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On this date in 1930, Clyde W. Tombaugh discovered the (dwarf) planet Pluto, long believed the be the farthest planet in the Milky Way solar system before being formally demoted to the specially designed status of plutoid in 2006. Since then, the astronomical entity has become a very melancholic figure, a sentiment facilitated by Pluto’s [...]

Yesterday we read the sad news that the Obama administration has approved an $8 billion loan for the construction of two new power plants in Georgia, which is by far the worst violation of our trust the White House has pulled in the last year or so. Being staunchly anti-nuclear, we’re seriously contemplating moving to [...]

Some years ago we visited New Orleans the week after Mardi Gras and it looked much worse for wear. That said, from all the beads, margarita cups, costume scraps and chunks of floats lying around, we gathered that it had been a fun time, and quietly wished we’d arrived a few days earlier. At any [...]

If it were up to us, David Lynch would make every and any movie he wanted, and remake countless others. We would build him his own studio full of muscle cars, modernist homes and baroque theaters, have perpetual casting calls out for little people and classic movie star types, and of course a limitless budget. [...]

Today is Inventors Day in the United States, in honor of Thomas Edison, who was born on this date back in 1847. The holiday is celebrated in a handful of other countries around the world on the birthdays of their respective famous national inventors. (Someone should invent an international day for inventors.) We’d like to [...]

Today is Umbrella Day! As New York braces for the second Snowpocalypse of the season, we think affectionately on how much we prefer snow to rain, whether still or windy. When the air is really moving and the cats and dogs are falling, we feel very miserable. The only thing that makes it bearable is [...]

Today is Toothache Day! Though we hesitate to say whether this means we should be out causing ourselves toothaches, or if, rather, today is a day to treat toothaches, we have devised a compromise that celebrates both the problem and the solution. Tooth care commercials are a too-often overlooked sub-section of the personal hygiene industry, [...]

You would be surprised, we suspect, to see how clean and tidy our computers are given the innumerable things that list experts have to keep in huge quantities. Maintaining a semblance of order is hard work, so when we heard that today is Clean Out Your Computer Day we got a little annoyed: every day [...]

Every February 5, the entire nation bursts into a heated celebration for the men and women who predict our weather: It’s National Weatherperson’s Day! On this date, every weatherperson in the country is allowed to ask the president of the Weatherperson’s Association for one thing (sort of like asking the Don one thing on his [...]

We picked up the new Lil Wayne rap-rock hybrid album Rebirth yesterday, and for now we will just say that as far as musical musical experiments go, it’s a pretty sweeping failure. As we struggle to focus on the overwhelmingly awful record, we keep tuning out and thinking of better fusions of rock and rap, [...]