Big Pickles

There's no point to this, as far as I can tell. You just have to try and see what you can do. For some reason, it's fun.

Labels: fun, internet

I wasn't a big sticker collector or anything when I was a kid, but most of these are surprisingly familiar. In fact, I can almost smell them.

Labels: nostalgia

This is frustrating to watch--I can't imagine how nerve-wracking it would be to play.

Basically, it's a video of someone trying to complete one level in Super Mario Bros. that is so impossibly hard it can only be called evil.

E-Vil, like the fru-Its of the De-Vil, e-Vil.

Labels: fun, games, video

Who knew? The opposite of Absolute Zero is the Planck temperature, 10^32 Kelvin, the temperature beyond which the molecules of matter become black holes unto themselves, or something.

Some scientists believe that we, or at least our universe, have already experienced the Planck temperature, although it went by so quickly you may have missed it. It occurred at 10^-43 of a second after the Big Bang, the great cataclysm in which the universe was born. (10^-43 of a second, in case you're not hip to the notation, is an incredibly tiny fraction of time. Time enough to create the universe, but not, as a University of Chicago physicist was once at pains to explain, time enough to get off a disputed last-tenth-of-a-second shot against the Chicago Bulls.)

(I had no idea that Planck had so many units.)

Labels: science, wikipedia

So we have this hot tube that came with the house. We used it once or twice that first year and haven't bothered with it since. I've filled it up and cleaned it out a few times since then, in case we ever wanted to use it, but we just haven't.

So this week we decided to get rid of it.

Melissa suggested we list it on Craiglist and see if someone will come haul it off for free. I can't believe anyone would want it, though, so I decide against it. I figured it would take about $500 to get it all fixed up and usable at this point, and I can't believe anyone would want to put that kind of money into it.

Today I asked my dad about borrowing his trailer so I can haul it to the dump on Saturday, and he suggested Craigslist as well. This time I decide it couldn't hurt, so I go ahead and list it. I mean, if someone really wants to come take it off my hands, that would be great! I'm staring at a major project this weekend, and I'm even considering hiring some company to haul it away.

I posted the listing at 12:00 pm. It's now 1:26 and I've received 14 responses from people who want to come pick it up tonight!

Please, do me a favor and check out the listing. Have I failed to communicate what bad shape this thing is in? Or have I simply underestimated the demand for dirty, run-down hot tubs in the Dallas-Ft. Worth Metroplex? I'm baffled.

UPDATE:

I've taken the ad down. Too many responses. Plus, Melissa tells me that if you search Craigslist in DFW for "hot tubs," the listing right below mine is for a free hot tub removal service. Doh!

Labels: internet

This one includes an excellent quote from Schopenhauer: “A man can do as he wills, but not will as he wills.”

I agree with Adams that an idea as simple as "We don't know as much as we think we know" can change the world. It reminds me of another of his posts from November, we he suggests that one way to magically solve all of the world's problems would be to simply "imbue us all with the knowledge of who is smarter than ourselves on any given topic."

Labels: general

Check out the new sport that's all the rage in Europe right now.

Parkour's founder and chief practitioner is David Belle. It supposedly stems from French military training during the Vietnam War era, which made extensive use of obstacle courses.

Free Running was started by Sebastien Foucan. He basically took Parkour and adapted it to a British audience.

While thy seem very similar on the surface, practitioners cite significant differences. Parkour is very similar to martial arts. It has the practical applications of escape and reach, and is also meant to be a kind of life philosophy. The goal in Parkour is to get from point A to point B in as fast and efficient a manner as possible, with an emphasis on problem solving and overcoming obstacles.

Free Running, on the other hand, is more like an extreme sport, with its emphasis on tricks and "going big." It lends itself more readily to commercialization and competition, and is more concerned with the beauty of a particular move than its usefulness or efficiency.

Parkour article in the New Yorker

Video of David Belle falling

Labels: sports, video

I assume this is some kind of swing dancing move.

Labels: video

I tell you, they know how to do TV in Japan. Why don't we have any reality shows called "Ninja Warrior?" I would watch that.

This guy is only the second to complete an obstacle course that can only be called insane. Five hundred others have tried and failed.

Labels: japan, tv

There are some awesome pictures of Antarctica here. I always thought the entire continent was covered in ice all the time, but I was wrong.

By the way, does anyone know if we treat Antarctica like space, in that no country is allowed to claim all or part of it as their own?

Labels: geography, science

This opinion piece was written at the U of U a few years ago, so maybe some of you Utah people have seen it. But it was new to me.

Basically, the author argues that pi should be the ratio of radius to circumference, rather than diameter, because that would make all the formulas look prettier. I have to agree that, once you get beyond elementary geometry, it's all radius, all the time. So why is this famous number based on diameter?

