… to Wichita???

More very miscellaneous links:

An excess of empathy?

Jimmy Webb, theologian.

“Lord Byron was a vampire? You would have to pay me money not to believe that.“

From a discussion in the comments at TSO’s place:

>Reminds me of my System/360 days when we had to suggest to the programmers that rather than ask the operator at the console to type “1 for Yes, 2 for No”, the program should request “Y for Yes, N for No”.

>And what’s wrong with “1″ for Yes and “2″ for No exactly?

>One for yes and two for no is great if you have at least one position to the right of the decimal point.

>”And what’s wrong with ‘1′ for Yes and ‘2′ for No exactly?” 1thing.

Via Ken the Brickmuppet, who also found this bit of nostalgia:

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For the caffeine addicts.

Barry has a new t-shirt.

See if these play for you:

Men in black

Shake a tail feather

Click on the icon in the lower-right corner of the players to turn off the on-screen comments.

(Via the LLamas.)

Some more of that good old traditional Japanese rock ‘n’ roll:

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Via JT, a brief history of physics.

My sister sent me a link to an “identify the album” quiz. The page is no longer maintained — the link to the answers returns a 404 — and at least one of the identifications is wrong, but you might find it amusing anyway.

The above is one of my favorite covers, though the album, a collection of medieval dances, is too obscure to be fair game for such a quiz. Here it is in higher resolution.

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Is there a superhero in your neighborhood? Check the registry. (Via Ken the Brickmuppet.)

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Introducing Edward, the Veggie-Vampire.

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I’m an embarrassment to Barack!


I only scored 14 on the Obama Test

(Via John Salmon.)

A natural combination?

Via Story Boredom, where you can also find this.

Robert notes that today is the birthday of Neil Innes, who, in addition to being the Seventh Python, was also part of the Bonzo Dog Band. Here are a couple of tunes Innes wrote or co-wrote for the band. The first was produced by “Apollo C. Vermouth,” better-known as Paul McCartney. The second features narration by the late, great Vivian Stanshall.

There are new videos out from Aleksey Igudesman and Richard Hyung-ki Joo, aided and abetted by Gidon Kremer.

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Via Shamus, the story behind Star Wars. See also Shamus’ updated treatment.

I was never a Star Wars fan — I bailed out after The Empire Strikes Back — but I was surprised to learn just how much worse than the final product the original script was. (Via Dirty Harry.)

You want Christmas spirit before Thanksgiving? I’ve got some right here.