“Anachronous discovery: Swiss watch in ancient tomb”

Damned clumsy time travelers. 😉 (“Anachronous” is probably a better term for this than the writer realized.) I’ve confirmed that the article isn’t a hoax, at least — it really was reported, and discussed pretty widely at the time. Whether the watch is or not is an open question. A cursory glance at the Google …

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“The Effect of Country Music on Suicide”

I recently spotted this quote on our friend interrobang’s blog: The results of a multiple regression analysis of 49 metropolitan areas show that the greater the airtime devoted to country music, the greater the white suicide rate. The effect is independent of divorce, southernness, poverty, and gun availability. — Steven Stack and Jim Gundlach, “The …

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“The Wild World of Robots”

Interesting facts and statistics. And if you squint at it just right, you can almost see the future that science fiction has foretold for the last sixty years or so, right around the corner. (Via Lifehacker) EDIT, 2013-05-01: The first sentence above used to link to <http://www.onlineschools.org/blog/wild-world-robots/&gt;, but I was asked today by someone from …

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“German boffins develop sharkskin paint for ships, planes”

World War II warplanes were often painted with sharp-toothed heads on the fronts, to improve the morale of the pilot’s side and, hopefully, decrease it on the enemy’s. But apparently that’s not enough; now scientists have come up with a justification for stenciling the whole thing to look like a shark. 😉 (All kidding aside, …

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“Online Privacy: Check Yourself (Before You Wreck Yourself)”

I like snarky-but-true comments. This one is particularly good. The article it leads to is also packed with good advice. I don’t particularly worry about my online privacy. I have my browser set to delete cookies (including Flash super-cookies) whenever I close it, I keep Javascript blocked for most sites, and I absolutely refuse to …

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