I admit to being a keen and regular reader of the Salon advice column Since You Asked. The columnist, writer Cary Tennis, is frequently given to bouts of soul-searching and self-examination about his allotted role. And here is his latest, a masterpiece.

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Found this via BoingBoing – an incredibly interesting experiment done by Belgian cultural broadcaster Klara.bi. It took an internationally-important contemporary painter called Luc Tuymans, whose works are viewed reverently in galleries and which change hands for huge sums of money.

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Mortgage rate rising? Global warming. Ken losing in London? Same again. Can’t get a credit card? Blame climate change. England not qualifying for Euro 2008? I think we all know the reason for that… However, you should curb your excessive cynicism. According to The Guardian, the most unlikely phenomena can be attributed to precisely this cause.

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Just spotted this lovely story on the BBC News website: a Swiss amateur parachutist has made a successful descent using a replica of a parachute designed more than 500 years ago by Leonardo da Vinci. And there’s a video of the jump too so you can see the design – quite different from a modern [...]

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I am informed that the phenomenon of goats in a tree is completely real and genuine and that there is no production company slightly off-camera in the following video clip putting the goats in the trees then filming them coming down again.

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It transpires that Robbie Williams has been spending the time he’s taking out from his recording career exploring a very serious interest in the paranormal. And, when he decided to go to a conference in Nevada on alien abduction, who on earth else would he call up to accompany him but Jon Ronson? Here’s Ronson’s [...]

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Have just found out about the crystal skull phemomenon, for the first time, after learning that it’s going to be the central plot in the new Indiana Jones movie.

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Where are the limits of humour? And how to solve the perennially vexed question of good taste versus free speech – the one that caused the creators of Jerry Springer: The Opera such trouble? These are questions raised after a union representing Tube drivers announced it was planning to picket the premiere of a film that makes a joke of people falling under trains.

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Incredible pictures from the New York Times this morning show the city’s unwanted Redbird subway cars being towed off the coast of Delaware where they will be dumped into the Atlantic Ocean to form an artificial reef.

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Have you ever sat on a commuter train or a congested motorway longing for someone to invent a real-life teleportation device? Or maybe you’ve spotted someone you longed to avoid and wished devoutly you could become invisible? Well, according to a piece in today’s Guardian, such innovations might be closer than we suspect.

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Intriguing story from today’s Telegraph about an Iranian asylum-seeker running the world’s most northerly kebab-shop.

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Great story on the BBC News site today about passengers stranded on the London Eye for… wait for it… a whole hour on Easter Monday. During which they were reportedly ordered to crack open emergency fluid, blankets and portable toilets. Declare a national emergency!

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