I've been thinking about which "miracle" to explain for the Juggalo Science Fair. Clearly the paper about how fucking magnets work will be a lot of people's #1 choice, but I was thinking about explaining the evolution of the long-necked giraffe with emphasis on the recurrent laryngeal nerve. All mammals share a common ancestor, and perhaps as an ( Read more... )

My new bank, Ally Bank, configures a security question and answer for customer service calls. In addition to your SSN, date of birth, and mother's maiden name they also ask you the question you specify and wait for the answer you've provided. This is good, because many standard questions are guessable in a way that user-defined questions may not be ( Read more... )

A while ago I found myself on the mailing list of a boiler room spammer. Every few days I'd get an advertisement claiming enormous returns on my investment if I signed up with their company. Eventually I responded by calling the number in the email. I told the person who answered that as a major Hollywood producer I had a lot of money but not a ( Read more... )

My dad is a doctor in San Luis Obispo. Very good, clean-cut, respectable guy who can take a joke. I mailed him this, which I expect will confuse him greatly.


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Back when cellular telephones first reached the consumer market and cost $3.00 per minute my friend Dan and I joked about how the most expensive prank would be to use a cellular phone to crank call Mongolia.

I recently got a Skype account, to make the occasional overseas telephone call. Their rates are extremely reasonable, not to mention an easy ( Read more... )

ATTRIBUTIONDAMMIT!

( Editor's annotation)

With haineux's help I bought a MacBook last weekend. A white MacBook, saving me $150. A *refurb* MacBook, saving me $200 more. A *refurb, employee-discounted* MacBook, saving me an extra $77. Plus $37 off employee-discounted AppleCare. Woot. With any luck I'll be able to sell my 15" PowerBook and related products (iSight, 2 extra power bricks) for ( Read more... )

The plan went off without a hitch. matrushkaka was a little nervous as we approached my "neighbor's" car and then completely freaked out when I sprung the door and climbed inside. After about five seconds of me yelling "get in the car! geti in the car!" and her yelling back "get out of the car, what the hell are you doing?" she stopped to consider "tongodeon wouldn' ( Read more... )

The midget containment field remains intact. I was up in SF all weekend and nobody so much as dropped a hint to matrushkaka about my new Prius. We also didn't say anything on the way back, and she didn't notice anything suspicious about the new car parked two houses down. Not that she should - there are a few new cars in our neighborhood ( Read more... )

This weekend
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