I want to acknowledge the victims of the recent earthquake in Iran, but I don’t have anything that’s appropriate to say right now.

Rest in peace, 25,000 human beings.

I’ve been meaning, but failing, for the longest time to point out that Cult of X is back on the Web.

Welcome back, Mr. X.

Cult of X has been one of my favorite reads for quite a while now, one of those undiscovered gems of blogdom. It’s good to have it back.

Something Awful goons have their way with a Medieval tapestry-making site.

Some of them are stupid and most people won’t get quite a few of them, but some made me giggle substantially.

Space isn’t remote at all. It’s only an hour’s drive away if your car could go straight upwards.

— Fred Hoyle

Today is World AIDS Day.

If you’re in the U.S., you’re (hopefully) on Thanksgiving holiday now, and you may find yourself looking for something to do.

Perhaps you’d like to read An Atheist With Gandhi, a journal of an atheist Indian social progressive’s correspondences and conversations with Gandhi.

Or perhaps you’d like to read about the tradition of scientific materialism in ancient India. (more here about ancient Indian philosophical and religious thought)

Or perhaps you just want to see a dude win Super Mario 3 in 11 minutes. (17.6 MB. You probably need to save this link to your local disk and then rename the saved file from “.html” to “.wmv” if necessary.)

Update: here is another copy of that video.

I never played checkers all that much so this may be common, but I just played a game with my daughter Julie that ended in a draw with no pieces taken by either side and with both sides, at the end of play, unable to move.

Ahhhh… according to the American Checker Federation:

QUESTION: What if I cannot move because my pieces are all confined?
ANSWER: If you cannot move because it’s impossible, the game is lost. The object of the game is to capture “OR CONFINE” all your opponents pieces so they cannot move.

As I took the last move, I suppose that technically makes me the winner. (Though, one could make the point that we are now both confined, but that seems like a question for a Philosopher of Checkers.)

I think I’ll just leave it at a “draw”.

He was really big on Darwinism.

— overheard, from a fellow student discussing her middle school biology teacher

The word “biweekly” can mean either

• occurring twice a week or
• occurring once every two weeks.

Did everyone know this but me?

No wonder I’ve been so confused all my life.

I’m curious about what other “bi-” words this new learning can be applied to.

Two excellent videos — I especially like the wonderfully executed stylism of “Remind Me” — from the Nordic electronica band Röyksopp.

(yes, I know “stylism” isn’t a word, but it should be.)

Innocent, if unfunny, comic or slam against a major world religion?

Washington Post article about this “controversy” here.

(before calling me a hypersensitive ultraliberal commie or something, please note that I really don’t care either way but just think the whole thing is interesting and at least a little bit funny, regardless of whether Hart is telling the truth.)

(Warning: Stanley Kubrick trivia ahead.)

Q: Who played the mysterious person in the red cloak in Eyes Wide Shut?

A: Leon Vitali, who also played Lord Bullingdon in Barry Lyndon.

Zen question: “Sir, if the ability of the Star Wars ABMs to hit a nuclear missile is imaginary and the nuclear missiles in Iraq are imaginary, does that mean a Star Wars ABM could hit an Iraqi nuclear missile?”

Follow-up question to Zen question if answer is no: “Would you consider that justification for having gone to war against Iraq?”

— Questions for President Bush’s Next Press Conference, Calvin Trillin, The New Yorker

The Onion: Mom Finds Out About Blog