- Creationists take on Dr. Pepper. They do know he’s not a real doctor, don’t they?
- Speaking of which: Video Dial-a-Doctor Seen Easing Shortage in Rural U.S.
- Tree removal for space shuttle arrival tempers excitement:
For some South L.A. residents, the excitement of Endeavour rumbling through their neighborhoods en route to the California Science Center faded when they learned that 400 trees had to be cut down.
- Birds Hold Funerals for Their Dead
- And finally, Johnny Carson’s senior thesis: How to Write Comedy for Radio [via]
space
Thursday various
- SETI and the problems with searching for alien life [via]
- Grant Morrison Comic Bingo [via]
- Scooby-Doo and Secular Humanism:
To paraphrase G.K. Chesterton, Scooby Doo has value not because it shows us that there are monsters, but because it shows us that those monsters are just the products of evil people who want to make us too afraid to see through their lies, and goes a step further by giving us a blueprint that shows exactly how to defeat them. [via]
- The darker side of Groupon. Apparently it kind of sucks for small businesses. [via]
- The Myths at the Bar, Debunked
- The harrowing story of What Really Happened Aboard Air France 447. Warning: you almost certainly will not want to fly after reading this. (Also: FAA approves iPads in the cockpit.) [via]
- The AV Club compiles a list of 26 destructive fictional therapists. I keep thinking there’s maybe a book in this, but that’s maybe just my day job talking.
- When William Gibson wrote, “The sky above the port was the color of television, tuned to a dead channel,” did he really mean Fox News? Does Newt Gingrich want to make Neuromancer come true? [via]
- Star Trek People Drinking Coffee. Does exactly what it says on the tin.
- And finally, the lovely video for “In Your Arms” by Kina Grannis. After, I recommend the making-of video. [via]
Wednesday various
- Mark Evanier on celebrity voices in cartoons…and why it’s mostly same as it ever was.
- Along sort of the same lines (and also via Evanier), the Cartoon Color Wheel. Where does your favorite cartoon fall along the wheel?
- Nathan Rabin revisits Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip so you don’t have to. His review is a lot more intelligent and funny than the series itself ever was.
- Dream is over for Virgin Galactic space tourist:
After waiting seven years to fly aboard Sir Richard Branson’s Virgin Galactic spaceline, Walton gave up on the dream and asked for a $200,000 ticket refund on his 75th birthday this past spring. [via]
- And finally, the TARDIS Teapot:
It’s neat, but they’re missing a golden opportunity by not having it make the TARDIS sound when you pour. [via]
Monday various
- I am strangely fascinated by NASA’s book for the visually impaired, Getting a Feel for Lunar Craters. It’s sold out right now; they do have the text and an audio version freely available, but that seems like it misses the whole point of a tactile book. [via]
- Have we all been playing Monopoly wrong all these years? I like Waxy.org’s post about it, in which Andy Baio writes, “It’s interesting to see a commercial game see the same sort of cultural variation as other children’s folk games.”
- TV’s ‘Cash Cab’ kills pedestrian in Vancouver. Reality television is dangerous, people! [via]
- Can you survive Baltimore’s 5k run? Sounds like The Wire meets The Walking Dead. [via]
- And finally, the Empathic Civilisation [via]
Tuesday various
- NASA proves Einstein was smart. Okay, it’s a little more complicated than that — namely, finding that there’s “a space-time vortex around Earth, and its shape precisely matches the predictions of Einstein’s theory of gravity” — but yeah, basically: Einstein? No dummy. [via]
- Gelatin cubes dropped onto solid surface High Speed Video. Strangely fascinating. [via]
- Time Magazine talks to the kids who were there with George W. Bush on 9/11. I’m not sure I agree with them. Maybe Bush did just want to protect the kids he was reading to from finding out, from panicking, but his focus probably should have been on the nation as a whole. Still, there’s no denying they have a unique an interesting perspective on that day. [via]
- Oh, thanks a lot, monarchy! Book slump to eight-year low in Royal Wedding week.
- And finally, what American accent do you have? It guessed me correctly, although your mileage — especially if it’s, y’know, outside the US, and…what’s the word for “mileage” in metric anyway? Kilometrage? [via]