Stall Talk: Why must people insist on speaking to you in the bathroom?
A personal version of hell: conversations with strangers in public bathrooms, specifically, his being forced into conversation while urinating. "[T]o not reply would only make me appear as though I were a little too involved in my own act. I am bound by the forces of human social dynamics and nudity to weakly appear at ease with the hell I am in." From IronMinds

It is a British Christmas tradition that a wish made while mixing the Christmas pudding will come true only if the ingredients are stirred in a clockwise direction.

Someone help me, please: Am I a Dot.com guy?

Monty Python and the Great British Invasion that almost wasn't
What makes something funny? It is a question even the revered British comedy troupe Monty Python had to struggle with early on, according to Gadfly magazine. Chronicling the troupe's early flops with American audiences and then great triumph, the article illustrates the all-important cardinal rule of laughs: know your audience. From Gadfly Magazine

Lottery: a tax on people who are bad at math.

Could Zapatistas lose out to President Fox in war of ideas?
"On the surface, it would seem that Mexico is on the road to peace in Chiapas," writes Martin Espinoza. While the July election of peace-seeking President Vincente Fox ended the institutional ruling party's 71-year-old autocracy, Fox's ideological differences with his constituents may create a new, more insidious rift. From Jinn magazine

Open Letter to President Vincente Fox from EZLN's Subcomandante Marcos

"When you're swimmin' in the creek And an eel bites your cheek That's a moray"
--- Fabulous Furry Freak Brothers

How world cartoonists saw our electoral circus

When distributing gifts in Holland, St. Nicholas is accompanied by his servant, Black Peter; who is responsible for actually dropping the presents down the chimneys. However, legend claims that Peter also punishes bad children by putting them in a bag and carrying them away to Spain.

David Blaine and Blue Man Group: Extreme Performance Art
The latest incarnation of Houdini-style performance art. He recently subjected himself to three days encased in ice, receiving $1 million for his artistic effort. From Village Voice

Someone just pointed out to me that the following Emily Dickinson poem...
"Hope" is the thing with feathers
That perches in the soul
And sings the tune without the words
And never stops at all
...can be sung to "Gilligan's Island" or "The Yellow Rose of Texas."

Adventures Through Inner Space
Despite the negative take encouraged by the "war on drugs" on psychoactive substances, the last decade has seen a small renaissance in psychedelic research, both above and underground. Feed explores the growing subculture of "psychonauts."

One word: Caravaggio

"There is a theory which states that if ever anyone discovers exactly what the Universe is for and why it is here, it will instantly disappear and be replaced by something even more bizarre and inexplicable. There is another theory which states that this has already happened."
--- Douglas Adams

A complete printout of Windows 2000's 29 million lines of source code would form a stack of pages 193 feet high (59 meters), about as tall as a 19-story building. More than 4,000 people worked together for several years, exchanging an average of 90,000 email messages every day. Writing the code itself was only a small part of the task; testing and debugging consumed more than 90% of the effort.

Not up to Snuff. The skinny on Snuff films from San Francisco Bay Guardian.

Fifties' sitcoms like "Father Knows Best," heavy with status symbols radiating the perfect middle class sheen, also pushed subtle themes of control. 2wice digs to discover the symbolism of the domesticated lawn.

The history of ping-pong.

"You mean to tell me that those old ladies in Palm Beach can play 15 Bingo Cards simultaneously, but can't punch a ballot?"
--- Sierra Times

A wrestling priest inflicts holy headlocks and saintly slams. Sergio Gutierrez of Nuevo Laredo, Mexico, has spent 25 years in the ring, wearing a costume that includes a clerical collar. One of his opponents is Damian, a taunting, mocking wrestler who has the number 666 on his forehead and flames painted around his eyes.

Had the constants of physics been different even by a hair from what they are, the universe would have been a lifeless dud. Does this mean there is a God? From LinguaFranca

Can't get that "Gilligan's Island" theme out of your head, huh?

Researchers at Stanford University are developing tiny flying machines that use helicopter rotors to stay in the air. These miniature helicopters are not quite microscopic, so they are called mesicopters (mesi- means "in the middle"). A mesicopter is about the size of a postage stamp with four or more tiny rotors that spin at around 50,000 rpm. Powered by tiny lithium batteries, a mesicopter could fly for up to 30 minutes without running down. Smart mesicopters with on-board brains could be used to explore Mars or other planets with atmosphere, or they could be used to study tornadoes, hurricanes, or other weather phenomena. See a gallery of mesicopter images, real and simulated.

E-evolution: The Gutenberg Bible now online.

Killing The Buddha
A former truckdriver, a webmaster, and a sinner have teamed up to create a new online religious magazine dedicated to "people made anxious by churches, people embarrassed to be caught in the 'spirituality' section of a bookstore, people both hostile and drawn to talk of God."

"Wagner's music is not as bad as it sounds."
--- George Bernard Shaw

The Crackpot Index
A simple metod for rating potenially revolutionary contributions to physics.
Such as: 2 points for every statement that is clearly vacuous; 10 points for pointing out that you have gone to school; 30 points for suggesting that Einstein, in his later years, was groping his way towards the ideas you now advocate; 40 points for claiming that when your theory is finally appreciated, present-day science will be seen for the sham it truly is.

