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• Enter into thought about all the underplaces of London, in an interesting and highly photo-ridden post titled “London Toplogical.”
• Or entertain the thought of what “to call the food blech is an insult to blech” means, exactly. This and other insults that didn’t make the cut when slicing & dicing entries for Zagat guides.
• How to talk to a human. More specifically, how to reach a human through the tangle of touch-tone absurdity found w/ most customer support lines.
• It’s not just a tusk, oh no; it’s a tusk (tooth) with “hydrodynamic sensor capacities.” The narwhal’s secret powers finally revealed, and by none other than the Harvard School of Dental Medicine.
• Now that summer’s coming around, watch out: that honeybee down the street may actually know more than you think. And no, I’m not using ‘honeybee’ in any sort of allusive manner. (via BoingBoing)

…it’s better to go running with rats?

But new research with rats suggests that running solo might not offer the perceived benefits and, in fact, may actually be bad for runners when combined with social isolation.

The scientists behind the study report that mice forced to live and run by themselves have less brain cell growth than those that get to run with other rats.

The implications for humans aren’t clear.

I don’t plan on finding any rats to go running with anytime soon.

…but maybe you’ll wanna see it again, who knows.  A live action interpretation of the Simpson’s intro that has to be seen to be believed, more or less.

Haha!  Of course it’s not.  But it is, well, interesting: now there’s a blog dedicated to rooting out (or at least pointing out) abuses of the word “literally.”  It’s about time.

Not particularly current or important, but curious and fun nonetheless:

In 1986, Silo (a chain of home electronics stores) ran a television commercial in 23 markets nationwide, offering stereos for “299 bananas.” They never thought anyone would take them at their word; after all, “banana” is a widely accepted, if playful, term for greenbacks. Who could possibly mistake one for the other? Thirty-two customers held the retailer to its unwitting word — they showed up bearing loads of the yellow fruit and demanding the store keep its end of the bargain.

…

Each stereo was exchanged for $40 to $60 worth of bananas, and Silo took in a total of 11,000 bananas. Many of the bananas were donated to Woodland Park Zoo, but there were too many even for the hungry animals.

(Though how widely accepted, exactly, is the use of the word ‘bananas’ as a stand-in for ‘dollars’?)

(Snopes.com: “Banana Skinned.” [October 20, 2005])