Random

Somehow, with all the strange, otherworldly people standing for office in American elections Tuesday, one ballot measure has not received quite the enormous importance that it deserves.

No, I am not thinking of Proposition 19 in California, the one supported by significant members of the tech world, the one that hopes to legalize the sale of marijuana.

This ballot measure, addressed to voters in Denver, is called Initiative 300 and it is adorned by perhaps the most ridiculous question ever asked in a political campaign: "Are you ready for the truth?" The truth that proponents of this measure … Read more

As we enter the season of buying people things they don't like, it is fortunate that one company has stopped to think what the world might truly be missing.

Haynes, a company that has made its name and fortune out of creating perfectly bound owners' manuals for every conceivable car, has taken its talents to celestial heights.

According to the Daily Mail, the company is releasing an owner's manual for the USS Enterprise.

This would seem to be a little more difficult than creating a manual for a Ford Escort. The Enterprise went through quite a few iterations … Read more

Roll up. Roll up. You won't believe your eyes.

No, I'm not launching a new Apple product (at least not yet). Instead, I would like you to scan a piece of footage for me and tell me what you see.

I would like you to examine a YouTube video that has been sent to me by various readers and eminences. It has already been viewed by more than 1.6 million people. And it shows Irish film director George Clarke declaring that he has seen an old woman--or a man in drag--in the 1928 Charlie Chaplin movie "The Circus."

Why might this be remarkable? I am sure even Chaplin himself might have donned a skirt at least at some point in his life. Ah, but this skirted individual, with a hardened Edward G. Robinson-type face, appears to be talking on a cell phone.

You did hear me right. She (or he) appears to be in possession of a mobile device and chatting into it. … Read more

The modern world has one immutable law: where the founders of Facebook go, so does the rest of society.

Recently, Dustin Moskovitz and Sean Parker, just two of the characters from "The Social Network," donated $170,000 to assist Proposition 19, a California idea aimed at legalizing pot.

And now I read in The New York Times that, sensing a turning of the tides, or merely a cloud of smoke about to emerge from an important chimney, many people are anticipating pot legalization by buying up pot-related domains.

The Times tells of Kevin Faler, who was once a … Read more

I know that, for some, bees are something of an irritant. The same, however, can be said of computers.

While bees sometimes pester us with their proximity and noise, computers pester us by making us believe in the proximity of something we're missing, somewhere out there.

However, new research suggests something both powerful and profound about these two pesterers: bees are allegedly far smarter than computers. For, the Guardian informs me, bees are swiftly able to solve the "traveling salesman problem."

My mother's solution to this was to never open the door or, if she did, … Read more

How should one bring up children? Should one give them everything for which they ask? Or should one make them understand very early in life that some things are bad for them, whether it is physically or psychologically?

This flight of philosophical depth comes to me on reading an interview in the New York Times with Melinda Gates, wife of Microsoft's Bill.

I wasn't sure whether to laugh, cry, admire or attempt to plait my eyebrows. You see, the interviewer offered her questions about Apple. The first was quite amusing: "Do you own an iPod, which is … Read more

Do you lie awake at night and see large, hairy beings, their eyes the size of the moon, leaping out of the wardrobe and looming over you?

Do you walk into dark spaces and feel the presence of ghostly apparitions ready to make deep-throated noises before they turn your epiglottis into carpaccio?

Do I sound like I am talking to a 6-year-old? This is because many children endure such fears. However, perhaps you too, still suffer from such traumas.

Might I offer you the potential of a remedy? Please begin by clutching your iPhone and availing yourself of a Monster Meter.… Read more

Men make mistakes. Then they try to rectify them. Which might be mistake number two.

Who cannot sympathize with a man from the Jiangsu province in China whose cell phone sadly disappeared into the toilet?

ITN News doesn't record quite how the cell phone managed to disappear down where the blue goldfish swim, but what seems clear is that the man tried to reach down to retrieve his vital gadget.

Unfortunately, as this footage from China News makes clear, the man ended up flushed with embarrassment, as his arm became wedged in a place where it is unwise to … Read more

In the more dog-eating-dog quarters of the world, Sweden is sometimes mocked for being a namby-pamby welfare state.

Sometimes, though, caring for one's fellow man is beautiful just for its own sake.

So please may we rejoice at the tale of an anonymous Swedish professor who had his laptop stolen.

How can having one's laptop stolen possibly bring us to a happy conclusion? Did someone find his laptop and return it to him? No. Did someone catch the thief and, in a fit of justice, remove all the Pirate Bay stickers from his laptop? Again, no.

However as Swedish news source The Local would have it, … Read more