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Monday, January 29, 2007
A Huge Collaborative Flipbook Animation
32 minutes ago
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Your typical list of crazy laws, still on the books but rarely enforced, broken down by state.
I liked this one, which was never actually a law:A Utah legislator proposed a resolution urging that each TV weather person be required to provide an ice cream cone to every member of the state House of Representatives whenever the forecast was wrong. The resolution failed, perhaps on First Amendment grounds.
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I never tire of these simple flash games.
In this one, you dodge tangerines. Brilliant!
I scored 87 on my first try.
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Very interesting (and long) piece in the New York Times on food and the advent of "nutritionism."
Unfortunately, the bulk of my diet is comprised of highly processed items that, in Michael Pollan's estimation, hardly qualify as food.
"There are a great many foodlike items in the supermarket your ancestors wouldn’t recognize as food (Go-Gurt? Breakfast-cereal bars? Nondairy creamer?); stay away from these."
Oh well, there's always Lean Cuisine, right?
"Avoid even those food products that come bearing health claims. They’re apt to be heavily processed, and the claims are often dubious at best... When Kellogg’s can boast about its Healthy Heart Strawberry Vanilla cereal bars, health claims have become hopelessly compromised."
Oh no!
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Two of the greatest comedic minds of our generation (the third being Sacha Baron Cohen) on camera together. It's like chocolate and peanut butter!
(Via Cynical-C.)
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Tuesday, January 23, 2007
Today is Amy's birthday. Happy Birthday Amy!
But the American Pie Council would like you to remember that January 23rd is also National Pie Day.
So do your patriotic duty and perform a Random Act of Pieness today.
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Can you guess what the most shoplifted item in America is?
I couldn't.
It's meat.
Meat.
I've never even heard of anyone shoplifting meat before. I would have guessed it was some kind of clothes or accessory item at the mall, or possibly gum. (Hasn't every six year old stolen gum from the grocery store? Maybe it doesn't count as shoplifting if your mom makes you return it.)
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Neat Google Maps pic of an SR-71 sitting on the deck of a docked aircraft carrier.
So many questions. First of all, they don't look like they would be able to take off from aircraft carriers, and are these planes still active anyway? Maybe it's someone's souvenir or something.
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Monday, January 22, 2007
This essay represents a valiant attempt to rectify some of the continuity issues with the Star Wars saga.
Basically, the galaxy is held together by R2-D2 and Chewie.
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Sometimes words are more effective than graphics.
Especially when you're trying to convey the true evil that is the other paddle.
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Another flash game. Collect the black squares, avoid the red squares.
I got 7078 on my first try.
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As in, "brown is the new black."
Some of my favorites:
Ohio is the new Florida.
Prequel is the new sequel.
Actual is the new virtual.
Knitting is the new rock 'n' roll.
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Wednesday, January 17, 2007
Kind of like Six Flags Over Texas, but with a giant banana.
(Via Cynical-C.)
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Wow, work has been crazy these past few days.
OK, let's kick the morning off with a ceramic toaster.
(Via Boing Boing.)
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I'm going to try embedding a video here.
The good part starts around the 3:00 mark.
Spelling Bee...
A test of wit and wordlery
The ancient sport of kings and queens
To make it on the spelling bee scene
You've got to be the cream!
Spelling Bee...
Daniel's dream goes up in smoke
He had his chance but then he choked
And this my friends is not a joke
It's a frickin' tragedy!
Spelling Bee...
Daniel lived in misery
But Daniel's not his name you see
For this tidbit I hid from thee
That little boy was me!
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The Spelling Bee was today, and Michael got out on his first word.
I'm very disappointed, and I can't stop thinking about it in order to get any work done. Which surprises me.
I'm surprised by how excited I was leading up to the event, how nervous I was sitting in there waiting for it to start, and how disappointed I am that he got out so early. I did the Spelling Bee once as a fourth grader and I got out on the first word, too, and I didn't care, so why do I care about this?
I guess it's because he studied so hard and he knew all those words. When he came home a few months ago and said he was going to be in the Spelling Bee, I didn't think much of it because he's just a first grader. How well could he possibly do? But as he studied those words, I was amazed at how well he learned them. Once he got them right he remembered them. I started thinking that he actually had a shot. When we arrived at the school there was some buzz among the teachers and parents that there was a first grader in the Spelling Bee this year.
But there's a reason they don't usually let first graders in the Spelling Bee. They are just squirmy little kids. They don't really have the composure to get up there at the microphone in front of the whole school and say what they know. They lack the gravitas, if you will.
Michael's word was "massage." I knew that was one that he studied, and he knew how to spell it. But he repeated the "g." He did it in such a way that nobody thought that he intended to put two g's in the word. He just stopped for a second, thought about it, and then picked up again on the last letter that he was on. (Which I think you are allowed to do, according to my viewing of the documentary "Spellbound.") Anyway, at first the judges told him he had it right, and he punched the air victoriously and took his seat. Then they discussed it for a while, then they went to the tape and reviewed it, and after what seemed like forever they walked over and told him that he had to leave the stage. He was visibly disappointed, and I felt crushed.
I wanted to get out of that auditorium as fast as I could, for some reason. I didn't want to hear any other kids spelling or misspelling words that I knew Michael knew.
