What's scarier than a dinosaur? How about a giant crocodile that ate dinosaurs? This article reports conjectures that the 40 foot, 10 ton beast with its 60 foot, 100 tooth jaw and upward oriented eyesockets "was an ambush predator, hiding under the water and then surging out to grab anything lounging on the shore", including 30 foot sauropods. [via Sigma Xi: In the News]
Because the music we already have isn't bad enough, Dictionaraoke presents popular songs using "karaoke-style backing music with vocals provided by audio pronunciation samples from online dictionaries". Slow to load, but absolutely hilarious. [via Pith and Vinegar]
This might be fake, but I'm betting it isn't: 20th Century Castles Unique Underground Properties is selling decommissioned missle bases for personal or commercial purposes. I would definitely believe there was a market - I'm just surprised they are selling them on the web. From the looks of their "Contact Us" page, their web presence is getting them a lot of non-serious buyers. [also via Pith and Vinegar]
In the auspicious history of internet personality quizzes, find out what your sleeping position says about you. The answers won't surprise you (did you think teeth gnashing would be a good sign???) but the descriptions, and the suggestion that you use these analyses to test your boyfriend, are cute. Brought to you by Sleep Best, your home for sleeping tips, reasons for sleeping and dreaming, and Thai pop stars and the secrets of their sleeping habits. [via Strange Brew]
Sometimes the simplest things are the most addictive. Case in point: the worm game. My high score is 1059. [via eatonweb]
fog
I'm by no means a video purist, but when it was pointed out to me that the re-release of E.T. is being altered to get rid of the guns the government agents after E.T. had and replacing them with walkie-talkies. In the discussion of this over it Ain't It Cool News, it was claimed that Spielberg made the change because government agents would never go after a child with a gun. Ummmmm.
I'm not a huge fan of E.T., but it seems like a really stupid change to me. It alters the seriousness of the situation and the tension. I don't think it serves any good purpose, and rather seems like an attempt to sugar-coat reality in a misguided attempt to protect children from a fact they should be made aware of - not everyone, not even if they are from the government, is a loving person with your best interests at heart. [Thanks Jim!]
I played around with taking digital photos in the dark last night, and got some really cool effects with the fall colored leaves and the street lights. One of them is to the right - that's the original photo scaled down - no Photoshop tweaking going on.
I'm curious, though, so I've signed up for the plain text version at one address, and the Metamail format at another address, and see what they're like. The test Metamail message demonstrates that they're sending the messages at attachments, but they are intelligent about it, and you can read the plaintext separately and just view the attachment if you're interested. [via Mood Swings]
I've been playing the Playstation 2 NHL hockey game with a friend a little (decent game - make sure you're the Detriot Red Wings, though), and we both noted that the music for this game is more tolerable (heck, even likable) than the music for some of the other system's games. Turns out that's because it's part of a trend to put real music, that they also intend to sell, in video games - in this instance using a song from Barenaked Ladies, who I like more than I'm comfortable with.
Sometimes you have to return to what you're good at. Bruching Shuttlecocks has always been funniest in their ratings, and their funniest ratings have always been of the more mundane or broad type - cereals (parts one, two, three, four, five, six, and seven), playground equipment, street signs, etc. So it's nice to seem returning to their roots, after a string of "high-concept ratings", and rating dinosaurs again (part one was a little funnier).
Oviraptor
This creature's name means "egg stealer." It is so named because it does not steal eggs. When the first Oviraptor fossil was found, it was on top of some eggs, so the discoverers drew the obvious conclusion that it was stealing them. This is because it was discovered by the LAPD. As it turns out, those were probably the thing's own eggs. But, okay, they think that the species as a whole may have eaten eggs -- other creatures' eggs -- anyway. It just seems like the sort of thing they'd do. I'm going back to bed. C-
If it isn't already clear to you that fighting terrorism will take a great deal of social and humanitarian effort, keep in mind that even if we eliminate Taliban terrorists, if the U.S. walks out power won't necessarily be left in better or safer hands. The Revolutionary Association of the Women of Afghanistan is calling for the Afghan people to step in and take back their country from fundamentalists - an outcome that seems to me the best chance for restoring their country. I can respect their desire to get the U.S. and other countries out of Afghanistan, and they understand that the best way to make that happen is to take their country out of the hands of violent people and improve their own condition.
I find it amusing that Martha Stewart is daring to try to exert her hyper obsessive craftiness on cats and their sleeping habits, with her Cat Hammock project. Note, from her suggestion that you place the hammock where you find convenient that Martha is clearly not a cat person. [via Not Martha]
It was slashdotted a few days ago, so it isn't new, but the Chemistry Comes Alive! Sample Movies from the Journal of Chemical Education are fun to check out, particularly (of course) the Ice Bomb. Why wasn't my chem class ever this fun? [Thanks JRE!]
More weirdness: 2000 Uses for Peanut Butter, along with danger ratings. It's like a hyper "50 Things to Do in an Elevator". [via Pith and Vinegar]
A new, 120 page version of Phil Agre's Networking on the Network guide to professional skills for PhD students is out. As before, worth checking out if you haven't yet.
There was meant to be more to my previous entry on the 19th, but technical glitches kept me from adding them, so you get them today. There was no update message about last time either, so if you only check when you get an update, keep scrolling down.
You can see the flower is finally fully open now, by the way.
With the new TV season underway I'm back reading Mighty Big TV recaps again - I highly recommend them, even for shows you only watch sporadically. I've been finding the site frustratingly slow, though, and it's been hanging occasionally. The solution, I found, was to just read the site in plaintext using lynx (I'm coming from a UNIX platform anyway....) - you get all of the content in a lot less time.
I'm also glad to see Pop Culture Junk Mail back updating. Thanks to her, I can let all my Simpsons-fan friends know about the Simpsons Collector website of Simpsons merchandise. No, it's really more fun to browse than it sounds. Get your own Comic Book Guy or Groundskeeper Willy for your office.
If you're looking for a sort of cool, geeky hobby, and you like building things, check out this page on How to Build a Computerized Andriod Robot Head for $600.00. If you can't imagine the fun to be had with your own computerized android head, you just aren't thinking hard enough.
I noticed that the ads for last night's CSI featured a glowing pickle as key to solving the case. This prompted me to point out that I had linked to a number of sites about glowing pickles a while ago, again putting me ahead of the mass media curve. Woo hoo me!
I went to a wedding up in New Hampshire this past weekend, and I've never been to a wedding that caused as much pre-ceremony heckling. It was, I will say up front, a beautiful wedding, and I had a great time. It was also held outdoors at the top of a mountain, in New Hampshire, in October, all of which comes together to spell snow, winds, wet benches, and chilly feet. So, if there were a few comments that the couple should have handed out commemorative mittens before the ceremony, and the etiquette of sitting on the program after reading it, I hope the guests can be forgiven. It was certainly affectionately meant, and I think the true consensus was that it was a really beautiful setting for a wedding, and that you had to respect the couple for sticking with their plans and accepting whatever nature handed them. The gondola ride up the mountain was also a great treat!
It also gave me two 8-hour days in the car through upstate New York, Vermont, and New Hampshire in the start of leaf season here, and I almost came to understand why people who aren't in the region make such an effort to come up here for the long weekend. My favorite bit, though, was waking up Sunday morning to 2 inches of snow. It's so disappointing when the first snow of the year is a wimpy flurry. Happily, my first snow of this year was substantial and wet and thick. It's a good omen for a good winter, and I hope for a long and happy marriage for my friends.
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