While I’m uploading some MP3s for a music post a little later tonight, let’s do the tab closing dance:
- Did you see the story about the scientists who unfroze the blob of 120,000 year old life in the Arctic? I can’t do my usual thing of making the news sound like a creepy SF or Lovecraftian story, since the actual article takes core of that–especially the bit about how the scientists think “their laboratory revenant may be related to indestructible super-aliens”. Hell, why not just call them shoggoths?
- I see where science has invented an even blacker black than the last blackest black. I am totally ready for this to become productized as fuligin, so that I can start buying some T-shirts.
- I’ve never been even vaguely interested in cigarettes, but I do like these ads from the 60s–they are kind of like the boiled down essence of advertising to men. I particularly like the last one, as it plays into my whole book thing.
- I kind of feel sorry for Paul Krugman–he keeps thinking it’s possible for the populace, and the pedagogues, to learn from history. And, all Obama’s apparent skill aside, I suspect he’s doomed to disappointment.
- And in the absolutely most insane true story I saw this week category, the clear winner is the one about the unassuming German librarian who survived a plane crash, a fall of over 3km (no chute!), and then a 10 day jungle hike with a broken collarbone. What are the odds of that fall being survived, and the compound that with the odds that the lucky survivor would be hard-core enough to walk out of the jungle with a broken collarbone. Damn. Of course if I were her, I would probably never take another chance on anything again–I’d assume my lifetime quota of luck was completely used up.
- I know it was a joke to Mark Thomas, but I kind of think there’s a serious argument to be made for the notion of an age of consent for religion, at least as a kind of thought experiment. That’s some powerful memetic crack there, and there’s something fundamentally wrong about laying it onto someone who hasn’t finished their mental development enough to make responsible decisions about it.
- While I’m picking on religion, let me pull out a little bit of Feynman. I love his statement that he likes questions and being unsure, but I especially love his snap on creation myths as being “too provincial”–that’s a solid burn, and one that I intend to use later.
- I love stories about “unbreakable” ciphers being cracked, and I love stories about real-world historical mysteries, so a story about a professor stumbling on a historical cipher and working it out is pretty much right up my alley.
And that should do it.
