quote out of context
If it is conceivable, just 57 years after the identification of DNA’s structure, for a Canadian poet to imprint his poetry into the DNA of a living organism then isn’t it probable that an intelligent designer in the past would have had similar desires and perforce much greater abilities to accomplish the task?
dear clusterflock
What’s your nickname?
this just in
After months of grueling tests, a species of horned dung beetle takes the title for world’s strongest insect.
Eat that ant lovers.
Update: Speaking of strong insects.
“feeling unalone”
Or what I like to call the “holy shit” moment, a moment that often happens at two in the morning when I am in the thick of a really good book and need to go to work in the morning:
Sometimes this process of resizing and refitting is easier than others. And sometimes, the prolific (or just incredibly fortunate) reader will stumble upon a sublime moment in a particular text in which the need for translation seems to disappear altogether. At these points, the reader suddenly feels that he knows exactly what the author is trying to articulate; and the amazing part is that he knows these things because he has experienced them himself without ever putting a name to them. For a chapter, a page, a paragraph, or even just a sentence fragment, it is as if the writer and the reader share one pair of eyes, one mind.
sarcasm
In my family, we have a coming of age ritual for this moment:
The point that most parents dread in the development of a teenager is not the day they come home clutching extra-strength cigarettes, vials of crack cocaine, or a moping, mute and jobless boyfriend five years their senior. It’s the day they come home with sarcasm.
(hat tip to Luke)
from the spam
Cabinet data, knee train important train catch address item explore expect save plant report interpretation engine.
from the comments
There are a number of ways to answer this question, pens have so many different qualities. I am not, surprisingly to myself, a pen snob. Lately I love Sharpies and pencils, though I am unbelievably particular about pencil lead. Retractable pencils are a complete topic in themselves. In terms of all other pens, for me it’s all about the fountain pen. I have never been able to see expensive roller balls and ballpoint pens as being anything other than status objects. I have a loathing of ball pens and roller balls are tolerable only in very particular cases. Okay but I LOVE the Fisher space pen.
But fountain pens are something else entirely.
NFL Overtime
NFL owners voted to allow changes to the overtime rule for postseason games.
If that first team scores a touchdown on first possession, the game would be over, but if both teams exchange field goals, actual sudden death, with the first team to score winning, would then occur. Teams voted the new change in by a margin of 28-4 for a postseason-only modification, but it’s entirely possible that in the next meetings in May, the rule could get the required 24 votes to be implemented on a full-time basis.
This sounds good to me.
caption contest?
Who is Merton?
An interview with Merton, the Chatroulette piano guy.
spam name
Murray Estrada.
from the spam
Good evening bros. I’m actually into shoes and I was digging allowing for regarding that meticulous model.
For Renner (Without Reason)
Not only is Renner on the road and unlikely to see this post, but so far as I know, he never cared one way or another for the late Alex Chilton. But I thought he might like some of the references in this interview excerpt, which he probably won’t read.
Don’t ask me why I do things like this.
Any influences?
“Lately I’ve been listening to Robin Gibb’s solo album, which is totally demented.
The way your current working methods were described to me sounds a lot like Eno. Do you admire him?
“Oh yeah, tremendously . . . snakes just crawl out of that record [Here Come the Warm Jets]. It just slithers along, a beautiful sound.”
You do Sky Saxon numbers.
“When I first heard that record (‘Can’t Seem To Make You Mine’), it was like my first reaction to ’96 Tears’. I said, ‘GOD! THAT IS THE WORST THING I’VE HEARD’, but now . . . ’96 Tears’ is one of the most powerful rock ‘n’ roll records ever made.”
Have you heard his new stuff, like ‘Universal Stars’?
“Yeah, I love that. He’s very underrated, a good songwriter.”
[From: Sandy Robertson. Sounds. "Alex Chilton: Getting The Cramps Between The Box Tops and Big Stardom." (via Rock's Backpages)]
Let’s backtrack our steps
from the comments
This weekend I’m going to get this bit here above my dong vajazzled.
there are too many convergent points of nerdery here for me to handle
It was the winner of a great contest idea by Kitsune Noir. Also, that card is broken, particularly in an artifact deck with Urza’s Lands and Time Walk.
Incidentally, do people play Magic: The Gathering anymore?
No!
No No No No No
Vajazzeling!?
Is there a single person who can justify this to me in the comments?
//Ben
pen nerdery, round 2
I’m fairly certain that Hilary Rodham Clinton’s pen of choice is a Pilot G2 Retractable Gel Ink Rolling Ball
Pen nerd that I am
It looks like he used a Cross. Politics.
photo out of context
quote out of context
I didn’t know it until just now, but I had been waiting all my life to watch a short film featuring Werner Herzog voicing a plastic shopping bag.
Peter Bil’ak’s 100-Year Calendar
fossilized 13th century brain
This is the left cerebral hemisphere of an 18-month-old infant who lived some 800 years ago. Such finds are extremely rare, because nervous tissue is soft and normally begins to decompose soon after death, so this specimen is unique in that it has been far better preserved than any other. Although reduced by about 80% of its original weight, many of its anatomical features have remained intact. The frontal, temporal and occipital lobes have retained their original shape; the gyri and sulci (the grooves and furrows on the surface, respectively labelled G and S, above) are easily recognizable; and amazingly, it contains the identifiable remnants of neurons.
(via marginal revolution)
alive and kicking
Independent books on the iPad.
Perseus Books Group, a large independent publisher that also distributes works from 330 other smaller presses including Grove Atlantic, Harvard Business School Press, Zagat and City Lights Books, signed a deal last week with Apple, following five of the six biggest publishers that have already signed agreements with Apple.
The Things They Carried
I heard on the radio that Tim O’Brien’s The Things They Carried is now twenty years old. How did that happen?
