The mouseover text on this XKCD is fabulous.
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Author: Glen
Regaining Childhood
Interesting way to think about it.
Does new information slow down your life?
From William Reville, here is a speculation: Finally, here is a “guaranteed” way to lengthen your life. Childhood holidays seem to last forever, but as you grow older time seems to accelerate. “Time” …
Global Crime
How interesting.
Has there been a “reversal of fortune”? Paolo Buonanno, Francesco Drago, Roberto Galbiati, and Giulio Zanella step into these treacherous waters with a new paper (pdf): Contrary to common perceptions…
Clips From The Web
Osborne brings his usual wisdom — especially point 3.
SLOW DOWN – YOU MOVE TOO FAST!
If You Forget You Are Sad, Are You?
The bit about amnesia made me laugh out loud. Wow.
Do sleeping pills like Ambien work because of the placebo effect? — Barking up the wrong tree
Join 25K+ subscribers. No spam, ever. Enter your email here: Sleeping pills on average only make people fall asleep 12 minutes faster and sleep 11 minutes longer during the night. The placebo effect m…
Depressing
Wow.
Freakonomics » Speaking Ill of the Dead Apparently Okay if the Dead Worked for Chick-fil‑A
Sysco is the latest food giant—it’s the largest food distributor in the country—to come out against gestation crate confinement of pigs. The National Pork Producers Council’s communications director w…
Lolo!
Lolo wound up placing 4th. I wish she had won a medal.
Lolo Jones can’t be sexy, Christian and a hurdler » GetReligion
Some readers sent in a recent piece from Salon, which (for those who stopped reading it back in the 1990s) bills itself as “the leading progressive news site, combining award-winning commentary and re…
Conspiracies
This is one of the best rebuttals to a conspiracy theory that I’ve ever seen.
Three days ago in the summer of 1969, Apollo 11 became the first manned mission to land on the moon. One small step for man; one giant leap for mankind. Of course, it makes perfect sense that the whol…
If I Was Rich and Bored
As I was standing in line for security screening at a flight, I began to think about how ridiculous so much of airport security is.
I decided that if I were rich and bored it would be fun to buy thousands of nail clippers and stuff them into my suitcase. I suppose it would look like solid metal when the machine scanned it, and so a physical inspection would be required.
I imagine the TSA agents unzipping the suitcase and gazing upon countless nail clippers. At first they would be puzzled. Then, slowly, comprehension would dawn. I would wait one heartbeat after that moment of awareness, then yell to the passengers behind me, “Operation nail clippers is a no go. Repeat, no go. Run for it!”
And then as I rush off into the distance, I would cackle back over my shoulder, “This isn’t over. We’ll be back. Next time we’re bringing bottles of water! Your planes will never survive against our schemes! Bwahahahah!”
And then I would use my rich person magic to make the charges against me go away.
That’s what I would do if I was rich and bored. As things stand, I was bored but not rich, so I left my nail clippers at home and disposed of my deadly beverage and all you get is this meditation upon the security farce we endure when we fly.
Candy Is Edible Joy
Candy is a good thing. Candy is joy given caloric expression. Candy is, to twist an old saying, proof that God loves us and wants us to be happy.
I do not think my wife believes this in her heart. She is a mom, and there is a lot of pressure on moms to believe that candy is bad. In the land of moms, candy is a controlled substance. One, incidentally, for which medical prescriptions are not forthcoming.
And so as we were going to bed on Halloween I told her, “There’s something important we need to establish before we go to sleep tonight. The presence of leftover candy in our house is not a problem to be solved, it is a joy to be celebrated. We don’t have to give it away, throw it away, or find some creative use for it. Eating it will be sufficient.”
I felt like a Mormon knocking on Richard Dawkins’ door, but sometimes a dad has to step up. Edible joy is a rare thing and worth defending.