Hammertime

Marijuana Trumps Blackberries for Productivity

In 2005, a psychiatrist at King=92s College in London administered IQ tests to three groups: the first did nothing but perform the IQ test, the second was distracted by e-mail and ringing phones, and the third was stoned on marijuana. Not surprisingly, the first group did better than the other two by an average of ...

The wisdom of the Irish

What a great use of language: “…fan the flames of desire with the bellows of indifference…”

Draw a pig

Try drawing a pig. It’s supposed to tell you lots about your personality. Here’s mine.

I want to be able to do this

I think I’ve posted this before somewhere, however somethings are WELL worth repeating. This is one of them – some ubercool dancing from someone I wish I was.

Hypnotism and health

On a similar sort of vein as the placebo post, it’d be neat if you could hypnotise health, or health resilience.

Termagant

termagant \TUR-muh-guhnt\, noun: 1. A scolding, nagging, bad-tempered woman; a shrew. 2. Overbearing; shrewish; scolding.

Smallpox is too small and poxy.

I can only think of one predator that cities have, and that’s  contagious disease. Which is great, because I don’t like cities, and  people bother me quite a lot – especially in cities where they tow your car even when it’s parked right outside your house so they can dig up the road to fix ...

Placebo

Here’s fun. You know the placebo effect? Give some people sugar pills and they get better all on their own. But there are a bunch of people for whom this does not work, and they need the actual bona fide drugs to get better. Now here’s the neat bit: if you take this second group ...

TED talks

This is neat stuff. TED also has a video podcast which is well worth it, too.

David Hockney

Have you seen David Hockney’s art? It’s no wonder everyone thinks they can be famous these days when you look at that stuff. Here’s a lesson: Lack of talent + persistence DOES NOT create talent.

100 mile diet

http://100milediet.org/

Great music

I like Solid Steel podcasts: http://www.ninjatune.net/solidsteel/

What would someone clever do?

You know those bracelets that people wear saying “what would Jesus do?” – I think they’re actually quite a good idea. Though being me I’d have to replace it with something like “What would someone brilliant do?” or “What would Ender Wiggin do?”

Hear the summer

The sound of the summer – a beautiful advert from Mercedes Benz.

If beauty's skin deep, she's beautiful all the way through

Londonistan

This lecture was delivered yesterday in Sydney by Melanie Phillips who is a British journo. Quadrant dinner, Sydney, Australia, 1 March 2007 Londonistan was a term of abuse coined by the French for a Britain that had allowed itself to become the European hub of al Qaeda. To me it’s also a state of mind, ...

If it's not an American flag, it's probably a bomb.

Original, updated

This is quite an old one, but it’s still great. Not that old though, come to think of it. I’d love to be able to move like that, but I really don’t think it’s ever going to happen. Mind you moving like that does only have a limited number of uses. You’d be able to ...