. D.R. Kincaid said.

Kincaid said the girl saw construction zone signs alerting her the right lane was closed ahead but panicked when she entered the zone and saw traffic behind her. The girl screamed for her mother, who was apparently asleep, and asked her what to do. Her mother told her to change lanes.

The girl, who was in the open left lane, then cut into the closed right lane, through construction cones positioned 40 feet apart, Kincaid said. The girl ran across small spots of fresh concrete that had dried, but when she reached a "super long" spot, that concrete was still wet.

But I guess it can happen to anyone.

Related by location:"Man with panties on face attempts to rob W.Va. store"

(via Fark)

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