Wes Phillips

Today's Jon Carroll column doesn't exactly answer yesterday's link to Clay Risen's critique of Claire Hoffman's Joe Francis story (man, is this blog getting self-referential or what), but it does neatly expose Risen's glaring flaw: Journalism isn't just one thing.

Watch the blooming of Brooklyn Botanic Garden's titan arum (Amorphophallus titanum), aka the "corpse flower" because it "releases a monstrous stench of putrefaction at peak bloom."

Huckleberry can quit the catnip anytime he wants—honest!

The Morning News' Clay Risen thinks the LA Times shouldn't have published Claire Hoffman's story on Girls Gone Wild sleazeball Joe Francis. Risen thinks Hoffman couldn't write objectively about a man who assaulted her.

Does music represent the pleasure of counting without the burden of numbers? John S. Allen makes a strong case—sort of.

This time Science News' late-summer science reading list. Lots of good stuff here, and, other than Blink and The Wisdom of Crowds, I haven't even heard of any of them.

My buddy Jeff Wong sent this little video along and I initially resisted posting it, primarily because I used to work in a light show that featured strobe light effects (ah, the '60s, I'm told I enjoyed them). We used to create lots of chaos with unsynchronized strobes moving in different planes, so I was blasé about The Time Fountain's reversing time schtick.