Google Instant will deny you your deep, dirty desires: “When results fail to appear after you’ve typed ‘lesbian’ or ‘butt,’ it’s not because the results are being censored. Google is struggling to prevent the text of offensive searches users have made in the past (there have been other controversies on this subject before) from jumping up in front of you when you’re looking for something innocuous. Since countless users may have followed the word lesbian with ‘porn,’ generating results inappropriate for children, Google’s algorithm has decided not to immediately throw 20 links to lesbian porn sites in your face when you type ‘lesbian,’ even if that’s the most common search based on the algorithmic data.”

Turning now to the arts: You’ll come to this piece for the pole-dancing, chain-smoking robots, but you’ll stay for the “disgusting light switch interaction artist.” There’s a lot going on here.

“It’s a similar feeling from being in a community of punk rockers as a teenager and the feeling I still get today when I’m in a community of skeptical scientists. The idea with both is that you challenge authority, you challenge the dogma. You challenge the doctrine in order to make progress. The thrill of science is the process. It’s a social process. It’s a process of collective discovery. It’s debate, it’s experimentation and it’s verification of claims that might be false. It’s the greatest foundation for a society.”
–Greg Graffin, founder of the L.A. punk band Bad Religion, is also an evolutionary biologist at U.C.L.A. Talking to Scientific American about his new book Anarchy Evolution, he says he can’t think of a single good song about science. (He calls “She Blinded Me With Science” a “stupid song, no offense to Thomas Dolby.”) Graffin probably knows more about both good songs and science than I do, but I beg to differ.

Maybe Graffin wouldn’t consider those songs to be really about science. I wouldn’t be surprised if he had a more exacting standard for such than I do. Anyway, here he is himself, singing a song that’s not really about science either. But it’s a good song.

Emily Gould invites Jennifer Egan, author of A Visit from the Goon Squad, into her home kitchen to make macaroons. Jennifer Egan! Cooking the Books is directed by Valerie Temple and shot and edited by Andrew Gauthier. You can see all the Cooking the Books episodes here or even subscribe via iTunes.

Yes, Jennifer Egan!

New York Republican gubernatorial candidate Carl Paladino apparently believes that if you want to take out the trash you have to surround yourself with people who know how to get dirty: “His campaign manager failed to pay nearly $53,000 in federal taxes over the last few years, prompting the Internal Revenue Service to take action against him. An aide who frequently drives Mr. Paladino on the campaign trail served jail time in Arizona on charges of drunken driving. Another adviser has been indicted on charges of stealing more than $1 million from Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg’s re-election bid last year. And Mr. Paladino’s campaign chairwoman left a local government position amid claims that she had steered $1 billion in public money to a politically connected investment manager.”

When last we checked in on the war against the birds, our plan was simply to kill most of them. And now we meet the head of the Department of Agriculture’s Airport Wildlife Hazards Program. His job? Killing some birds. In gas chambers. Also, did you know that those fat cats in D.C. are less likely to die in airplane bird strike incidents? That’s right! “All the D.C. airports have a federal biologist on the payroll.”

“People race cars or climb mountains but no one gets on their case. I’m the first one to admit I make the occasional mistake. You have to put it in context. People are keen to criticise, but they need to look at the big picture. I’m out there taking risks. I’m pushing the limits and seeing what can be done. I do what no one else is doing. So I’d appreciate it if people would get off my case and give me some support. If you don’t capsize, you’re not trying hard enough. Go hard or go home, that’s my motto. The sea by its very nature is unpredictable. I’m going through a never-ending learning curve. Anyway I’ll have a new boat after Christmas. They’re not that expensive. We’re not talking about the Titanic here.”
-Sailor Glenn Crawley, whose catamaran ‘Mischief’ was destroyed when he attempted to ride “The Widow Maker,” Britain’s biggest wave. Since 2003, Crawley has required the rescue services of the Royal National Lifeboat Institution 13 times, at a cost of over £30,000. Also: “In 2007 he was rescued four times in four hours by local sailors and coastguards after he flipped his boat.”

There’s something you don’t see every day: “A customer heading into a San Leandro deli Sunday evening stumbled across something besides salami sandwiches and potato salad: a dead bear.”

“I was in Fargo and this woman left after the reading and came later to get a book signed and she had a little plastic container, and she had gone home, and it was a plastic container of breast milk, and she wanted me to sign the container. And I said, ‘Can I smell it?’ And she said sure and lifted up the lid and she looked at me and said, ‘We both know where this is going.’ And I said, ‘We do.’ I didn’t drink all of it. I just had to taste it, you know?”
–David Sedaris is still pretty punk in his own way.

Ed Miliband, the newly elected leader of Britain’s Labour party, has confirmed that he is an atheist, meaning that two out of the three major British party leaders do not believe in God, and the third (Prime Minister David Cameron) isn’t all that big on going to church. The President of the United States, meanwhile, remains a total Jesus-freak.