Labels: math

Melissa is a benevolent realist.

Labels: quiz

If the one of our nation's greatest classical musicians plays some of the world's greatest music on what may be the most famous violin ever built, and no one notices, is he really any good?

Joshua Bell will be awarded the Avery Fisher Prize tomorrow.

Labels: music

Most of us have probably taken our fair share of personality tests on the Internet, but this one had an interesting format. You give your responses by moving an arrow on a slider, plotting a point on a coordinate plane, and other analog stuff like that.

It felt like it was just the right length and asked things in several different ways, so even though I felt like I was contradicting myself at times, the results seemed to be pretty accurate.

Labels: quiz

I just bought this bike. It's on backorder, so it won't be shipped until May 5.

If you look at my profile, I'm sitting on the bike I just bought for Michael. It's a 20 inch Haro, compared to the 16 inch Huffy he's currently riding. It fits him, technically, but he's not as confident on it, and the smaller bike is just more fun for him right now. And let's face it, fun is what it's all about.

So I've been riding the bike I bought for Michael, leading Melissa to suspect that this was my plan all along. (I feel like I need to say something about a hockey stick here.) Anyway, it has always been my plan to buy a BMX bike to ride around with the kids, as the road bike just doesn't work well for that. I figured now was as good a time as any--Michael's new bike is really too small for me and I don't want to wear it out before he decides to start riding it.

Let's see, I need a link...

Here's a BMX video for ya.

Labels: bikes, video

About a year ago we had some sales people come into our office and give a presentation on this cool electronic whiteboard that would let you save whatever you wrote to a computer.

This was attractive to us because the financial planners use whiteboards a lot in their presentations, and this would allow the client to take home a copy of all the diagrams and notes and stuff. And it would be useful for other things in the office, too. I won't get into all of it.

Anyway, when I first encountered this website, I thought it would be a demonstration of this kind of technology.

Boy, was I wrong.

Labels: books, internet

A recent comment on Clark's blog made the following claim:

Brigham Young once commented on the weather in St. George with a statement something like this: "If I only had a house in St. George and a house in hell, I'd summer over in hell."

I've heard similar quotes attributed to various people, mostly about Texas (because I live here) but also about various other places. I suspected the comment had been made about nearly every state and city in the Southwest, so I googled "live in * and rent out *" (because that's the way I've heard it most often) with interesting results.

My favorites:

"...I'd live in Hell and rent out Texas/Arizona/San Antonio/Houston/Brooklyn/Vegas/Arkansas/Oklahoma/South Africa/Memphis/Louisiana/New Guinea/etc."

"...I'd live in California and rent out Heaven."

"...if I were a UN peacekeeping force and owned Bosnia-Herzegovina and Tombstone, I’d live in Bosnia-Herzegovina and rent out Tombstone."

My limited research indicates that the original quote was about Texas and was first attributed to General Phillip Sheridan in 1866, but I'm open to argument.

UPDATE:

It appears the St. George quote is most often attributed to J. Golden Kimball (Jeffrey Holland cited it once in a 1974 speech), which makes sense. Kimball was a GA from the 1890s until his death in the 1930s, so he could have heard the Sheridan quote and adapted it to St. George during that time.

Labels: general, geography

Pat Venditte of Creighton University is one of only a handful of ambidextrous pitchers to ever play the game. He uses a custom glove that fits on either hand so he can switch arms in the middle of an inning.

A switch-pitcher facing a switch-hitter could make a fine Abbott and Costello routine. Against Nebraska last year, a switch-hitter came to the plate right-handed, prompting Venditte to switch to his right arm, which caused the batter to move to the left-hand batter’s box, with Venditte switching his arm again. Umpires ultimately restored order, applying the rule (the same as that in the majors) that a pitcher must declare which arm he will use before throwing his first pitch and cannot change before the at-bat ends.

Scouts are considering him as a possible late-round pick in this year's draft.

Labels: sports

Yet another Flash game. This one is called Disorientation, and it's just what it says: disorienting. All you have to do is move your guy from point A to point B, but the board tends to move around in ways that make that more difficult than it sounds.

Labels: fun, games

Still using Google? Lame! Don't you know that these days, savvy web-searchers trust their queries to none other than Kevin Federline?

Actually, even if you choose to search with Kevin, you'll still be using Google. A company called Protege has made its "Search and Win" portal available to A-list celebrities while giving us all a chance to win prizes with every search!

If K-Fed isn't your cup of tea, you can also Search With Wynonna, Search With Meatloaf, or Search With Andrew Dice Clay.

Labels: internet