"Wallsend, in North Tyneside, was the end of Hadrian's Wall, constructed by the Romans to defend the border of the Empire against the rebelling tribes beyond. To commemorate this historical connection (which is also reflected in the town's name), since 2003 most of the signs in Wallsend station on the Tyne and Wear Metro have been in both English and Latin. Large photographs taken in Wallsend which have all text changed to Latin are also displayed."

"There's a certain kind of insanity, not a feeling of not being oneself any longer, but a loss of a grip on what it would be to feel, or not feel, oneself at all, which is apt to be brought on at family reunions, especially those at which one encounters distant relatives for the first time. At such gatherings one gets a keen sense of the family "look", and the general family mode of behavior. One sees not only one's features return to one in the features of countless others; one sees, too, one's squabbles with one's siblings (say) reflected in the bickering of great-aunt so-and-so and her husband. There seems to vanish any sense of oneself as an individual, oneself as something substantial, rather than a congeries of free-floating traits that happen to be combined, here, in these proportions. But even this is too much; it's not as if one can say that one is so much of Cousin X in this respect, so much of Great-Aunt Y in this other respect, and so on, for X and Y stand revealed as having no more solidity in themselves than one oneself has (as we know, a family reunion is a system with no positive elements). Nor can one console oneself with the thought that at least one is the only one to have these traits in this precise proportion, because, even if that is true (and how can one be sure?) it is only accidental.
"At its most extreme, someone who suffers from this delusion will not only see himself as just a congeries of shared traits; he will also begin to see in every person one encounters nothing more than a collection of traits previously encountered in oneself or in others ... those others and that self in turn lacking any real substance. Nothing new under the sun, here or there, no potential for surprise; you've seen everything already.
"The name of this delusion is, of course, metempsychosis."

"And the time ... in physics class, when we were doing these basic (very basic) labs on probability, and I had a little handheld pachinko machine? With a bunch of balls, and evenly spaced rods, and stalls at the bottom? And you tilt it down, and all the balls roll to the top, and you tilt it back, and they come cascading down, and hit the rods, and either bounce left or right, and in the end you’ve got this lovely little bell curve of balls at the bottom, because law of averages and such most balls bounce left, then right, then left, or some combination thereof, and end up in the middle? And only a few go left-left-left-left, or right-right-right-right, and end up on either end? —Anyway, it’s my turn, so I tilt it down, then back again, and click-clack-click-clack-click, and wouldn’t you know it, I’ve got an almost perfect reverse bell curve. Towering stacks of balls to the left and right, and almost nothing at all in the middle.
"So I go to the teacher running the show and hold it out to him and say, okay, now what, smart guy? (“If it fails to agree, under novel experiments or with refined measuring techniques, it is not said that one should not be happy.”)
"And the teacher looks at the little handheld pachinko machine, cocks an eyebrow, tilts it down, tilts it back, clack-click-clack-click-clack. Perfect bell curve.
"“There,” he says. “Fixed it for you.”
"—And I can’t for the life of me tell you which of those gestures is the argument with the universe, and which the sermon on the way things ought to be, dammit. —And that might just be my problem."

Must get some of those posters.

I guessed what the cause must've been, and this was still hilarious. (Also, it's old enough that I might have heard it before.) Still, this is great.

It's the last line which seals it.

"Look, here's a simple fact: The alien didn't ask to be born. It didn't ask to have an evolutionary gestational strategy that relies partly on a third-party host. You can't in good conscience blame it for that. And when it is born, do humans gather 'round to appreciate the miracle of birth? They do not. They try to kill the alien. What choice does the alien have but to run and hide?
"And then, naked, cold, hungry, and outnumbered, what choice does the alien have but to try to survive? The humans are the ones hunting it with shock prods and flamethrowers. Can it really be blamed for fighting back? If you were being hunted down by heavily armed superior forces, would you be thinking, Well, golly, I'll just let them burn me to death with a flamethrower, that seems fair? It is, in a word, doubtful. You'd do what the alien does: fight back."

"We report a non-detection, to a limiting magnitude of V = 18.4 (9), of the elusive entity commonly described as the Tooth Fairy. We review various physical models and conclude that follow-up observations must precede an interpretation of our result."

Being a review of Paula Merriman's _Mungojerrie: A Brief History of the Cat Corset_.

"We here report for the first time, to the best of our knowledge, rat motor cortex neurons predicting the behavior of the American stock market. We implanted the motor cortex of the brains of rats with silicon electrodes. Using the correlation technique, we monitored the activity of neurons in our rats while simultaneously tracking the activity of stocks in the U.S. stock market."

(Via http://jonfwilkins.blogspot.com/2012/03/life-cycle-of-physicist.html)

I can't believe Greg Bear hasn't used this plot yet.

