January 9, 2014
- Mounting evidence Christie is a bully.
- I've never known a governor without a long list of local opponents, enemies, and plain chuckleheads.
- Missing its deadline to elect new Olympic officials, India's athletes will compete as independents at Sochi.
- UN to stop updating Syria's death toll, because it can't verify the numbers.
- In 2008, U.S. intelligence worried a virtual Bin Laden would emerge on an MMORPG and attract denizens.
- Toy gun sales surge in Pakistan—the most popular is a Kalashnikov replica called "the Osama gun."
- While arguing with her boyfriend about space aliens, Cormac McCarthy's ex-wife retrieved a gun from her vagina.
- Some 2014 Tournament of Books metrics: 7,164 total pages, with the longest book reaching 848 pages.
- Entomologists welcome sub-zero temperature as means to rid New York's flora of invasive species.
- Watch PBS's entire Raiders of the Lost Ark documentary from 1981.
- Wikipedia is the new museum.
- Always well worth your time: The Museum of Online Museums.
- Rare conjoined gray whale calves found in Mexico.
- The sun releases the first big solar flare of 2014; expect northern lights this week.
- They could perhaps become more like the mannequin by purchasing some of the clothes he was wearing.
- New York's MTA plans to phase out MetroCards by 2019 for a system that uses bank cards or smartphones.
- Ben Saunders explains a hitch in his South Pole expedition.
- Abandoned luxury hotels.
- So I've taken up the unhappy practice of trolling obituaries.