Trick or Treat? For Many Britons, the Reply Is Neither
The adoption of American Halloween customs is still a rude culture shock for a generation of older people whose need for a macabre fall festival was traditionally satisfied by Bonfire Night.
(tags: international holiday)

Here’s the jack-o-lantern faces Josh and I carved to greet you. Guess whose is whose.

Sweet Dreams and Nightmare.
I have class tonight. Some of my classmates have plans to dress up, which I might play along with, depending on how much time I can spare after work to change. With the pace of things around here [...]

How the Web Prevents Rape
If you want to understand the effects of on-screen sex and violence outside the laboratory, psych experiments don’t tell you very much. Sooner or later, you’ve got to look at the data.
(tags: internet science)

Potential Male Contraceptive
For men who don’t want to alter their sex hormones over the long haul, researchers are [...]

To honor Halloween approaching, I decided to cook with pumpkin. Well, not technically pumpkin, but butternut squash, which Food Network says “tastes more like pumpkin than pumpkin.”
Neither Josh or I are big dessert people (give me a rack of lamb over a frilly pastry any day), so I preferred something non-sweet. That limited my options [...]

3 Ways to Make Old Extensions Compatible with Firefox 2.0
(tags: internet)

ArcGIS had a nice little surprise in store for me while I was georeferencing a scanned image. After warping to the reference points, the sea of pixels (which originally were a grey solid mass) turned into this.

And after rectification, to this:

It looks fractalesque and makes me happy. I love rainbows.
Which reminds me of a joke [...]

Take a bite out of phishing crimes
I do #4. It would never hurt to do more.
(tags: internet)
More Reasons To Have Sex (Like we need any more)
“Fans of abstinence had better be sitting down. “Saving yourself” before the big game, the big business deal, the big hoedown or the big bakeoff may indeed confer some moral [...]

Women’s Vote Could Tip Close Contest
Allen vs. Webb in VA. Time for me to start paying careful attention to this stuff.
(tags: politics local)

Go on an eight-week carbon diet.
The Slate “Green Challenge.”
(tags: environment)

Researchers Developing Purple Tomatoes
The novel pigment contains the same phytochemical found in blueberries that is thought to reduce the risk of cancer and heart [...]

The fall foliage map I posted a link to indicated the peak color would be last weekend. On Friday, Josh surprised me by saying he’d take me hiking any place I wanted to go. What should have been a golden (literally) opportunity turned into sort of a flop. Next time, I will let him pick [...]

Photo Gallery: Exotic New Orchids Discovered in New Guinea
Even before the find, Papua New Guinea claimed more known orchid species than any other country in the world.
(tags: international photography)