Lawmakers in Europe have voted to ban menthol cigarettes, but have rejected a proposal to heavily regulate "E-cigarettes." This development further cements the vast gulf between the cool, dangerous, retro smoking choices of the past, and today's ridiculous techno-vaping nerd trend.

Tomorrow is the big day when Apple announces its new "iPad 3." Or will it be called the "iPad HD?" Who gives a shit, really? Same gadget either way. Get a hobby.

Kids these days! Getting smashed is no longer the "cool" thing to do among American collegians—college binge drinking rates (at Purdue, admittedly) have fallen from 48% to 37% in only three years! What are our young people doing rather than downing Colt 45 at racist fraternity sex parties? According to the Wall Street Journal—known as the beating pulse of life on campus—they're doing the following:

Pointedly ignoring the fact that most schools are worthless, While Obama is trying to hire 10,000 new teachers. Great, just what our kids need (*sarcasm punctuation mark*). More science, chess, Chinese classes...what our kids need is self-defense. Nerds!

To punctuation expert Lynne Truss, The New Yorker is "that famous punctilious periodical." The last grammar mistake to appear in the New Yorker might have been made by a hungover E.B. White. But has this impeccable record finally been broken?

We support this mathemagical campaign to name 10 to the 27th power a "Hella."

A new study of future math teachers around the world gave Americans a grade of "C" when it comes to being smart in math, by math teacher standards. Which is just fine. Until you see who beat us.

Barack Obama is a BIG FAN of the blogs! "Offbeat" blogs, even! OMG. So exciting. Shadowy White House spinmasters have finally leaked to the Washington Post the big Obama Fave Offbeat Blog List!

Bolivian president Evo Morales: Avatard.

Ha, the family of sci-fi writer Philip "K" Dick is threatening to sue Google for stealing its "Nexus One" phone name from the Dick story that inspired Blade Runner (it also featured Androids, get it??). Google's response: "Nerds." [WSJ]

In your maverick Monday media column: A word is preposterously declared to be The Top, Jim Lehrer takes it slow and steady, the Mike Penner vs. Christine Daniels question, and you are invited to a Hooker Pub.

Wikipedia was probably pretty cool a few years back when you could just get a wild hair and immediately post up an article on The Artifacts, or whatever. But now it's run by a dead-ender Debbie Downer "deletionist" nerd army.

Google co-founder Sergey Brin is a weird guy. A smart programmer whose ideas lifted humanity, but a weird guy nonetheless. A coder who dislikes coffee. An American who knows virtually nothing about baseball. And then there are his evening jollies.

Fake AP Stylebook on Twitter: Because real grammar geeks dig linguistic satire. (via)

The Way We Live Now: Revenge-d by the nerds. Statisticians are the new Hedge Fund Guys. The less math-y among us are just marks for con artists and shady Metrocard machines. But: hot stock tip, below!

Borders, a seller of printed "books," is trying to trick America's youth into thinking that buying popular "books" about vampires is cooler than buying record albums of hip hop, for example. Yea right.

Journo-nerd Bible the AP Stylebook—which last year unconscionably got rid of "riffraff" and "malarkey"—has been updated again. Things the AP just learned about in 2008: baba ghanoush, Twitter, and water sports.

[To the tune of "American Pie"]

Today in Ivy League math event news: Harvard has canceled its annual digit-reciting extravaganza "Pi Day." Despite last year's "pretty crazy" pi blowout: