There are several variations on the vegetarian side which tend to imply you're half a notch from cannibalism if you eat meat.

If self-righteous in-your face vegans tasted as good as sirloin, I'd be willing to remove the half notch.

An article on that guy who memorized pi to 22,514 digits: [link]

It may seem to defy logic, but Ramachandran believes that a savant’s genius could actually result from brain injury. "One possibility is that many other parts of the brain are functioning abnormally or sub-normally. And this allows the patient to allocate all his attentional resources to the one remaining part," he explains. "And there's a lot of clinical evidence for this. Some patients have a stroke and suddenly, their artistic skills improve."

That theory fits well with Daniel. At the age of four, he suffered a massive epileptic seizure. He believes that seizure contributed to his condition. Numbers were no longer simply numbers and he had developed a rare crossing of the senses known as synesthesia.

"I see numbers in my head as colors and shapes and textures. So when I see a long sequence, the sequence forms landscapes in my mind," Tammet explains. "Every number up to 10,000, I can visualize in this way, has it's own color, has it's own shape, has it's own texture."

For example, when Daniel says he sees Pi, he does those instant computations, he is not calculating, but says the answer simply appears to him as a landscape of colorful shapes.

"The shapes aren't static. They're full of color. They're full of texture. In a sense, they're full of life," he says.

Asked if they’re beautiful, Tammet says, "Not all of them. Some of them are ugly. 289 is an ugly number. I don't like it very much. Whereas 333, for example, is beautiful to me. It's round. It's…."

"Chubby," Safer remarks.

'It's—yes. It's chubby,' Tammet agrees.

I have an OSV oval sticker -- if Old Sturbridge Village had an airport, it would definitely be official -- and a small sticker for my yoga studio. On my old car, I had a Darwin fish.

I forget what NPR commentator remarked that her rear bumper "looked like a graveyard of lost causes."

In honor of the release of Windows Vista, a gallery of the Blue Screen of Death throughout the ages: [link]

Wow, the BSOD dates back to Windows 1.1.

Early beta versions of Windows Vista (dubbed "Longhorn") displayed a Red Screen of Death when boot errors were encountered. The red screen was a rare treat for Longhorn testers -- all other crashes in the OS brought up the familiar blue screen. The final version of Vista preserves the BSOD legacy for the next generation.

Cool!

guy who memorized pi to 22,514 digits

"I know pi to a thousand places."

. He keeps promising to take me to a game so I can be rugby queen, but he is a liar

umm, perhaps you do not want to be rugby queen. Around here, they put you on their shoulders and sing rude songs at you until you pour beer on them. Or maybe you'd like that.

I was just reading this piece in Salon about journalists dealing with the immediate feedback from the 'net. I'm not exactly sure what the point was, because sometimes I'm dumb, but I just kept thinking, "Dude, where have you been?"

All I got from it was that sometimes letters are good and have merit, and there are a lot of jackholes on the internet.

Oh Salon, what has become of you?

I tried to read that story, but it was three pages of "Writing is HARD" and "People are MEAN" and tl;dr.

TOTALLY, Dana.

I hate that "writing is hard" horseshit.

umm, perhaps you do not want to be rugby queen. Around here, they put you on their shoulders and sing rude songs at you until you pour beer on them. Or maybe you'd like that.

It's like that at these games with the added bonus of the dirty, sweaty men having to do everything you say, as long as you don't make them leave the beer.