What went wrong for Ralph?
Did Ralph Nader's campaign drift too far left? Was Winona LaDuke the right running mate? Did the Green party affiliation help or hurt him? Micah Sifry looks at why Nader fell short of his goal of 5 percent of the national vote. From NewsForChange.com

"Every game ever invented by mankind is a way of making things hard for the fun of it."
--- John Anthony Ciardi, American poet, critic

Instant Runoff Voting
The concept of "instant runoff voting" probably hasn't settled as deeply into your consciousness as the "chad," but this election reform--which allows you to rank candidates in order of preference--is quickly garnering attention throughout the United States. From FairVote.org

Two Guys Talking: William S. Burroughs and Timothy Leary

Smoking habits of our ancestors are as much a part of their faded oddity as their strange hats and the strictures of their underwear. From Indedendent

TLA - Three Letter Acronym
TINA - This Is Not an Acronym

Street Drug Slang
Hundreds of word/terms listed.

A Crash Course on Incommunications
From raucous circus-like talk shows to news reports shaped by military propagandists, the celebrated Uruguayan author and historian Eduardo Galeano says the global media increasingly "accustom us to the inevitability of violence and train us for it from childhood." From The Media Channel

With a good-looking black person and a little Photoshop derring-do, almost any American college or political campaign can look as diverse as a Benetton ad. Dexter Roundtree, America's most-photographed token, is getting rich as a result. From MotherJones

"It is necessary for me to establish a winner image. Therefore, I have to beat somebody."
--- Richard M. Nixon

When a rooster finds some food, he sometimes makes a "took took took" sound -- moreso when there is a hen nearby. Hearing the call, the hen usually strolls over to the male, who may offer her choice morsels from his own beak. But sometimes a rooster will say "took took" when there's no food just to get the female to come over. Smart bird?

College-level thought experiments on mass and energy.

Bic Mac, Big Trouble
Ten years ago, McDonald's opened its first branch in Moscow, hoping to start a "beautiful McFriendship" between the East and West. But something went wrong. Now, angry employees are organizing to demand higher pay and better working conditions.

Um, on average, in natural, uh, conversation, people use, well, filler words, such as um, well, or you know, every seven or eight words.

Solar storms and their human impacts.

The difference between genius and stupidity is that genius has its limits.
--- Albert Einstein

Voters demand drug war cease-fire
Government has largely ignored the one issue on which voters have given a clear mandate. Give the people a cease-fire in the war on drugs. From AlterNet

The author Edgar Rice Burroughs owned a ranch near Hollywood in southern California, where he wrote his famous stories about Tarzan of the Apes. (Tarzan's official web site.) In 1928, the town surrounding his ranch was officially incorporated and chose for itself the name Burroughs had given his ranch: Tarzana. (Tarzana's web site.)

"Maybe, just once, someone will call me 'sir' without adding, "you're making a scene.'"
--- Homer Simpson

Bomb Shelters, Dinosaurs, and Sweet Rolls
What better place to build restaurants, bakeries, and community youth centers than in old bomb shelters? At least that's how many Russians in the Pacific port city of Vladivostok view the dungeon-like spaces tucked away under apartment buildings and into the sides of mountains. From Transitions Online

Something in the heavens is growing brighter and it will soon become one of the most eye-catching stars in the night sky. No it's not a supernova. It's the International Space Station

"It's difficult to work in a group when you're omnipotent."
--- Q, "Deja Q", Star Trek:TNG

Snow crystal growth is a fascinating and poorly understood process, in which remarkably complex and beautifully symmetric structures appear, quite literally, out of thin air. The many facets of snow crystals are described here, along with our attempts to understand their formation.

The Idler's Glossary
In support of layabouts and doddlers everywhere, former Utne Reader staffer Joshua Glenn in his zine Hermenaut, redefines a vocabulary of idler-specific terms--i.e. saunter, absentminded, nap--that he hopes will help reclaim slacking as an honorable activity.

Coin-flipping page. Click here to flip a coin.
I know I provided this link last month, but, c'mon, double or nothing.

Cool Word: apotropaic [adj. ap-uh-tro-PAY-ik]
An apotropaic object is one that is meant to ward off evil. Examples include good luck charms and talismans. In the sixth century B.C., the Greeks used to paint apotropaic eyes on the cups that they drank from, so to prevent dangerous spirits from entering a person's mouth. Apotropaic entered the English language in the 1880s. It is from the Greek apotropai (to turn away, avert evil), from the roots apo- (off) and trope (to turn).

Time is what prevents everything from happening at once.
--- John Archibald Wheeler

Bad Sex in Fiction Award
''It is time, time... Now. Yes. She is so small and compact and yet she has all the necessary features... Shall I compare thee to a Sony Walkman, thou art more compact and more - She is his own Toshiba, his dinky little JVC, his sweet Aiwa... Aiwa, aiwa aiwa aiwa aiwa aiwa aiwa aiwa aiwa aiwa aiwaaaaaaaaahhhhhhhhh.''

Every day, about 30 trillion gallons of water falls on land (136 trillion liters). At that rate, a volume of water the same size as all the world's oceans passes through the atmosphere every three thousand years.

Brewing a Future: Zero Emissions Factory Bolsters Community
In nature, organisms depend on the byproducts of other ones. Using natural systems as a model, a southern African brewery generated a chicken farm, a fish farm, a mushroom plantation, a Spirulina plantation, and an earthworm farm to make use of its "waste." From FutureNet

A civil ruler dabbling in religion is as reprehensible as a clergyman dabbling in politics. Both render themselves odious as well as ridiculous.
--- James Cardinal Gibbons

Life in space is a daring adventure, but somebody still has to cook dinner and take out the trash. Two astronauts are asked about the thrill and routine of daily life in orbit. From NASA Science News

At this distance they couldn't hit the broad side of a ba

"A conclusion is the place where you got tired of thinking."
--- Arthur Block