Am I the only one who thinks that Scott Pilgrim looks incredibly disturbing ( Read more... )

The barbaric, meaningless yawp of the anti-Cordoba-House crowd have a new tack: "Ground Zero is our Auschwitz."

Thankfully, no, dummies. Not in scale, not in methodology, not in idealogy, not in context. If we're talking WW2, Ground Zero is a lot more like one of America's bombing runs again a non-tactical, civilian city, an atrocity which we ( Read more... )

Happy birthday, lietya!

Remember Wishbone, the PBS series where an adorable Jack Russel Terrier acted out the plot of classics of literature and folklore in fairly elaborate costume drama? I was thinking about it, and decided to probe deeper on Wikipedia, "Where nostalgia meets lazy research." And man, that show did not soft-pedal the less child-friendly aspects of those ( Read more... )

Dear New York Times:

A fantasy novel about "a squid-worshipping cult" may be quite a good book. But it does not "defy stereotypes"--in fact, it steals from pays homage to one of the classic stereotypical tropes of the genre.

That the title of the book is Kraken might be a huge hint about this. Even the orignal master of squid-cult novels was ( Read more... )

RIP David Warren, inventor of the 'black box' flight recorder.He is the very definition of a great contributor to humanity: someone who begins with the given that we make mistakes, and from that makes us better able to learn from them. And his willingness to effectively give away the invention probably saved still more lives (as well as thousands ( Read more... )

Dear beard,

What the heck, man? At 31, you decide to start growing in at a daily-shave rate? What happened to all those babyfaced years of easy maintenance?

When I want you to grow in, you give me total ridicularity. Now that I've abandoned all hope of a hirsute future, this. And not an attractive this, just a stubborn muzzle.

Have you read The ( Read more... )

The trouble with buying a pack of hot dogs when you are the only omnivore in the house: you now have this pack of hot dogs sitting in the fridge, singing their siren-song. You could cook us up and eat us ANY TIME YOU PLEASE. It's so easy and so fast! Why, it takes no more effort to cook up five franks than it does one! And so on ( Read more... )

This is pretty sweet: anti-government paranoids are funding the government with every round they purchase.

Well, the ones who aren't filling their own casings, at least. (It is a much thriftier option, Bircher gun-lunacy or no.)

A new research article suggests that men* are highly apt to make "gender-congruent" food choices. Though there are "feminine" foods, women are not nearly as likely to choose a signifying food over what they would simply prefer to eat. A woman is as likely to eat a burger as she is a salad ( Read more... )