Author: mike

Here’s a religion I can really get behind: Yazidi, a sub-sect of (mostly Mosul, Iraq-based) Kurds. According to the Yazidi, Malak Taus is a fallen peacock angel who repented and recreated the world that...

A rebel Shiite cleric, wanted dead or alive by US troops, may be offered a seat in government. A favourite to become Iraq’s new prime minister has offered to include Sheikh Muqtada al-Sadr –...

I saw a thread in MeFi, where some conservatives have, apparently, belatedly realised that there is a definite slide towards authoritarianism AKA fascism afoot within the USA. And that they are the main enablers....

Added an “email this link” button to the page. Go on, spam someone you love!

The Volition Bug was launched anonymously from a site somewhere in a Central Asian republic. It propagated wirelessly among all the WiFi-communicating chipped objects, installing new directives in their tiny brains, directives that ran...

I was thinking about the biological dogma that cephalisation can only occur within bilaterally symmetric animals (Bilateria). It seems to me that a bilateral symmetry would put evolutionary pressure on such animals to evolve...

Someone asserted to me that the Macintosh was the wellspring from whence all great games descended… where do you think Sims (SimCity) and Tetris came from? SimCity? First released in 1987 on Commodore 64...

Incest taboos have become prevalent in our interlinked, modern societies because promoting exogamy acts as a great mechanism for wealth redistribution. Societies that facilitate familial endogamy tend not to be relatively successful in a...

Baghdad is not under control, either by the Iraqi interim government or the American military … “I would definitely say it’s enemy territory,” said Col. Stephen R. Lanza, the commander of the Fifth Brigade...

Foiled! I had this great idea to record some of my more tedious and long-winded lectures to save myself getting writer’s cramp. However, twice my plucky little Archos died on me after a song...