Missoula Notebook

Links of the Week

By Sutton Stokes, 6-20-08

Not to get all pedantic or anything, but “blog” is short for “weblog.” The originators of the form were just logging the interesting things they found on-line. Of course, that was back when you had to blog by candle light.

In tribute to our internet forefathers, then, here are the ten best links I found this week, from severed feet to road rage, pot-borne salmonella, enemas, and much, much more. Happy Friday!

1.
A fifth severed foot, wearing a shoe, has washed up on an island on the western coast of Canada. “At first, the talk about it was really humorous. But as more feet turned up, the talk became sinister,” a resident said. “These are pristine islands, not the place where you would expect to find a bunch of severed feet.”

2.
Watch your step around people driving cars covered with bumper stickers. But you knew that already. (Update: commenter “Helena,” who seems like the kind of person who probably drives a car festooned with the things, was disappointed by the link I originally provided. My apologies for linking to paid content; a free precis of this Nature article is available here.)

3.
For some reason, Barack Obama and Scarlet Johansson regularly exchange long emails.

4.
The tomato-borne salmonella outbreak hearkens back to a marijuana-borne salmonella outbreak back in 1981 (the culprit was dried manure that had been added to increase weight and volume), in addition to providing the perfect opportunity to point out that smoking pot apparently makes you more susceptible to food-borne infections, due to decreased gastric-acid production.

5.
I finally got around to re-locating this great Richard Dawkins essay about the three worst (i.e., most error prone) reasons for believing something: tradition, authority, and revelation.

6.
The best paragraph I read all week:

“The Testicle Festival always has been and probably always will be unpredictable, so it is impossible to predict what effect, if any, the addition of the Hells Angels will have,” says [Missoula] county Sheriff Mike McMeekin.”

7.
Soar like an eagle, fight like a swan.

8.
Fortunately, there is now ”a simple, two-minute test that detects alcohol in breast milk so new moms can monitor the safety of their alcohol levels.”

9.
Who did they get to drive that car?

10.
And, finally: “There is no kitsch or obscenity, it is a successful work of art,” Alexander Kharchenko told The Associated Press. ”An enema is almost a symbol of our region.”

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