Probably the whole world knows about these already, but somehow I had never seen them. Here are some choice examples:
<JonJonB> Purely in the interests of science, I have replaced the word "wand" with "wang" in the first Harry Potter Book
<JonJonB> Let’s see the results…
<JonJonB> "Why aren’t you supposed to do magic?" asked Harry.
<JonJonB> "Oh, well [...]
I think the best part about this, is the quote from Jerry Falwell:
“When that museum is finished, it’s going to be Cincinnati’s No. 1 tourist attraction,” says the Rev. Jerry Falwell, nationally known Baptist evangelist and chancellor of Liberty University in Lynchburg, Va. “It’s going to be a mini-Disney World.”
A theme park based on fictional [...]
Slate has an article with a side-by-side comparison of Bush’s statements on stem cells versus his statements on the death penalty. The contradiction is impressive. Here’s an example:
“Research cloning would contradict the most fundamental principle of medical ethics, that no human life should be exploited or extinguished for the benefit of another.”
versus
“The president [...]
Thanks to Chris for pointing this out.
Slate has a rather interesting article about baby names, their perception and how that perception evolves in the strata of society.
So, last night the Senate reached a compromise on the filibuster. This is good for Democrats and Republicans. Why? Because everyone is in the minority sometimes. You can’t eliminate the filibuster only when it is convenient. For example, Bush wants to ban stem cell research to a greater or lesser degree, [...]
I am of the opinion that the US is going to face its worst economic downturn since the Depression within the next couple of years. I think this for a variety of reasons, but one of them is what I perceive as the unsustainable increase in home values over the past decade. Except [...]
As we head into the final hours before Bill Frist chooses whether or not to deploy “the nuclear option” with regard to filibustering in the US Senate, it is interesting to observe that filibustering has regularly been used by both parties.
On a related note, this is a quite useful graphic (from Wall Street Journal Online) [...]
Autoweek a while back had a great article on minorities in motorsports. The NASCAR stuff is what really gets you. Take the sort of people who attend NASCAR races and make them into a mob 100,000-strong. Then put a black guy out in front of Dale Earnhart, Jr. and you can fill [...]
I actually listened to this book on audio CD about a month ago. It wasn’t abridged, however, and it was read by the author, so I don’t think I missed out on anything. In fact, since he was able to convey his intended tone, I may have actually appreciated it better than if [...]
This is great fun and a quick read. It is truly bizarre and isn’t the sort of book I would’ve picked up on my own. Brenda said I might enjoy it and its zaniness, and frankly, she knows me better than I know myself. I won’t spoil the plot, because the book [...]
I desperately wanted to like this book, but I just didn’t think it was all that good. It is difficult to identify why. The writing style is not very impressive, but it was not a book meant to be stylistically driven. Clearly, this book was about plot and Stephenson’s imagination. It [...]
I thoroughly enjoyed reading this article, entitled “Beating the Averages” by Paul Graham. He argues that there is a conventional wisdom that all “high level” programming languages are equivalent and that it is incorrect. He makes his argument by presenting his own successful startup company as a case study and seems to feel [...]
Tom Minka has a great Statistical Learning/Pattern Recognition glossary.
This is a little strange. A 15-year old girl posted naked pictures of herself on the Internet, and she’s been charged with “sexual abuse of children, possession of child pornography and dissemination of child pornography.” Child porn is bad stuff, to be sure, but isn’t the point to protect kids from people who [...]
“Technically, you need only one time traveler convention.”