URLs du Jour

2008-02-06

Depressed and/or bored by recent political news? Hey, me too! So a pretty much politics-free post today.

  • Remember that story that everyone, including me, posted yesterday about Maine middle-schoolers getting detentions for intentionally farting? Never mind! (last item)

  • I am way out of Ken Jennings's league, trivia-wise, but I'm with him in spirit. His latest posting is (roughly) about people with wildly different life accomplishments. I would not have guessed that, for example:

    [Nina Wilcox] Putnam not only co-wrote the story for Boris Karloff's The Mummy—she also designed the IRS's 1040 form! The horror…the horror…

    Indeed. And yet, I feel somehow smarter knowing that.

    Ken's exaggerating, though, when he says that Fred Astaire was 85 years old when he was in Funny Face. He was only about 57, which is … er, uncomfortably close to my current age.

    Never you mind what I said before; this Jennings kid is a young smartypants whippersnapper. Deserves a good beatin', says I.

  • I liked this quote, seen at Little Green Footballs, attributed to Daniel J. Boorstin:

    The greatest obstacle to discovering the shape of the earth, the continents and the ocean was not ignorance but the illusion of knowledge.

    "The Illusion of Knowledge" would be a pretty good name for a rock band blog.

  • If you feel like you'll be wanting to rage against the machine in the foreseeable future, you'll want to check out Cracked's "25 Most Nonsensical Protest Signs". You'll want to know mistakes to avoid.

    My favorite:

    [destroy the computer]

    (The rainbow flag in the protester's other hand should clue you that this is a parody; confirmation on that is here.)


Last Modified 2012-10-14 10:46 AM EDT