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Wednesday, January 10, 2007
MIT is offering a ton of free courses online. You can't get credit for them, and you won't have access to faculty or anything like that, but anyone is free to download the syllabus, lecture notes, assignments, and exams. No registration required.
If you were really motivated you could get the rough equivalent of an MIT education for a fraction of the cost! I guess you would still have to buy all your books, though.
UPDATE: Turns out OpenCourseWare is not limited to MIT, but actually consists of a consortium of several outstanding universities, such as Harvard, Johns Hopkins, Notre Dame, ...and UVSC.
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Flickr photos tagged with 'faketiltshift' demonstrate an interesting photo editing technique where the immediate foreground and background are blurred. The resulting effect gives the appearance of miniature scale models being photographed up close.
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Melissa showed this to me the other day. The videos showing the process are especially cool.
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Tuesday, January 9, 2007
This depiction of the gears of a clock is supposed to represent a triumph of Scalable Vector Graphics, but I just think it looks cool.
What's amazing to me is to realize that each second that ticks by causes every gear to move, however imperceptibly.
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You know how sometimes you're walking along, or driving to work or whatever, and you think to yourself, "Hey, I wonder what Art Garfunkel was reading in August of 1991?" And you just had to be content not to know, because even in this information age there are still some crucial bits of knowledge that lie just beyond our grasp?
Well, not anymore. Thanks to the Garfunkel Library, you can finally be at ease, secure in the knowledge that while Paul Simon was promoting his latest album with another free concert in Central Park, Art was reading Oscar Hijuelos' The Mambo Kings Play Songs of Love.
Fascinating.
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Steve Jobs announces the new Apple iPhone at MacWorld 2007 this morning.
They will be available in June, priced at $499 for 4GB, $599 for 8GB.
I am quite certain I will not be buying one, but they look pretty sweet.
Official website
UPDATE: Apple stock is up on the news, while Palm and RIMM (maker of Blackberries) ...not so much.
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Once you get past the inherent awesomeness of the chart itself, there is a lot of interesting information here.
By the way, does anyone see "Periodic Table" as one of the elements? I didn't, but it seems like it should be included, right?
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This drum machine, and my skateboard, are my two main articles of life. As of today, I am officially nomadic.
(Seems to be a little skewed towards latin beats--three congas but not a single tom.)
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1. Go to any website with a lot of pictures. I had good results with Amazon.com.
2. Copy and paste the following into your address bar, then hit Enter:
javascript:R=0; x1=.1; y1=.05; x2=.25; y2=.24; x3=1.6; y3=.24; x4=300; y4=200; x5=300; y5=200; DI=document.images; DIL=DI.length; function A(){for(i=0; i-DIL; i++){DIS=DI[ i ].style; DIS.position='absolute'; DIS.left=Math.sin(R*x1+i*x2+x3)*x4+x5; DIS.top=Math.cos(R*y1+i*y2+y3)*y4+y5}R++}setInterval('A()',5); void(0);
3. Be mildly entertained, then go back to work.
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Monday, January 8, 2007
I want to try this recipe but I don't have one of those big soup pots.
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Friday, January 5, 2007
Maybe not overtly political, per se, but definitely agenda-laden. It's all about sticking it to the man. You'll see what I mean.
Third World Farmer
Dissafected! (Links to download)
McDonald's Video Game
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This time-lapse video depicts a Picasso painting from beginning to end.
What would be awesome is if Picasso narrated the process Bob Ross-style.
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Martha Stewart shows us how to turn one wall of your home office into a chalkboard calendar.
Now I just need a home office.
UPDATE: How to make your own chalkboard paint. As Suzanne points out, you'll need this if you actually want to attempt this project.
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Thursday, January 4, 2007
I can imagine Clark having a similar conversation with his own kid someday.
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Wednesday, January 3, 2007
Clever put-downs from high-minded folk.
"He has all the virtues I dislike and none of the vices I admire."
Winston Churchill
"I've had a perfectly wonderful evening. But this wasn't it."
Groucho Marx
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This guy collected samples of all different kinds of food in 200 Calorie portions, took pictures of them, and then posted them in order of Calorie density. Nothing we didn't already know, of course, but it's an interesting visual.
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Every year they ask one open-ended question and some of the most brilliant people on the planet give their answers.
This year's question is "What are you optimistic about?"
Last year's was "What is your dangerous idea?" and the year before it was "What do you believe is true, even though you cannot prove it?"
There is some really thought provoking stuff here--along with a few crazies, of course.
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Ze Frank's "The Show" has to be one of the most informative and entertaining things on the Interweb right now. Unless you count The Daily Show and the Colbert Report, but I think they still technically count as TV.
What's your power move?
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Another strangely compelling online game that is extremely addictive. Seriously, don't start playing it unless you have a significant chunk of free time available.
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Foldedspace has collected many of your favorite classic Sesame Street clips on YouTube into one convenient location.
Note: If you try and click on the "La la la" song, you will find that the video has been removed. Never fear, someone else posted it here.
I haven't tested the rest of the links recently, but let me know if any others are broken.
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Well, Christmas break is over so it's time to get back to blogging. These first few days of work have been particularly busy ones, but hopefully things will die down once the year gets underway.
For the first post of 2007, I give you fifty great TV commercials from the 80s.
I still quote from No. 1 regularly.
The 80s commercial I quoted most in high school isn't in this list though. You can find it here. It's the second one. "Pardon me, guys." Never gets old.
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