Author Archives: Heaton
My Life as a Bollywood Actor
June 12, 2013 – 12:01 am
Bollywood, in case you are unfamiliar, is Bombay’s film juggernaut, producing thousands of Hindi movies each year. The films are terrific, because the characters spontaneously burst into song randomly, and instead of sex scenes the characters dance in a suggestive manner. It’s almost exactly like my high school experience, except that everyone speaks foreigner! Recently read more
When is a Joke Racist?
June 5, 2013 – 12:58 am
Standup comedians are continually on the prowl for more jokes to enhance our punchline arsenal. Occasionally we stray away from gags about airline food or poop jokes and investigate edgy subjects, like race or sexuality. Most comics want to avoid incorporating bigotry into their sets (or to at least make themselves strategically bigoted so they read more
Triumph of the Nerds
May 22, 2013 – 12:16 am
Last week I saw the new Star Trek movie at an IMAX theater with my girlfriend, thus achieving all three of my goals from high school simultaneously. If you looked around the IMAX theater (an acronym for Image Media Antelope Xylophone) there were several hundred other nerds and femmedorks present who had convinced a date read more
How the Internet Skews Reality
May 15, 2013 – 10:00 am
If you are reading this you are probably familiar with a thing called “the Internet.” If your assistant printed my article off for you, or possibly read all of it verbally whilst a second and even more attractive assistant transcribed it by hand, then handed you that paper personally, you should know that the “the read more
When Extroverts Ruled the Earth
May 8, 2013 – 11:22 am
We live at the conclusion of the Age of Extroverts; a brief period of human history wherein social butterflies excelled, often at the expense of introverts. Technology is rapidly leveling that playing field. During the first 400,000 years of human history the dominant group in society was whoever had the biggest head-clubbing stick, or whichever read more
Do I Deserve your Waiter’s Money?
April 25, 2013 – 12:53 am
You may be alarmed to discover that sequestration not only affects our nation’s battleships, but also its art galleries and strategic folk dancing troupes. As sequestration leads to the involuntary fiscal liposuction of our federal budget, the National Endowment for the Arts will tighten its belt by $7.3 million. That reduction will leave the NEA read more
We Probably Overdid it on Witch Executions
April 18, 2013 – 3:09 am
I’m beginning to suspect that most of the women we burned at the stake were not actually witches. Even those we properly identified as conjurers can still be divided into subcategories, because not all witches are necessarily evil. There are good witches, like Samantha, from Bewitched, and then there are evil ones, like Janeane Garofalo. read more
I Might Be on the FBI Watch List
April 9, 2013 – 11:14 pm
I’d like to go ahead and clear up why I once delayed an international flight due to a misunderstanding about smuggling pistols. If you’re a regular reader do press on, but this post is primarily written for whichever federal investigator handles the yellow sticky notes in my file folder at the FBI headquarters. In 2004 read more
The Truth About Archaeology
April 4, 2013 – 1:41 am
There are a dozen reasons you might want to go digging around somebody else’s land with a shovel and a vaguely communicated purpose. If so, spare some hassle and call yourself an “archaeologist.” You can still dink around with a garden trowel in someone’s petunia garden if you want, but uppity neighbors might accuse you read more
Why We’ll Never Run out of Resources
March 27, 2013 – 12:10 am
It would be a major inconvenience if the Earth ran out of things I enjoy using, such as petroleum, or seltzer water. You might be the sort of bloke who settles down after a hard day of work to enjoy a nice, cool bucket of tungsten. Luckily for us, we’re never going to run out read more
Human Achievement Hour
March 22, 2013 – 1:56 am
This Saturday during Earth Hour various people around the world will shut their lights off for sixty minutes as a symbolic gesture to raise awareness about climate change. Hopefully if enough people do so they will scare the bejeezus out of unsuspecting astronauts. Watching Houston inexplicably pretend to be Pyongyang for forty-five minutes is surely read more
Malthus was Wrong
March 20, 2013 – 2:19 am
Once in a while some gloomy Gus at a cocktail party will posit that if we ever solve world hunger, everyone will have so many babies that they’ll eat all the food, and the whole world will be reduced to one big field of cannibalistic toddlers. Thomas Malthus originally pioneered this depressing theory; that if read more
Good Riddance, Soda Ban
March 13, 2013 – 2:40 am
Fortunately for you it is still legal to buy Pepsi by the bucket in the city of New York. I do not speak lawyer, but a cursory glance of Judge Tingling’s ruling indicates that Mayor Bloomberg’s attempt to ban giant sodas was halted partially because Bloomberg overstepped his bounds as mayor, but also because the read more
How to Sail Through Line at the Bank
March 6, 2013 – 11:06 am
If you’re looking to expedite your time at the bank, frame your future requests in such a way that the tellers think you’re a psychopath. Their barely-concealed fear that you’ll go nuts will compel them to prioritize you above coffee breaks and other customers. Now, before you go rushing off to the nearest vault with read more
When I am Pope
February 27, 2013 – 12:15 am
Last week Pope Benedict shocked the world when he announced that he will resign the Throne of St. Peter, so that he can cash in on Social Security before all the Baby Boomers suck it dry. No Pope has done this since 1782, when Pope Benedict Arnold defeated the British at the Battle of Yorktown. read more
How to Dress in New York
February 22, 2013 – 10:02 am
If you’re visiting or moving to New York, chances are you’ll be wearing clothes at some point. Should you want to blend in with the locals, you’ll need to employ “fashion,” which is a concept the French made up to sell decorative belts and berets. (If you really want to impress New Yorkers, pronounce the read more
Political Totems
February 19, 2013 – 11:49 pm
Which do you hate: solar panels or natural gas? (If you’re Amish, you should hate both. Then you should post on the message board why exactly you’re on the Internet what with being Amish. Then send me a bale of cheese.) Over the last year I’ve noticed that a surprising amount of Americans hate one read more
Jeremy Bentham: Not Voting from Beyond the Grave
February 14, 2013 – 7:50 pm
You may not remember Jeremy Bentham from high school history class, as he never became an American president nor was portrayed by John Wayne in any films. However Bentham has nonetheless influenced you deeply, because he is the founder of Utilitarianism. Utilitarianism is a school of thought asserting that you should base ethical and policy read more
Corpses of Interest: Tapping the Admiral
February 13, 2013 – 12:19 am
In today’s Corpses of Interest segment we learn about Lord Nelson, a British maritime hero whose body was preserved on the way back to London by pickling it in a barrel of brandy. Fair warning: Lord Nelson’s death is heroic, but the mortuary practice which followed it is gross and may even stop you from read more
Corpses of Interest: John Knox
February 10, 2013 – 9:51 pm
If you’re a Shakespeare enthusiast, or ardent follower of global parking lot news, you’re aware that archaeologists recently discovered King Richard III’s earthly remains under a parking lot in Leicester. Presumably King Richard (or “Humpback Dicky,” as his friends called him) parked his car at a mall, couldn’t again locate it, and eventually got buried beneath read more
