Stoned Again
Huckleberry can quit the catnip anytime he wants—honest!
Wes Phillips
Corpse Flower Webcam
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."
Jon Carroll: Still a Giant Among Writers
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.
Awww
Fred, Brooklyn's "honorary detective" undercover kitty, is dead at the age of one.
Even Yet Another (Yep, One More) List
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.
Under New York
Text and photos by Bob Sacha. "Looking beneath a city street is like peeking under your skin: the terrain upon which your well-being depends is so close, yet so full of secrets."
Mathematical Representations of Musical Tunings
Does music represent the pleasure of counting without the burden of numbers? John S. Allen makes a strong case—sort of.
When Should You Spike a Good Story?
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.
Napoleonic Satires
As a fan of Patrick O'Brian's Aubrey/Maturin romances and Bernard Cornwell's Sharpe's Rifles novels, I'm a sucker for this type of collection.
Watch Malaria At Work
I'm fascinated by how tiny little things affect world history—take the malaria parasite for instance. Forget the Black Death or the Influenza outbreak of 1917, Malaria has had a bigger impact on humanity than any other rampaging pathogen—yet, we still don't completely understand how it works.