The Wikipedia article on rutabagas has a section entitled "Activities involving rutabagas":
Rutabagas are commonly carved into decorative lanterns called jack-o’-lanterns for the Halloween season throughout Britain and Ireland.
The International Rutabaga Curling Championship takes place annually at the Ithaca Farmers’ Market on the last day of the market season.
I realized recently that my impression of the sanctity of marriage has been damaged most by anti-gay activists attempting to limit marriage to heterosexual couples. The message seems to be, "Marriage isn’t for EVERYBODY who is in love, since some people who are obviously in love can’t be married. Ergo, what else can it be besides a legal mechanism, a tax break/health insurance arrangement we give to some couples but not others?" Of course, as the child of an open marriage maybe I’m predisposed to think something like that.
So then what to make of this story about a man marrying his body pillow in Korea, via Suzanne? One commentator writes, "As long as the guy and the pillow are happy together who cares? I suspect that this is just another ‘look at stupid johnny foreigner’ photo opportunity. If the pillow had a Ph. D. they never would have published it."
Or how about the related stories I found when I was digging up that one: man marries a Barbie doll to appease the spirit of his dead wife, man in Japan weds video game character?
Seen on Planet Debian: ‘Can you get cp to give a progress bar like wget?’ The solution starts:
#!/bin/sh
cp_p()
{
strace -q -ewrite cp -- "${1}" "${2}" 2>&1 \
...
The author notes in the comments:
If you feel the need to point out an alternative solution, then you have missed the entire point by a wide margin.
—lamby
Seen via JWZ: a fascinating story about a dwarf.
This is one of those things where I’m struck at how weird the world we live in is.
Please be advised: there is a protein called sonic hedgehog. There is also a retinal protein known as Pikachurin, named after Pikachu.
The name of this "nimble" protein was inspired due to Pikachu’s "lightning-fast moves and shocking electric effects".
Via Peter Swimm: a fascinating interview with the creator of Kobe Bryant Deathmatch Fiction.
A quote from the Kobe Bryant fanfic in question:
We chose to have our fight to the death in an abandoned factory in China. I flew over in my private jet and made sure I preserved my vital combat energies by abstaining from totally consensual intercourse with my perfect-10 stewardesses.
Instead, I reminisced about other NBA superstars who I have killed in action: Mel Turpin, Joe Barry Carroll, Benoit Benjamin, Stanley Roberts, Arvydas Sabonis, Mike Giminski, Bill Wennington and Edward Martini, who is not technically in the NBA or a superstar but a male nurse I mowed down in an unsolved hit-and-run homicide.
It’s fairly short (five minutes of reading?) so you might want to go read the whole thing (then again, maybe not). Lots of fascinating thoughts in the interview on the nature of fanfic and "serious literature". Also be sure to check out the Dirk Nowitzki fanfic, linked from the article.
Wonderful quotable line from this strip.
On CNN: an article about the NORAD Santa Tracker.
"NORAD uses four high-tech systems to track Santa — radar, satellites, Santa Cams and fighter jets," reads the NORAD Santa Web site. "Tracking Santa starts with the NORAD radar system called the North Warning System. This powerful radar system consists of 47 installations strung across the northern border of North America. On Christmas Eve, NORAD monitors the radar systems continuously for indications that Santa Claus has left the North Pole.
Lately there’s been some fuss about Google’s new privacy policy, with this post by Joey Hess (on Planet Debian) and Slashdot’s article about Google’s new opt-out policy.
Joey Hess writes:
With the decade over, and Google rolling out all manner of tracking cookies and javascript, it’s time to move on. Just keeping on top of the torrent of privacy-affecting changes Google is making, and trying to parse the real meaning in the chirpy googlespeak announcements has become more work than the value their search engine adds. (This was the last straw.)
At least for now, I’ll be using Duck Duck Go for search. It’s small, quirky, has features the big competition lacks, and works well enough for my mostly moderate and occasionally intense needs. Sorta like Google in 1999.
While I am in favor of privacy, have not been thrilled with Google’s behavior, and have come to resent the attitude of Google employees and officers, I have to say Duck Duck Go does not meet my search needs. Neither does Bing. Neither does Google, when it comes right down to it. Search is hard, and there are a lot of tricky bits. (Try searching for the Haskell type signature "Int#". For a while it was nearly impossible to find the emacs package "magit", as all you could get were results for "magic".)
So for the time being I’m still using Google Search. With luck, in time everything will just magically get better..
File under truth-is-stranger-than-fiction: an article about those wacky Scandinavians (via Slashdot).
In Denmark, it’s legal to make copies of commercial videos for backup or other private purposes. It’s also illegal to break the DRM that restricts copying of DVDs. Deciding to find out which law mattered, Henrik Anderson reported himself for 100 violations of the DRM-breaking law (he ripped his DVD collection to his computer) and demanded that the Danish anti-piracy Antipiratgruppen do something about it. They promised him a response, then didn’t respond. So now he’s reporting himself to the police. He wants a trial, so that the legality of the DRM-breaking law can be tested in court.