This weekend I saw Good-Bye, Lenin!, a German movie about a young man who must pretend that East Germany still exists, for the sake of his mother who was in a coma during the fall of the Berlin Wall and therefore remains unaware of the earth-shattering changes the took place while she was unconscious. There is, of course, the comedy of a yo...
Who knew that Beethoven wrote ambient music? The people at NOTAM took Beethoven's 9th Symphony and slowed it down so that the entire performance takes 24 hours. It's actually quite nice to listen to. (I like 2.1 myself.) [Rats, scooped by MetaFilter. Honest, it was in my queue! Nobody will believe me; they'll think I swiped it from Me...
The New York Times reported on two enormous construction projects of dubious merit: [The first bridge] would connect [Ketchikan, population 7845] to an island that has about 50 residents and the area's airport, which offers six flights a day (a few more in summer). It could cost about $200 million. The other bridge would span an inl...
It seems that giving away ice cream has been illegal in Tennessee since 1957, when state legislators were trying to combat alleged unfair trade practices by the dairy industry. Upon its being alerted to the existence of this law, the state Senate and House unanimously passed a bill to repeal the law, sending it to the governor for signa...
Spain's Crown Prince and his fiancée are outraged that they had to go through airport security in Miami. "The prince and his bodyguard felt they should not be subjected to the screening, but if they do not have an escort from the State Department or the Secret Service, it is required," she added. "It is the law." Apparently, the...
Competitive Scrabble® is another game entirely. For example, here's a game from the 2001 World Championship. You can follow it move-by-move, or you can read the game commentary. The name "Stefan" you see in the commentary is Wall Street Journal reporter Stefan Fatsis, author of Word Freak: Heartbreak, Triumph, Genius and...
There a fascinating article in today's New York Times on a troop of baboons which went pacifist: ... researchers describe the drastic temperamental and tonal shift that occurred in a troop of 62 baboons when its most belligerent members vanished from the scene. The victims were all dominant adult males that had been strong and snarly enoug...
As I was reading one of the bajillion annual reports in my mailbox, I happened across a comment regarding extraterrestrial income. Space aliens have to pay income tax? Oh, no, it was just a misread for the controversial extraterritorial income exclusion.
My friend Jonathan is acting as my host in Uppsala, and he was responsible for preparing dinner for a staff party at his nation. He chose curry. The same thing he chose the last time he was responsible for preparing dinner for a party. The last time, one of the attendees ceremonially dumped the curry into the trash because it was "inedi...
McDonalds anonunced that it would no longer offer "Super Size" on its menu. The ostensible reason was that the addition of newer healthier options didn't leave room on the menu for "Super Size". This was of course laughable on its face. Now it's even more laughable, because it turns out that the so-called "healthy" options are even fat...
