- Scholars beware!
Experts on the various fungi that feed on the pages and on the covers of books are increasingly convinced that you can get high–or at least a little wacky–by sniffing old books. Fungus on books, they say, is a likely source of hallucinogenic spores. [via]
- I have to admit, I didn’t immediately understand this video (a collaboration with NPR’s Radiolab), but I liked it enough to re-watch from the beginning once my brain kicked in. [via]
- I have no idea if the new Scott Pilgrim movie will be any good or not. Some say awesome, some not so much. I know this will lose me some indie geek cred, but I’ve been stuck halfway through the first volume for several months, not particularly loving it. That said, I can totally get behind this:
There’s no reason to be angry at the people you imagine a movie will make happy just because you didn’t like the movie. [via]
- Oh come on, it’s an honest mistake. [via]
- And finally, I need to start riding the subways more often!
books
Wednesday various
- You know, if you’re going to get a tramp stamp lower-back tatoo…
- The other day, I posed a question on Twitter and Facebook: grammatically, should it be the Beatles or The Beatles? I wasn’t interested so much in this particular example, but what people thought about the capitalization of the lead-in article. My question brought in a flurry of responses, some very well thought out, most in favor of capitalizing the “The,” only one (not in favor) citing an actual style guide, but I don’t think we reached anything like a consensus. It’s one of those things that boils down, for the most part, to personal aesthetics. I almost always write the Beatles, lower-case t, just as I almost always don’t italicize the “the” before “the New York Times.” You can find lots of people (and style guides) that dictate one or the other, but it pretty much comes down to personal preference. This particular example wasn’t work-related, so I didn’t have the APA style guide to fall back on. Despite what I usually do, this time I went with the capital T.
I bring all of this up simply because I was amused to see my initial question listed among Wikipedia’s lamest edit wars. You have to know which battles are worth picking. [via]
- No E-Books Allowed in This Establishment. Just lame.
- On the one hand, I’m intrigued by the idea of an Outer Limits movie. On the other hand, maybe a financially troubled studio and a pair of Saw writers aren’t the best people to see it through.
I do find it curious that none of the reports I’ve seen mention the more recent ’90s adaptation of the show — which, for better or worse, ran 5 years longer than the original.
- And finally, Jacob Weisberg on Sarah Palin:
The non-Sarah Dittoheads among us have to decide whether to regard this babble—favoring creation science, aerial wolf-shooting, and freedom of the press, so long as the press is “accurate”—as scary or funny. During the 2008 campaign, when there was a real chance that Palin could become the automatic successor to an impulsive, elderly cancer survivor, I found it more scary than funny. After McCain lost, and after Palin terminated her governorship in the effusion of furious gibberish known as her resignation speech, I have found it mostly funny. To be alarmed by Palin today presumes a Republican Party suicidal enough to want her to do more than run its weekend paintball games.
Me, I’m still a little scared. In today’s politics of the right, crazy is quickly becoming the new sane, and crazy seems to love it some Sarah Palin, you betcha. [via]
Tuesday various
- Want to live in the Chicago Museum for a month? Then you have to apply by tomorrow. [via]
- Hey now! If any hack is going to come in and make s–t up, it’s going to be James Cameron himself, dagnabbit!
- Wondering what makes humans special and unique? One hint: it may be NSWF. [via]
- A Tiny Apartment Transforms into 24 Rooms. And he didn’t even have to shout, “Autobots, roll out!” or anything.
- And finally, Dr. Seuss was never like this when I was growing up! [via]
Mondayness
The sheer Mondayness of today cannot be overstated.
I started reading the next book in the “Joe Pitt Casebooks,” Half the Blood of Brooklyn, and actually bought the last two books in the series. I’m not yet sure if I’m going to go straight ahead and just finish the series without a break, but they are entertaining (if gory and vicious) reads.
And that, really, is it. It’s the Mondayness, what can I tell ya?
Monday various
- Maslow’s Hierarchy of Robot Needs. [via]
You know, I’m pretty sure I’d never heard of Maslow’s hierarchy before just a couple of weeks ago, and since then I’ve seen multiple parodies of it. Weird how that works. [via]
- Good news for Quantum Leap fans: there will be a new movie. The bad news: it probably won’t be about Dr. Sam Beckett.
- Man, Spock’s back must have been killing him at the end of the day!
- Google says there are 129,864,880 books in the world. If I’m lucky, I read about 50 a year. You do the math. Luckily, I intend to live to be several millions years old. [via]
Of course, Google may just have made that number up, so who knows how much I’ll have to Methuselah-it-up before I get through just what’s already been published. (At least I know I can skip that Justin Bieber book, so that’s a load off my mind.) [via]
- And finally, Guy Walks Across America [via]: