Tetris fridge magnets. Cory Doctorow:


Tetris fridge magnets -- it was inevitable!

Link

(via Shiny Shiny)

[Boing Boing]
2:42:21 PM      comment []

Species cleansed by comet.

Interesting stories in The Economist and the Guardian/Observer about how UCSB professor James P. Kennett, director of the University's Marine Science institute, and other scientists, suggest that a comet wiped out both humans and animals in North America in roughly 10,900 B.C.

Evidence is found in the widespread dispersal of tiny diamonds that would be formed by a comet arrival, by the similarly dispersed charcoal in soils of that time period, and an absence of the iridium that would have accompanied an asteroid impact. This event also marked the end of the Clovis culture and the road for large animals (e.g. mammoths) that had perisisted up until that time.

Of course, humans may also have killed the big animals, but the comet would have done them both some major damage.

[The Doc Searls Weblog]
2:29:20 PM      comment []

Why do mafia hit men drop their guns at the scene of a crime?. On Sunday's episode of The Sopranos, the Italians shoot a man they have mistaken for New York boss Phil Leotardo. Later, Bobby Bacala is killed at the model-train store. Both times, the killers drop their guns at the scene of the crime. As Clemenza says in The Godfather, "Leave the gun, take the cannoli." How come mafia hit men always drop the guns?

By Michelle Tsai. [Slate Magazine]
2:29:05 PM      comment []

What does the Swiss Guard actually do?. As Pope Benedict XVI passed through St. Peter's Square during his weekly Wednesday audience, a man jumped over the barrier and apparently tried to climb aboard the pope's jeep. This video footage shows the papal security detail pouncing on the man while a member of the Swiss Guard stood by and watched. What do the Swiss Guards actually do?

By Christopher Beam. [Slate Magazine]
2:28:46 PM      comment []

How does a dirty word get that way?. A federal appeals panel on Monday said the FCC could no longer slap indecency fines on broadcasters who accidentally allowed the word fuck on the airwaves, arguing that these days the word fuck is commonly used to express frustration rather than sexual obscenity. How did fuck and other words get so dirty anyway?

By Michelle Tsai. [Slate Magazine]
2:28:22 PM      comment []

Everything you know about Sgt. Pepper's is wrong.. Thousands of apocryphal tales about Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band have been told and retold in the 40 years since the record's release, but the loveliest is a true one. Immediately following the completion of Sgt. Pepper's in the wee hours of April 21, 1967, the Beatles decamped from Abbey Road Studios to Mama Cass' apartment in Chelsea, where they flung open the windows and blasted an acetate of the album into the London morning at top volume. In the surrounding buildings, windows slowly rose in reply, and neighbors leaned out to listen to the Beatles' newest songs. It's a delightful image, a metaphor for the flood of joy and wonderment that the four Liverpudlians loosed on the world, and on England in particular, the windows, the minds, that were nudged open by the Beatles' sonically questing, love-affirming, sad, funny, irrepressibly tuneful music.

By Jody Rosen. [Slate Magazine]
2:27:59 PM      comment []

The CIA's favorite form of torture. If the Bush administration forces the CIA to drop "tough" interrogation techniques like waterboarding, the agency will probably fall back on a brutal method that leaves no physical marks. [Salon]
2:27:12 PM      comment []

Perhaps I should consider changing the name of this Blog. It's been over a month since the last post. Yipes!

1:04:33 PM      comment []