Solipsism Gradient

I know I’m desperately overworked when I spend too much time surfing sites like Magnificent Obsessions. This led me to Who Would Buy That? (auction oddities from all over the web), which in turn points at {drum roll}…

Smiling Green Eye Boob Salt & Pepper.

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This is a work of genius, or of a very sick mind. Probably both. Yes. I want one. A pair, I mean.

A couple of days ago I visited the studio of Marcelo Bicalho, a local artist/illustrator. We have several friends in common, but had never met before.



Here’s some of his prizewinning 3-dimensional work in paper, and here’s an index page with more stuff, including some cut-out examples.

Highly recommended!

Part II of Michael Crawford article “Living with Schizoaffective Disorder” is out. Inside the article is a link to Part I, as well as to other writings.

Rich Tennant’s Fifth Wave shows photoshopping devils at work.

Kevin Smith’s Centricle has posted version 1.2 of his Ruler favelet that allows checking coordinates and measure items in both Safari and Internet Explorer (Mac).

Extremely convenient… be sure to look around Kevin’s site for more useful stuff.

Posted by AccordionGuy:
You’re welcome, Rainer!

Joey “AccordionGuy” deVilla has reposted most of the original Top Ten Things About New Girl article, which caused all the Blogs save lives commentary. Thanks, Joey!

David Weinberger thinks this explains it all:

According to a Harris Poll:

…half of all adults believe in ghosts, almost a third believe in astrology, and more than a quarter believe in reincarnation – that they were themselves reincarnated from other people. Majorities of about two-thirds of all adults believe in hell and the devil, but hardly anybody expects that they will go to hell themselves.

One very strange (at least to me) result of the Harris poll is that significantly more democrats than republicans believe in astrology, but more republicans than democrats believe in hell and the devil.

At the same time, Tom Coates expresses his amazement about American Fundamentalism:

…the idea that challenges to theories like “evolution” can circumvent the entire academic peer-review and testing process by way of the courts – inspired by people who want to find ways to equate the world with their religious beliefs… Well, it’s scandalous! Totally, utterly scandalous!

The Guardian is running an article in its new Life section today on exactly this subject: The Battle for American Science. It’s this article that part-inspired me to write about this subject today…

I could list dozens of other links about the “creationism” thing, which seems to be a uniquely American delusion. I’m looking forward to reading the comments to all these posts…

…as for me, I believe that being superstitious brings bad luck…