This quiz, The Alchemist's Challenge, is far more difficult than the Bible quiz, below.

2362 other users have thus far accepted the Alchemist's Challenge. Their average score is 56 percent correct.

Out of a total of 50 questions, you answered 34 correctly – that's 68 percent correct.

Yahoo! News reports:

Women on average say they would be willing to give up sex for 15 months for a closet full of new apparel, with 2 percent ready to abstain from sex for three years in exchange for new duds, according to a new survey of about 1,000 women in 10 U.S. cities.

Sixty-one percent of women polled said it would be worse to lose their favorite article of clothing than give up sex for a month.

I've never read the thing, though I tried once, in high school. I don't think I made it even halfway through the O.T.. And I never went to church. That I was able to get even that much on the quiz, I suppose shows just how deeply the stories in the Bible are woven into western culture.

Fark's right: this will be the coolest wave picture you'll see all day.

Rob's doing '30 second' reviews. Oh yeah? Well, I'm going to do 15 second reviews. So there.

Here's a bunch of things I've recently picked up:

• The Sword - Age Of Winters. Black Sabbath + Metallica + Beowulf
• Boris - Pink. Crazy Japanese garage metal, so loud you can't tell what language the guy's singing in.
• Sonic Youth - The Destroyed Room. A B-Side collection that's better than a few of their recent official releases.
• Yo La Tengo - I'm Not Afraid Of You And I Will Beat Your Ass. Yummy old-school YLT is the delicious hard-candy shell surrounding a bunch of gooey new YLT that makes me wince.
• Earlimart - Treble and Tremble. The ghost of Elliot Smith told me he wants you guys to find a different sound for your next record.
• Elf Power - The Winter Is Coming. That yummy Elephant 6 vibe, in a sweet little psychedelapop package.
• Adrian Belew - Side Two. Guitar experimentalism with techno drum loops.
• Robert Fripp & Andy Summers - I Advance Masked. Just what you'd expect : Frippy noodling over Summersy guit-synth wash.
• Green Day - Warning. Not as immediately catchy as Dookie, nor as ambitious as American Idiot.
• Beastie Boys - Paul's Boutique. There's one bit in Eggman that makes me go "aw yeaaaah!" every time I hear it.
• Beck - The Information. Sounds like Beck.

Subject of a spam I just got:

But Maurice may Euphrates but Cezanne it's hydroxylate !