In a more innocent age, it was said that Gregory Efimovich Rasputin's legendary power over women was due to his piercing eyes ( Read more... )

Amish shooting: Search for motive

now there's a headline.

also...note the misspelling of a headline in the left-hand column.

The beginning of "The Perfect Crime 2" off the Decemberists' new album, "The Crane Wife" (which I'm loving, incidentally):

"Sing, Muse, of the passion of the pistol"

COLIN MALOY MADE A HOMER REFERENCE!!!!!!!!!

And then I exploded.

The following is an actual question given on a University of Washington chemistry mid-term. The answer by one student was so "profound" that the professor shared it with colleagues, via the Internet, which is, of course, why we now have the pleasure of enjoying it as well ( Read more... )

2 fire alarms (new and improved, by which i mean horrifically loud and impossible to ignore) in high rise before 8am, and what caused it?

Drumroll please...

Spiders crawling on the smoke detectors.

I hate spiders.

i have a roommate and she's totally cooler than i am and my apartment just got even BETTER!

back on campus and IN LOVE with my new apartment - it's on campus, so it's not a real apartment, but i don't care and i love it. the kitchen is tiny, the common room has a pillar in the middle of it, and the toilet is sort of dysfunctional but it's perfect and i love it - my room is huge, too. i tested out the oven yesterday on a batch of ( Read more... )

Heath Ledger is the new Joker.

"New 'Batman' names its Joker"

I mean...as one of my colleagues has pointed out all that makeup was a little gay, but Heath Ledger? Really? Does he have that kind of flamboyant villain in him?

About time for an update, I suppose - Greece continues to treat me well. There's all kinds of drama among our lovely colleagues, but it's all good fun and passes the time. We spend a lot of time in our hotel, what can I say? We finished our classes last week with a course on Homer from Greg Nagy, who's a slightly lunatic fringe Homer expert, and ( Read more... )

So, as you might imagine I'm really enjoying this trip so far. The food has been rather fabulous, although it's been pretty tough to stay hydrated and stick with Weight Watchers, and the group is quite diverse and a lot of fun. There are people from Greece, Turkey and Britain as well as Harvard, Harvard extension, Rice and Bates (naturally my ( Read more... )