darw1n.net

The New York Times put up an anniversary article for Strunk & White’s 50th. It was a much more interesting read after the previous post regarding them. The other article made enough of a splash to be mentioned about halfway through, and then disregarded with a pithy quotation. Article.

…is apparently the The Sedlec Ossuary in the Czech Republic. It’s decorated with 40-60,000 human skeletons. Example: chandelier.

Apparently Texas rep Joe Barton thought that he had stumped Steven Chu — Energy Secretary and Nobel laureate — with the question: How did oil get underneath the North Pole and Alaska. The answer: too complicated for Barton. Link includes transcript and the video a triumphant (?) Barton placed up on Youtube.

Well, this is pretty bad… apparently the Pulitzer prize for investigative reporting was won by The New York Times’ David Barstow for a pair of articles (1, 2) that expose:

“how some retired generals, working as radio and television analysts, had been co-opted by the Pentagon to make its case for the war in Iraq, and how many of them also had undisclosed ties to companies that benefited from policies they defended.” – The Pulitzer Prizes

However, this Salon.com article points out that the story hasn’t actually been covered by any of the networks employing the offending persons, which is pretty much all of them. It points out an NBC broadcast and CNN publication which both announce the winners of the prizes, except for this report. Which is… just… bad.

There’s an interesting and/or weird case right now where a 13 y/o girl is suing a sperm bank for providing her mother with sperm that led to the girl having a mental impairment. Apparently all she has to do is show that the bank’s product was “unsafe and caused injury”. I give props for finding interesting ways to use product liability laws.

Here is what the title promises. It looks cool with the exception that it mostly looks the same, “but more”… not that this is altogether bad, of course. If you missed the 356W post awhile back you play from the point of view of a Big Daddy and can, according to the video at least, attack with the drill. This vid shows him in pursuit of a (the?) “Big Sister”.

The Onion released a News Network video titled: Hot New Video Game Consists Solely of Shooting People Point-Blank in the Face. They then released said videogame online here. I strongly recommend watching the news item and then playing the game; the cutscenes alone are worth it, though I also enjoyed the shootings in the face.