Yesterday's Astronomy Picture of the Day is a classic.

Jacob Weisberg's Deathstyles of the rich and famous takes a look at the hazards of extreme wealth:

There are diseases of poverty, such as tuberculosis, malaria, and HIV/AIDS. There are diseases of affluence, such as lung cancer, high blood pressure, and type-2 diabetes. And then there are the hazards of extreme affluence, such as being thrown off a polo pony, flipping your Cigarette boat, or succumbing to altitude sickness on a vanity expedition to the Himalayas.

This point was brought home this week with the presumed death by drowning of Philip Merrill, the mid-Atlantic press baron who owns Washingtonian magazine. The 72-year-old Merrill was sailing alone on his 41-foot boat, probably without a life jacket, when he fell into the Chesapeake Bay. I mean no disrespect to Merrill or his family when I say that the risk of meeting this sort of end goes into the small but poetic category of problems unique to the rich and famous. Members of the middle class do not have to worry about falling off $250,000 sailboats because they don't have $250,000 sailboats to fall off of. [...]

Comforting news, I'm sure you'll agree.

(Unless you're reading this on your laptop whilst reclining on the deck of your fancy sailboat, in which case you might want to go and put a life preserver on before you click on that link…)

The University of Florida's Book of Insect Records has some fascinating chapter headings:

Chapter 1: Fastest Flier

[...]

Chapter 8: Most Spectacular Mating

[...]

Chapter 10: Least Specific Sucker of Vertebrate Blood

[...]

Chapter 23: Most Toxic Venom

[...]

Chapter 28: Most Spectacular Batesian Mimicry

[...]

Chapter 36: Most Polyandrous

[...]

[Via Proceedings of the Athanasius Kircher Society]

Channel 4 have purchased the UK rights to Aaron Sorkin's new show, Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip.

Now we just have to hope that a) the show turns out to be good enough to be worth watching, b) US audiences watch in sufficient numbers to get the show renewed, and c) the show does well enough on Channel 4 to avoid the dreaded shift to a post-midnight timeslot that befell quality shows like Angel, Homicide: Life on the Street, The West Wing, Six Feet Under, NYPD Blue and umpteen others.

[I think a) is a pretty good bet, but b) and c) are in the lap of the gods.]

Avram Grumer has found firm evidence that the Singularity will be upon us sooner than you'd think.

(As someone who hasn't been clean-shaven for more than a few months at a time in the last two decades presumably I'm destined to be Left Behind after the rest of you upload yourselves into your AI-powered, nanotech-driven razors.)

[Via Majikthise, via Pharyngula]

Dirty Dancing: The Corner'ingation of Baby: Dirty Dancing as a 1923 silent movie.

Extortr – online blackmail for the masses:

Frequently Asked Questions

Blackmail Procedure

[...]

Is this legal?

Extortr is hosted in Kgryjstan, where enterprising, forward-thrusting Web 2.0 businesses such as ours are welcomed with open arms. We operate within the bounds of local law; it is your responsibility to make sure you obey any laws in your juristiction.

[...]

Advice for Recipients of Blackmail Notes

What's going on?

First of all, congratulations! You're being blackmailed using the most technologically advanced extortion service in the world, Extortr. If you haven't already, you should go to the web address in the email you were sent, to check that the photo or video that we have is genuine. If it's not, lucky you — you can let the timer next to it expire witout worry. If it is genuine, we recommend clicking on the "Pay Now" button as soon as possible in order to make sure that the material stays private.

[...]

[Via del.icio.us/popular]

The Vampire Slayer Act of 2006 has just been approved by the California Assembly.

See if you can figure out what the Act does before following the link. (I couldn't.)

[Via Amygdala]

Geeks have been arguing for years about what would happen if the worlds of Star Trek and Star Wars were to collide. This video is the latest contribution to the debate.

I'm mildly astonished that the lawyers from Paramount and LucasFilm have so far failed to join forces and take out the rebel video makers (figuratively speaking), but as long as it's up it's worth a look. Some of the editing is a bit choppy and a few of the Enterprise's non-speaking bridge crew seem to be shapeshifting from one scene to the next, but all in all it's a neat piece of work.

(Admittedly, it helps that it gets the outcome of the first encounter between the Enterprise and the Death Star right. IMHO, obviously.)

[Via Screenshot]

You really couldn't make it up:

An artist's sculpture has been rejected by the Royal Academy of Arts which has instead opted to display the wooden support it was put on.

David Hensel, 64, from East Grinstead, West Sussex, was told the laughing head would be part of the summer exhibition.

But at a preview he found that just a piece of wood intended to support the head was on display on the plinth.

