I’m Wondering If You Can Help Me…

By Christopher Null | December 3, 2009 |

As someone who used to fix computers part-time but stopped advertising his services over six years ago, I can attest to the veracity of this “guide to being the local PC repair dude.” Specifically: Expect to be riddled with calls and requests for fixing computers for the rest of your natural life.

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Snowglobes: Banned

By Christopher Null | November 14, 2009 |

It no longer snows upon the world’s miniature landmarks. The TSA says you can’t carry a snow-globe onto a plane, even if it fits in your freedom baggie, because they can’t measure how much liquid it contains, and therefore it must contain more than three oz of potential explosive, um, water.

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Remind Me Again Why I Have a Land Line?

By Christopher Null | November 4, 2009 |

This week my home phone started bristling with static. Again. Had the same problem a year ago, thought it was something with the cordless phone. After many weeks finally got a repair guy to come out and he discovered it was a short at AT&T’s junction box. Now it’s back. This time I didn’t hesitate,…

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Be Mad

By Christopher Null | November 3, 2009 |

It’s healthy! An Australian psychology expert who has been studying emotions has found being grumpy makes us think more clearly. In contrast to those annoying happy types, miserable people are better at decision-making and less gullible, his experiments showed. While cheerfulness fosters creativity, gloominess breeds attentiveness and careful thinking, Professor Joe Forgas told Australian Science…

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Want Your Wallet Back, Bub?

By Christopher Null | October 13, 2009 |

Carry a baby photo. As the psychologists soon discovered, the sight of a smiling baby is enough to warm nearly any heart: only one in 10 of the strangers who retrieved such wallets neglected to return them. In contrast, the second-most successful image, the puppy, boasted only a 53 percent return rate. When the wallet…

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BPA: We’re All Screwed

By Christopher Null | October 9, 2009 |

Society laughs at your fears about the BPA-laden plastic water bottle. “When people talk about polycarbonate bottles, they talk about nanogram quantities of BPA [leaching out],” Warner observes. “The average cash register receipt that’s out there and uses the BPA technology will have 60 to 100 milligrams of free BPA.” By free, he explains, it’s…

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Go For It, Losers.

By Christopher Null | October 9, 2009 |

From the press notes for the utterly baffling, upcoming new film Bad Lieutenant: Port of Call New Orleans, which is not a remake of the Harvey Keitel classic. Starring Nicolas Cage and directed by — no, seriously — Werner Herzog. Here’s what Herzog — who’s easily on my list of 10 people I’d like to…

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In Other News, Ukranian Cash is Known as the Hryvnia

By Christopher Null | October 7, 2009 |

Note to self/world: If you drop money into a toilet, let it go. The emergency workers removed tiles, drilled the toilet out of concrete floor and cut the outlet pipe, but the man’s arm remained trapped in the chute. Hydraulic shears and a plumber’s torch were finally used to cut the man free.

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