An xkcd comic showing the entire observable universe drawn on a logarithmic scale. I laughed at the reference to Ford Prefect, which I’m pretty sure makes me a loser.
Technology terms and dictionaries
Technology and dictionaries: It’s like this article was written for me. It’s a pretty good summary of how technological words get treated by general dictionaries:
Ironically, while the earliest citations for many new high-tech words come from the blogosphere and other online postings, the adoption and widespread use of new high-tech words in blogs and other Web-based sources carries less weight than do print publications when it comes to deciding which words make it into the dictionary.
Hence, no pwned in the OED. I might have to wait a while for respected print sources to take up that one.
Punning like this is a sin
Has the respected science publication New Scientist really used the headline ‘The Cod Delusion’ in a story about overfishing? Yes. Yes it has.
More impressively, one commenter has even managed to find it blasphemous. Somebody is either a member of a fish-based religion of which I was previously unaware, or has decided to take on the Sisyphean mission of attempting to take offense at any oblique reference to Richard Dawkins that is made on the Internet, in any context, for the rest of time. Good luck to that man.
If you use MySpace, you know hell all too well
The comics of Jack Chick now come in embeddable form, so making it even easier to inform people on the Internet that they are going to be burned in hell for all eternity. Sins worthy of such damnation seem to include telling dirty jokes, disobeying your parents and, most archaically of all, whoremongering. The idea is to embed the tracts on sites like Facebook, MySpace, or basically anywhere else where it’s possible to both embed Flash and annoy multiple people very easily.
If you’re new to the unique work of Jack Chick, I recommend going to this page and looking at the story Lisa. It’s been removed from the Jack Chick official record, possibly because of its incredibly sensitive treatment of child abuse, but (luckily) nothing is ever really deleted on the Internet.
Galaxy clusters colliding
I used to think mere galaxies colliding was impressive, but this is nothing compared to when galaxy clusters hit each other. Boom!