Exploding Aardvark

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SEEING STARS

Astronomers, like stars, burn out. Unlike stars they grow beards too. They wear monocles. They play the xylophone. They work the word “spectrograph” into every sentence and describe the comings and goings of fellow astronomers as red or blue shifting. Nobody’s quite sure when it is that the last professional astronomer actually discovered anything of […]

STUPID DEATH QUIZ

You’ll die from an Unlikely Illness (like the plague).

You will unfortunately succumb to a random and unlikely disease. Only to find out after death that eating more broccoli would have cured you.

‘How will you die?’ at QuizGalaxy.com

AND ZIP THOSE LIPS, WOUNDED SOLDIERS

Soldiers at Walter Reed Army Medical Center’s Medical Hold Unit say they have been told they will wake up at 6 a.m. every morning and have their rooms ready for inspection at 7 a.m., and that they must not speak to the media.

Walter Reed patients told to keep quiet (Air Force Times)
Problem solved!
Related: Bush Administration […]

TOE THE LINE OR LOSE FUNDING

When is $4 million really $2.8 million?
One answer is “When you’re a woman,” as the Labor Department has repeatedly found that women earn about 75 cents for every dollar that men earn for the same work.
But this week’s answer is “When you are the Office of Women’s Health” within the Food and Drug Administration. That […]

TODAY’S SPOOKY REQUIRED READING

… or listening, if you prefer. CIA consultant Chalmers Johnson is interviewed on Democracy Now:
Nemesis was the ancient Greek goddess of revenge, the punisher of hubris and arrogance in human beings. You may recall she is the one that led Narcissus to the pond and showed him his reflection, and he dove in and drowned. […]

HEADLINE OF THE DAY

Paedophile freed for Dracula book

MINE WORKS EVEN MORE CHAOTICALLY

Brain works more chaotically than previously thought
Four cheers for chaos! (Five is right out.)

228

Taipei, 1947:

On the evening of February 27 a cigarette vendor and her two small children set up a portable stand under the banyan tree in Round Park. On it were a few packs of cigarettes and several coins with which to make change if she were lucky enough to make a sale.
Monopoly Bureau agents appeared, […]

MITT ROMNEY: RUNNING AGAINST FRANCE

WTF excerpt from a Romney campaign strategy PowerPoint doc (which, incidentally, includes a page called “Primal Code for Brand Romney”):

But the plan lists two ways Romney can set himself apart from Bush. The first says, simply, “Intelligence.”
Document shows Romney’s strategies (Boston Globe, via Wonkette)

TALLY ME QABBALAH

I’m sure that somewhere in my stacks of CDRs, I have one or two MP3 rips of this audiobook. And because I am, of course, a scrupulous and fastidious observer of all national and international intellectual property laws as well as end-user license agreements, I do have to wonder: Suppose I want to listen to […]