"singer in a smokey room / smell of wine and cheap perfume / for a smile they can share the night"

[larryhammer]

Meanwhile, back at the ranch, I seem to have collected a larger than usual batch of linkage. Call it an economy size package -- the sort you don't use all at once.


Getting the Japan linky out of the way quickly: still more Edo-period Japanese monsters (the hajikkaki looks remarkable like a shmoo), samples of this year's rice paddy art, an old song, revisited, and another gorgeous, atmospheric timelapse of Tokyo skylines.

Quote of the week: "Octopodes is the plural in Greek, octopuses is the plural in English, and octopi is the plural in ignorance." It's wrong of course, but it's still a snappy quote.

How much street prostitutes earn, as reported by a study in Chicago by economists.

"A caption that raises more questions than it answers." Indeed. (via)

Song I'm currently digging: "Visite des recoins" by Scotch & Sofa. I'm also digging that guitar.

Dan Telfer makes fun of your favorite dinosaur. (NSFW)

A bit late for this, but here's a cool interactive graphic of national teams of the past few World Cups, splitting out where members of each squad plays club football. Mouse-over flags to see just the lines for that country.

I assume everyone has already seen the first optical photograph of an extrasolar planet, yes?

The story of Hanny's voorwerp. (via)

On the differences between amateur, pro, and top-level. (via)

A suggestion that inflationary models of the early universe are not likely to be true, because they don't really solve the problem they set out to. Full disclosure: I never liked inflationary models on aesthetic grounds -- having been wrong on neutrinos, to be right here would please me mightily. (via)

More photos from the secret life of nails. (via)

The truth about cold water immersion, including the interesting fact that you cannot die of hypothermia without a flotation device. (via)

---L.

Comments

[asakiyume.livejournal.com]

I'm dubiously comforted to know that in the absence of flotation, if I fall into frigid water, I will much more quickly perish from drowning than hypothermia.

(More seriously, it was an interesting article. Now to check out the rice paddy art.)

[larryhammer]

It is indeed a fascinating article. I think I am comforted.

---L.