"However," replied the universe, "The fact has not created in me a sense of obligation."

“Here is another thing to remember every time you sit down at the keyboard: a little sign that says, ‘Nobody has to read this crap’. You are not writing to impress the scientist you have just interviewed, nor the professor who got you through your degree, nor the editor who foolishly turned you down, nor the rather dishy person you just met at a party and told you were a writer. Or even your mother. You are writing to impress someone hanging from a strap in the Tube between Parson’s Green and Putney, who, given a chance, will stop reading in a fifth of a second. So the first sentence you write will be the most importance sentence in your life, and so will the second, and the third. This is because, although you may feel compelled to write, nobody has ever felt obliged to read.”

-Tim Radford via Ed Yong.

(Also thanks Stephen Crane and vozamer.)

Happy Thanksgiving

No pugs were harmed in the making of this picture. Don't believe the look on her face.

Where do your ideas come from

Yeah, it's like a disease, really.

Creativity is like an itch. When you scratch it, it feels good, and then it itches more. You fulfill the aesthetic urge and it pushes you to create more.

But if you don't have the itch to begin with, it's hard to know where to scratch. There's no way to "get ideas." It can't be forced. They just happen. You're eating breakfast one day and you have an idea, and either you forget about it, or you work on it and execute it. The more of your ideas you execute, the more ideas occur to you.

-Drew ("Toothpaste for Dinner")

Halloween reaches a historical milestone.

The five year old son of some friends of mine, dressed for Halloween as Elmo dressed as a ghost for Halloween. This is the most awesome costume anyone of any age will ever come up with.

So not fair

It's like some stuff was invented just to screw with journalists...

Correction: July 29, 2006 Because of an editing error, the About New York column on Wednesday, about William M. V. Kingsland, an expert on the privileged of the Upper East Side whose own background turned out to be a bit of a mystery upon his death last spring, misstated the name of the cemetery where he is buried. It is the New York City Marble Cemetery, on Second Street; not the New York Marble Cemetery, which is on Second Avenue.

Hobbies of the Future

Lately I got together with some friends I met on the Internet, and after an excited discussion that we suddenly realized could be ended by pulling a device with web access out of a pocket, one mentioned that he keeps getting into these excited arguments with friends, and then suddenly they will stop and realize what idiots they are being and say "If only there were something - you know, like some worldwide network of computers linked together, where we could find out the answer!"

And another responded that HIS friends will deliberately NOT Google something they're trying to remember - they want to try to do it themselves.

And of course this makes perfect sense. After all, all kinds of skills that are no longer necessary turn into hobbies. Some people like to go jousting, some like to make pottery by hand when they could just buy a plastic cup... so of course, now, there are some people who want to try to figure something out without Googling it. I'm just wondering how long it takes before they start actual clubs.

Good for what ails you

This is an actual syringe, almost the length of my forearm.