Okay, tell me if my instincts are right here ( Read more... )

The Radio Lab podcast once discussed earworms, which are those songs you cannot for the life of you get out of your head. People called in to sing bits of their own personal earworm tunes, and in a follow-up episode called "Earworms", the hosts pointed out that, interestingly, people were often perfectly on pitch when singing these songs. It seems ( Read more... )

Two mildly amusing things of late:

1) Spotted a cartoon in American Scientist titled "Fermat's Last Novel," with caption, "That's it, 'Guy gets girl, war then peace, don't have enough time to put it all down here, will flesh out later ( Read more... )

I heard about the case of Mr. and Mrs. H's supposedly haunted house on "This American Life" last Halloween, and meant to post it here. Upshot: feeling chilled, fatigued, and weirdly suffocated in some rooms of your house? Hearing and seeing strange things? Yeah, you might want to check for carbon monoxide before you go blaming ghosts. It can ( Read more... )

Poll Questions unrelated to one anotherBody type would have something to do with that last question, I'm sure; but I don't think it's as simple as "big people are warm; tiny people are cold." In fact, a lot of skinny people are skinny because they have metabolisms that burn like rocket fuel; therefore, they are comfortable at lower room temperatures than the average person. In addition ( Read more... )

The other month we tried some Oreo knockoffs from a brand called Back to Nature. The name spawned many jokes: ah yes, nature, where chocolate sandwich cookies grow on trees. Monkeys flinging them at each other, squirrels carrying them off to their nests. A real bitch when you park your car underneath one, though; the filling smears all over the ( Read more... )

On warm nights in the calm, dark inlets of Puget Sound, the saltwater lapping up to the shore will sparkle with a pale green light if you run your hand through it. (You can also use a stick, or generally disturb the water in any way.) This is one of my favorite sights in the world. When I was growing up, we were always told that the sparkles ( Read more... )

A coronal mass ejection is heading for Earth!

But that's a good thing. It may well mean auroras. You don't have to know much about atmospheric sciences or geomagnetics to know that today's chart of the planetary K-index, which is a good aurora indicator, definitely looks dramatic. (The bars are red! They're going up high!) Keep an eye on ( Read more... )

More unrelated tidbits. I apologize to those who dislike the ploughman's platter approach to LiveJournal. Just take the chutney and leave the cheese if that's all you're interested in ( Read more... )

From tdj and elsewhere, a very exciting bit of news about, oh, pretty much everything having to do with Western literature as we know it ( Read more... )