Philosophical question

How do you know a guy is fluent in a language if he's the only one who speaks that language? Maybe it's just a con. You know, I am the only remaining living speaker of Pizzatoria, a dialect of Italian spoken only in my region.

Kitchen charts

Useful, useful, useful! A series of reference tables for the kitchen, including conversion from U.S. measures of volume (cups) to Metric weights (grams) and much more. If you have no idea why I am so excited, you should understand that in the US of A ingredient amounts are often expressed in units of volume, while in Italy they are in grams! (Measuring volume is easier than measuring weight, often, except that if you make the huge capital investment of buying a kitchen scale for $20 then you enjoy superior accuracy for the life of the instrument). So in other words with this chart I can prepare Mom's recipes in the US and viceversa...

Finally!

Well, not quite the discovery of America, but something that has been bothering me since 1998. Here are the best lyrics to Run DMC's "Praise My DJ's" you'll find on the net. And when I say "the best" I mean "the only good ones", because every other lyrics you'll find is the same, sloppily put together piece of text. This here has been put together with a lot of love and a lot of sweat on my part, so if you want to copy it and put it somewhere else on the Net you should attribute it to me. Improvements/corrections are welcome and will be duly recognized! Go google, bring me a bunch of Run's Fans!



Money, making money be your love for life
People bankin' dem Ben Franklins then I got to get mine
Speaking for you to your lawyer 'bout your contract design
Make your papers catchin' vapors from your friends all the time
Buy mercedes for my ladies like will she be alright
I been runnin buyin' diamonds [walkin? when] he go shine
[Keep in motion?] kickin' potions with afros every time
So I dedicate this joint here to my v-alentine

My funny valentine, sweet comic valentine
You make me smile with my heart
Your looks are laughable, unphotographable
But you're my favourite work of art

Praise my djs while he plays at rage
People hyper for the type of life I live on my day
Living lavish [backin' cavish?] Jimmy carries my bass
Runnin' what I know you wanna but she's out of your way
People nagging that's cost wife me like they wearin' a shell
And I might be more than likely so they like me like else
Put your product in my window gonna get up with mine
But my J-U-S-T-I-N-E is my v-alentine

My funny valentine, sweet comic valentine
You make me smile with my heart
Your looks are laughable, unphotographable
But you're my favourite work of art

Praise buyin' heavenly from Beverly Hills
Back to JFK no Chevrolet the rebel stay ill
Rock and roll is like Ann Jo be like my homie by mails
Keepin' dollars [upon dollars come from skankin' on scales]
Now my mummy wear Armani buy me [Gianni?] for mine
Every city be like did it tortellini and wine
That's my mummy she got Tommy Gucci every design
But to me she still go be my what a v-alentine

My funny valentine, sweet comic valentine
You make me smile with my heart
Your looks are laughable, unphotographable
But you're my favourite work of art

Birthers

Some Americans don't believe that Obama is American. Are you assuming that they are uneducated, white-supremacist rednecks? No! They sure are white, but they are a sweet lady from Delaware and her townsmen! Isn't this video scary.

News from the world

Today's selection

1) Spanish people have a yearly tomato fight, which produces amazing red-tone pictures.

2) Good people create an open standard to format documents, XML. Everyone thinks "oh cool, yeah". Then some vile troll makes a software patent that says "I will use that open standard to format documents", the patent gets approved, and the trolls sue Microsoft for using the open standard. Go software patents!

3) Entropy law of defamation: it takes a hundred people to build a good reputation, but it takes just one to ruin it. Here's applied to Katrina and New Orleans and generally the behavior of people during disasters.

Oh holy mother of God

I did not post anything for four months. Well, it's time to start over.

Here's a link to an article that says that the antivirus software I've been using for two years is the best free one and has "SUPERIOR" scanning performance.

They forget to say that it does not slow down your computer like every pay-antivirus I know of. Go Avira.

May the Force be with them

The Scottish police is infiltrated by Jedis.

Bacon-powered Thermal Lance

Theodore Gray created a thermal lance using just bacon. It can't get much more awesome than that.

A dream come true

Retired defense department scientists working to impress Bill Gates have used cold war technology acquired on eBay to build a laser based offensive system against Mosquitos.

Brought to you originally by the Wall Street Journal.

It's funny... because it's racist

Funny video 4 (Michael Phelps)

Could not agree more. For the record, I did send a letter to Phelps to express my support and I started a Kellogg's cereals boycott.

Funny video 3 (Pampers ad)

Funny video 2 (Pizza Hut)

Pizza Hut in Italy - watch more funny videos

There they go again. Ripping off Italy. Just because we cannot put copyrights on "parmesan", "pizza",... uffffffff. The good thing with Americans is that they also provide you with occasions to forgive them.

Funny video 1

Lots of catching up to do...

This is a satire of the new obsession of American politicians for "clean coal".

Amazing superbowl commercial

Vroom vroom... partystarter!

