I was very amused to see this story today, about a train in India that stopped on a short unpowered section of track and the passengers had to get out and push to get it started again. It reminded me of my mother’s stories of the AJO&P Railroad of her youth. The acronym stood for …
When I first saw the above title today, I thought it had something to do with a former owner who had an Egyptian fetish. When I read the story, I discovered that I was mistaken: he’d bought a “flat” (apartment? condominium? something like that), sight-unseen, and when he arrived to look over his new property, …
Continue reading ‘“Spaniard Buys Flat Complete With Mummy”’ »
Boing Boing has a fascinating entry on technology-induced synaesthesia today. Human vision, and visual interpretation of non-visual data, has always fascinated me. This goes one step further, because it mentions using this sort of thing to overcome physical sensory defects (such as inner-ear problems affecting balance).
As a child, my family moved quite a bit. One of the strangest things I noticed was what people called a carbonated beverage in different places. In many of the places I’ve lived, it’s a soda; in some, it’s a pop. My sister was once mortified when, just after one of our many moves, she …
I love stories of inept would-be thieves, such as this one. Even I, who have boundless faith in the power of human stupidity, find them hard to believe.
…as the 761st-most-popular-name for babies in the year 2006. 🙂 I’m baffled by the popularity of the name Jacob though.
As predicted here, Google’s shareholders have voted down the anti-censorship proposal, and others.
Wishful thinking indeed. Priceless.
In a bid to save money on electrical bills, we’ve been switching all of the commonly-used lights in our house to compact florescent (CF) bulbs. We started about a year ago, and just finished yesterday, after I discovered a kind of 60W-equivalent CF bulb I hadn’t seen before that is no taller than a standard …
Continue reading ‘“Will the feds phase out traditional lightbulbs?”’ »
I was just reading this article about two fairly-new TV-over-Internet startups, when my mind stumbled over this paragraph and fell flat on it’s face: The company is eschewing the vogue for user-generated novelty and signing up real talent. The latest name to be revealed is movie director Spike Lee, who will make an exclusive video …