If Weird Al‘s math is right, on Ted’s 1275" tv, Robert De Niro’s mole would be only about six feet wide.

Hey, look! A portable office, only 1.5 Tatami! From the people that brought you a slightly larger portable room.

Bobby Fischer, paranoid recluse and former world chess champion, has been granted Icelandic citizenship (presumed to be a show of gratitude for Fischer’s role in drawing international attention there in 1972 by defeating Boris Spassky in Reykjavík), leading to his release from Japanese detention.

I hadn’t ever seen the "Don’t" sign (symbol of universal hatred over a plain blue field) before we were in Iceland, and I finally decided it must mean "no parking," since I believed a plain blue field meant "parking okay." I had to take the BBC Roadsign Quiz to find out I’m wrong.

Joss has signed up to write and direct Wonder Woman!

My initial reaction to the headline " Last Star Wars to be ’emotional’" was "Oh, right, because that’s what he’s good at." But, y’know, I seem to remember American Graffiti being genuinely moving in parts. But reviewing his oeuvre on IMDb makes me wonder if maybe it’s just that I haven’t seen AG in a long time. Or maybe it’s that AG had actors in it.
Either way, it’s a sad day when George Lucas is aspiring to be James Cameron.

No Free Lunch is a doctor-to-doctor campaign to reduce the influence of drug company representatives on their work. As far as I know, we don’t have any medical personnel in our readership, but if anyone wants to get rid of drug company pens, we sure could use some extra pens where I work.

As if we didn’t have enough to worry about, the next Yellowstone Supervolcano is 40,000 years overdue. Give or take. The last one left a crater within which Tokyo would fit, and the effects sound about the same as the dreaded nuclear winter.

Way back in 1899 (revised 1903), John Cotton Dana wrote in A Library Primer (now available online!):

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I think I had heard of Notes and Queries before I read Not Even Wrong, but reading that at least reminded me to look and YES!! There is an online archive of issues of N&Q from 1849-1869 online. N&Q is a newslettery repository of the research interests and results of the Victorian research nerd. The modern version has refined this to the classical research nerd, as the other nerds have made their own nests elsewhere.