I was a little surprised to see FD&C Yellow 5 was not on the BBC’s list of colorings banned elsewhere, but FD&C Blue 1 is there. Bottom line appears to be that Norway is the place to live if you’re exceptionally concerned about food-additive safety. Update: turns out Yellow 5 is Tartrazine; the BBC just […]

Through the excellent CoolGov, comes the Flu surveillance map. If this was a different sort of weblog, I would make a joke about red state/blue state and horrible infections.

I’m a little (well, a lot) appalled that challenging the assumption that "language … allows you to do other high order intellectual functions" is considered so shocking. I frequently feel like language gets in the way of my high order thoughts, in an analogous way to how sounding the words in my head slows down […]

Apparently we won’t have to worry about smoke visibility in the near term, as the Pope’s laryngo-tracheitis has been fixed. That was quick. Mine seems to be getting hardly any better at all. Of course, it sounds like his doc(s) gave him treatment instead of a blank stare.

Plumbers beware! In Virginia, it may soon be illegal to have one’s pants droop. Though I haven’t read the text of the bill, the focus seems to be on underwear, so maybe skipping the thong entirely will allow the miscreant to escape prosecution. Or maybe a crack show is covered under other legislation.

As noted previously, these kids today are not very bright. In further developments in that field of study, USA Today (that bastion of journalistic excellence) cites a study that found more than a third of high school students think newspapers should get government approval before publishing stories (though the wording I see doesn’t say they […]

Take this piece about the Pope’s flu, for example. It makes me wonder at least a couple things not addressed: Is the Vatican flu as bad as the Kremlin flu (or was that the Kremlin cold, and that’s why the Vatican emphasized that this is the flu and not a cold)? Why wouldn’t an 84-year-old […]

Just another "Good Baptist couple gets porno labelled as The Pajama Game" story? Maybe. My favorite part, though, is "’My wife and I were very shocked but we watched it until the end because we couldn’t believe what we were seeing.’" So, what, they were expecting maybe the topless Italian woman was the accompanying short? […]

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

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.