December 2008
Fimoculous.com — 30 Most Notable Blogs of 2008 →
Last year I said I only read Fimoculous for the year-end lists. This is (almost) true this year, as well.
““We had particular problems with fruit-fly researchers,” says Sue...”
– Bye-bye boojums: Scientific names lose their sparkle. (via the Mumpsimus)
A very European hero →
Almost three thousand words on Tintin, from The Economist (!):
It is one of Europe’s more startling laws. In 1949 France banned children’s books and comic strips from presenting cowardice in a “favourable” light, on pain of up to a year in prison for errant publishers. It was equally forbidden to make laziness or lying seem attractive. The law created an oversight committee to watch for positive...
Lists: 2008 →
I wish anyone who plans to comply with Jamie’s request luck. I suggest you start here.
Abandoned London →
Xmas morning is the only time that London is (almost) empty of humans - so a morning spent cycling around town taking photos.
Interesting, though I assume it would be more so if I were more familiar with how London usually looks like, full of people.
What can first-order logic do for your... →
[N]erds stand to benefit, even more than normal people, from becoming more assertive, outgoing, optimistic, obamalike in temperament, and all those other good things,
… the fundamental problem with nerds is that they’re constantly overthinking everything,
… this means nerds are regularly beaten in life by people who think less than they do,
… it also means that nerds can’t...
iPhone fart app pulls in nearly $10,000 a day →
Had I only known I could trust iPhone users’ juvenile tendencies. Lesson learned: fart humor always goes over well with a significant portion of the population.
By the way, I wonder how fart jokes would fit in with an evolutionary theory of humor.
Humor as social bargaining →
I’d never considered what it is that makes something funny outside of any isolated instance of humor. This post presents an evolutionary account of humor, and while I can agree that humor is probably an evolved rather than a cultural trait, I have a strong intuition that there are different things that can make different situations funny, so I’m deeply suspicious of any theory that...
Underground City: Deep Down into Derinkuyu →
Awesome. Alan Weisman:
No one knows how many underground cities lie beneath Cappadocia. Eight have been discovered, and many smaller villages, but there are doubtless more. The biggest, Derinkuyu, wasn’t discovered until 1965, when a resident cleaning the back wall of his cave house broke through a wall and discovered behind it a room that he’d never seen, which led to still another, and another....
“It sounds so trite, but hard work and persistence will put you in the 98...”
– Andrew Phelps speaks truth.
Credit Crunch: the board game →
From The Economist. (via.)
too much chocolate →
Too much chocolate specifically aims to serve and connect young emerging editorial/fine art based photographers all over the internet.
I’m really enjoying this site thus far. The only thing I don’t like about it is the frames — <frameset> belongs in 1999 — ahem, it’s a nice site. The Rotating Gallery is a great idea:
The rotating gallery features the work of a...
Me Too! →
One way of telling how long a Microsoft employee has been working here is their reaction to the phrase “Bedlam DL3”. Just for grins, I was at lunch in the cafeteria with a bunch of co-workers and I blurted out, totally out of context: “Bedlam DL3”. About 3 of the old-timers in the group responded, in chorus “Me Too!” So why does everyone know about this rather mysterious phrase?
It all started...
“Millions long for immortality who don’t know what to do with themselves on...”
– Susan Ertz.
Noted Post-Marxist Sociologist, Philosopher, and... →
“You are outside life, you are above life, you have miseries which the ordinary...”
– Antonin Artaud, General Security: The Liquidation of Opium. Artaud strikes me as the kind of person you’d want to have one deep, all-night conversation with and then never see again: insane, unstable and the opposite of stupid.
It goes without saying that taking advice from a madman, on opium...
Javascript Snow: DHTML Snowstorm →
Please don’t.
