Faith… it’s not just for religion any more. I just bought some I’believe potato chips:

From The Debatable Land:

The Scotsman today:
Page 1: Mystery of Severed Head Found on Arbroath Beach
Page 18: The Awe Inspiring Beauty of Scotland’s Beaches

It happens every few years, and it’s happening again right now. A bunch of spambots are spewing forth thousands of emails about fake Gucci handbags, and each message has my email address in the “From:” field. The result: I’ve been receiving hundreds of mailer “bounce” messages for the last few days, filling my inbox and confusing my spam filters. There’s nothing to be done about this; I must just wait for it to subside. Last time I seem to remember that it took a couple of weeks. The ever-present worry, of course, is that some spam filtering system will decide that my email address is toxic, and starts blocking my legitimate emails. E-fingers crossed….

How about a “Hello Kitty AK-47”? “A perfect gift for the young lady of the house. A bargain at only $1072.95!”

Or perhaps you’d prefer Martha Stewart anti-personnel mines?
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(HT to the Akihabara News.)

Bad Astronomy Blog is remembering Space 1999 with a really cool image….

Poland to probe if Teletubbies are gay:

Poland’s conservative government took its drive to curb what it sees as homosexual propaganda to the small screen on Monday, taking aim at Tinky Winky and the other Teletubbies. Ewa Sowinska, government-appointed children rights watchdog, told a local magazine published on Monday she was concerned the popular BBC children’s show promoted homosexuality. She said she would ask psychologists to advise if this was the case.

Apparently others in the Polish government are worried about her…

… making public comments “that may turn her department into a laughing stock.”

May? Too late, I’m afraid.

Stupidity spreads.

I didn’t want to read this story about a thesis entitled Quantum Feminist Mnemotechnics: the Archival Text, Digital Narrative and the Limits of Memory, but I found myself powerless to resist. Unfortunately, even though this sounds like another affaire Sokal, the author seems to be sincere. How disappointing….

Alec just drew my attention to this newspaper story, which I unhesitatingly nominate for the “Best Opening Sentence of 2007” award:

A man who was found dressed in latex and handcuffs brought a donkey to his room in a Galway city centre hotel, because he was advised “to get out and meet people,” the local court heard last week.

I also liked the following example of Irish legal compassion: He was also charged with damage to a mini-bar in the room, but this charge was later dropped when the defendant said that it was the donkey who caused that damage. The whole thing is strangely reminiscent of Frank Zappa’s tour de force album from 1971: The Mothers: Fillmore East.

Check out this wonderfully wacky piece at Good Math, Bad Math on Rudolph Steiner and Theosophical Math. For example:

In normal projective geometry, there’s an interesting kind of duality, where you can take theorems involving lines and points and switch the lines and the points in the theorem, and the result is also a theorem. So, for example: given two distinct points, there is exactly one line that crosses through both of them. The dual statement of that is: given two distinct lines, there is exactly one distinct point that they both cross through.
Steiner insists on carrying duality to silliness, and that’s where the really crazy math comes in. Since there’s normal space where parallel lines converge and intersect at infinity, there must be a dual space where everything is at infinity, and things converge towards the finite.

Wow. Where can I get some of that stuff…?