If the only hammer you have is the UNIX stream editor sed, you may be surprised at the variety of nails available to you.

Again showing my fairly foggy knowledge of European history, I had no idea that the Polish scouts operated an underground resistance during WWII! I think more scouts would remain active until High School if they knew they would get to sabotage railways.

I’m probably the only reader of this blog that doesn’t read McSweeney’s Internet Tendency on a regular basis, so this recommendation is almost certainly redundant, but John Moe is funny. Not so much "ha ha" funny as "you might as well laugh; despair won’t help" funny.

Somehow, just because culture is their field of expertise, the American Anthropological Association has felt moved to issue a statement opposing a constitutional amendment banning gay marriage, on the grounds there is no basis to the argument that marriage is sacredly heterosexual.

Would more entertaining names for medications make them more effective?
These are some great names from A Manual of Chinese Herbal Medicine: Principles and Practice for Easy Reference by Warner J-W. Fan, M.D.

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The City of Seattle’s Film Office has a really nice (large pdf) brochure with details on Seattle and Washington locations used in films.

If there’s one thing Canadians love, it’s making fun of Canadians: loyal reader John points us to the TV show An American in Canada. Which I won’t link to, since the CBC web page is already talking about the season finale. But it’s on my local PBS station on Saturdays at 9:30pm. Then I’ll watch some SCTV and read How to Be a Canadian.

In the "things nobody asked about" department, Dr Alan Cohen, "a part-time tutor at Cardiff University," has revealed why this Monday will be the most depressing day of the year. I think he misunderstood the chorus of that Boomtown Rats song; I, at least, didn’t really want to know why I don’t like Mondays.
Then again, since the collective does not embrace the new year’s resolution, it’s mostly the weather and those fiendish "General motivational levels" we have to worry about.

From vol. 2 of the previously-mentioned book by Henry Mayhew, London Labour and the London Poor, a section on the River Beer Sellers or Purl-Men:
“It appears to have been the practice at some time or other in this country to infuse wormwood into beer or ale previous to drinking it, either to make it sufficiently bitter, or for some medicinal purpose. This mixture was called purl–why I know not, but Bailey, the philologist of the seventeenth century, so designates it. The drink originally sold on the river was purl, or this mixture, whence the title, purl-man. Now, however, the wormwood is unknown; and what is sold under the name of purl is beer warmed nearly to boiling heat, and flavoured with gin, sugar, and ginger. The river-sellers, however, still retain the name, of purl-men, though there is not one of them with whom I have conversed that has the remotest idea of the meaning of it.”

And from the Oxford English Dictionary:
“a. Formerly, A liquor made by infusing wormwood or other bitter herbs in ale or beer. purl-royal, a similar infusion of wormwood in wine. b. Later, A mixture of hot beer with gin (also called dog’s nose), sometimes also with ginger and sugar: in repute as a morning draught.”

From CocktailDB, a slightly more modern dog’s nose.