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Here are the two most shattering facts about North Korea. First, when viewed by satellite photography at night, it is an area of unrelieved darkness. Barely a scintilla of light is visible even in the capital city. (See this famous photograph.) Second, a North Korean is on average six inches shorter than a South Korean. You may care to imagine how much surplus value has been wrung out of such a slave, and for how long, in order to feed and sustain the militarized crime family that completely owns both the country and its people.

North Korea continues to be both fascinating and horrifying.

Not everything needs a 15-megapixel lens stuck on the back, like a little glass anus.

Still recovering from broken trust, neither wanted to be the first to try the eggs.

My new favorite blog.

A new entry on the list of coolest jobs ever.

The 9,000-student K-8 district this week pulled all copies of Merriam-Webster’s Collegiate Dictionary after an Oak Meadows Elementary School parent complained about a child stumbling across definitions for “oral sex.

I’m pretty sure there’s a word for this.

Oh, right. There it is.

Totally unrelated to the post as a whole but this t-shirt is full of nerd awesome.

A non-explosive device that emits a ticking sound was what caused the Lindbergh Center station to close Thursday night, a MARTA spokesman told ajc.com Friday.

A new report says reduce your salt by 1/2 teaspoon a day and you will be more healthy (as though that alone would do it).

The fact is, we have struggled to make our food so inexpensive that we’ve basically decided to grow cardboard, which, if you’ve ever tasted it, requires plenty of salt, especially if you intend to serve it to guests. Why do you think food is so cheap?  Because there’s nothing of value in it! Including flavor. Thus, the salt.

On a daily basis I am astonished by the bad design of things. In my last home, the switch for the garbage disposal was on a panel with a light switch, and looked just like it. Approximately 50% of the time I turned on the light when I wanted to dispose of something, and vice versa. I tried to memorize which switch was which, but I always got confused by my own memory tricks. Were the switches ordered the way I thought they should be, and that was my memory trick, or were they ordered the opposite of how I would have done it, and THAT was my memory trick.

It really is astonishing how many things, even things from designers and manufacturers that should know better, are so carelessly designed. It’s almost as if no one ever actually tried to use it before putting it out in the wild.

Case in point: I have a convection/toaster oven made by Sanyo. I use it constantly since I rarely need the full oven and hate to waste the gas it takes to heat it up. In convection oven mode cooking is controlled by a button which selects between 5 or so temperature settings and a knob that sets a time between 0 and 30 minutes. Once you hit the start button there’s no turning back. Other than 4 LED indicators that show what 7.5 minute range the timer is in, the oven offers no indication of how much time has elapsed or is remaining in the cook time. The time knob remains exactly where you set it. It is also impossible to change the time by turning the knob. I’ve learned to live with these quirks but it still is a constant source of low-grade annoyance.

This is a great bit of 90s nostalgia.