Things Sean Connery Should Say

What it says: Link.

Via Pomplamoose.

.

Emerging trends in YA supernatural lit.

The Penny Arcade guys were having a go at trying to figure out what would gain popularity once vampires lost their allure:

Link.

But apparently they've decided that their first impressions were mistaken. The book even has it's own trailer.

The Tetris God

Via College Humor.

.

The science behind roommate conflicts

Extra-terresoteriology

Apparently our peeps were discussing life in the universe last month.

This article seemed to be attempting to try dredge up any conflicts between Catholic doctrine vs. life on other planets controversial.

But the conference itself was apparently more dedicated to the discussion of astrobiological science rather than it's intersection with theology per se.

Tickle Me Emo

Not right (but I've thought it so many times):

Girls Guild

The Girls Guild: An ancient esoteric order for girls.

Conveniently Creative Commons licensed.

Via Boing Boing.

.

The Benefits & Dangers of a Soy-heavy Diet

Given the edamame currently in our freezer I thought you might find this Boing Boing article of interest.

You should probably read the article for details but, long story short: The less processed the soybeans, the better they are for you.

Relationship discussion from the RPG crowd

Looks like someone's followed up a little on the Love Widget theme:

Sex Advice from D&D Players

Warning: Parental advisory should probably be issued for some of the entries.

Via Boing Boing.

.

Vamping

Your icy kiss
- via the FMyLife blog.

Shimmering with life
- via the FMyLife blog.

Meetup for Weirdos (But who am I to point fingers?)
- via Boing Boing

.

Snarky bookseller converasations

The BookMine website has collected a number of conversations over the years:

(Older gentleman calls)

I see you have a book titled "---" listed on your web site for $200

Ok

I am the author.

Ok

That book originally sold for under $20

Ok

How can you justify that?

Justify what?

Charging so much!

That's what it's worth. Look it up on Bookfinder

You will make more on the book than I did

I guess I should feel bad about that! If it makes you feel better, you could adjust for inflation (30 years)

I just doesn't seem right

It's the free market at work. You shouldn't have written such a good book

I will take that as a compliment

It was

And plenty more similar conversations where that came from.

Via Boing Boing.

Babies - The motion picture

A documentary on, what else, four infants from around the world. Trailer is cute and heartwarming beyond belief!

Via Boing Boing.

Marsh Gods

A fantasy story Adrienne's might enjoy.

Page here.

Direct link to mp3 here.

Failure & Success!

You may be aware of the Fail blog, but what about the one chronicling Success?

Psychology in Predatory Lending

More about how credit card companies do what they do.

Article here.

Via Boing Boing.

Parenting Literature

Readings on Ambivalent Parenting
Thought you might find this of amusement.

If Your Kid Eats This Book, Everything Will Still Be Okay - parenting book full of things you don't need to worry about
And this to be of general interest and possibly reassurance.

.

The Uglies - Free PDF

This was pointed out on Boing Boing. It's no longer available at the link they pointed out, but it can still be found here.

Thought that a searchable text version might come in handy at some point.

.

The Millitary Industrial Complex vs. Powerpoint

Writing in the Armed Forces Journal, retired Marine T.X. Hammes excoriates PowerPoint and its impact on decision-making in the military.

More at Boing Boing (or even more here).

.

Psapp - Hi

The Adventures of Li'l Cthulhu

Booklife

A guide to writing for a living, and/or a lifestyle.

Given one of your possible intended choices of profession this book might be of interest.

Superflat Monogram

Basically a Louis Vuitton commercial, but cute.

Watcher note: To improve the video quality significantly take the following steps:
1. Expand the video to full screen.
2. Start the video playing then immediately stop it.
3. An icon labeled "HQ" will appear in the bottom corner of the video. Click that "HQ" icon.
4. Click play again to start the video.

The Cosmos from Saadat Shahr

Via Dirty Russia.

Mouse!

A girl and her pet.

Via Dirty Russia.

The Wearable Towel!

I know what two of my favorite RDs are getting for Christmas!

But still the question remains: Tunic or Toga style?


Via Boing Boing.