"Pseudoephedrine, active ingredient of Sudafed®, has long been the most popular nasal decongestant in the United States due to its effectiveness and relatively mild side effects [1]. In recent years it has become increasingly difficult to obtain psuedoephedine in many states because of its use as a precursor for the illegal drug N-methylamphetamine (also known under various names including crystal meth, meth, ice, etc.)[1,2]. While in the past many stores were able to sell pseudoephedrine, new laws in the United States have restricted sales to pharmacies, with the medicine kept behind the counter. The pharmacies require signatures and examination of government issued ID in order to purchase pseudoephedrine. Because the hours of availability of such pharmacies are often limited, it would be of great interest to have a simple synthesis of pseudoephedrine from reagents which can be more readily procured.
"A quick search of several neighborhoods of the United States revealed that while pseudoephedrine is difficult to obtain, N -methylamphetamine can be procured at almost anytime on short notice and in quantities sufficient for synthesisof useful amounts of the desired material. Moreover, according to government maintained statistics, N-methylmphetamine is becoming an increasingly attractive starting material for pseudoephedrine, as the availability of N-methylmphetamine has remained high while prices have dropped and purity has increased [2]. We present here a convenient series of transformations using reagents which can be found in most well stocked organic chemistry laboratories to produce psuedoephedrine from N -methylamphetamine."

"One of their projects is to make glowing sushi from GloFish, commercially available zebrafish that have been modified with jellyfish and coral genes to make them fluoresce. The center also filmed the Glowing Sushi Cooking Show to teach you how to make your own transgenic sushi, provided you're not afraid of eating genetically modified organisms you bought from a pet store. But they are serious when they call their signature maki the "Not in California" roll. You can't legally purchase GloFish in California. If you're anywhere else in the US, though, you can go to town on raw fluorescent zebrafish."
Yet again, I have grown up and am living in a Bruce Sterling novel.

"giant hairless killer-kitten"

"The gift tests the empathy, attentiveness, general acuity, not to say commitment, of the donor.  So this is one contest where "close" really does win the  cigar.   If the donee dreamt of taable mats and the donor gives her doilees, the donee may be a little crestfallen, but she can say, "how thoughtful of him to try."  If he gives 12-guage shotgun shells, she is bound to conclude "I really don't think he was listening."  If he gives cash, the donee can infer that he is saying: "I really don't give a rat's ass what you do with your life; here, solve your own problem.""

My version, of course, is "Taylor expansion".

"Usage: http://httpcats.herokuapp.com/[http_status_code]"

Making a toaster, at home, from scratch.

"Can you find the complete circuit? Can you identify different types of cellular life? Or help Darwin's finches choose their next meal? Of course you can! This silly collection of coloring pages includes more than 60 pages featuring classic Nerdy Baby line drawings. All of the letters of the alphabet are included with fun definitions. Kids can also color famous scientists, count subatomic particles, and imagine what will grow in their petri dishes. Equal parts nerdy and ridiculous, this book will challenge and delight the most precocious of young scientific minds."

I question the last line. (Few women, in my experience, are driven nuts by men's soft, silky fur.)

"mmcrivin: I think our world is closer to being a cyberpunk dystopia than to most old SF visions of the future. Japan isn't a global hegemon and states haven't withered away. But the combination of massive inequality, cheap electronic tech, and a ubiquitous Internet perpetually clotted with the activities of penny-ante scammers and crooks feels very cyberpunky to me.
scifantasy : That sort of depends what you think of as cyberpunk. Which underlies the whole debate, really.
mmcirvin : I suppose. Still, the fact that we're having this conversation on a post-Soviet forum periodically brought down by politically motivated distributed-denial-of-service attacks by botnets of hacker-controlled PCs with possible shadowy connections to elements in the Russian government, and the paroxysms are visually represented by a picture of a goggle-eyed goat chewing on a bundle of shredded wires? Totally cyberpunk."

"Bayesian nonparametrics is a bit like the Catholic church : there is a fair bit of dogma, mystery, and reliance on countably infinite populations from the developing world."

While I don't _think_ this is actually Krugman, it's a little disturbing that I can't be sure. --- ETA: It's not (http://krugman.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/10/26/onion/).

Not strictly a cartoon, I know.

"Celebrating pornographers who go the extra mile when set dressing classroom porn and actually write something on the blackboard. What do they write, and is it correct? (Humour site - Safe for work)"

"Stay away from Nevada, New Mexico, Hanford, Oak Ridge.  From remote areas with good water circulation away from prying eyes."

I excerpt: "(39) being disjoint from the object, (40) being not conducive to liberation, (41) birth, (42) enduring, (43) impermanence, (44) possession, (45) old age, (46) utter torment, (47) dissatisfaction, (48) deliberation, (49) pleasure, (50) clarity, (51) grasping the discordant, (52) affection, (53) discordance, (54) grasping the concordant, (55) fearlessness, (56) reverence, (57) veneration, (58) devotion, (59) lack of devotion, (60) obedience, (61) respect, (62) lack of respect, (63) suppleness, (64) ebullience, (65) speech, (66) agitation, (67) attainment, (68) lack of faith, (69) lack of suppleness, (70) purification, (71) steadfastness, (72) gentleness, (73) repentance, (74) anguish, (75) confusion, (76) arrogance, (77) grasping the unfavorable, (78) doubt, (79) pure discipline, (80) inner serenity, (81) fear", etc.  Sadly, "remembering that one has just broken a water pitcher" is not on the list.

