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Joshua Peter Tubbs is a self-proclaimed "kool" kid - class (co)president, Mr. Timberlane, a national honors student - who decided that for NaNoWriMo he would write an honest review of all 349 students in his senior class
comment posted at 2:08 PM on Dec-8-09
comment posted at 2:18 PM on Dec-8-09

"What is it you like about chicken?" We all know of the often excellent BBC but what of it's poor commercial cousin ITV, forced to earn its crust from paid advertising? It was once mighty though in the current advertising apocalypse it's fallen upon hard times. Production budgets have been decimated nationally meaning regional branches are truly scraping the barrel. UTV, the local television station in Northern Ireland has made something so nosebleed insane it deserves a wider audience. A half hour program which reveals Irish people like potatoes, sometimes chicken, occasionally seafood. The interviews *INTERVIEWS* are priceless.
comment posted at 5:37 AM on Oct-11-09

Here's a strange one for the books: Science has taken notice that a really, really LARGE proportion of schizophrenic patients smoke. In fact, Scientific American Mind reports that an average of 85% of schizophrenic patients smoke cigarettes compared to only 20% in the general population. Many schizophrenics also appear to have abnormal thermoregulation, an impaired ability to understand body language, an inability to perceive an optical illusion called "the hollow mask illusion," an impaired ability to produce a brain protein known as the muscarinic M1 receptor, and an abnormally large number of genetic mutations known as CNV's or "copy number variations."
comment posted at 12:04 PM on Sep-29-09
comment posted at 12:21 PM on Sep-29-09

How accurate was Kubrick's "2001: A Space Odyssey" about the future? "Part of the reason that Dr Floyd has been sent to Clavius Base is to deliver a morale-boosting speech to a crew bemused by what they have unearthed on the moon. [...] Frankly, there is no way that this would have been done in the real 2001 without the judicious use of PowerPoint featuring Excel charts and inspiring pictures of puppies, and probably some free branded goodies to take away and cheer everybody up."
comment posted at 1:15 PM on Sep-29-09

Cancer is hilarious.
comment posted at 2:27 PM on Aug-13-09

When Pat Robertson asked in April if hate crimes legislation would protect people who liked to have sex with ducks, he may have anticipated some reaction. But did he think that he would inspire an anthem?
comment posted at 12:31 PM on Jun-9-09

John Michell, who has died aged 76, was an old Etonian who became the standard bearer for the romantic hippy mysticism with his 1969 book The View Over Atlantis, This posited the then original theory of a prehistorical global civilisation linked by leylines, and became extraordinarily popular and influential.
comment posted at 1:34 PM on May-12-09

20 movies which make you wish you'd gone to college from UK flim critic Jo Berry.
comment posted at 10:04 AM on Apr-12-09
comment posted at 10:05 AM on Apr-12-09

It's harder to be more obscure and unheralded than John Henry Timmis IV. He barely even tried to sell his own music, almost always giving copies away of his impossibly rare loner-punk 45's. Dieing in 2002, almost 15 years after his last single, from complications resulting from alcoholism, after suffering from the degenerative ear/skull disease mastoiditis-- his potential hardly tapped... until now. Film buffs may know him as the director/producer of the longest movie ever made, The Cure for Insomnia staring Lee Groban reading his same titled 4,080 page poem spliced with porn and heavy metal, clocking in at 87 hours. Virtually unknown until the song "Death Trip" appeared on an obscure bootleg punk compilation Staring Down the Barrel. Interest peaked enough for Plastic Crimewave's Secret History of Chicago Music article to have a write up on him and Drag City/Galactic Zoo to reissue his forgotten masterpiece, Cosmic Lighting.
comment posted at 5:04 PM on Mar-18-09

via whedonesque.com: Vote for the name of node 3 of the ISS. Apparently Joss needs our help. "After Serenity made it to space last year, NASA want to know what to name part of the space station, and Serenity is on the list."
comment posted at 2:30 PM on Feb-19-09

"It doubtless seems highly paradoxical to assert that Time is unreal, and that all statements which involve its reality are erroneous. ... I believe that time is unreal. But I do so for reasons which are not, I think, employed by any of the philosophers whom I have mentioned, and I propose to explain my reasons in this paper." ~McTaggart, The Unreality of Time, 1908. (Bonus: The Kant Song.)
comment posted at 5:57 AM on Feb-11-09

Smoke if you got 'em. Today is the Great American Smokeout, a time to reflect on how great people look when smoking, and the terrible things (NSFW) the additives do to you.
comment posted at 3:45 PM on Nov-21-08

The laughed at him. Foretelling the doom and gloom of the mortgage crisis as a pundit in these 2006-2007 interviews, Peter Schiff held to a grim economic outlook. Recently in the Washington Post, Schiff writes: "Our leaders irrationally promoted home-buying, discouraged savings, and recklessly encouraged borrowing and lending, which together undermined our markets."
comment posted at 8:51 AM on Nov-15-08

A math professor was explaining a particularly complicated calculus concept to his class when a frustrated pre-med student interrupts him. "Why do we have to learn this stuff?" the pre-med blurts out. The professor pauses, and answers matter-of-factly: "Because math saves lives." "How?" demanded the student. "How on Earth does calculus save lives?" "Because," replied the professor, "it keeps certain people out of medical school."
comment posted at 9:18 AM on Nov-9-08
comment posted at 9:46 AM on Nov-9-08