Strange New Worlds

Onion Headline:

Scientists Discover Portal To Outside World

Hopefully our offspring will be one of the brave souls willing to explore this bizarre dimension.

Pool rules

Looks like BU's not the only place that requires 'em.

Via Boing Boing.

Leviathan

From Scott Westerfeld:


Also Chapter 1 as an audiobook:



Via Boing Boing, etc.

That which does not kill me . . .

Apparently the US Department of Agriculture has a set of guidelines on when it's ok to eat moldy food. I thought I'd heard somewhere that things like this used to be published in news papers during the depression to help folks extend their food budget further.

Here 'tis:

Click image for entire article.

Via Boing Boing, via Make, via the USDA.

Lining Your Nest

From ABC News and the Associated Press:

A mouse found inside an automatic teller machine . . . had thoroughly torn up two bills and damaged another 14 to line his nest. Employee Millie Taylor says she screamed and slammed the machine's door shut.

The bank replaced all the money that wasn't extensively damaged, and the ATM has continued to work just fine. The mouse also got a reprieve: He was evicted from his nest but set free outside the station.

Those Darn Plums In The Icebox

Click image for more legible version.

(And of course the relevant poem.)

Roles Hodgman Would Have Dominated

John Sellers of True Slant writes:

[John Hodgman] is also one of my personal friends, and has been for quite some time . . . so when he became a national sensation a few years back, it was only natural that I would spend many late nights at bars with some of his other old friends discussing the various ways that it’s bizarre to know someone who has suddenly become overwhelmingly famous.

And we’d sit around and play The Roles John Hodgman Would Have Dominated game.

The object of the game is to come up with the many parts that seem to have been written specifically with Hodgman in mind, even those that predate the onslaught of Hodgmania . . . Also, it’s important to remember that this game isn’t about finding Hodgman look-alikes; it’s about finding Hodgman act-alikes. And so none of this Dr. Bunsen Honeydew nonsense.

7 good examples following the link.

Via Boing Boing.

Ashton Kucher eat your heart out.

(Click image for full comic.)

Rare Book Collecting Sneak

Those crazy 19th century antiquarians and their sneaky, sneaky ways. I love the image of all these sworn enemies sitting in an obscure tavern railing about how they've been wronged.

Best read this article:

The Fortsas Bibliohoax


More here.

Play Hard - Sleep Well

Sophie Ramsey, Consumer Reports:

It makes sense, after all, that kids will be more tired and ready for sleep if they've been physically active during the day. Now researchers have done a large study published in the medical journal Archives of Disease in Children to put these parental observations to the test.

The study included 519 healthy 7-year-olds from New Zealand, who each wore a device called an actigraph for 24 hours. An actigraph records movement, providing an objective measure of a child's activity level and sleep time. Parents also noted when their child went to bed, which allowed researchers to calculate how long after bedtime children actually fell asleep.

The researchers found a wide variation in how quickly children fell asleep, with some taking as little as 13 minutes and others needing more than 40 minutes after going to bed. Within this range, there was a close relationship between the onset of sleep and daytime activity. On average, children took an extra three minutes to fall asleep for every hour they weren't moving about. Also, the children who fell asleep faster slept longer overall.

Thank heavens ours runs around like a nut all the live-long day.


Via Boing Boing, Via Consumer Reports, via Archives of Disease In Children.

Txting Dth

Sometimes these things just hit the mark so well any commentary is superfluous.


Via AJC by way of Dirty Russia.

Doctor Hizouse

By the Washing Tones.


c/o Dirty Russia.

Infant window box / acrophobia torture device

The Boing Boing commenter likened it to a Skinner box.

Though personally I find it brings more to mind Professor Gallagher's controversial treatment technique*.


* - Comic gleaned from Bedford, Freeman and Worth.

Wookie Dog & Fashion Show

MTV International / Mister Furry from Universal Everything on Vimeo.

Via Boing Boing.

Tower of Goats

Via BoingBoing:

Jim Leftwich says:

"I'm thinking the next step beyond raising chickens in the backyard is to have your own Goat Tower!

