fun
retrospectacle | February 13, 2007 Remember those old Speak & Spells in the 80s, the ones made by Texas Instruments? Well, that and Simon were probably my favorite games as a kid (oh, and Rubix cube). There's actually a cool Speak & Spell emulater on the web that I came across, check it out and enjoy the 'say it' feature. Wasn't there also a Math version? What perfectly lovely toys for burgeoning nerdlets.
(Hat tip, Kyle)
clock | February 12, 2007
Yes, I was never a member of Boy Scouts (no such thing in Yugoslavia, of course), but I will gladly join the Order of the Science Scouts of Exemplary Repute and Above Average Physique, the brand new organization founded by the folks of World's Fair and the Science Creative Quarterly. Steve of Omni Brain and John Lynch have already signed up.
Above Average Physique? I am super-skinny. But OK, I am tall. And energetic. And have a deep bass voice. That should count...
So, of the possible badges, which ones apply to me? Let's see...
The first one is obligatory for all members:
The "…
clock | February 10, 2007Your results:You are Poison IvyPoison Ivy 77%Dr. Doom 73%Apocalypse 63%The Joker 62%Magneto 61%Lex Luthor 61%Riddler 54%Mr. Freeze 54%Juggernaut 49%Dark Phoenix 46%Catwoman 46%Mystique 41%Kingpin 30%Green Goblin 29%Venom 28%Two-Face 17%You would go to almost any length for the protection of the environment including manipulation and elimination.
Click here to take the Super Villain Personality Test
stoat | February 5, 2007In my rapid skim of the junk that the Independent put out, I missed the classic I've just used as a headline. Hat tip to Coby for actually reading the stuff. To quote Coby: It makes James Inhofe sound reasonable. And that's no small feat!
clock | February 4, 2007A good reason not to de-blogroll blogs on hiatus - they may come back as much as TWO YEARS later. Like the I Love Colonoscopies blog just did. I know you want to click on that link and explore the archives. Go ahead!
clock | February 4, 2007Now that the Seventh Book is available for pre-order (and beating all the records, not to mention being #1 on Amazon), there is gooing to be a lot of blogospheric speculation about it, e.g., who dies, what happens and how it ends. So, between now and July 21st, as well as afterwards, read the Carnival of Harry Potter and submit your entries to it whenever you write something about it. The latest edition, posted last night, is up on Pensieve.
clock | February 3, 2007A-ha! Finally! Now I understand the connection between Creationism and the overall anti-sex sentiment of the Fundamentalists!
New reseaarch shows that E.coli swim upstream due to the Design of their flagellum! And where do they swim from and swim to? Yes, you guessed it right! And you can also watch the movie.
clock | February 2, 2007Sounds like Washington Press Corps over the past six years (and more). But really, it has something to do with genetics. Either you are alive, or you are fully, truly dead, or you are just not dead yet.
stoat | February 1, 2007James Annan, via Tom Adams, finds that the White House search engine has hits on "global warming" deliberately removed. Such fun.
Since they are almost bound to get embarassed by this and fix it, the current result for searching the Whitehouse is:
Search whitehouse.gov by keyword
Results for: "global warming"
1 results found, sorted by relevance sort by date hide summaries 1-1
http://www.whitehouse.gov/ceq/foia/rcec/arms46.pdf
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CEQI CREATION DATE/TIME: 2OAPR-2003…
clock | January 28, 2007...by Matt. No celebrity is very much look-alike with me (and I included only male faces to eliminate Lindsay Lohan's childhood picture):
http://www.myheritage.com
clock | January 28, 2007Since I think that Fiddler on the Roof is the best musical ever, of course I totally loved this:
(Found here by Joolya)
I blogged somewhere before (I cannot find it now - darned Google and Technorati are imperfect!) that I think that, upon arriving in America, the fourth daughter married a black guy and the fifth daughter married a woman. I never expected one to marry a puppet!
clock | January 28, 2007Perhaps it's time for me to get serious about eating doughnuts!
(Hat tip: Greg)
clock | January 28, 2007What Kind of Reader Are You?Your Result: Obsessive-Compulsive Bookworm
You're probably in the final stages of a Ph.D. or otherwise finding a way to make your living out of reading. You are one of the literati. Other people's grammatical mistakes make you insane.
Dedicated Reader
Literate Good Citizen
Book Snob
Non-Reader
Fad Reader
What Kind of Reader Are You?Create Your Own Quiz
(Hat-tip: Grrrrl)
clock | January 27, 2007
I am:Robert A. Heinlein
Beginning with technological action stories and progressing to epics with religious overtones, this take-no-prisoners writer racked up some huge sales numbers.
Which science fiction writer are you?
clock | January 27, 2007The Merriam-Webster Word of the Day for January 27, 2007 is:
quotidian ⢠\kwoh-TID-ee-un\ ⢠adjective
1 : occurring every day
*2 : belonging to each day : everyday
3 : commonplace, ordinary
Example Sentence:
As an employee, Fiona is gifted at solving the difficult problems that arise from time to time, but she is often careless about the quotidian responsibilities of her job.Did you know?
In Shakespeare's play As You Like It, the character Rosalind observes that Orlando, who has been running about in the woods carving her name on trees and hanging love poems on branches, "…
clock | January 25, 2007When I was a kid, there was no such thing as "do it yourself" biology for home. Sure, you could do observational stuff, like go out in the woods with a butterfly net and a magnifi\ying glass, or plant some seeds, or look at stuff under the microscope, but it was hard to do real experiments in biology.
My favourite trio of childhood science books (recently reissued) were "Between Play and Physics", "Between Play and Chemistry" and "Between Play and Mathematics" - see, no biology there!
But the world of science has changed since then and there is much more stuff that one can do at home that is…
stoat | January 23, 2007 Not quite up to Albuquerque levels, but may well be the once-in-a-year event for Cambridge. We woke up to... a white blanket enveloping everything, or so it looked at first sight. On second sight it was a bit thinner and the grass was showing through. Still, it was enough for Daniel to get up and out and start making a giant snowball. Miranda stayed in bed though.
Sadly it doesn't seem to have brought the M11 to a halt, even England can cope with less than 1 cm of snow.
stoat | January 18, 2007This is a recipe for peanut butter cookies. It was my sons homework last weekend. It worked out very well so I shall put it here so I don't lose it.
You need: 75g butter; 50g peanut butter (we used smooth); 100g castor sugar; 100g soft brown sugar; 1 egg; 150g flour; 1/4 teaspoon salt.
Turn oven to 190 oC. Mix peanut butter, butter, sugar and egg. Add flour and salt and mix to dough. Make dough into 36 balls. Put balls on baking tray(s). Flatten with fork to make criss-cross pattern.
Bake for 10-12 mins, until golden brown. Cool on trays and enjoy.