Random Stuff
Category archives for Random Stuff
Weekend Diversion: The Best Holiday Present
Posted by Ethan on December 23, 2012 
“Dogs are our link to paradise. They don’t know evil or jealousy or discontent. To sit with a dog on a hillside on a glorious afternoon is to be back in Eden, where doing nothing was not boring — it was peace.” -Milan Kundera It’s the holiday season, and for most of us, that means…
Weekend Diversion: Discovering the Universe
Posted by Ethan on December 16, 2012 
“The vastness of the heavens stretches my imagination. It does not do harm to the mystery to know a little about it. For far more marvelous is the truth than any artists of the past imagined it.” -Richard Feynman What did you think about, wonder about, and dream about the first time you saw the…
Weekend Diversion: Teaching an Old Dog New Tricks
Posted by Ethan on December 9, 2012 
“If you pick up a starving dog and make him prosperous he will not bite you. This is the principal difference between a dog and man.” -Mark Twain While it’s hard to imagine for me now that I have one, there are plenty of people out there who have never known the rewards and joys…
Weekend Diversion: Science Book Reviews for the Holidays
Posted by Ethan on December 2, 2012 
“A truly good book teaches me better than to read it. I must soon lay it down, and commence living on its hint. What I began by reading, I must finish by acting.” -Henry David Thoreau Every day that we have free or leisure time, there’s this great conflict as to how we spend it:…
Weekend Diversion: Make Yourself Hallucinate (Safely)
Posted by Ethan on November 24, 2012 
“Life should not be a journey to the grave with the intention of arriving safely in a pretty and well preserved body, but rather to skid in broadside in a cloud of smoke, thoroughly used up, totally worn out, and loudly proclaiming, ‘Wow! What a Ride!’” -Hunter S. Thompson For those of you who’ve never…
Weekend Diversion: Blending the “real” with 3D prints
Posted by Ethan on November 17, 2012 
“Everything we call real is made of things that cannot be regarded as real.” -Niels Bohr One of the most amazing recent technological innovations is the advent of 3D Printing, where any shaped or textured object can be accurately reproduced with the right software and printing materials. The things that I’ve seen made so far…
Weekend Diversion: The First Relativistic Video Game!
Posted by Ethan on November 11, 2012 
“There is no such thing as magic, supernatural, miracle; only something that’s still beyond logic of the observer.” -Toba Beta It might be hard to believe, but science tells us truths about the Universe that we might never have intuited or philosophized about if the Universe itself didn’t reveal them to us through investigation. Bap Kennedy…
Weekend Diversion: The Greatest Pumpkin EVER!
Posted by Ethan on November 3, 2012 
“Only the knife knows what goes on in the heart of a pumpkin.” -Simone Schwarz-Bart With Halloween just behind us, the only things that pumpkins may mean to you now are pie, soups, or — as John Prine would sing you — a condescending term of affection, as in, Daddy’s Little Pumpkin. But I recently…
Weekend Diversion: Happy Halloween 2012, with a Retrospective!
Posted by Ethan on October 28, 2012 
“Where there is no imagination there is no horror.” -Arthur Conan Doyle Halloween, for those of you who’ve been here a while, is my favorite holiday. Every year for the past dozen years now, I’ve dressed up as whatever I’ve wanted for Halloween. And — if you haven’t seen the pattern yet — it’s almost always…
Weekend Diversion: Something Amazing from Something Simple
Posted by Ethan on October 21, 2012 
“The artist is a receptacle for emotions that come from all over the place: from the sky, from the earth, from a scrap of paper, from a passing shape, from a spider’s web.” -Pablo Picasso People find artistic inspiration from a plethora of different sources, ranging from the very complex to the extremely simple. This…
