Addendum

As an addendum to the previous post about cheese rolling, here is a Cracked.com article on insane sports.

Annual cheese-rolling in England

I learned about a curious custom through one of my housemates: in Gloucester, hordes of people will charge down a steep hill in pursuit of a wheel of cheese, as part of an annual tradition dating back hundreds of years.

I like cheese, but not THAT much.

Walmart's partnership with I Can Haz Cheezburger?

If only this were true...

It's just some water being poured on your face...

Conservative talk show host changes his tune after just six seconds on the subject of waterboarding.

Junk Shop Photos

I found this neat website with old photos from strangers. Some are thoughtful. Some are interesting. Some are funny. And some are downright disturbing (see May 22's the Battle of the Bulge):

http://www.junkshopphotos.com/

You have to be rich to be poor

Apparently, poor folks don't have it so easy. Lots of things that we take for granted are a lot more difficult for people who don't have that much money--making it harder for them to pull themselves out of poverty than you would expect. Very interesting article.

We do not tolerate failure

It has been pointed out to a few folks that the MMORPG City of Heroes is giving away a fortnight worth of play for free. We are thinking about starting up a group this Sunday. Naturally, we will use our powers for evil.

Two things.

First, won't you play with us? All you need to know about character creation you can get from these wiki pages: your powers, which are class (or 'archetype') -specific. In the previous link, they are grouped by the primary and secondary of each archtype. Note that it also includes hero archetypes and prestige class-type deals. In addition, there are the pool powers which everybody can choose from when they reach a higher level.

Second, and potentially more importantly, won't you help us develop a theme? This is important.

We could be The Monsters of Alternative Rock: Conman Meloy, Michael Stab, James Russel Murder, Death Cab for Cutie, Magma White, ...
Or we could be The Confirmed Bachelors (of Arts and Sciences): Political Science as a Mastermind with mercenaries, Chemistry as a Corruptor with radiation and kinetics, Biology as Dominator with plant control, film/theater as mindless Brutes...

This is where certain members of our collective, long shunned for their terrible, terrible propensity for puns, can really shine and save the day. If the Venture Brothers have taught us anything, it is that a villain is only as good as hir pun-laden name.

EDIT for adding links, including the following to the official CoV manual.

Sharks have problems too

From your friends at Animals Have Problems Too

How Topical

Antimatter

There's a light article about it on Wired. 

Sorta neat.

Sharks? Sharks!

I hereby declare this week shark week for the blog. Post shark related things!

I assume a few of you have already seen this, but it is still jawsome!

Destroy the world!!

This is what I do at work:

http://www.sharenator.com/Pandemic_2/

We are all megalomaniacs here. Now you can really destroy the world with Swine Flu.

Mustaches of the 19th Century

For your daily mustache fix:

mustaches of the 19th century

This is what you learn about when you work in an archive.

Attn: People who use Google Chat

I seem to have accidentally deleted my contact list... somehow... so I need you, yes you, to contact me so I can put this back together again. That is all.

We're Rock Stars...

Dum! de dum da dum!

Vaccines and Autism: How Oprah is Murdering Children

So it's been established for some time that the Huffington Post missed the boat on real science. Summary: their "Wellness Editor" since 2009 has qualifications limited to a "Masters Degree in Traditional Chinese Medicine" (Buster?) and a doctorate in "homeopathic medicine."

But it turns out, just about anybody can get an editorial printed. And editorials advocating junk medicine are being printed with some regularity now.

But they aren't the only ones: the problem is escalating, with Oprah beginning to promote noted anti-vaccine activist Jenny McCarthy a blog, in what is expected to be only the first step in turning her into some sort of self-help celebrity (as she did Dr. Phil, apparently).

Other resources:

TIME interview with Jenny McCarthy

Washington Post article on vaccine-autism link (there isn't one)

Email Oprah! (Please!)

Save the asses!

Seeing as how the Neezer has brought us to the important topic of asses: consider donating to Safe Haven for Donkeys in the Holy Land. Donkeys are common beasts of burden in Israel, and are typically viewed as expendable, so they are mistreated and overworked. Sick and elderly donkeys are often left to die.

SHADH aims to change this. You can adopt a rescued donkey, or just make a small donation. At the very least, their website contains a gallery of cute asses for you to ogle.

Even Uri Geller supports SHADH! Maybe he will teach the donkeys to bend spoons with their minds.

Ass!

The cutest ass you will ever see!

Spiritual Heritage Week

"The resolution, H.RES. 397, would put Congress on record as “recognize[ing] the religious foundations of faith on which America was built are critical underpinnings of our Nation's most valuable institutions and form the inseparable foundation for America's representative processes, legal systems, and societal structures.”"

And they're all like, 'we should blur the line between church and state,' and I was all like, 'folks should sign this petition.'

Keyboard cat

Meme alert.

100 days of Barack Obama's Facebook news feed

I showed this to Babyfingers, but then I realized that because he is not a real person (i.e. not on Facebook), he wouldn't completely get it. Maybe you real people will appreciate it more.

Kitties with Kalishnikovs

Maybe this is a little immature, but I thought it was cool!

It's meowcenaries

where lolcats meet first person shooters!

Thought this crowd would appreciate it.

What you can't do with iTunes

If only this clause wasn't in here.

The four horseman of a trauma death

link

Also, it's now off the front page, but I posted a comment on the epilogue to the cthulu campaign.

Superpoop

I accidentally typed the wrong URL into my browser and stumbled upon this. I guess this individual finds pictures online and captions them. Some of them are pretty funny. Enjoy.

Tone Matrix

Too much time?

If you haven't already seen this, it will suck up a good hour or so. The horizontal dimension sets the time of the tone, the vertical dimension controls the pitch. My only complaint is that it isn't longer.

I don't know what the musical term for this is, but it's hard to make something that doesn't sound good.

Cap & Trade

I've heard some nasty things about it-- particularly involving corruption and poor regulation wherein Chinese companies will be founded for the express purpose of not producing carbon dioxide who can then sell their emissions permits-- but Paul Krugman has a well-reasoned defense of them.

I don't tend to trust economists, but he's a clever guy.

Corewar

Looks fun.