Any man who reads too much and uses his own brain too little...

Let's begin with this very funny and very interesting article about five everyday addictions.

1. Pop music. "No matter how carefully hipster you are, your brain is secretly into Bieber."
2. Eating salty and spicy snacks. "Combining [salt] with fat and other elements in junk food is actually thought to be about as addictive as heroin."
3. Using lip balm. "When you throw some oral fixation into the mix, it all adds up to a pretty legitimate, if extremely stupid, psychological addiction."
4. Tanning. "Suntans are cool and all, but who in their right mind could be addicted to intentionally exposing the largest organ in the entire human body to damaging, cancer-causing radiation?"
5. Chewing ice. "Ice chewing, or pagophagia, is a subset of a larger disorder known as pica, which causes people to crave things with no nutritional value." 

"Hello, my name is John and I'm addicted to ChapStick."  It's true and I'm not ashamed to admit it.  Good thing there are self-help groups on-line such as Chapstick Addiction Cure and Lip Balm Anonymous.

Take that, Lady Gaga.  You got a meat dress, we got some meat guns. 

Bacon + Egg = Cupcake

Make friends all over the world with this illustrated guide to the world's rudest hand gestures.  You'll be surprised to learn what thumb's up means.

"This is so bizarre it reads like a Monty Python skit." Get bigger boobs by slapping them.  (While I haven't been formally trained, I'm willing to provide this service gratis.)

The path of the righteous man is beset on all sides by the iniquities of the selfish and the tyranny of evil men. Blessed is he who, in the name of charity and good will, shepherds the weak through the valley of darkness, for he is truly his brother's keeper and the finder of lost children. And I will strike down upon thee with great vengeance and furious anger those who would attempt to poison and destroy My brothers. And you will know My name is the Lord when I lay My vengeance upon thee.  I now officially need a bookmark folder just for Lorem Ipsum generators.  This one is the Samuel L. Ipsum generator.

OK, so last week I linked to an animated video about NASA's proposed Space Launch System (right) for future travel to the moon, Mars and beyond.  Then I saw Countdown by Desrumaux Celine (left).  Wow, what a contrast.  Countdown is beautifully fantastic.  NASA's video looks like... an animated video made by a government agency.  And in my opinion, there's no reason NASA couldn't have achieved something similar.

MigrationsMap.net shows you where people are coming from and where they're going to. For example, when people leave the U.S.A, more of them go to the occupied Palestinian territory than France.  Draw your own conclusions.

Kids today, doing things, like making a version of Super Mario World using 64 pixels - Super Pixel World.

Brian Eno extends his collaboration with poet Rick Holland on the new EP, Panic of Looking. The title track is available for your listening pleasure.

Are you a man?  A manly man?  Does doing manly things leave no time for life's basics?  While you're bow-hunting for elk, cheering ringside at Vegas with the boys, and arm-in-arm with two glamazons (i.e. surfing the web for pr0n, half asleep on the couch in your boxers watching football and digging Cheetos out from between the cushions, and surfing the web for pr0n) you can get your manly essentials from Manpacks, an online subscription service for life's essentials like socks, underwear, and condoms.

Do the words non-Newtonian fluid arouse you?  No?  Maybe this video will.

Why does an enterprise software company like SAP feel gamification is the future?  They're striving for "visible joy in 7 minutes" (among other things) just like EA Games.  SAP thinks gamification will help them reach their goal of 1 billion users by 2015.

Fortran, the COBOL of scientific programming languages.  But, at 54 years of age it's still extremely relevant.  It continues to be updated (e.g. polymorphism) and has great parallel capabilities for HPC.

Like it or not, the smiley (aka emoticon) was born this week in 1982 - 19 Sep 1982 to be exact. ;-)

If you are on the verge of joining the software industry (hell, even if you're already in the industry), this list of 33 lessons for software industry novices should be required reading. #4 Know what you know and what you don't know. #6 Software's primary function is to earn profits. #22 Learn to write well.  (As always, these tips really apply to any industry, not just software.)

Yet another music discovery tool.  Musicovery charts music by genre and popularity over time.

It's easy to avoid these seven common sales mistakes if you just keep one thing in mind: you have to think of sales like dating.  (Which is why I'm not in sales.)

National Boss' Day is 16 October.  Just sayin'.

This is not the VAX I used to program on.  Eddie Jobson demos his VAX77 keyboard setup at the National Association of Music Merchandisers trade show back in 2010.  It's more than a demo, he plays many of his tunes and U.K. tunes you'll recognize.

Only a programming geek will find these bit twiddling hacks interesting.

Science proves that students are just as stupid when studying using computers as when using pen and paper.  They mindlessly over-copy long passages, take incomplete notes, etc.

No idea what particles is about other than play.

If particles was too unstructured for you, checkout Draw a Stickman where your stick figure becomes the main character in a cartoon.

Gotta go when you're out and about?  Never fear, the Peepoo is here.  (This is a legitimate product for people in developing nations who lack sanitary facilities.  Shame on me for finding humor but they're the ones who gave it a funny name.)

My new favorite song: Rainbow Poo San.

˙uı˙dıןɟpןɹoʍ ɟo ʎsǝʇɹnoɔ noʎ oʇ ʇɥƃnoɹq ǝɔuǝʇuǝs sıɥʇ

Where was How to Land a 747 when Kurt Russell needed it in 1996's Executive Decision?

A CAD (computer aided design) blogger provides the best explanation of which vs. that I've ever read in his blog post A few things to keep in mind when writing in English. Which is for singular, that is for plural.  I had basically been told never to use which.

A Waterman Polyhedron of Root 12345.  Be sure to check out root 10,000,000.

Another bit of the curtain over the Cold War was pulled back when the NRO revealed details about the Key Hole KH-7, KH-8, and KH-9 spy satellites.

Learn what's special about certain numbers.  For example, 8 is the largest cube in the Fibonacci sequence.

Fort Worth's Modern is hosting a Richard Diebenkorn exhibit (will see it next week) which reminded me that the MoMA is hosting a De Kooning retrospective at the MoMA (which the NY Times' art critic seems to like).

Make art with your Roomba.

If this next video is real (and you can never be certain) you can consider my mind official blown.  Imagine this: have someone watch a video, scan their brain using an MRI, and reconstruct what they saw from the brain scan.  Gives me the heebee jeebees.

...falls into lazy habits of thinking. ~Albert Einstein.

Damn you, Al.  Who you callin' lazy?