At least it’s an interesting and unusual way to expire: a man in India was killed by a horde of wild monkeys. Not many people get to have that written in their obituary.

Reading further, I see that some places in India have a real problem with monkeys overrunning them, but I was surprised at this one solution they’re trying:

One approach has been to train bands of larger, more ferocious langur monkeys to go after the smaller groups of Rhesus macaques.

Uh, right. The little guys have just killed someone, so the obvious answer is to bring in bigger, meaner monkeys. Maybe the fate of death by monkey isn’t going to be so unusual after all.

(via Cronaca)

Now this is the kind of thing I’d like to have on my lawn…

…except, unfortunately, that I have to miss Halloween this year. Halloween is a Ray Bradbury-esque holiday best celebrated in the midwest, and I’m going to be spending that day in the sunny, cheery, less-than-autumnal climes of Southern California, dispelling ghosties, I hope.

I must protest. Now we’ve got LOLCnidarians. What’s next? LOLChoanaflagellates? LOLPriapulids? LOLLichens? This is MADNESS.

People often complain that I’m too mild-mannered in my personal appearances — that they want a real fire-breather. Well, my solution arrived as a gift in the mail today: a selection of fine fire-breathing aids from
Chilestuff.com, including a spectacularly vivid t-shirt with that appropriate logo on it. Next talk I give, you should sit in the back row.

Alas, this might make Skatje cry. She likes her food bland, but I’m going to have to sneak a little of the chile relish or the hot sauce into pale, tasteless, limp food — and then she’ll look like the picture!

Weird ol’ Target is now selling talking Jesus toys. Isn’t there something in the Bible about idols? Isn’t it turning their divine prophet into a cheap gimmick, literally? It seems to me that the real blasphemies seem to emanate from the Christians themselves, rather than us atheists.

It might be a useful toy for breaking indoctrination, though, when the kiddies discover that Jesus has “Made in China” imprinted on the sole of his foot, and that they can play games that have him shacking up with Barbie. And Ken.

It’s awfully risky to put this here, but it is a pretty picture.

Feeling trinitarian yet?

Perhaps you are interested in knowing how to survive the end of civilization in an alternate universe. Or perhaps you’d like to know how to take advantage of the apocalypse to shape this universe into an alternate reality. Then you are part of the rarefied market for A SteamPunk’s Guide to Surviving the Apocalypse. There are actually some useful suggestions in there for any cultural upheaval.

(via Our Descent Into Madness)

I just got back from Madison, which is mad about Halloween, and then I was emailed this exceedingly cool Halloween costume idea: dress up as a jellyfish with flashing LEDs.

It looks easy: here are the full instructions, with the traditional hot glue gun and soldering iron, but no duct tape, which does violate the rules of home handicrafts, I think. The only drawback is that the LEDs cost about $2.50 each, which adds up. The jellyfish uses 18, but if you modified this to make a luminescent squid, you’d only need 10.

Another virtue for the paranoid parents out there, though, is that the late night traffic won’t be able to miss seeing your kid when he or she is crossing the street.

Scientists love empiricism and evidence-based demonstrations, so elderly urologists flaunting their erections seems like an effective presentation technique in the right context. And here I’ve always just relied on boring ol’ PowerPoint.