The notion that technology is the reason the murder rate has fallen by half.

"I do not know Nate Silver. I have never spoken to Nate Silver."

"I do not know how old Nate Silver is or anything about Nate Silver’s existence. I am not even sure Nate Silver is his real name. That sounds like a stage name, one that a numbers geek would pick because he secretly dreams of being a cowboy...."

"Their strategy for staying alive is to be barely alive at all."

We're talking about "bizarrely low-key bacteria have been found in sediments 100 feet below the sea floor of the Pacific Ocean" — at least 1,000 and maybe millions of years old:

Their metabolism is dialed down to almost nothing, an adaptive advantage in a place with so few resources. The bacteria that survive are the ones that can satisfy themselves with minute traces of oxygen and a parsimonious diet of organic material laid down millions of years ago....

This made me think of the Beatles lyric: "Isn't he a bit like you and me?" Nowhere bacteria, please listen/You don't know what you're missin'...

“These organisms live so slowly that when we look at it at our own time scale, it’s like suspended animation,” said Danish scientist Hans Roy, a biologist at Aarhus University and the lead author of the study. “The main lesson here is that we need to stop looking at life at our own time scale.”

Yes. Exactly! I'm going to readjust to this bacteria point of view. It's a strategy....

How to get people to watch women's sports: "1. More singing.... 2. No more uniforms.... 3. More dating intrigue."

Joel Achenbach is using the hoary old tactic of trying to get a rise out of the feminists.

1. More singing. When U-Conn tips off against FSU with the all-time record on the line, we know that U-Conn is going to clobber the overmatched Seminoles. But what if the teams were also required to conduct a singing competition at halftime and, say, in the closing seconds? And they don't know if they'll have to do a hip-hop number or some country-and-western? Nothing but suspense.

2. No more uniforms. I am not suggesting nudity! I am suggesting that, rather than the players wearing identical outfits, they get to wear whatever they want, ideally clothes that they have personally made. And not even with real fabric, but with items purchased at, say, a hardware store! And this would be rated by judges. A player could have a rough night at the free throw line, making only three of ten shots, but she could still come out with extra points for having fashioned her outfit out of a heavy industrial tarp.

3. More dating intrigue. Break-ups, hook-ups, emotional anguish, betrayal, reconciliation. Friendships damaged and repaired. Gossip. Melodrama! Less emphasis on teamwork, more emphasis on the mating competition. If you can't steal the ball, maybe you can steal a boyfriend. Nothin' but viewers, my friends.

Joel Achenbach wishes he could be "something other than a detestable, oozing, suppurating lesion on the body of civilization."

He's "the embodiment of all that is wrong with America":

"On weekends I engage in countryside motoring as if it's a form of exercise. Worse, during the week, despite the availability of mass transit, I almost always drive to work, a five-mile jaunt on surface streets past one bus stop after another."

Joel's not about to stop sinning. He likes his car, his "empowerment device," and since most Americans feel the same way, he thinks what we need is some sort of "transformer" car, basically a golf cart with "clip-on parts" or something.

Via Jac, who, apparently, is not amused by Achenbach's comic stylings and disdains the desire for power at the expense of "the planet."