Category: Out there

On a dry lakebed in Death Valley, rocks weighing up to 320 kilograms locomote themselves slightly uphill over time, often leaving zig-zag trails in their wakes. Geologist Paula Messina has painstakingly documented boulder movement via GPS. Smells like a hoax? Take a look at this table, linked to hard data on every named rock. A time-lapse map records boulder movement over time — some have chugged as far as 3.2 kilometers.

The mechanisms for these unusual events have been hypothesized and in some cases tested, but never proven.

Give an infinite number of monkeys an infinite number of typewriters, the theory goes, and they will eventually produce the works of Shakespeare. … Researchers at Plymouth University in England reported this week that primates left alone with a computer attacked the machine and failed to produce a single word.

The AP story also reports that:

Another thing they were interested in was in defecating and urinating all over the keyboard. … Eventually, monkeys Elmo, Gum, Heather, Holly, Mistletoe and Rowan produced five pages of text, composed primarily of the letter S.

Had to do a double-take just now to digest a car sitting at a stoplight — its wheels spinning though the car was not moving. But it wasn’t burning rubber — spokes merely rotating around the hub with the tire planted firmly on the ground. Some specially rigged, motorized hub magic. Really does a number on your senses. Is this “a thing?”

In SF last night on the way to see Hedwig again with friends (show closes May 11 and is tremendously entertaining — GO!) and passed a guy with random wares spread out on the sidewalk in one of those makeshift yard sales. Amongst the usual raft of items: twine, coverless book, rabbit’s foot, pen stolen from the bank with chain still attached, was a shiny new… AOL 7.0 CD. Yup, for sale. The entrepreneurial spirit runs high. I wondered how much he got for it.

A year ago, posted about baald and his chicken head motorcycle helmet. Then recently, doing research, stumbled entirely by accident on a blog entry by a guy I knew back in Boston — Tim Anderson lived in a cramped hollow in an MIT building and built robots and 3D scanners and held amazing show and tell nights… and now apparently has turned his genius toward kiteboarding — here he is with chickenfoot foot pads and a hand-crafted chickenhead hood. That’s two chickenheads in my life, neither edible.

On the heels of the death of diet guru Robert Atkins, let us bow our heads a moment in respect of other bizarre things dietetic.

Though I was too young to appreciate them for what they were at the time, I very clearly remember that my grandmother had the complete set of Mid-70s Weight Watchers Cards. My brother and I used to paw through the collection when bored while visiting her house. I think that in my mind, this was her parallel of our collecting baseball or Star Wars cards. From the site:

These cards mystify me. None of them have calorie or nutrition information of any kind, and in some instances it’s hard to tell what’s dietetic about the recipes at all, except that they’re unspeakably grim. And yet also, completely insane. They appear to be from a much kookier era of Weight Watchers.

While you’re in the mode, don’t miss James’ Gallery of Regrettable Food. Oh, and these reviews of 20 cheap beers is, um, mouth watering.

You know Spring has arrived with vigour when ivy crawling the outside of the house becomes overzealous and finds it way into your office. Don’t tell our landlord. This wouldn’t have happened if we had prevented the ivy from becoming enmeshed in the shingles to begin with. But we’re suckers for inflourescence. Amy found the creeper and truncated it outside the house. Life support pulled out from under it, the indoor tendril collapsed a few hours later.

Another one of those bizarre floating comments last night — on a Nov. 2002 post about Miles making little vocable sounds, someone asked:

I have mice pets and they just had babies and i dont have no idea how should i take care of them. PLEASE PLEASE HELP me right now. im freakin out.

So… did this person mistake “Miles” for “Mice?” Can’t say I haven’t done the same. Squeak.

Check the QuickTime at this site promoting their flagship product, an adjustable desk. “How shall we communicate the core value proposition of our product?” I know, we’ll do multimedia!”

Desk goes up, desk goes down. Desk goes up, desk goes down.

Heartening to know that some semblance of 1950s marketing sensibility has survived the MTV generation unscathed.