Someone wasn’t satisfied with the Rock/Paper/Scissors triad, so they expanded the number of allowed gestures by 22. The variant is called RPS-25, and you can see what beats what here. You can also find how the 300 outcomes are spoken here. A sample:

• Water short-circuites Nuke
• Sponge intrigues Alien
• Monkey flings poop at Woman
• Dynamite explodes Rock

Useful.

Knizia has developed a game based on Sudoku to be offered at Essen this year. I wonder what novel auction mechanisms he will re-use…

Alabama state senator joins noted meteorologists Al Qaeda, Pat Robertson… blames Gulf storms on gambling. From here:

Hurricane Katrina and other storms that battered the Gulf Coast were God’s judgment of sin, according to state Sen. Hank Erwin, R-Montevallo.

“New Orleans and the Mississippi Gulf Coast have always been known for gambling, sin and wickedness,” Erwin wrote this week in a column he distributes to news outlets. “It is the kind of behavior that ultimately brings the judgment of God.”

After touring Gulfport and Biloxi, Miss., and Bayou La Batre, Erwin said he was awed and humbled by the power of the storm. But he wasn’t surprised.

“Warnings year after year by godly evangelists and preachers went unheeded. So why were we surprised when finally the hand of judgment fell?” Erwin wrote.

The BBC has an article about interesting words in other languages that don’t have an English equivalent. Here are two:

• bakku-shan (Japanese): a girl who appears pretty from behind but not from the front.
• Backpfeifengesicht (German): a face that cries out for a fist in it.

Both favorites.

The guys at Penny Arcade spoofed a page from that shitty SkyMall catalog you get on airplanes. Good stuff.

It’s uncertain which strain of OCD started this, but I’m sure it was left untreated. It is an activity that consists entirely of repeatedly stacking and unstacking plastic cups. It’s called Sport Stacking, though it looks like it’s a “sport” in the way competitive eating is a sport. Still, it’s impressive to watch someone who’s good at it. Click the picture to see a very short video (WMV) of the world record holder:

Ricky Gervais was on Conan O’Brien shilling for Extras and had a great line. He was telling Conan about the inane questions he gets now that he’s well known. He talked about one of the stupidest questions:

“[I was asked] If you had to save three things if your house was on fire, what would they be? So I said… my cat…umm….my pet salamander…and three you say? Probably one of the twins.”

Feel free to run that one into the ground, Danger.

This caused a double take. Someone put up some interesting examples of color illusions.