Definitely stole this from Caleb, who is spending the next few months getting rid of almost all his stuff. I have a huge amount of respect for him for doing this.

I am a firm believer that we need a lot less stuff. It’s why I like what Caleb is doing a whole lot. I feel like I am on a constant quest to have less stuff. It’s not easy to do. Every time I move, I try to throw away even more stuff. Every time I get tired of my cluttered room, things I didn’t need in the first place inevitably go in the trash or to Goodwill.

If I had it my way, I’d have one shelf for my books and music, a clear desk with my stereo and computer and nothing else. My general rule when buying physical stuff now is that, unless it’s something I’m going to use all the time, it’s not worth owning.

I’m kind of glad my family isn’t doing much for Christmas gifts this year. I already have plenty of stuff. If you haven’t started buying Christmas gifts yet (doubtless, unless you’re a dude like me), maybe you should consider buying non-physical goods, like iTunes gift certificates or a donation to charity.

Since it’s the day before Thanksgiving and I have no motivation to write, here’s the Muppets singing “Bohemian Rhapsody.” Enjoy and be thankful!

The fact that these nonscientific tests are sponsored by Volkswagen sour the deal a bit for me. But the theory is great: make people do good things by making them fun to do.

It’s hardly a revolutionary idea, but it’s one of the first times I’ve seen someone make a considerable effort to test it out.

But I have questions: Would it get annoying if all our trash cans and stair cases made noise? Would these ideas hold up over time? If the idea becomes commonplace, does it remain fun? What useful tasks do we do regularly that don’t lose their enjoyment factor?

I guess my point is that, yes, we need to find ways to encourage people to recycle and exercise, but I wonder if our nature as humans will “evolve” to resist such things once the fun wears off.

And then I wonder why it is some of us are more health- and earth-conscious and others are not. Perhaps we need to narrow that down and figure out what makes those people tick versus those that choose to be wasteful and slobby.

A curmudgeon might reasonably point out, “Why the blue hell do I need to talk about ‘mind grapes’ when the word ‘mind’ is working just fine?” Well, as Cosmo Kramer once asked, “Why go to a fine restaurant when you can just stick something in the microwave? Why go to the park and fly a kite when you can just pop a pill?” Language isn’t always about brevity. People like to be clever, and they like to reference clever shows like 30 Rock. Whether that makes you blurgh or liz is up to you.

(via The Language of 30 Rock)

I love this piece about how 30 Rock invents words that get thrown into our cultural lexicon. I personally love using the term “thoughtsicles” as an alternative to “mind grapes.” Tracy came up with that one, too.

Language is a funny thing. We say all sorts of seemingly useless crap that we get from TV, movies, music, YouTube and Urban Dictionary. A physical printed dictionary could never keep up; it’s a wonder people even care what new words get added to Webster’s list every year.

Side note: I also enjoyed how the article used Twitter as a means to prove their point of real-world usage. Mark that down as another possible purpose for tweeting, or at least the value for researchers found in otherwise inane collections of 140-ish characters.

Does anyone else notice the issue here? She’s making the argument that homeschooled kids are normal while not being quite normal herself. I would flip the stats and say that about 80% of the homeschooled kids I’ve met are weird.

Also, she’s listing off “cool” people that were homeschooled, and names mostly historical figures instead of people we know that are alive today. Who knows if they were weird or awkward? Not me. Though I’ll bet Darwin was a weirdo. Plus, weren’t most people pre-1900 homeschooled in some form anyway? So using them as examples makes no sense.

I have a theory, though: the fact that homeschooled kids are weird usually (not always) has something to do with their parents, not the homeschooling itself. In other words, the kind of parents that prefer to homeschool are going to have weird kids whether or not they actually homeschool them, just by the environment they’re raised in.

There’s absolutely no way to prove that, of course. Just a theory.

I have never seen a more true flowchart. You could do one for Papyrus too, but Comic Sans is at the core of the pit of evil for all fonts.

And I’m not even a designer. I just pretend to be.

HEY. I’d like the record to show that I lasted until I was almost 23. Thank God I never was tempted beyond a 30-second whim to get a tattoo showing my ‘edge pride.

Of course, I was just afraid of alcohol and what it might do to me and “straight edge” was a nice way to cover that up. Especially as a listener of hardcore music.

I still have my straight edge friends, and I respect their choice, but sometimes I need a beer or a gin and tonic to tie up my evening.

Why? I mean, really? I’m entertained, but what causes any human to think, “Gee, I should try and get inside a giant balloon, then film it and post it on YouTube“?

It’s Manos: The Hands of Fate. Hands down.

Sadly, I couldn’t get my hands on a copy that wasn’t the MST3K-laced one, but hey. You do what you have to do in the name of bad art.

Completely devoid of comprehensible plot line, concise dialogue or half-decent acting, this is truly the worst of the worst, which loops it back around to being the best of the best. Highly recommended.

An interesting fact I learned in Australia: US pennies would probably not exist were it not for copper lobbyists. In the land down under, the smallest denomination coin is 5 cents. They eliminated 1-cent coins and all prices are to be rounded to the nearest 5.

I wondered out loud at one point why the US doesn’t do the same thing. One of my travel mates quickly responded that the US still makes pennies because lobbyists for the copper industry have fought all such legislation. Now there’s an interesting twist on “money equals power.”

Australia also has 1- and 2-dollar coins. I wonder if there is some lobbyist for an industry supported by the US Mint keeping smaller bills instead of popularizing coins so they won’t go out of business too.

I understand the desire for an industry to do whatever they can to stay afloat, but, with a few exceptions, it seems like a bad sign when an industry has to resort to legislation and/or lawsuits in order to keep business from dying. Deal with it, folks. No industry is guaranteed to be eternal.

Fun side note: in Thailand, where 30 baht is roughly equivalent to 1 US dollar, there are 1-baht and even 1/2-baht coins, but they’re hard to find. The only people that give them out are Big C chain stores (the Thai equivalent to Walmart [blech]). And, conveniently, pretty much nobody will take a 1- or 1/2-baht coin but Big C, rendering them almost entirely useless.