Various amusing or interesting topics, or things that shock and appall me. Kind of a miscellaneous bin.
Scott Adams points out a possible link between creativity and boredom. I can see where he’s coming from, in that when you’re bored you’re more likely to think of something creative than when you’re too busy to think, but I’m pretty sure people can be creative even without boredom, at least in the area that …
This article suggests that acne is simply an unfortunate byproduct of going hairless. While that’s a good explanation for why it originally developed, it’s not a good reason why we still have it. It’s maladaptive, in that people with visible acne are seen as less desirable mates. But fifteen percent of people rarely if ever …
Continue reading ‘“Acne Science: What Makes Pimples So Peculiar To People?”’ »
It seems that the amount of prenatal testosterone that a person gets in the first trimester influences a laundry list of physical and mental characteristics, including sexual orientation, athletic ability, possibly autism, and (most importantly for this line of questioning), relative finger length. As well as a man’s penis length and chance of getting prostate …
Continue reading ‘“Is Our Fate Written in the Lengths of Our Fingers?”’ »
Yesterday’s entry was grim, so here’s something a little lighter. And the thing that makes it funny, at least to me, is that it’s all true. (I always wondered where the term “dashboard” came from.)
While researching a programming problem yesterday, I found a wonderful signature block on a message from someone named Alf P. Steinbach: A: Because it messes up the order in which people normally read text. Q: Why is it such a bad thing? A: Top-posting. Q: What is the most annoying thing on usenet and in …
Continue reading ‘How Not To Answer E-Mail: A Four-Line Tutorial’ »
You might have seen this guy, he was a guest on a lot of shows after he won the US Memory Championship earlier this year. Memory training is a topic that’s near and dear to my heart. I really think that schools should have one mandatory class every year devoted to it. Of course, it’ll …
Sometimes I really wish that I could think fast enough to come up with comebacks like this. 🙂
Remember that scammer I reported playing with a few months ago? Well, apparently one of his many brothers-in-crime didn’t get the memo about me. I picked up the phone earlier this month and found myself talking to another very-heavily-accented man, who again tried to tell me that my computer was infected. I briefly considered playing …
I don’t watch Internet video, as a rule, but this one made a hilarious exception.
You know, if you tried to make up something like this, you’d be laughed out of the room, but somehow it becomes perfectly acceptable when someone really does it.