Gender Differences

A Jesuit took statistics of deadly sins committed. By gender. These are the things that make me love the BBC.

Joke

Believe it or not, this joke was posted in the Google Finance forums. Believe it or not, they are actually some of the best forums around. A high percentage of literate people, you know. Anyway:

Jesus was walking along one day, when he came upon a group of people surrounding a lady of ill repute. It was obvious that the crowd was preparing to stone her, so Jesus made His now-famous statement, "Let the person who has no sin cast the first stone."

The crowd was shamed and one by one began to turn away. All of a sudden, a lovely little woman made her way through the crowd. Finally getting to the front, she picked up a large stone and threw it at the woman, striking her in the back.

Jesus looks over and says, "I really hate it when you do that, Mom."

The Onion on Japanese porn

I always disliked japanese porno movies where guys insert an egg under, well, never mind. Read for yourselves.

BBC never liked Prodi after all

Barack the Magic Negro

The Web President has decided to post about this song for documentary purposes only, and he does not endorse - nor does he like, and barely does he tolerate - Rush Limbaugh.

Hyundai. Like Sunday.

Nice Superbowl commercial. (For non US-ers: Every year on Superbowl Sunday companies make TV commercials that are actually worth seeing. This is one of them.)

Obama vs. Berlusconi

Catastrofe is on a roll today.

Frei Korper Kultur

He he he. He he he he. He.

Recession indicators

Times are tough. Actual excerpt from the Dean's newsletter, Stanford University: "The new policy suspends provision of food and beverages from School funds for meetings and other events... Some events will be rescheduled, where feasible, so that they don't coincide with meal times."
And this is from the School of Medicine. Yikes!

Source: PhD Comics

Become something we have never been

We must become something we have never been and for which our education and experience and environment have ill-prepared us. We must become bigger than we have been: more courageous, greater in spirit, larger in outlook. We must become members of a new race, overcoming petty prejudice, owing our ultimate allegiance not to nations but to our fellow men within the human community.

Emperor Haile Selassie III addressing the United Nations, Oct 1963

What to do if you get trapped by a foldable sofa

According to the BBC.

It ain't over till it's over

Yogi Berra, Italian-American baseball champion, "didn't really say everything he said". Nonetheless, what he did say is food for thought.

Micronations

I don't really know what to say, but this is hilarious.

Got some catching up to do

In the past days I was not able to post, so now I condense two interesting Wikipedia links into one article... I hope my 10^23 readers will forgive me

Once Napoleon warned never to ascribe to malice what can be ascribed to stupidity. Apparently this principle is called Hanlon's Razor, somewhat related to Occam's razor.

And here's one of the most amazing Italians of the 19th Century - widely published poet, reformer of morals, daredevil and war leader - at some point he even declared war on Italy!

Time to move on

I like it when Wondermark goes political.

Lego Bible

Are you into Jesus? can you feel the Jesus? or are you simply an old-fashioned Rabbi with the black hat? This website illustrates the Bible with Lego bricks and characters. An indispensable tool to help you and your acquaintances visualize the most salient episodes of the Book.

There's probably no God

Richard Dawkins strikes again

Play the surgeon

Who tells me the English name of the board game where you have to operate a patient wins $1

At what time did my computer crash?

Or, in other words, does Windows have a system log? (Many of my 64,000 readers will make fun of me for such a naive discovery, but lo, after 13 years messin' with computers I did not know. "Event Viewer" in Windows XP is the answer. It records (some) actions by the operating system and other applications, so that you can get an idea of what happened when. In order to start it, do "Start > Run" and type "eventvwr" in the "Open:" textbox follwed by Enter. A window like the one in the picture will open and you'll be able to know that your computer has been functioning at least until 10:11pm yesterday (whew!).

Bushisms

It's old, I know, but it's always funny. The BBC commemorates GW Bush with a collection of his Bushisms.

Keynes' 1933 letter to President Roosevelt

An interesting letter that makes you wonder - Keynes' suggestions were revolutionary back then, and it took a few years (1929-1933) for them to be accepted by governments during the Great Depression. Nowadays, similar policies are enacted much faster but the point is, we haven't improved our knowledge of "what to do in an economic crisis" much in the past 75 years... I'd love to receive comments on this from knowledgeable economists. Or at least people who know what I am talking about... :-)

Jesus riding a Velociraptor

I can't stop laughing. But if you are totally into Jesus, it's even awesomer. Jesus would approve.

A movie that makes you happy

This nice little free movie is more potent than Prozac, and what's most important, it has no side effects... :-) Enjoy even if you are already happy.

(The only downside, but only for depressed people, is that its effect probably wears off after watching 4 or 5 times)

The worst economic forecasters of 2008

• Mark Hulbert on the stock market
• Goldman Sachs on oil prices (Raw in March - Chiseled in May)

To Mr. Hulbert's credit, he did not have a reputation anyways.