"Currently there are only three Goat Towers in the world (which I think you'll agree is not nearly enough!). The original Goat Tower was built in 1981 by Charles Back at the Fairview Wine and Cheese Estate in Paarl, South Africa. The estate has 750 Saanen goats and some of these are allowed access to the tower."

See also Wikipedia.

Going in with Gunns a Blazing

Tim Gunn to be a character in Marvel Comics:


More details in the New York Times article.


Tip o' the (yellow) hat to my sister for pointing it out.

Or the Ballhawk's Baleful Cry

Click image for original (ie. legible) version.

Skin Deep: Beauty's dangerous price.

Via Boing Boing:

James sez, "The web site Skin Deep covers the issues related to the lack of oversight regarding the safety of cosmetics:"

Skin Deep is a safety guide to cosmetics and personal care products brought to you by researchers at the Environmental Working Group.

Skin Deep pairs ingredients in more than 42,000 products against 50 definitive toxicity and regulatory databases, making it the largest integrated data resource of its kind. Why did a small nonprofit take on such a big project? Because the FDA doesn't require companies to test their own products for safety.

More at Skin Deep's own website.

Bibliophile's Dream / Nightmare

. . . depending on your perspective.

CSI: Mathnet

Life after Square One.

The Incompressable John Hodgman: On Lying Artfully

From Hodgman's interview with Psychology Today*:

In both of my books, I have struggled against plain absurdity. Pure non-sequiturs (such as: "Thomas Jefferson was secretly a VIKING!") have a certain flighty charm to them. But I like some factness with my fakery.

Better to say that Thomas Jefferson was thought by his wealthy neighbors to be a witch. For really, how else to explain how this prosperous Virginian slave owner would suddenly become a radical revolutionary--other than Satanic possession?

. . .

Ideally, fake facts help to jostle our imaginations. They remind us how much of actual history is so strange, and novelistic, and practically unbelievable.

But I am not a lunatic. Obviously I know that it wasn't Satan who had taken over Jefferson's mind, but the Mole-Men.

More of the story here.

* - Note: Actual date was not "today", but in reality about a week ago.

White Collar Squid

Sven's less-hip, cephalopod counterpart.

Etc.

Via Boing Boing.

Fighter back in the ring.

Thought you'd like to know.

Link.

Daughters of Eyrewood (and Lookouts)

This recently from Penny Arcade:


Thought you might find this of interest.

But mainly because it led to this.

And ultimately this:

Seems like the sort of early-life training a sparkle-princess would enjoy.

Fear the Claw

One of those situations where violating traffic law is probably the wiser course of action.

More of the same here.

And here.

(and here)

Of cake & panties . . .

. . . and their respective levels of humidity.

The word that comes next on the "least favorite" leaderboard is moist. Many people feel quite strongly about moist - there's even a Facebook group called called "I HATE the word MOIST!" with more than 300 members. One Facebooker calls moist "possibly the worst word in the English dictionary," while another says, "I despise the sick, repugnant word!"

- Visual Thesaurus

Link.

.

I ♥ NOVELTY FONTS!

What's wrong with Papyrus!?

Those snobs should just be glad it's not Comic Sans.

Printer Economics

Remember that year when printers were literally cheaper than replacement cartridges and students leaving for the summer abandoned the things in droves?

Prestigious plagarism

How hard is it to paraphrase?


Pointed out on Boingboing.

Photo via Orange Crate Art.

Greater Heroism

I'd probably stand a better chance with this than the more conventional versions.

Teen Texting Practices

Before I headed to Atlanta to do fieldwork, I asked folks who follow me on Twitter (@zephoria) what questions I should ask teens. Many of the questions that I received were more general questions about teens, rather than questions for teens. Still, I'm going to take a stab at very briefly answering some of the questions that I received based on what I know and what I learned.

- zephoria

More here.

Know When to Run

RunPee is a website that tells you the best time to use the facilities while a movie is playing.

Because you can't have UP with "U" "P".

Proper Hydration

I've known people who carried around those ridiculous mugs large enough to get the full eight glasses of water in a day. But if you're doing this sort of thing why do it half-assed?