Just in time for the holidays!

Please buy me this for Christmas. Then I will truly become self-actualized.

There is an area of Scotland where the life expectancy is 54.

I wouldn't have believed this if I hadn't seen The Acid House.

BBWW: Big Beautiful Wonder Woman

Fan fiction/artwork/slash has always held a special place for me as one of the most bizarre yet unproductive and (mostly) uninspired human expressions, pure perversion neatly packaged into others' original creations. However I do still enjoy a good trainwreck.

Thanks again Pierre!

It's all really, really there

The beauty of a living thing is not the atoms that go into it
But the way those atoms are put together
The cosmos is also within us
We're made of star stuff
We are a way for the cosmos to know itself

-Carl Sagan

A series of vocoded music videos about space and science featuring everyone's favorite science popularizers? Yes, please.

The Death Star of Minsk

Well, it does look really awesome.

Freedom from Covert Harrassment

Somehow my boss got on the listserv of a genuinely psychotic individual(s) who are convinced they're being watched by "US military intelligence and the US investigative agencies, certain defense contractors, corporations, as well as individuals and teams of private citizens."
In other words, everyone.

The List of Associated Harassment Activities reads like a second-person version of the DSM-IV.

I'm including this on the blog because I'm genuinely impressed at how organized and coherent this is. It's not hard to find some mentally ill folks on the internet, but combined with detail and late-90s web design, I'm sure they'll attract a little more attention than the average schizophrenic.

By the way, the latest email to my boss was about being dropped by their lawyers and looking for a new one. Anyone know any lawyers willing to represent these guys? I kinda want to listen in on their periodic conference calls.

As a bonus check out their expert witness, a real Canadian psychiatrist!

"I claim that I can send a beam of energy out of my eyes, capture it in a special set of goggles I have built, and then use the energy to make a tone play out of a speaker. I can do this using the equipment I will bring to the challenge and I can do so at any time, in any office or hotel room that is convenient. I can make the tone sound at will and can signal that I will do so with a finger signal or in response to a verbal command from another person, such as "now" or "go." The tone will play briefly when I decide to make it do so using my eyes and will not play at any other time."

He's taking on James Randi!

Cats can has swine flu and diplomas too!

Fresh off the heels of the first confirmed H1N1 case in cats is one of wikipedia's famed lists, evidence that everything must be catalogued (or in other words, lots of time on someone's hands). There's also links to a few good diploma mill stories there if you're interested.

By the way, isn't the phrase "time on their hands" just really bizarre?

Thanks to Pierre for this one.