Weirdness
pharyngula | July 2, 2007You really must have headphones on when you listen to this wonderful exercise in stereophony.
There's more information on how it was made at toomanytribbles. You've gotta love your brain and the way it can translate phase and timing differences in sound into a spatial map, without you really having to think about it.
pharyngula | June 29, 2007I guess y'all are having a drought, and your farmers are worried. I sympathize, and I do hope you get some good healthy summer storms soon. But, well, your governor is a dufus.
With the state's weather forecasters not delivering much-needed rain, Gov. Bob Riley on Thursday turned to a higher power. The governor issued a proclamation calling for a week of prayer for rain, beginning Saturday.
Riley encouraged Alabamians to pray "individually and in their houses of worship."
"Throughout our history, Alabamians have turned in prayer to God to humbly ask for his blessings and to hold us steady…
pharyngula | June 28, 2007I'm speechless. I thought most case-modders were interested in cooling their machines, but here's the PC EZ-Bake Oven.
Now the computer savvy among us can relive the fun of having your very own personal mini-oven with the PC Ez-Bake oven! It fits in a 5 1/4" drive bay and plugs right into your power supply with the included Molex connector. Also included is "PC Ez-Cook", the open-source oven controller software with hundreds of easy and creative recipes for your PC Ez-Bake oven, and even a fuzzy-logic cooking control system to precisely measure the doneness of your cake, cookie, or cheese…
pharyngula | June 28, 2007$5175.00The Cadaver Calculator - Find out how much your body is worth
Mingle2 - Online Dating
Do you think I might appreciate in value as I get older?
(via brokenhut)
pharyngula | June 28, 2007This is horribly tasteless: it's a trailer for a new movie based on a video game by Uwe Boll (for those unfamiliar with his oeuvre, I'll just mention the combination of the words "movie", "video game", and "Uwe Boll" represents the very worst of humorlessly plodding, dumb cinema). So why did I find this clip amusing?
pharyngula | June 27, 2007OK, Blue Gal, you're weirding me out a little bit. I agree that Kucinich is a progressive candidate, and that Glen Beck is a smarmy, disgusting little creep who made deeply offensive remarks about Kucinich's sex appeal, but…
…well, maybe he is looking a little bit cute and adorable.
pharyngula | June 26, 2007Tara has successfully grossed me out. She has an article on the unfortunate consequences of a bikini wax—a massive infection that turned the vulva and perineum into something resembling an over-ripe melon. And the woman who had this problem repeatedly tried to depilate afterwards!
I've never quite gotten the appeal of this practice. Is it to appeal to men with pedophilic tendencies? Or is it more of a desire to look like you've got a mollusc in your crotch? Everybody has their own little kink, so if hairless pubes appeal to two people, I'm not going to worry about it…but it seems to me it…
pharyngula | June 21, 2007Some people were annoyed that I included a link yesterday that led to a silly story that used strippers as an example of good marketing, that also included a photo of a woman in lingerie. It was very mild stuff, and I'm not going to apologize for that; the worst thing at the link was the sexism, and I will say that I do not endorse that at all. Sometimes I will talk about sex here, and although I'm not going to start sprinkling the articles with coarse and exploitive porn, I'm also not going to be shy about the frank talk.
Then Cocktail Party Physics had to ruin my self-image as an unabashed…
pharyngula | June 20, 2007Some clothing store called Diesel is supposed to have a fashion show tomorrow that will be streamed live to the web. Normally, I wouldn't give a pickled pucker, but they advertise it as a "journey with us through time and liquid space to a futuristic world of bioluminescence, giant mechanic cephalopods, futuristic aquanauts and mysterious galactic polyps"…and the accompanying images are all of weird jellyfish looking things and strange organic blobs. Hummm. Well. That sounds somewhat interesting.
Denim jeans for squid, do you think?
Maybe skinny naked models draped with ctenophore tentacles,…
pharyngula | June 20, 2007Nice site, that looks like a home-furnishings catalog to me. But then, I'm always disappointed that "Bed, Bath, and Beyond" lacks anything that is truly "beyond."
pharyngula | June 19, 2007Here's some fun with demographics — it's a treasure map! Actually, it's a map of where the excess single men (in blue) and excess single women (in red) are located.
(click for larger image)
That east-west split is strange, I wonder what the explanation might be?
pharyngula | June 17, 2007Matt asks a weird question: he's wondering who is the target of the sickest web searches. I should recuse myself, because I thought I got no perverts searching for me: after all, I think searching for "sex with a spider" or "penis tentacles" is perfectly normal. But I took a look at the search terms anyway, and I was appalled—there actually are several very common phrases people use to find their way here that I find objectionable.
Right there near the top of the list of search phrases there's this one:
PZ Meyers
Aaacck! Then, a little further down:
PZ Meyer
Jebus. Philistines.
PZ Meier…
pharyngula | June 16, 2007
To be honest, I hadn't been following his career in years, but it's still sad to see that Pac Man has died. I am pleased to learn that at least he has left his body to science.
pharyngula | June 15, 2007Normally, I can't be motivated to read economics—no offense, economists, but I think the economics part of my brain got left behind on one of my many moves around the country, and it was locked in to one particular latitude and longitude anyway—but maybe adding a little swashbuckling and really bad puns in the title would help. Hilzoy has found some interesting examples, anyway. Here's the abstract to one:
This paper investigates the internal governance institutions of violent criminal enterprise by examining the law, economics, and organization of pirates. To effectively
organize their…
pharyngula | June 13, 2007Chuck Colson has a list of the three greatest enemies of Christianity right now. They are:
Islam. It's "evil incarnate."
Atheism. It's "virulent."
Christian coffee shops??!?
OK, that last one is a little strange, but I had an epiphany. I'm sitting in a Christian-run coffee shop right now. It's great for fairly good inexpensive coffee, it's got an open wireless net, and some of the conversations around me are inspiring—I write some of my anti-religion screeds while the Bible Study Group meets at a table in front of me.
Gosh. Chuck Colson is right.
pharyngula | June 12, 2007I think a nimble-fingered Albanian got a little souvenir. Too bad the market for Bush memorabilia is in the dumpster right now.
pharyngula | June 11, 2007Two photographs by the same photographer, taken on the same day of the year, with an unhappy subject at the center. What a bizarre coincidence.
Personally, I think the first one was far more affecting and important.
pharyngula | June 7, 2007
Yuck, I'm reminded that Father's Day is coming up soon, and you are all obligated to find something cheesy to give to Dad (except me, I don't have one anymore, so I'm exempt). Here's a collection of manly suggestions, most of which don't appeal at all to me, but hey, maybe your dad is different. Anyway, the only one that was mildly cool was the squidbrain tie (you can order here), which has a mere two flaws. 1) I don't wear ties, and 2) why a vertebrate brain? What would be really nifty is a tie with a chain of ganglia down its length (it would even be in the right location, along the…
pharyngula | June 7, 2007
Now this is the pinnacle of office domination furnishings. Imagine, a student comes in to complain about his grade, and I push a button: my chair rises up to tower above the trembling supplicant, and stalks across the room bearing the professor, who in a booming voice declares, "You dare? You dare to question my decisions?"
It's much more intimidating than the trap door to the spiky room in the basement or the discreet ceiling-mounted lasers I'm using now. We tyrant kings all know that spectacle is an important component of effective oppression.