James K Polk - One Tough Mother!@#$%&! James K Polk did not mess around. If you live in the western US like me, you can thank your American-ness to James K Polk. He even inspired a song [YouTube] by They Might Be Giants, not to mention many quirky high school history projects. With Manifest Destiny and all that, this must have been a completely different sort of country. Seems a lot crazier than what we have going on now...

Maywa Denki Japanese Nonsense Machines. This might be useful, but this? Here is some background. The perform live with the instruments they create like this one.

Things look cool close up. These are fun to look at - I wish I could read the text...

Cot death warning Is it just me, or is this a flawed article? The study reveals that infants that die of crib death tend to have slept in the same bed as their parent on the night they died. Is it possible that they slept with their parents because the child was fussy because they were sick in some way! There seems to be a fundamental misunderstanding of correlation and causality here.

Curious, George: Good Pet Choice? What a good pet choice besides a cat or dog?. I like cats, but my wife is allergic. We both like dogs, but we live in the city, don't like to scoop, travel out of town a lot and have little kids. What are some other pets you have had? What have been your best and worst experiences?

The virtual bartender doesn't server drinks, but is still worth a visit. From MetaFilter. I thought you monkeys would enjoy this. Don't forget to ask for a banana. First FPP - long time lurker. Don't kill me please.