I’m not usually interested in sports, but this sounds fantastic: chess boxing. Berlin is home to the world’s biggest chess boxing club with some 40 members and it is in an old freight station here that the two men settled the matter early yesterday. The match began over a chess board set up on a…
More cruel jokes to play on literal-minded people. Similar:An Open Letter to Reuters Reporters Nate Raymond and David IngramHow did Reuters happen to get a picture …Current_Events"Do Date" vs "Due Date": Do Profs Really Have to Explain the Difference? If there really are teachers who lis…AcademiaThat gut-wrenching photo of immigrant children in a cage? First…
Nerdvana: ROFLCon (From Leeeeroy Jeninks to Bert is Evil to LOLTrek to Tron guy, old friends come back from the abyss; good thing too, because I’ve got more than 15 minutes of love for our favorite memes of yesteryear. Mix up a bunch of super famous internet memes, some brainy academics, a big audience, dump…
Spokesman Review: “Our editors (Wednesday) night noticed the similarities in the two photos,” said Paul Emerson, Tribune managing editor. “We are not crime-stoppers here. It is just a weird coincidence. If it did solve a crime, I’m glad it happened. I have seen nothing like this in my 26 years as Tribune managing editor.” A…
Well, Google didn’t say “glarbifulous” on its own, but I had a good reason to search the internet for a nonsense word. In order to confirm my feeling that the Associated Press’s preference for “Web log” is far less popular online than the traditional “weblog,” I did a quick Google search. 12,900,000 Google hits for…
Kate Luce Angell writes an entertaining feature on my next-door officemate and his work in Seton Hill’s Writing Popular Fiction MA program. Award-winning author and Seton Hill University professor Michael Arnzen demonstrates that in horror, as in life, it’s often the little things that matter most. Take his short-short piece “Nightmare Job #3,” which begins…
The Walls are Closing In  It’s all my fault that now I hear their death – their screams of pain within their final breath. No, we are alive. And thanks to you, we’ll get out. A whole song about such a literal event? Songs in musicals, even if they are showpiece numbers attached closely…
Wired’s Threat Level: Just two days after it was yelled out in a University of Florida lecture hall, “Don’t Tase Me, Bro!” has become the newest cultural touchstone of our pop-cultural lexicon. Similar:So this is Pi DayMy wife says she bought the pies intendi…AmusingWhen Robert Pinsky Wrote a Video Game[F]or a brief time in the…
In Texas, spiders have learned to cooperate. And I, for one, salute our new arachnid overlords. But Tuesday afternoon, thousands of Texas spiders were back at it, working to rebuild an immense spider web at Lake Tawakoni State Park that at one time stretched about 200 yards, covering bushes and trees to create a creepy…
Sean McBride: The problem I discovered was that one of the thin walls between the holes had broken and bent down, forming a ramp. When I plugged the DVI adapter into my computer, two of the pins went into the same hole, and the projector could no longer understand the output from my computer. However,…
The study had youngsters sample identical McDonald’s foods in name-brand and unmarked wrappers. The unmarked foods always lost the taste test. Robinson said it was remarkable how children so young were already so influenced by advertising. The study involved 63 low-income children ages 3 to 5 from Head Start centers in San Mateo County, Calif.…
An octopus with a porcelain plate stuck to its suckers has led to the discovery of a hoard of ancient pottery, South Korean scientists say. —Treasure trove ‘found by octopus’ (BBC) Thanks for the link, Rosemary. Similar:More Adventures in Suburban AdultingAbout four years ago I bought an electri…Culture2001: Stanley Kubrick’s Exasperating MasterpiecePosting this mostly to prove…
An armed gang of four kidnapped one of the world’s top RPG gamers after one criminal’s girlfriend lured him into a fake date using Orkut, Google’s social network. After sequestering him in Sao Paulo, they held a gun against the victim’s head for five hours to get his password, which they wanted to sell for…
bootlegs are wierd the only time i gop online is to blog on this my space woich juliet you are free to bring oiver to m,y site as its mine and i own it, anyway i dont know i told all myf riends an dyou too to be there 1030 sharp because weve been allabout…
The armada of 29,000 plastic yellow ducks, blue turtles and green frogs broke free from a cargo ship 15 years ago. Since then they have travelled 17,000 miles, floating over the site where the Titanic sank, landing in Hawaii and even spending years frozen in an Arctic ice pack. —Ben Clerkin —Thousands of rubber ducks…
What is it for? Why is it there? Did whoever put it up realize that if there were no sign, there would be no need to warn about it? Is this a joke from the developers? Is it a lesson in recursiveness? Is it a philosophical prop? —Bizarre Sign (Lushlush) Does it mean “Don’t forget to…
Back in the projector room, five hairy men wearing nothing but overalls, hardhats, and grime were toiling away, trying to get things under control. “It’s too powerful! It can’t take no more!” they yell as they hopefully pull levers and turn valves. “The movie is living up to the franchise! We’re going down!” Meanwhile, in…
—Stephen Granade —LOL Trek (Live Granades) I was vaguely aware of the lolcats phenomenon, which involves remediating the famous “Hang in there, baby” cat poster as if the cats themselves were writing the captions. Never did I expect it to be unleashed on the beloved Star Trek episode “The Trouble with Tribbles” (which has earned it…
Told to express emotion for a creative-writing class, high-school senior Allen Lee penned an essay so disturbing to his teacher, school administrators and police that he was charged with disorderly conduct, officials said Wednesday. Lee, 18, a straight-A student at Cary-Grove High School in Cary, Ill., was arrested Tuesday near his home and charged with…
—Pictaps (Roxik.com) Thanks to the Flash power of Roxik’s Pictaps, I can draw an effigy of the great Captain Kirk, and make him dance! Dance, captain dance! Your puny phasers are no match for my superior intellect! Bwahahaha! Man, it’s been a long day. Similar:Omaha schoolgirl dresses as a different historical figure each day Voilà , she…