The Adventures of Shylock Holmes

I spent the weekend in Vegas. A couple of posts on the subject will be forthcoming. As a first pass, Vegas has a totally weird distributio...

I had not heard of Senator Ron Wyden, a Democrat from Oregon, before today. I am sure Ron Wyden and I would find much to disagree about in m...

If you gaze long into an abyss, the abyss will gaze back into you, as Mr Nietzsche sagely observed : This ad, which came up during a House e...

The First: http://www.news24.com/SouthAfrica/News/Murdered-tourist-looking-for-real-Africa-20101116 Cape Town - The husband of murdered t...

Their description, not mine - but apt nonetheless! http://veryawesomeworld.com/awesomebook/inside.html

Okay, so if you're either, you're probably both, but they're answers to quite different questions.  Why do people from Iran alw...

I am aware of the risk of turning this blog into an all-SMBC-all-the-time affair, but this one was so good I couldn't resist. He also ge...

..is download the free new album by 'Girl Talk', the awesome mashup DJ. I know what you're thinking - "Girl Talk"?!?...

Tim Blair links to this great story in The Sun - two thugs with a bull terrier attempted to pick a fight with three guys in London, but e...

One of the developments I like the most about the internet is the advent of blogs that combine accurate reporting of the news with snarky hu...

Where 'Us' equals 'The Chinese' . Apparently some time in April, 15 per cent of all internet traffic was for a time diverted...

Hippy rock star Neil Young tries to convert 1959 Lincoln Continental into a hybrid, succeeds in burning down warehouse instead . The artic...

I oppose tax increases because they fund a wasteful, value destroying government. I oppose them because they reduce the incentives to work a...

These days, areas predominantly populated by gay people tend to be the cool parts of town (The Castro in San Francisco, Boystown in Chicago,...

From Christopher Hitchens : "Darfur, Zimbabwe, Burma, North Korea, anywhere that the concept of human rights doesn't exist, it...

The funniest gags are rarely fair to their subject matter (and this is no exception), but this is funny and hits the mark. My favourite line...

Scorn not democracy lightly, my friends. It has been so long since most of our countries have had to experience (or even seriously contempl...

Public affairs vex no man, as Dr Johnson observed : BOSWELL. "Perhaps, Sir, I should be the less happy for being in Parliament. I neve...

If a man's height were subject to as much fluctuation as a woman's weight, I wonder if women would still have the reputation of bein...

When people think about rude words, they usually focus on their raw power to cause offense. This tends to prioritise the usual suspects like...

Apparently Full Tilt Poker and Pokerstars, two of the biggest poker sites have recently been having a purge of poker bots, according to The ...

In economics, a corner solution is ( roughly speaking ) the solution to an optimization problem that involves being up against a binding co...

Human nature and human motivations are rarely simple. Pithy rhetoric and evocative examples cannot paper over the fact that the same actions...

This lesson in publicity 101 comes from Ryan Maloney , a.k.a. 'Toadfish', a longtime character on the Australian soap opera ' Ne...

Zero Hedge has an interesting post about how the European debt crisis is set to be the next focus of the market. What's well known is...

" Irish Breakfast - it's the whiskey of teas."

http://gaslight.mtroyal.ca/Orwell-B.htm The title of this post alone ought to be enough convince you (Men of Letters, all) to read this. B...

Check out this great story in the New York Times magazine about Albert Gonzalez, a big-time credit card fraud operator. He's sure fal...

Here's something I've noticed about my recollections of dreams. The amount I seem to remember follows something like an exponential ...

A Google researcher on social networks has a fascinating slide show on how  social networks  operate in real life. In particular, one of the...

The Last Psychiatrist has an interesting post about the images that marketers use to subtley convey cool: It's easy to think that the ...

I got a Roomba a few months ago. They're a brand of robotic vacuum cleaners. I refer to it affectionately as 'The Cleaning Lady...

From the excellent Saturday Morning Breakfast Cereal . What's funnier is that I know people who'd actually do this:

I think I've figured out part of the secret of Robbie William's success. It's his carefully crafted persona that broadcasts ...

If you ever needed proof that the government views us as its subjects, rather than its masters, consider the way the TSA has rolled out i ts...

For those of you who think that mental accounting isn't real or significant, I ask you this: Is not the end of daylight saving the bes...

There's something really satisfying about seeing science applied rigourously to areas normally ruled only by rumour and superstition. It...

Everybody tells me that I should learn a language. It's the trendy thing to do. Wouldn't it be amazing to go to some remote village ...

For various reasons, my family tends to take a very matter-of-fact approach to death. As I grew up, it became apparent that this wasn't ...

I consider myself fortunate to have had to endure only minimal exposure to women's magazines, usually when a girl I know is reading them...