Some friends of ours who live in NZ told us an amusing story about then Prime Minister Helen Clark. She doesn't have her own plane; she flies from one part of NZ to another on commercial flights. One such flight was diverted due to bad weather causing a student aboard to miss classes. Ms. Clark wrote him an excuse note ( Read more... )

I ran across this video on Eat Me Daily. I'm guessing it was at the recent American Crossword Tournament. Check out how lunchboy (at about 5:28) knows the answer before even hearing the clue!

Woot!

One of my favorite knit bloggers, who is not a sci-fi fan was taken to see the new Star Trek by his SO. He enjoyed it and wrote an alternative (and hilarious) commentary.

Enjoy!

The marketing blitz is on for the new Star Trek film. Between Morning Edition and All Things Considered yesterday NPR did *four* different stories somehow related to it, including a piece about a Klingon opera being done in Long Island.

Anyway, the best thing I've seen so far is this round-up of Star Trek food and drink from Serious Eats. Yes, ( Read more... )

President Obama gave a wonderful address to the National Academy of Sciences a couple of days ago but I think it got pushed out of the headlines by the flu outbreaks. Even NPR only quoted the two sentences he uttered about the swine flu. Anyway, it is well worth watching in it's entirety. He really really gets how important science is to solving ( Read more... )

Here are a couple of well written articles with good science info about the current Swine Flu outbreaks. The first is from The Gruniad and this one is from a good blog called CivilEats.

Don't forget to wash your hands.

For Christmas I got M. a Pig Butchering Class at the Brooklyn Kitchen. It turned out that Robert Smith from NPR was there that night and they interviewed M. for the piece. You can hear it here.

Check out this fabulous ad for a state owned bank in Argentina which includes a transgender woman:

Click to view

Recently the digital TV station Music Choice held a poll asking people what they would like played at their funeral. Here's a BBC article on some of the results. What prompted me to post this however, is a charming piece in The Smart Set about the tune that precedes the Radio 4 Shipping Forecast, which was chosen by some Britons as their final ( Read more... )

You've got to love a country that makes a television ad to inform people of a change in the rules that may make them eligible for citizenship, especially when it is as cute as this:

Click to view