three four cool links

[NB: This post was updated, hence the title change.]

This Japundit post links to a video about octopus wrestling. According to the English commentary, the idea is that, to get an attacking octopus to let go of you, you have to bite a particular nerve cluster that causes it to go limp. That's pretty much what happens in the video, in which a guy strips down to his skivvies, an octopus is brought out of the water to wrestle him (we don't actually see much wrestling), and then he bites. The octopus's reaction is instantaneous, though you can see that it doesn't go completely limp. Makes you wonder who the hell first discovered the nerve cluster. Probably some aikido sensei who was bored of teaching human vital points to his students.

Here is some great foodblogging of homemade cheese blintzes at a very fine blog-- ZenKimchi. (Could you nix all the ads, guys?)

From a blog called Foreign Dispatches, we have a "good riddance" tribute to postmodernist god/devil Jean Baudrillard-- he of Simulacra and Simulation fame. I imagine Camille Paglia is cheering in private as these dudes die off, one by one.

John of Long Time Gone links to another blog that is hosting another Pen & Teller "Bullshit" video. This video takes aim at the mentality of activists, many of whom are joiners but not thinkers. Good stuff. The video focuses on environmentalists, but P&T's point isn't about whether environmentalism, in and of itself, is good or bad; it's about whether one should simply sign up for a cause that sounds good without checking into whether the cause is bullshit. Most of us could use some lessons in critical thinking. Life is too short to waste time on causes about which one knows little. P&T, it turns out, are pulling a variant of an already-famous prank: see here for more info.


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