Reasons to love your job

And you thought you had to take a lot of crap from people at your job. The worst jobs in science.

(via Neat New Stuff on the Net)

It was actually the Big Bird feather hanging from the roach clip that tipped them off...

Five-year-old girl shows class how to make a bong in show-and-tell. Hijinks ensue.

(via Google News)

Huff(and puff)ington, Schwarz-uhhhh-negger and pals

Language Removal Services takes recordings of political speeches, removes the words and leaves nothing but the "umm"s, "uh"s and "err"s. Here they do their magic on some of the leading California gubernatorial candidates.

(via Boing Boing)

Noo Alfabets

Why is the alphabet in that order? Is it because of that song? - Steven Wright

When playwright George Bernard Shaw died in 1950, he bequeathed most of his fortunes to developing an alternative to the alphabet of the English language, an alphabet composed of at least forty letters to account for each of the possible sounds produced in English without all the crazy spelling variances. The resulting competition brought forth hundreds of new alphabet proposals. The Shaw Alphabet submitted by Kingsley Read was announced the winner. Another proposed alphabet, Unifon, was a close runner-up.

More interesting stuff on alphabets and their origins at Omniglot

(via Metafilter)

Look! Up in the sky! It's a bird! It's a plane! It's...

umm... Oh, no wait... it's just Angle Grinder Man.

(via Metafilter)

With A Name Like...

Funny, I haven't seen any of this brand on the shelf at my local supermarket.

Terrified of running out of toilet paper? Sure, you could get a double dispenser, but if you're a self-respecting geek, you'll still need a TP usage algorithm. Hmmm, this is getting a little complicated. How about just getting a little bit bigger roll?

(all links after first one via The Presurfer)

My new desktop wallpaper

Could it be The Greatest Rock-n-roll Photo Ever Taken?

The shot, taken in a 1969 Cash concert at San Quentin after a photographer asked Cash for a shot "for the warden".

The pic resurfaced in 1998 when Cash took out a full-page ad in Billboard. Disappointed at the industry's reluctance to play his newer music, the photo appeared with the following cation placed squarely above Cash's middle finger: "American Recordings and Johnny Cash would like to acknowledge the Nashville music establishment and country radio for your support."

Johnny Cash may be in the Country section at Best Buy, but deep down he was all rock-n-roll, baby...

Why Sharing Music Doesn't Feel Like Theft

Syndicated tech columnist Larry Magid wrote an interesting piece on why, to many of us, downloading music through a file-sharing program like Kazaa or iMesh just doesn't feel like stealing. In spite of the Recording Industry Association of America's argument that downloading copyrighted music is equivalent to walking into a record store and stealing a CD, music downloading is as popular as ever.

(via Techdirt)

Oh boy! A lil' web log!

Hey you! Go see Mad Ape Den. It is a web log, but not too big, as you can see. Oh, how wee of a web log it is!

(Translation: You should check out the amusing Mad Ape Den. Each post is composed of 3-letter or shorter words. Why? Whaddaya mean why? Like climbing Everest (on a motorcycle) or going for the free 72 oz. steak... because it's there, man, because it's there!)

...But some phones are already smarter than their owners

Researchers at Carnegie-Mellon University are working on a smarter, more polite cell phone. Phones that will ring loudly if you're in a noisy environment, or vibrate when they're in your pants pocket. Phones that will sense when you are conversing with someone and text back the caller telling them that you are busy right now, but if it is urgent they could try back within three minutes.

Sounds like these Indian cell phone owners should have volunteered for beta testing...

(via Ars Technica)

A bottle of red/ A bottle of white

It all depends upon your appetite...

See yourself as a sophisticated, discerning, erudite man-or-woman-about-town? Here's every Esquire cover dating back to its 1933 founding. (via Scrubbles)

For the rest of us, I guess we can just enjoy every Mad Magazine cover since its inception in 1952. I always did like Don Martin best, anyway. Great sound effects.

A Rare View of 9/11, Overlooked

Like the Zapruder film, someone happened to be pointing their camera in the right place to document a pivotal moment in history. From this New York Times story (free registration required), an immigrant worker from the Czech Republic was riding in the passenger seat of an SUV, videotaping a video postcard to send home when he taped the approach and impact of the first airplane into the North Twin Tower. This is only the second known footage of the first plane hitting the tower. He continued filming the aftermath and taped the second plane as it hit the South Tower as well.

There is a link on the page to an audio slide show, with stills from the video and commentary.

(via Metafilter)

A Boy Named Peggy

How many clothespins could you attach to your face? 10? 20? 70? Not even close.

Dancing Baby? All Your Base? Stop it, I'm getting all misty...

Internet fads of days not-too-gone by.

(via A Blog Doesn't Need A Clever Name)

No word yet on whether ZZ Topp will enter

The World Beard and Moustache Championships come to the US this year. Take the weekend off and head out to Carson City, NV for the November 1, 2003 event. Watch current world champ Willi Chevalier defend his title!

For those of us that still occasionally like to take the newpaper and pencil in bad facial hair on the photos, check out the official categories for the event.

(via Ishbadiddle)