October 23, 2007
100 miles in 24 hours - can your horse do that?
The Western States Trail Ride, more commonly known as the Tevis Cup, is an equestrian competition held annually in the Sierra Nevada mountains of California. It begins near Squaw Valley, and ends in Auburn - a distance of 100 miles, to be covered in under 24 hours. [more inside]
Nerd It Through The Grapevine
Raisin Hell, a tale of fourth-grade Halloween woe by Eric Feezell. "I was deep in thought, mulling over ideas for a Halloween costume, a fresh, heart-stopping one. Something that had never been done before... Suddenly I witnessed something stupendous. Instantly, any ounce of reason contained in my young mind evaporated. I saw a California Raisins commercial." For reference: a list of California Raisins commercials on YouTube.
WYLD CANADA!
WYLD CANADA! 120 red-hot slabs of '60's teen garage nastiness from The Great White North (and a fifth volume here.) All the Canuck garage rawk you could ever want, from 49th Parallel to The Witness Inc. [more inside]
a suburban counterterrorist
Behind Enemy Lines With a Suburban Counterterrorist "In fact, it's distinctly possible that Rossmiller, alone at her computer, has a better track record than the Justice Department. "
One man, one vote. Chuck Norris is The Man, he has The Vote.
Sorry, Americans, the 2008 presidential contest is over, Chuck Norris endorses Mike Huckabee for president. Also, here's Chuck's plan for his presidency.
My, Easter eggs aren't what they used to be in 1995.
YES on Sound Transit, NO to RTID
Proposition 1 - Sound Transit & RTID: Dan Savage is for it ("I want 50 miles of light rail so bad, I don’t give a shit if they pave 180 miles with baby mice," sorta), while the Sierra Club is against ("It wants to support the Sound Transit/light rail portion of the ballot issue, but not the Regional Transportation Improvement District part, which seeks more money to expand and repair roads and highways"). On November 6, voters in Washington's King, Pierce and Snohomish counties will decide.
Wake Up Cat
Before Kid Nation, there was Robbers Cave
"In the summer of 1954, twenty-two fifth-grade boys were taken out to a campground at Robbers Cave State Park, Oklahoma. [...] Ostensibly it was an unremarkable summer camp. [...] what they had really done for two and a half weeks was unwittingly take part in an elaborate and fascinating psychological experiment." [more inside]
Pencil pushers - Pencil collectors
The Art of Sharpening the Pencil (You've GOT to check out the bizarre pencil sharpener at the bottom of the page. "You'll poke your eye out!"). [more inside]
Hello Cleveland!
Dennis Kucinich had a UFO encounter. [one link newsfilter]. "The smell of roses drew him out to my balcony where, when he looked up, he saw a gigantic triangular craft, silent, and observing him."
I guess this sort of puts him in the company of other delusional nutjobs that have seen giant UFOs.
Please Allow Me to Introduce My Bug
They keep doing this: 1869: European Gypsy Moth - thank you, Leopold Trouvelot! 1956: Africanized Bee - thank you, Prof.Warwick E. Kerr! 1957: Cactus Moth - thanks, unknown Caribbean cactus-hater! 1978: Asian Harlequin Ladybug (previously on MetaFilter) - thanks, USDA scientists! [more inside]
The Worst Mayor In America
He once stopped a school bus on a busy interstate because he “needed a hug” from the kids inside. He’s been known to strap weapons to his chest and leg that he has no authority to carry or conceal, then wear them in public. He once bulldozed an elderly woman’s house, promising to build her a better one. He then forgot to build it. He recruited a team of kids to torch a row of dilapidated shotgun houses, without clearance or first turning off the utilities. Meet The Worst Mayor In America.
The Superset
Out of the fire, into the flood
In Chapter 3 of his 1999 Pulitzer Prize winning book The Control of Nature, John Mcphee describes the catastrophe from debris flows following wild fires in the Los Angeles area in 1978. [more inside]
Smile, Mahtha
Northeast Historic Film is the best of quirky Maine. They archive home movies, collect postcards of New England movie houses, and study depictions of New England in major films. Browsing the list of collections is tantalizing; if only some of these were available as clips or on YouTube. They're one of many archives preserving home movies. Also.
No dearth of mirth today
Happy 6010th birthday, world! Technically, God created the world (or possibly the entire universe?) the night before Sunday, October 23rd, 4004 BCE, but the 23rd is the day that some Young Earth Creationists still hold to be the Earth's birthday. Anglican Archbishop James Ussher arrived at this date in his 1650 magnum opus, Annales veteris testamenti, a prima mundi origine deducti, and while many other dates have been interpolated from the Pentateuch, Ussher's has become the best known, probably because (starting in 1701, at the behest of Anglican Bishop William Lloyd) his chronology was included in copies of the King James Bible (and, centuries later, in editions of the Scofield Reference Bible). [more inside]
The horse is out of the barn
Most have forgotten Abdallah Higazy, but he's proceeded with his lawsuit against the FBI. In an interesting twist, the details of the threats made against his family by FBI Agent Michael Templeton have been classified. Sadly for the Second Circuit, they released the unredacted version briefly before withdrawing and replacing it with the classified decision. Good on How Appealing for keeping the opinion online. [more inside]
Welcome to Guardian America.
Welcome to Guardian America "So what is Guardian America, what makes a British newspaper think that Americans will want to imbibe its view of America and the world, and why, having decided to undertake such an improbable project, would the paper place it in my hands? Fine questions. Let's explore." [more inside]
Where the wild things are
Build your wild self using a flash game from the New York zoos and aquarium and the wildlife conservation society. [more inside]
WHAM! BIFF! OW!!
Storming the Pink Palace
Amazing Spider-Man: 100,000. Shonen Jump: 250,000
Wired has a nice history of manga in the US available on their website in PDF format. Westerners: remember to read from back to front, or you'll spoil the story for yourself! (Via.)
Warming Climate Fuels Mega-Fires
Warming Climate Fuels Mega-Fires (11-minute video) 60-Minutes reports. "Recently there has been an enormous change in Western fires. In truth, we've never seen anything like them in recorded history. It appears we're living in a new age of mega-fires -- forest infernos ten times bigger than the fires we're used to seeing."
Phonetics
Phonetics for beginners: play around with phonemes, start with the chart.
The Worst Swearword in the World
Jon Ronson decides "I'm going to tell my son the worst swearword in the world". His follow up article is also interesting. Incidentally, his "Bad Science" colleague from The Guardian did uncover a list of the worst swearwords from the BBC no less (and previously)
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