Do you ever have trouble finding just the right words?

Me: "I’m trying to find retailers in this area who carry caffeine-free Barq’s."
Receptionist at my local Coca-Cola® bottling plant: "I think all Barq’s is caffeine-free; root beer usually doesn’t have caffeine in it."
Me: "Well, it turns out most Barq’s does have caffeine; the only place I’ve seen it not have caffeine is in Richland."
Her: "Richland…?"
Me: "Washington."
She forwards me to somebody in the sales department (or to his voice mail, rather), where I leave a message with my name, phone number, and question. Stay tuned for further developments.
And just by the way, wouldn’t you think you’d want a little better product knowledge in the public face of the company? Sure, they have lots of brands (and note "Caffeine-free Barq’s" on that list), but still….

A dear friend pointed me at this cool language comparison survey. I haven’t fired up IE (which it says it requires) to try it out yet, so I don’t know whether Icelandic is one of the languages they’re measuring.

Sorry for yesterday’s outage. I’m a lamentably tardy bill-payer, but steps have been taken so that it won’t happen again.

I’ve seen news about John Gottman‘s Relationship Research Institute for a while now. This week’s This American Life is about marriage, and includes a lengthy segment where he talks about his research into what makes happy couples different from unhappy couples. Once the stream is available, I hope somebody remembers to put a link to it here. It is, as Ira points out, very difficult to hear the discussions of and about happy couples without reflecting on one’s own relationships.

One of these days, the Elgin Marbles are probably going to be gone from the British Museum, but it’s seemed like that for a long time now. Everything old is new again.

In 1999, there was some momentum to call a Kuiper-Belt object a Kuiper-Belt object, but sentiment prevailed. Not even a compromise was accepted. At least one renegade flouted the IAU’s ruling.
Now, the discovery of Sedna, beyond even the Kuiper Belt, again highlights the silliness of calling Pluto a planet, and gives us another chance to use consistent criteria for determining planet status.

All web users enjoy the number 404, and there are plenty of interesting 404 error messages out there. The kind folks at the 404 research lab have given us Area 404, where you can see many of the best, categorized for easier browsing. There is also 404 Headlines, where I found pointers to a cellphone-originated blog and creamedpeas, which seem to be creations of the same person. The most recent creamedpeas project was Confidential To:. A fair sample is this letter from an engaged woman to her chicken-shit best-friend who, it turns out, has wanted her all these years. But I recommend starting at the beginning and reading until you can’t take any more.
Update: this one cracked me up.

It doesn’t take Inspector Morse to smell something funny about this Masonic Initiation mishap.

BC serial killer/pig farmer – sorry, accused serial killer/pig farmer – Robert Pickton may have mixed business with hobby.