A very odd story of a guy who defected to North Korea because he was drunk and afraid, and spent decades in the same state in that same state until he was freed to work in a Japanese cookie shop.

(4/14: link fixed)

On a recent Delta flight (I believe we were on a B737-800), the seat-back entertainment system needed to be rebooted, so everybody on the plane got to watch the startup messages scroll by. It was a Linux system booting with Redboot, running on a single-processor system (to judge from the single Tux graphic on boot). I was entertained by the warning that the kernel was being tainted by non-GPL code.

Not content to tell you how to find out what has been claimed as a trademark, we’ll also point you at someone who’s paying way more attention than seems entirely called-for to new claims and posting his findings in Trademork.

Putting the band back together? Get your charts here.

My librarian sent me this review of math-related literary works some time ago. I’m putting it here so I don’t have to keep it in my inbox.

I had my first mouth guard related dream: “This bread is terrible!”

Earlier, someone in the office was playing some jazz that sounded uncannily like the opening music in Manos: The Hands of Fate. That is all.

Do you like Penn & Teller? Do you like the book World War Z? Perhaps you will enjoy this short film.

Ok, I clicked on the link to find a goofy web site for a project, but a spray dispenser for pancake batter is actually a really good idea: because you can make a single pancake just for yourself every morning for weeks!