via the Viridian website, some bad but unsurprising news. We’ve been brought up to think that nature is roughly stable; that, even if big bad things happen like, say, the melting of glaciers or climate change, they’re going to happen slowly, stably. Carbon-merchants want us to think that for now, since it ensures our continued consumption of their wares, traded for our play money. But nature’s quite possibly much less like a Lego castle than a Jenga Tower. Remember Jenga? It’s a game I remember from birthday parties of my childhood, but it’s back now. You see in the boardgame …

For the educated combatant of creationism, check out these stickers. They are absolutely brilliant, and I wish I could print ’em off and stick them on a few books. Though I’ve not many many Creationists in Korea, at least not ones that speak English. Not a surprise, really. (via VALISblog, by the way.)

Back when I was a gamer, I used to pine for out-of-print resources which I couldn’t buy, even used, because they were so rare. In those days, the best thing anyone could do was to hit as many used RPG-bookshops as one could, and hope, and be patient. But now, of course, at an online shop called DriveThruRPG.com, you simply pay for the right to download an Adobe PDF of whatever files you want. Voila: no more out-of-print blues, and it’s cheaper than buying coveted old print editions of the books; for someone like me, who’s much more concerned with …

Regardless of what reporters publish in their employers’ pages, it’s not been scientifically demonstrated that prayer by third parties has any effect on one’s ability to conceive a child (or recover from illness, succeed in a war, or anything else, for that matter). Look! An American criminal was one of the authors of the study! What am I not surprised? I do find it saddening that Columbia University was dumb enough to let it be publicized, and that the general press establishment didn’t attack it once enough time had passed for the embarassment to be minimal. It seems religious nuts …

Who the hell would have thought these things up? (via The Electric Smack Shack… I saw the link weeks ago, and thought I posted this, but found it among my draft posts, and realized I hadn’t posted it at all. Gaa.)