Smiles Half Off

 -- A comedy club in Barcelona is experimenting with facial recognition software to count how many times people who visit the club laugh during the night's acts. Your bill at the end of the night will depend on how often you laugh. But there is an 80-laugh maximum charge; laughs 81 and above don't add any more to your bill.

Sounds like a good way to watch Sarah Silverman for free.

-- Statistics instructor Ben Wellington figured out which apartment in Manhattan has the longest walk to a subway station. Apparently a penthouse suite currently listed for $18.9 million is .8 miles from the nearest station, a little longer than other candidates because it's on the top of a taller building. Los Angeles residents would probably buy a car for that trip.

-- The image above (story here) is not a brain or the cover of a lost Hendrix album. It's a computer simulation of the inside of a giant star going supernova, one day after the helium gas expansion has begun. In other words, if you can see this, you may already have been reduced to your component atoms by radiation, heat and explosive forces. Purple haze, indeed.