The Joking Computer

The Joking Computer:
Computer generated jokes than your third-grade brother would tell. For example:

Q. how is a nude stream different from a reserve legal document?
A. one is a bare spill, the other is a spare bill.

One that made no sense to me until the computer explained the joke:
Q. what do you get when you cross a banquet with a geographical area?
A. a feast africa.
Its reasoning: "east africa is a kind of geographical area". This site lives in the uncanny valley of puns.

Triceratops and Torosaurus become a thorny issue

I was nervous when I saw the title, Triceratops and Torosaurus become a thorny issue - chicagotribune.com: "Triceratops: Beyond extinct". Triceratops has always been my favorite dinosaur. Triceratops and Torosaurus are likely the same species, at different maturity levels. This quote made me less nervous:

"Triceratops: Beyond extinct"; "You'll get a lot more hits on Google if you type in Triceratops instead of Torosaurus, and if you don't understand why that matters, you're, well, a dinosaur. So let's agree: A Triceratops isn't a baby Torosaurus — a Torosaurus is a grown-up Triceratops."

Wild variety of things hit by car en route to pool

A teenager fell asleep, and drove through:

• all terrain vehicles
• go-carts
• garage
• grape arbor
• swing set
• dog run
• deck

before landing in a:

• swimming pool (above-ground).

It's like The Very Hungry Caterpillar, but with a car instead of a caterpillar, and a swimming pool instead of a beautiful butterfly.

I have catalogued other car in pool things.

The acute effect of local homicides on children's cognitive performance

The acute effect of local homicides on children's cognitive performance by Patrick Sharkey in PNAS

Violence makes it tough for kids in a community to read, even a week after the event, and even if the kids don't witness it themselves. Living in inner city Baltimore, I am exposed to other things that make it difficult to learn. I don't have air conditioning, and city heat is stifling. The only real grocery store within walking distance closed in January. People fight and yell in front of my house.

Suburbanites talk about the city as a dangerous place. Sure, we have higher incidences of theft. Violence is more frequent, but it mostly happens between people with grudges, "don't start none, won't be none." Living in the city is hard, but mostly not from big things, like a car getting jacked; what affects me, drains me, is the environment, and what most affects urban kids is probably that plus lack of access to resources that are normal for me: healthy food, good books, safe, clean spaces to play in.

Flathead The peculiar genius of Thomas L. Friedman

From Flathead: The peculiar genius of Thomas L. Friedman by Matt Taibbi:

Friedman is such a genius of literary incompetence that even his most innocent passages invite feature-length essays. I'll give you an example, drawn at random from The World Is Flat. On page 174, Friedman is describing a flight he took on Southwest Airlines from Baltimore to Hartford, Connecticut. (Friedman never forgets to name the company or the brand name; if he had written The Metamorphosis, Gregor Samsa would have awoken from uneasy dreams in a Sealy Posturepedic.) Here's what he says:

I stomped off, went through security, bought a Cinnabon, and glumly sat at the back of the B line, waiting to be herded on board so that I could hunt for space in the overhead bins.

Forget the Cinnabon. Name me a herd animal that hunts. Name me one.