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I recently stumbled across the following story in an old file on my hard drive. Judging by the modification date on the file, I seem to have written it near the end of 2002; in any case, it’s old enough that I was still using Microsoft Word (shudder), and because it was before I started this blog, I don’t think I did anything with it at the time. ( Read more... )

What is either today's least surprising statistic or today's most surprising bound variable can be found at DutchNews.nl:
The Netherlands has one of the lowest percentages of non-Dutch nationals living within its borders in the EU, according to new figures from the EU statistics office Eurostat.

The thing about online news stories is that they, and their headlines, get updated as new information comes in. I'm not sure there's ever any definitive version anymore-I guess the print version is the version of record, but it seems as if the print versions nowadays are often written on the assumption that everyone's already read the basic story ( Read more... )

Yesterday was Talk Like a Pirate Day, for those who celebrate it. But did you know that today is Maraud Like a Rhetorician Day?

Raid eloquently, me hearties.

Thank you, Mr. Black, but I really did not need to hear about your constipation. The following comes from an article in the Toronto Star about an interview with Conrad Black in Vanity Fair: *
In his VF interview, Black described anal inspections with which he was “slightly mystified at the extent of official curiosity about that generally ( Read more... )

Even the zombies in this town are nice. I was biking home from the grocery store yesterday, and had to wait for a bit at a crosswalk while a teeming horde of undead shambled by. At one point, a few of the zombies decided that they were collectively taking rather a long time to cross the street, and paused to give some motorists and me a chance to ( Read more... )

writersblock asks:

This man and this lizard are celebrated in song for a feat that was eventually replicated in 1903 by a Norwegian.


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