The Null Device
2004/2/21
Did the Monty Python team predict the rise of Furries?
Interviewer: And when did you first notice these... shall we say... tendencies?
Confessor: Well... I was about seventeen and some mates and me went to a party, and, er... we had quite a lot to drink... and then some of the fellows there ... started handing ... cheese around ... and well just out of curiosity 1 tried a bit ... and well that was that.
Interviewer: And what else did these fellows do?
Confessor: Well some of them started dressing up as mice a bit ... and then when they'd got the costumes on they started ... squeaking.
Interviewer: And what was your reaction to this?
Confessor: Well I was shocked. But, er... gradually I came to feel that I was more at ease ... with other mice.
(via elnigma on LJ)
An interesting meditation on the trap that is perfectionism (via Gimbo):
The ceramics teacher announced on opening day that he was dividing the class into two groups. All those on the left side of the studio, he said, would be graded solely on the quantity of work they produced, all those on the right solely on its quality. His procedure was simple: on the final day of class he would bring in his bathroom scales and weigh the work of the "quantity" group: fifty pound of pots rated an "A", forty pounds a "B", and so on. Those being graded on "quality", however, needed to produce only one pot -albeit a perfect one - to get an "A". Well, came grading time and a curious fact emerged: the works of highest quality were all produced by the group being graded for quantity. It seems that while the "quantity" group was busily churning out piles of work - and learning from their mistakes - the "quality" group had sat theorizing about perfection, and in the end had little more to show for their efforts than grandiose theories and a pile of dead clay.
Deadly piranha found in Thames, a river formerly declared biologically dead. Mind you, the killer fish was likely to have been (illegally) released by a private collector (or their vengeful ex-lover or young child who just saw Finding Nemo or something), rather than being a manifestation of global climate havoc:
Piranhas have taste buds which cover their bodies so that they can deduce whether any passing fish is worth eating. It doesn't bear thinking about what such sensitivity must have made of the polluted Thames.