The Academy said the judging panel assumed the two pieces were separate and decided the support was better. [...]

[Via sashinka]

I think How IT Projects Really Work has added a couple of cells since I last saw it: I'm pretty sure I hadn't seen the marketing joke before.

[Via GromBlog]

Godawful Wedding Crap is a weblog devoted to … exactly the sort of awful tat you'd expect.

Where else would you find images of Mermice in Love, or Kiss the Bride Breath Spray?

[Via Crocodile Caucus]

The Department of Social Scrutiny is back in business after a prolonged quiet spell:

The Department of Social Scrutiny has unveiled the second part of its k-ID Card application form as part of its continuing committment to counter the growing problem of child identity fraud.

Last year, hundreds of children arrived at their schools only to find that adult imposters had completed their mathematics homework for them and their marks suffered as a result. Until now, teachers have only been legally allowed to spot-check the identity of their pupils by calling their name out as they throw whiteboard markers or best-practise teaching manuals at them. Now children can be scanned as they enter the classroom, using subcutaneous RFID chips or barcoded pencil cases.

[...]

The new cards are intended to show entitlement to key children's services, such as disenfranchisement, loneliness and the right to be taunted over their choice of running shoes. They are launched later today with the memorable slogan Identity: Nobody Will Be Nobody Without It. Innit?

It would appear that Dick Cheney is Juggernaut and Condoleezza Rice is (eek!) the Dark Phoenix.

I know mocking The Da Vinci Code is so six weeks ago, but The Internet Theologian Explains The Da Vinci Code is well worth a look even so:

Q: Okay, explain this whole "painting pictures of men who look like ladies" thing. What does it have to do with Leonardo?
A: In 1099, a reggae group called the Priority of Zion was founded to hush up the truth about Jesus' French children. It was felt at the time that if word got out that Jesus had lived in France, it would drive up real estate costs beyond what the knights were willing to pay. So the Priority of Lion was formed to keep the secret. Throughout the centuries, every time someone became prominent in Europe – Botticelli, Sir Isaac Newton, Tintin – they would be enrolled into the Prior of Zionism to help keep the secret.

Q: Doesn't it seem more sensible, if they wanted to keep a secret, not to enroll high profile Europeans?
A: Yes, except that it was hard for many years to avoid famous Europeans. From 1755 to 1914, everyone in Europe was either an author, inventor, or executed king.

[Via Making Light (Particles)]

Never mind a smallish rock landing somewhere in Norway: a Japanese TV show produced a seriously scary animation illustrating what would happen if Earth encountered a big meteorite. A really big meteorite.

As soon as I saw that thing, I was mentally flipping a coin, trying to decide whether the damned thing was going to cause a big explosion or simply split the planet in two and carry on going…

[Via GromBlog]

The online gallery for Princeton University's latest Art of Science Competition is chock-full of wondrous sights.

It's hard to pick a favourite, but I reckon David Karig's Perturbed Circle of Life or Amy Morton's Lichen II have to be right up there.

[Via Pharyngula]

Tabby Cat Chases Bear Up Tree, Twice.

And yes, there is a picture.

[Via James Nicoll]

A week ago Sky Three popped up on my Freeview receiver for the first time, so I took a quick look at the schedules to see if there was anything there worth adding to my viewing habit. By and large, the answer was "no": the expected mix of cheap "documentary" shows, repeats of years-old US shows, the sort of thing you'd expect from what I take to be Sky's third-string channel (at best).

Then I looked a bit closer and spotted Deadwood running once a week and part-way through season 1. I'd heard of the show, and seen Ian McShane interviewed a couple of times since he started to garner acclaim for his role on the show, but I'd never had the chance to watch it. I missed the chance to catch last Saturday's episode, the seventh of the first season, so tonight's was my first chance to see what all the fuss was about.

Well, that's one more hour of my week booked for the next however many months Sky Three chooses to run the show. Even without knowing anything about the background to the relations between the characters, I enjoyed tonight's episode enormously. Ian McShane is by no means the only familiar face in the cast, or the only one doing a barnstorming job: you can't go far wrong with the likes of Powers Boothe, Brad Dourif, William Sanderson, Jeffrey Jones and Molly Parker in a show created by David Milch.

Now the only question that remains is whether to track down the season 1 DVD so I can see what I missed in the first half of the first season.

Since Pixar's latest, Cars, is receiving solid but not outstanding reviews (at least by Pixar standards) it's probably just as well that they've just put up a trailer for Brad "The Iron Giant/The Incredibles" Bird's next Pixar film, Ratatouille, that looks to be everything you'd want from a Pixar film.

[Ratatouille trailer via kottke.org remaindered links]