http://slyoyster.com

NPR looks back at the pioneering music blogs, many of which began a decade ago.  Jesus this makes me feel old.

You wouldn’t think the genome sequencing for an ear of corn would turn out to be one of the most complex sequencing that scientists have concluded.  The reason for such complexity is that about 85 percent of its DNA is composed of transposable elements — segments of DNA that can move between locations.

I’ll admit, that one of the methods I use to determine my liquor choices is packaging.  If a bottle is well-designed, be it scotch, gin or rum, then I’m more apt to plunk down $20-$30 for a bottle. 

The Dieline examines 50 such bottles that would get my business whether or not the product is any good.  Despite the overabundance of Absolut Vodka bottles, it’s nice to see to Portland spirits make the list.  That both 12 Bridges Gin and Lovejoy Vodka (both are crafted by Integrity Spirits, whose Trillium Absinthe also made the list but I haven’t partaken yet) are excellent tasting spirits in their own right is an added bonus.

If you’re wondering that’s the Hawthorne Bridge on the bottle.

You probably haven’t watched Saturday morning cartoons in, um, well, forever, right?  But, let this cook your noodle: there’s a Teenage Muant Ninja Turtles 25th anniversary crossover/event/cartoon movie Turtles Forever, airing tomorrow morning at 10 a.m. EST on 4Kids.tv (check local listings and all that but most likely the CW).

Holy shit! Eastman and Laird’s black-and-white original comics turtles are joining the ’80s cartoon Turtles and the ’00s cartoon Turtles in some sort of geek-tastic cartoon bacchnalia. 

Yes, I will be glued to the television tomorrow morning to see how the original TMNT incarnation will be portrayed, since they were stoic badasses.

When The New York Times showed Elmhurst spokesman Dario Centorcelli a photo of what two missing letters added up to, he seemed perplexed. “Oh, God, are we going to get this fixed?” he wondered.

Turns out this wasn’t a prank on the Queens, N.Y. hospital but just a rather curious coincidence.  Just as bad for the hospital would have been if the bulbs burned out to spell “Elm St.” No one wants to get fixed up by Freddy Kreuger. [via]

Why?  I don’t know why the Heroes actress would do such a thing but this is a good way to get the blood pumping early this morning.  She goes from wet to dry in this reverse video portrait of her taken by photographer Tyler Shields. [via]

Anyone remotely curious as to what’s up with Jason Segel, now that he’s performed the same song not just with Maroon 5 but now with (Oscar-darlings) The Swell Season?  Is he laying pipe for a potential musical-comedy album or something?

Anyways, the supposed backstory to this song goes like this: “The band was at a restaurant in Los Angeles; drinking tea, when they were offered a bottle of wine by two celebrities. Paul Rudd and Jason Segel. Now The Swell Season has been enjoying watching their “Freaks & Geeks” DVDs while on tour, so this was a nice coincidence. They became good acquaintances, so The Swell Season asked Jason Segel to be a surprise guest and sing a song for us. ”

Now I’m really going to call the number to see what happens.

Mark your calendars for Feb. 2 at 9 p.m. ET.  Because that’s when the final season of ABC’s Lost returns.  The network has decided to move the show again (Wednesday to Thursday back to Wednesday) one last time with Tuesday being its new day due to the success of this year’s new sitcoms Modern Family (did you see the episode with Ed Norton and Elizabeth Banks? Talk about wtf!) and Cougar Town.

So Tuesday night.  Good.  Because now there will be something on Tuesday worth watching.

You can download the free virtual appliance of Chrome OS here. The tarball is containing vmdk and vmx files, so you’ll need a free VMware Player or VirtualBox in order to run this appliance. 

Not sure if this is on the up and up but Google did hold a press conference today with details of their much bally-whooed OS and it sounds impressive. 

It won’t be officially launched until first or second quarter 2010 and it really will be a browser-based interface.

Wait.  When did Europe become a country?  I mean, aside from the whole EU thing?  Anyways, in a closed door meeting, Belgium’s prime minister, Herman Van Rompuy, became the first president of the continent, though it doesn’t seem like any Europeans voted in an election or how it was determined he would be the president. 

“Van Rompuy, a soft-spoken fan of Japanese poetry, beat out contenders including former British Prime Minister Tony Blair for a post whose duties are not yet clear.”  What they leave it out is that he sort of looks like Dick Cheney’s doofy younger brother.

Sounds like a good job though.

Here’s a thought: If you’re going to do an article about the changing face of sports column writing four-years late with the angle being a mini-profile of ESPN’s Bill Simmons, arguably America’s favorite columnist (and New York Times #1 best-selling non-fiction author), you should probably be much more thorough on both subjects than the New York Times cared to be.

I don’t know if this made big news or not, but I was fascinated with the story of Belle de Jour, the anonymous sex blogger from London (most people might know that the Showtime series Secret Diary of a Call Girl, is loosely based on her blog)finally revealed her identity. 

The best part is that  she’s a scientist! Dr. Brooke Magnanti is not just a high-class call girl, but a specialist in ”developmental neurotoxicology and cancer epidemiology. She has a PhD in informatics, epidemiology and forensic science and is now working at the Bristol Initiative for Research of Child Health. She is part of a team researching the effects of exposure to the pesticide chlorpyrifos on foetuses and infants.”

So basically, every geeks dream girl.  Darren from LinkMachineGo, guessed Belle de Jour’s identity soon after her blog started. How? Before becoming an anonymous sex-blogger, Brooke Magnanti ran an obscure Robotwisdom-style link blog and wrote in a few other places ; Darren recognized the writing style. Rather than reveal the secret he set up a method to detect people searching for her secret identity and tipped Magnanti off that The Daily Mail was sniffing around. [via]