Why the hell am I addicted to this stupid game? It is one of my few vices; it’s all I can do not to do just one more. Three links for you. The first is a local news program description here. The second is one of the ‘official’ websites for the game here. The third is one of the best sites on the game, with a daily published puzzle here. WARNING: this is a pencil-and-paper thang. I wish my newspaper would toss the Omar Sharif bridge advice column and put in a daily Sudoku puzzle like European papers.

Too bad they didn’t name this Number Bukkake.

I love this album cover, from some obscure German group. I mostly love it because they probably thought it was a fantastic piece of art. No, I don’t own it, saw it on ebay.

From the WP:

Bush told Texas newspaper reporters in a group interview at the White House on Monday that he believes that intelligent design should be taught alongside evolution as competing theories.

Here’s the best bit, though:
Gary L. Bauer, a Christian conservative leader who ran for president against Bush in the 2000 Republican primaries said:

With the president endorsing it, at the very least it makes Americans who have that position more respectable, for lack of a better phrase.

Found this funny on-line comic strip called Toothpaste For Dinner. The jottings this guy comes up with are bizarre and often really funny. Here’s one:

Check out some of the others. The t-shirt photos are pretty funny.

This is a great way to distinguish yourself from the unwashed masses at gaming events.
Caveat: There is a layer of irony that comes at the expense of a diminished message and it is this:

SOAP is an acronym for a web service communication protocol (ie, web developers use it). Therefore, stinky programmer geek x seeing the shirt will attempt to outdork by expounding on the frequency with which he uses SOAP, while it remains clear that he rarely uses soap.

If you played a lot of Starcraft, and I know more than one if us has, then you’ll like this, else ignore. Here’s a gallery where you can clearly see the evolution of the development of the game. It starts out like an image-replaced version of Warcraft 2 (they didn’t even replace the fonts), and shows the evolution into what became the published game. Like I said, limited appeal.

Dog Poo Spray is the winning entry in this year’s Student of the Year award at London’s Central Saint Martins College. Dog Poo Spray laminates your dog’s shit to a stick so that you don’t need to scoop it up with a baggie and feel it squish revoltingly between your fingers. The contest was sponsored by the aerosols industry.

From New Scientist:

Airport security guards already use hand-held electromagnetic wands to detect metal hidden under clothing. The same wand can also sniff for traces of the gases some explosives emit into the air.

If the passenger is a suicide bomber who realises the wand has found something, the guard might not have enough time to pull out handcuffs or a gun. So the new wand will have a hidden secret – a transformer which steps the detector’s battery power up to 100 kilovolts and feeds it to disguised metal electrodes at the end of the wand.

If the wand gives a silent warning of explosives, the guard can then subtly slide the pads onto the passenger’s neck or hands and press a shock button. The patent reassures that the effect is “temporary and reversible”.

“Hidden Secret”? Guess what? They know now!

No, it sounds like a good idea. Passengers will line up to get accidentally electrocuted by some clumsy TSA employee. Soon they’ll even have their own code words for their faux pas like “fried eggs” or “Abu Ghraib”.

Since the cat’s out of the bag, why not just put sniffy bits at the end of a loaded rifle and rub that over passengers?