I never knew how the vaccination/autism link first started. It seemed to be ridiculous: a plausible idea that was tested and found lacking, but that a few very loud voices insisted on believing anyway. So I was interested to hear about The Facts in the Case of Dr. Andrew Wakefield, a short comic-strip-panel-style treatise which …
When George Lucas came up with The Force, he was just looking for a plot device for a story. But I’ve often thought that he’d tapped into an idea whose power even he didn’t realize. Now there’s some evidence for that theory.
The old joke goes: “lucky rabbit’s foot? It wasn’t so lucky for the rabbit!” But it looks like having four of them is lucky for at least one. 😉 But the owner… $16,000 in plastic surgery, just to look like a character from a one-off eighties movie? I guess she thinks it’s worth it… (Hm, …
Continue reading ‘“Meet Darius, the world’s biggest rabbit”’ »
I have little interest in skateboards, and never learned to ride one, but that headline certainly grabbed my attention when I saw it. And apparently it’s true too.
That explains a lot about politics.
Malware authors are always trying to trick you into opening their craptastic payloads, often using the latest news headlines. But it seems that they didn’t care for the volcano story a few weeks ago: Eyjafjallajökull, despite being arguably the biggest news story of the year so far, is simply too difficult to spell for most …
Continue reading ‘“Cybercrooks befuddled by Icelandic volcano name”’ »
Thus proving that it’s a good thing that life sucks. 😉 (Seriously, I can’t wrap my head around the idea that suction like this could help wounds heal faster. I don’t know of any mechanism that could possibly explain it. And as Isaac Asimov is quoted as saying, “The most exciting phrase to hear in …
Continue reading ‘“$3 hand-powered suction device quickly heals wounds”’ »
It’s always a good idea to be on the lookout for fraud, of any kind. Where there’s money to be had, there’s incentive to make your product look a lot better than it really is, or to try to cover up flaws. When I look online for a product, I generally look for bad reviews, …
Continue reading ‘“Hone Your Eye for Fake Online Reviews”’ »
This is exactly why organizations like the Pirate Party or Wikileaks need to be kept around — because even if they espouse illegal or semilegal behaviors, or provide a safe haven for whistleblowers to air the proverbial dirty laundry, they act as a check to governments and the corporations that essentially run them. If they …
Continue reading ‘“Australian seniors ask Pirate Party for help in accessing right-to-die sites”’ »
From the Dilbert Blog: […] I have a related hypothesis. I believe that political conservatives can be identified by their faces, even after you control for haircuts and eyeglasses. Not all the time, of course, but more than chance. (Another way to say the same thing is that political liberals can be identified by their …