- Giant prehistoric krakens may have sculpted self-portraits using ichthyosaur bones. “McMenamin anticipates that this theory will be met with skepticism.” Gee, ya think?
- Are DVD “special features” already a quaint relic of the past? Certainly, they seem to have quickly become a premium feature only.
- Computer Virus Hits U.S. Drone Fleet [via]
- Typewriter cocktail machine [via]
- And finally, If Arthur Dent Was In ‘The Dark Knight’ Instead of Harvey Dent
science
Thursday various
- Painless Protein Scaffold Lets Cavity-Ridden Teeth Re-Grow From the Inside Out [via]
- The Complete Harry Potter Story In One Comic [via]
- Dolce & Gabbana in dock over ‘killer jeans’. What William Gibson calls “The life-threatening labor required to ma[k]e the jeans of people who don’t do physical labor look somewhat as if they did.”
- Can you tell the difference between these Letterman and Leno monologue jokes? I sure couldn’t. [via]
- And finally, Betty has an odd, random thought:
…namely that if a zombie apocalypse were to suddenly erupt, whatever clothes I’m wearing right now could very well be what I’m shambling around biting people in forever, or at least until someone gets a clear head shot. This idea especially tends to occur when I’m wearing a t-shirt that would be just a little too apt in the circumstances. Like my Farscape “Irreversibly Contaminated” shirt. Or the one that says, “Life Is Short. Read Fast.” Or my Monty Python and the Holy Grail pajama pants. (“It’s only a flesh wound!”) In this fashion, I manage to simultaneously amuse myself and kinda creep myself out.
Monday various
- Diamond World Discovered by Astronomers [via]
- Scrabble makes you smarter, say Calgary researchers [via]
- McMaster research finds link between gut bacteria and behaviour [via]
- 6 Technologies Conspicuously Absent from Sci-Fi Movies [via]
- And finally, Frank Bruni Takes Aim at Anthony Bourdain, Misses the Point:
[Paula] Deen, for all of her folksy, I’m-just-cooking-for-all-of-y’all-who-can’t-afford-microgreens charm, has made many millions thanks to her partnership with Smithfield Foods, the pork producer and processor that’s made headlines for abusing unions, animals, small farmers, and the environment. (It’s also given plenty of campaign contributions to the GOP, that bastion of fairness to the working class.) Deen is no less a member of the culinary aristocracy than Bourdain — they just belong to country clubs with different rules. [via]
Tuesday various
- Orange goo near remote Alaska village ID’d as eggs. Well that’s one question answered… [via]
- Help provide free copies of Slaughterhouse-Five to students at book-banning high school. I sent them five bucks myself last night.
- Are smart people getting smarter? (See also: Everything Bad Is Good for You.) [via]
- Stan Lee is determined to create new superheroes for every man, woman, and child on Earth, isn’t he?
- And finally, How to Build a Newsroom Time Machine. This is kind of wonderful…even if the notion that they’ll need to teach this kind of course again twenty years from now is kind of predicated on the idea that there will be newsrooms twenty years from now. [via]
Wednesday various
- I liked Ryan McGee’s review of the new show Take the Money and Run, which he describes as “LARP&Order.” I don’t think I would remotely enjoy the show.
- The Stanford Prison Experiment 40 years later. [via]
- The headline reads: North Dakota is not a state and never has been. I’m reminded of TV Nation’s visit to the so-called state. [via]
- You know, I’m not entirely sure how I feel about schools no longer teaching cursive, but I think I’m pretty much okay with it. [via]
- And finally, John Hodgman on acting:
[W]hat I kind of began to understand about acting is that it’s similar to writing. You warm up for a while, you hate it, you don’t know what you’re doing, you feel totally fake and phony, you feel like you’re mechanically imitating what you did before and you’ll never be able to get any inspiration again, and then suddenly this voice starts coming out of you. And whatever it is you’re working on, if you’re writing, you realize there’s a story that you’re trying to tell that you didn’t know that you were trying to tell. And I think acting is the same way. There’s this period where you’re just pretending to be a human, and then, all of a sudden, some kind of human really emerges from you.