Routine Order

Heartening news from Yahoo: Google book-scanning efforts spark debate – Yahoo! News
A splinter group called the Open Content Alliance favors a less restrictive approach to prevent mankind’s accumulated knowledge from being controlled by a commercial entity, even if it’s a company like Google that has embraced “Don’t Be Evil” as its creed.

The organization will be [...]

How does one fail a gender test? And really, how hard could it be to assess someone’s gender? I agree if could be more challenging if the doctor cannot pull the patient’s pants down, but since we all know doctors can do that, how hard can it be?
Santhi Soundararajan, an erstwhile female athlete who was [...]

DC Comics
Now you can read the full first issues of the many Vertigo series that revolutionized comics! Follow the links below to download a PDF version of the first issue of these classic Vertigo series now collected in graphic novel form. When you visit the Graphic Novels section of VertigoComics.com, any graphic novel titles with [...]

I saw this movie Nowhere in Africa, which was a nice movie and all that. What caught my attention was a dialogue in the movie, where the father of the protagonist says, “One always loves more than the other – that is the problem.” I thought that was a very insightful statement.

Now I come across [...]

This body mod is quite amazing:

The scarf has the wearer’s blood circulating through it. I wonder if it really circulates though. More gory details at the modblog.

So apparently the tone and sound of the Stradivari violins are due to the chemicals used to treat the wood the violins were made of. I do not envy the scientist who spent 30 years proving his hypothesis that the unique and rich sound of the violins derive from the treatment done to the wood. [...]

I have often wondered what life would be like as a Synesthetic
Synesthesia (also spelled synæsthesia or synaesthesia, plural synesthesiae) is a neurological condition in which two or more bodily senses are coupled

Wouldn’t it be fun if you could see different digits (numerals) in different colors, or if you could “see” sounds and “smell” colors. I [...]

Man has driven yet another large mammal to extinction. Extinction is such a sad thing – the generations to follow will never know what they lost to the fullest.

The Baiji, or Chinese freshwater river dolphins are almost blind and were driven to extinction by ships which interfere with their sonar, pollution, fishing and such. The [...]

xentheon – where is my mind is a visual representation of the source code that makes Linux.

Ok, just a part of the source code. Alright, alright, the visual representation is a big let down, but hey, I had to share this with you. No way I would pass up on this!

The Economist is now in the agony aunt business. Well, if all agony aunts were like this, I would watch more TV, I guess.
Dear Natasha,
I understand your concern, but your future looks bright. A long-distance relationship will always put pressure on both of you, but it’s a question of how you use that to your [...]