Baboon Metaphysics?

Excrement in the Late Middle Ages? Curbside Consultation of the Colon? Yes ponies. This week saw the shortlisting take place for the Oddest Book Title of the Year Award. Baboon Metaphysics is up top and almost over the crest as the bookie's favourite (apparently the bipeds gamble on all manner of things as well as our sprint n'leap activities) but this nag has a sneeking feeling that The Large Sieve and its Applications could be the title to push it all the way.

While we wait in barely containable containers for the result, it would be good to loll a while amongst some of the previous titles to lift the award. In 1980? The Joy of Chickens. 1992? How to Avoid Huge Ships. 2002? Living With Crazy Buttocks.

But in 2004 a tome with an altogether more sensible subject at its core lifted the title and this correspondent for one adds a winny of approval to its doing so - Bombproof Your Horse.

Yours
Chives

Change you can believe in...

might just have been an election slogan but this is even better - change that might fund our research! From the Science section of the New York Times (probably the best thing about Tuesdays):

The law gives the National Science Foundation $2 billion in stimulus financing for research grants, and the foundation also has until September 2010 to spend the money. But the foundation will act much faster, pushing nearly all of that money out to scientists within 120 days, said Jeffrey Nesbit, an N.S.F. spokesman. (Last year, the science foundation’s $6.1 billion budget included $4.8 billion for research grants; Congress has not finished work on the budget for the current fiscal year.)

The spending increase comes after six years of nearly flat research budgets at the N.I.H., the National Science Foundation, the Department of Energy and other agencies, and growing desperation at research universities, which depend on the agencies to underwrite much of their scientific faculty and laboratory infrastructure.

To speed the process, the science foundation will not put out any new calls for proposals from researchers, but will instead use the money to finance a higher fraction of proposals already under review and to finance old ones that were judged meritorious last year but were rejected for lack of funds.

So, that proposal we submitted in January might really pay off!

Hooves crossed,

- Mr. Ed

The Simpsons Goes HD + New Start

- Philip ummmmmmmm snout.

Wow! He's one Big Fella

photo by way of The Guardian

Turner Prize winner Mark Wallinger has won the Ebbsfleet Landmark project with a proposal for a 50m high horse. We here at the P-Club, purveyors of all things equine, like to be right on these matters. Jonathan Jones loves the idea, while, in a rundown of the other proposals, Adrian Searle is less than convinced, smelling an Essex boy's joke at the expense of his Kentish neighbours. Who knows... with a human standing below the horse's hoof, a red letter day for horsekind at least...

-yours in a small way, Bluecupboard...

It never ends, this shit.

Sony Releases New Stupid Piece Of Shit That Doesn't Fucking Work

- philip

Via Daring Fireball

Bacon Explosion

Do you like bacon? I mean really, really like bacon? Then maybe Bacon Today is the website for you. I discovered this compendium of all things thinly-sliced pork when reading about the Bacon Explosion over at BBQ Addicts. What's that, you ask? Behold the raw materials, and feel your arteries harden at just the thought of it:
That is:
2 pounds thick cut bacon
2 pounds Italian sausage
1 jar of your favorite barbeque sauce
1 jar of your favorite barbeque rub

Care must be taken cooking the Bacon Explosion, as this video clearly demonstrates, because with great deliciousness also comes the risk of fat fires...

Alternatively, may I suggest Bacon infused vodka?

Mmmm meaty,

Mr. Ed

Waldron in the news

BBC News - Click Here

Video from local BBC News - Click here

- Philip