"[From Verona Total Breakdown (Liebestod), a forgotten early Infernokrusher work by Bill "Hoist This Petard" Shakespeare . . .
Ro-Mo. Your windows are still mirrored; taunt me not,But show your colors, dare to challenge me,These lips are two shaped charges, primed and hot,That wait the go-code for delivery.J-Cap. The flag is to the deadly, not the loud,Yet aim as well as posing show in this;The worthy throwdown's always to the proud,And hammer down is how the hard girls kiss.Ro-Mo. My draft is stopped; I struggle toward the clutch.J-Cap. And would a charge of nitrous make thee run?Ro-Mo. Too much; but what else is there but too much?Let me take arms, and elevate the gun.J-Cap.Small arms but hint what demolitions say.Ro-Mo.Then, gunner, gimme one round.J-Cap.On the way."

"21st century networked society vs. Lovecraft's commonplace book".

My tags kind of give away the punchline, but still, worth reading.

Somebody (hopefully not me) really needs to write a book about vampirical hypotheses testing.

Extracting data from your

_My_ plans for global domination were always pure exercises in strategy and whimsy, thank you _very_ much.  And one ex shared _her_ plans with me on our first date.  (It involved seizing control of shipping in the straits of Malacca.)  But, yeah, pretty much straight on.

"in the spirit of a pop psychology of the masses, let me offer the diagnosis that a large segment of the US population may be experiencing something somewhat similar to the Capgras delusion. That is, when they switch on their TVs and watch the news, they see someone who has all the trappings of a President, acts like a President, lives where the President lives, is treated by everybody as the President, signs bills like the President, gives a State of the Union address to Congress every year like the President… But these people at the same time have a clear and vivid intuition that: _This man is not the President_"  --- That a president who was _more_ stereotypically black than Obama would have _less_ trouble with people denying their legitimacy seems remarkably implausible to me.  It might, however, be done via less outlandish myths.

... and this goes on the office doors of statisticians everywhere.

Specifically via http://www.bookslut.com/blog/archives/2011_04.php#017506

"I was getting a book off the shelf last night and I came eye to eye with the hardcover of Patterson's biography of Heinlein Robert A Heinlein: In Dialogue With His Century and I realised what a stupid title it is. Especially for Heinlein, who seemed to write things that went straight from the nineteenth century to the future without pausing for the present."

I have no intention of seeing the movie, but I enjoyed the review. "The metaphors available to us after watching this film are sort of like a Banach-Tarski Paradox of restraint. Each time you try to take the restraints apart, they rebuild themselves into an even more enormous set of restraints until you have a cage the size of the sun that was somehow constructed from the surface area of a single spangle on the transparent stripper dress that Babydoll wears during her last adventure."

The list itself is disappointingly heavy in the worst sort of American military science fiction (but also Bujold, and _The Years of Rice and Salt_).

Would it be wrong to put this up in the office, across from the student chair?  (Yes, probably, but oh so tempting.)

"Did someone just fail a French test?" "If you're asking if I failed to care about imaginary moon sex organs, then YES."

Oh well done.

The dream-chair of the fisherman's wife, as it were.

I am almost tempted, but I'd want it to run Linux.

Have I really not bookmarked this before?

If I had to summarize my problems with mainstream economics in two words, they would be "Gary Becker".

"We are now living in a global state that has been structured for the benefit of non-human entities with non-human goals. They have enormous media reach, which they use to distract attention from threats to their own survival. They also have an enormous ability to support litigation against public participation, except in the very limited circumstances where such action is forbidden. Individual atomized humans are thus either co-opted by these entities ... or steamrollered if they try to resist. In short, we are living in the aftermath of an alien invasion."
(Stross is right that the existence of Communism forced capitalism to moderate itself, but that just meant we played one inhuman entity off against another, not unlike William Tenn's "The Liberation of Earth".)

""U.N. Department of the Exterior Planetary Park" posters in the style of the iconic 1930s WPA posters for America's National Parks. "

Don't miss the referee's report.

Giving thanks for the applicability of effective field theory. Part of me wants to say "You mis-spelled 'laws of large numbers', HTH, HAND.", but in the sprit of the occasion I will forbear.

"Q: Do I have to kill the snake?
A: University guidelines state that you have to "defeat" the snake. There are many ways to accomplish this. Lots of students choose to wrestle the snake. Some construct decoys and elaborate traps to confuse and then ensnare the snake. One student brought a flute and played a song to lull the snake to sleep. Then he threw the snake out a window."
--- It would be a Bad Thing for me to send this to the graduate students, wouldn't it?