Sunday Morning Movie - A moving and fascinating documentary, Dark Days is on Google Video. Marc Singer lived in the tunnel, and started filming with the help of his fellow tunnel dwellers. Trivia here. Inevitable Wikipedia link here.
comment posted at 8:05 AM on Nov-9-08

Man loses father to smoking 50 years ago. Builds time machine.
comment posted at 2:19 PM on Nov-7-08
comment posted at 2:27 PM on Nov-7-08

Nobels for Physics announced. The prize will be shared between three individuals, including one American teaching at the University of Chicago. The other two winners are from Japan, Makoto Kobayashi and Toshihide Maskawa .
comment posted at 3:47 PM on Oct-7-08

Fasting may be the remedy for jet lag. By overiding your clock (audio interview 12 min) that prepares your body to eat, it is likely that you can reset your body's clock. Might this be the missing step in training yourself to be an early riser? via
comment posted at 7:15 AM on May-25-08

If you've ever wanted to peel back the corners of your browser window again and again to reveal different colors, then colorflip is for you.
comment posted at 5:37 AM on May-20-08
comment posted at 12:34 PM on May-20-08

Hey ladies, want yogurt? No? Too bad, because yogurt wants you.
comment posted at 8:58 AM on May-10-08

The connection between mathematics and music is often touted in awed, mysterious tones, but it is grounded in hard-headed science. For example, mathematical principles underlie the organization of Western music into 12-note scales. And even a beginning piano student encounters geometry in the "circle of fifths" when learning the fundamentals of music theory. ...according to Dmitri Tymoczko, a composer and music theorist at Princeton University, these well-known connections reveal only a few threads of the hefty rope that binds music and math.

The Geometry of Music
See also The Geometry of Musical Chords - Dmitri Tymoczko, Science 7 July 2006: Abstract
See also Dmitri Tymoczko, Composer and Music Theoristvia
comment posted at 4:27 PM on Mar-16-08
comment posted at 4:29 PM on Mar-16-08

An Efficient Representation for Sparse Sets. Or, Using Uninitialized Memory for Fun and Profit
comment posted at 6:17 PM on Mar-16-08
comment posted at 9:01 PM on Mar-16-08
comment posted at 10:55 PM on Mar-16-08
comment posted at 11:09 PM on Mar-16-08

John Ruskin: Of The Pathetic Fallacy
comment posted at 9:27 AM on Mar-16-08

Next Generation presents the Hot 100 Game Developers of the year. See which developers are lighting up the world of games in 2008. For the impatient: skip to the end.
comment posted at 5:08 AM on Feb-20-08

Getting to the source of 5 beautiful lines of Quake 3. Rys Sommefeldt traces the history of a very quick (and now infamous) inverse square-root function used in Quake 3. (via)
comment posted at 5:03 PM on Feb-8-08
comment posted at 5:04 PM on Feb-8-08

Six word memoirs: too short for
comment posted at 4:26 PM on Feb-6-08

Here are 52 cover songs that Of Montreal have done over the years. via
comment posted at 5:01 PM on Feb-1-08

"Geordie messiah to return - Kevin Keegan is returning to Newcastle United as manager". Thus read the official statement issued by Newcastle United heralding the improbable return of Kevin Keegan to be manager of the club, the perennial under achievers in English football.
comment posted at 5:36 PM on Jan-17-08

Lightning calculator and "mathemagician" Art Benjamin goes through his paces in a 15 minute video.
comment posted at 12:28 PM on Dec-19-07

Warp Drive, When? "Have you ever wondered when we will be able to travel to distant stars as easily as in science fiction stories?"
comment posted at 10:21 AM on Dec-15-07

"This story would be nothing without the photos"
comment posted at 12:04 PM on Dec-11-07

Williams syndrome is a rare genetic disorder characterized by distinctively "elfin" facial features, an uncanny ability to socialize with strangers, and, often, enhanced musical abilities.
comment posted at 1:59 PM on Dec-3-07

Did the clients [at the brothel] realize that they were in fact getting an orangutan? “Oh yeah, they would come in especially for it. You could choose a human if you preferred, but it was a novelty for many of the men to have sex with an orangutan.” Via.
comment posted at 1:20 PM on Nov-16-07

Do you feel like a fraud? Holden Caulfield used to hunt phonies a few blocks from here, but times have changed. Now the phonies — or people who think they are, anyway — hunt themselves.
comment posted at 1:36 PM on Nov-5-07

A list of reasons why an atheist blogger is angry.
comment posted at 4:46 PM on Oct-30-07
comment posted at 5:42 PM on Oct-30-07

Jon Ronson decides "I'm going to tell my son the worst swearword in the world". His follow up article is also interesting. Incidentally, his "Bad Science" colleague from The Guardian did uncover a list of the worst swearwords from the BBC no less (and previously)
comment posted at 12:27 PM on Oct-23-07

Blender Magazine presents The 40 Worst Lyricists in Rock.
comment posted at 12:33 PM on Oct-9-07

"Everyone I've talked to knows the exact date when they've been hit."
"Yeah. It's burned into your memory."
James Gandolfini interviews 10 wounded Iraq war veterans in Alive Day Memories: Home From Iraq [review]. The documentary is viewable online.
comment posted at 10:10 PM on Sep-13-07