I read an essay by Martin Gardner in one of his books on cannibalism, asking whether it really happened. The essay was really a discussion of a book, which made the claims:

1. No anthropologist / explorer had ever witnessed cannabilism.
2. No tribe had ever admitted to it.

The book claimed that all evidence of customary [1] cannibalism effectively boiled down to a tribe / people / whatever saying: "Those guys who live over there, they are cannibals!" So anthropology students have been taught for ages that various primitive tribes engaged in cannibalism, but there is seemingly no proof of this statement. This was controversial and a few years ago (10, perhaps?) so I'm not sure what the current state of the art is.

[1] There are obvious one-off examples, like recently those rugby players down in South America, and in (pre)history perhaps eating mighty chiefs/warriors to try to absorb some of their strength or mana. This is, rather, looking at the idea of tribes that eat people on a regular basis.

Hah. Easy-peasy in python!

while lst != sorted(lst): random.shuffle(lst)

Do they not have a sun where you live?

Heh. Naming a bunch of things that orbit the earth after Galileo. Irony :-)

Well, if you're female, you'll probably fold your arms under your breasts, sniff, and maybe tug your braid.

Don't they mean Planet IX?

At the risk of being pedantic, mushrooms aren't plants..

No, That starts with a T. Although it's still not a number (unless you're working in base 30).

F-Secure points out that .PIF files will have their extension hidden even if you change the display option.

Q: Will that make all file extensions visible?
A: Well, no. There are executable extensions that will STILL be hidden even if you turn the option off.

Q: What?
A: For example PIF. This file type was meant to be a shortcut to old MS-DOS programs. Problem is, you can rename any modern Windows Executable to .PIF and it will happily run when double-clicked.

Q: How do you I make PIF files visible then?
A: Via a registry key called "NeverShowExt". We'd link you to an article in the Microsoft Knowledgebase... except we couldn't find any. But here's a Web page on the topic, from GeoCities, made by some hobbyist a couple of years ago. Maybe it's the best source of information on the topic.

Unless you're on a laptop (or otherwise missing a numeric keypad)..

There's more detail on the hunt for gollum in Unfinished Tales. Still not a lot, to be honest.

The most interesting thing is the explanation of how Gollum escapes from Thranduil. Basically, Sauron had been unable to completely break Gollum - perhaps because of Gollum's hobbit heritage. So Sauron had let Gollum go, in the hope that Gollum would find his way to the Shire or Baggins - both names Sauron had got out of him, but both things Gollum didn't know the location of. So Sauron let Gollum go, but kept an eye on him.

Then Aragorn captured Gollum, just outside Mordor. Now, Sauron knew (from Gollum) that the One had been found, but he did not realise anyone else knew this. So he was now worried that Gollum's new captors would discover this information, and thus Sauron would lose an advantage. Hence he arranged for an orc-raid to capture or kill Gollum. However, Gollum escaped. There were also Nazgul in the area, searching for the Shire in the guise of black riders, so in terror of the orcs and the black riders, Gollum hid in Moria./p.

The universal laws of driving skill:

1. Drivers everywhere in the world are terrible.
2. You either live or have lived in the city with the world's absolute worst drivers.
3. You are a great driver, as is everyone you know personally.

Strange but true.

I think it's because the spammers are selling DRMed pills these days and if you opt-out, you lose access to the extended functionality of your penis.

I don't think we have a word mildinconvenienceists

"manager"

(3) [2 points] A friend on a social networking site comments: "O RLY?".
(a) How should you reply?
(b) What picture might you expect to see attached to the comment?