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Did you know...

That the penalty for "breaking down a fishpond" in England in 1800 was death?

The Annivirthday Juicer I Bought My Wife...

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Is so sophisticated that it can even make French recipes: Silas will certainly be impressed with the fact that scientists have taught this juicer to process French ingredients.

Scientists discover gene

That causes researchers to attribute behavior to genetic causes. Details at 11.

It's for your own safety

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Because you know how a credit card you use without having your ID checked can sometimes explode. Or something.

What If We Make a New Convention?

I have always figured that I only need to mention if I add something to a quote: otherwise, what I put in my text was in the quote. So, with actual words, if I added them, I put them in square brackets: otherwise, you can assume I found them there. Can't we do the same thing with italics? If I don't mention I added them, there they were. Why do we need to specify both "Emphasis added" and "Emphasis in original"?

Whitehead on "random" sampling

"no sample is 'random'; it has only followed a complex method. A finite number of samples each following some method of its own, however complex each method may be, will give a statistical result entirely dependent upon those methods. In so far as repetitions of so-called random samplings give concordant results, the only conclusion to be drawn is that there is a relevant, though concealed, analogy between the 'random' methods." -- Process and Reality , pp. 233-234

What is with this "codes" business?

Twice today I have run across descriptions of books that say that they include "source codes." In 18 years of programming, I never heard that word pluralized: no one ever said "Today I wrote eight source codes." We wouldn't have known what the person was talking about. You might write eight lines of source code, or eight modules of source code, or eight programs. To my ear, pluralizing the word implies that there is something that one could identify as "one source code." But there isn't.