January 10, 2005
loyd's cyclopedia
Sam Loyd's Cyclopedia of 5000 Puzzles, Tricks, and Conundrums (With Answers) I hereby put this version of Sam Loyd's 1914 work into the public domain. (Ed Pegg Jr, 2005) Who is Sam Loyd? Remember the Donkey Puzzle? The 15 Puzzle? These and 4,998 more...
24 hours of online poker
Poker player plays for 24 hours in a row? Yawn. Online poker player plays eight tables simultaneously for 24 hours in a row? Interesting.
Nathalia Edenmont!
At first glance it would seem to be something one would find in some photoshop gallery. But then one finds out that she has been forced to justify her work, for they are pictures of freshly killed animals. Much to the dislike of some craigslistians. With the growing uproar, there is even a petition going around (though petitions like that are hardly rare.) Is this a work of someone seeking attention through offending people? Or someone unable to use photoshop? Whatever the case, I’m sure PETA will join in. . . .
Wait, it has.
chair fashions
PSST! Wanna get rich? Make a cardboard chair and sell it!
No, I'm serious. Based on a design by architect Frank Gehry that is now in the Guggenheim, these chairs apparently sell for some good cash. Engineers and design students have been doing the cardboard chair project for years, but I think it's time for the common folk to get in on the action. Need inspiration? Check out some more stuff . . .
No, I'm serious. Based on a design by architect Frank Gehry that is now in the Guggenheim, these chairs apparently sell for some good cash. Engineers and design students have been doing the cardboard chair project for years, but I think it's time for the common folk to get in on the action. Need inspiration? Check out some more stuff . . .
The end of an era.
RIP commercial jingles. Looks like the era of "I'd like to teach the world to sing" and "Oh I wish I were an Oscar Mayer weiner" is going away, thanks to the use of pop and rock songs.
Victorian Robots and other Mechanical Men
A history of robots in the Victorian era, featuring Boilerplate, the mechanical marvel of the 19th century.
... to die by your side...
Son of Bees or Bees Knees?
Son of Bees or Bees Knees? Looks like the Halo crowd may have uncovered another I Love Bees or maybe just the Bees Knees?
This Highway Adoped By the Ku Klux Klan
This Highway Adopted By The Ku Klux Klan The US Supreme Court has declined an appeal by the state of Missouri seeking to reverse an 8th Circuit opinion which allows the Ku Klux Klan to adopt a highway. Under the controlling ruling of the 8th Circuit, "desire to exclude controversial organizations in order to prevent 'road rage' or public backlash on the highways against the adopters' unpopular beliefs is simply not a legitimate governmental interest that would support the enactment of speech-abridging regulations."
Dewey Decimal Dance Break
Library Musical. "Sometimes, you are moved by such a strong emotion that you can only express it through song. As we learn from musical theatre that emotion can swell up anytime: in a corner deli, on a playground, in an open field--and even at the library."
Take this job and shove it.
I Got Your Sydney Opera House Right Here
Forget screwing in lightbulbs...
How many lawmakers does it take to declare war? Used to be 218 of the 435. Now, in a time of crisis, it's potentially less than 12. This is something that has been looked at before. Is this the best possible solution?
Let's try this again
Food, Food, Food!
The city of Austria was saved from invasion by pretzel-making monks. The first pickles may have been pickled in India, circa 3000 BC. The hush puppy may have originally been made with deep-fried lizard. Learn all manner of food lore with the Food Timeline!
Pre-20C Optical Toys and Illusionary Devices
Pre-20C Optical Toys and Illusionary Devices - The Laura Hayes and John Howard Wileman Exhibit of Optical Toys, at the North Carolina School of Science and Mathematics. Includes animations and short videos of kinoras, thaumatropes, phenakistoscopes, zoetropes, and praxinoscopes.
Shove It
Shove It is a maniacal logic game. [Flash]
Still in COLOR!
A'vast and be swabbed, me matey.
Back in Decemeber of 2002 Christa Worthington was murdered in the small Cape Cod tourist (and home of the 'livliest' nude beach on the Cape) of Truro, MA. Despite an active investigation and a $25,000 reward there has little progress in the search for the killer. This has led to a police request for voluntary DNA samples from 790 men. Civil libertarians (ACLU press release in .doc format) are concerned that, though voluntary, police have stated that, "that those who refuse could face some scrutiny." The Dept. of Justice, on the other hand, feels that DNA is a means to prevent crime.
Though more common in the UK and Europe, mass DNA testing has been used several times in the United States, most notably in Lousiana where more than 1,000 men were tested in the search for a serial killer.
Cue snort and chortle
Those Who Fail To Learn History. . . something or the other.
The Rapanui (of Easter Island), the Mayans, and the Norse colonists of Greenland all share one similarity: each culture was brought down by preventable, human-cause environmental catastrophe. Sure, Michael Crichton says it's all bunk, but Jared Diamond (the author of the infinitely discussable, Pulitzer prize winning Guns, Germs and Steel) recently came out with a new book that suggests that maybe we ought to be worried after all. Hear him discuss it on NPR's morning edition.
Imagining the Internet
Imagining the Internet. What will become of the internet? And how far off have prognosticators been about it thus far? Submit your own predictions, if you dare.
Dillard's How-To
Do you want to be a writer? "Write as if you were dying. At the same time, assume you write for an audience consisting solely of terminal patients. That is, after all, the case. What would you begin writing if you knew you would die soon?... Every book has an intrinsic impossibility, which its writer discovers as soon as his first excitement dwindles. The problem is structural; it is insoluble; it is why no one can ever write this book. Complex stories, essays and poems have this problem, too -- the prohibitive structural defect the writer wishes he had never noticed. He writes it in spite of that." Luminous and wise writing advice from Annie Dillard, author of Pilgrim at Tinker Creek, one of the most beautiful books written in the last hundred years (published when Dillard was 29). As a writer myself, I am often asked by younger folk how to become one. Dillard says best what I would tell them.
There, you happy now?
Happy Happy (both pdf) The burgeoning field of happiness studies is unearthing all sorts of interesting findings, many of them summarized in these two articles by University of British Columbia economist & "Professor of Happiness" John Helliwell. Rich countries are not happier than poor countries; people tend to revert to the mean after a happy event; money has only a modest effect on happiness; and, hey, good news! you get happier as you get older.
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