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Study Says Brain Trauma Can Mimic A.L.S.

The mind boggles… Lou Gehrig might not have had Lou Gehrig’s disease. –NY Times

Games | Modding | PopCult | Weirdness

Rihanna to star in Universal's 'Battleship'

Director Peter Berg is expected to soon begin shooting the live-action tentpole based on Hasbro’s naval combat board game. –Variety

Boggle. Trouble. Sorry.

Current_Events | Design | PopCult | Technology | Usability | Weirdness

Pee-wee Gets an iPad

Pee-wee Gets An iPad! from Pee-wee Herman

Culture | Current_Events | PopCult | Psychology | Weirdness

As Goes Halloween, So Goes Childhood

In several of my classes this week, I asked the students to estimate how many children had been poisoned by Halloween candy in the last 20 years.  Guesses ranged from one per year to one, but nobody guessed zero. No child has been poisoned by a stranger’s goodies on Halloween, ever, as far as we [...]

Books | Culture | Media | Weirdness

Sweaters from Rover?

From Awful Library Books.

For more schadenfreud, see Cake Wrecks, Photoshop Disasters, and Fail Blog.

Culture | History | Journalism | Media | Weirdness

Newspapers Have Published Their Share of Hoaxes

Don’t hate on the TV media just because they helped the nation fall for the Balloon Boy Hoax. Back in the day, the print media were the obvious target.

On April 13, 1844, Edgar Allan Poe wrote an article in The New York Sun, chronicling how Monck Mason, leaving England for Paris drifted off course [...]

Current_Events | Weirdness

Balloon Boy Dad: "Absolutely No Hoax"

When Heene appeared, he instead simply displayed a box into which he invited the media to submit questions, to be answered this evening. –CBS

Well, he’s managed to extend his fame by another 15 minutes.

Books | Culture | Ethics | Rhetoric | Weirdness

Library 'scissor ban is absurd'

Ms Watts, from Islington, north London, said: “I asked why I couldn’t borrow a pair of scissors and she said, ‘they are sharp, you might stab me’.

“I then asked to borrow a guillotine to cut up my leaflets but she refused again – because she said I could hit her over the head with [...]

Nature | Science | Weirdness

Lost world of fanged frogs and giant rats discovered in Papua New Guinea

A team of scientists from Britain, the United States and Papua New Guinea found more than 40 previously unidentified species when they climbed into the kilometre-deep crater of Mount Bosavi and explored a pristine jungle habitat teeming with life that has evolved in isolation since the volcano last erupted 200,000 years ago. In a remarkably [...]

Academia | Culture | Education | Ethics | Rhetoric | Weirdness

The 7 Secrets of Highly Successful Students Sycophants

And you thought the secrets to academic success would involve sensible stuff like “Study for two to three hours for every hour of class” or “Keep up with the readings” and “Meet all the deadlines your prof sets.”

But those won’t help you game the system, which is the strategy Don Asher presents as the [...]