Throughout history our number five used to look like a 4. Here’s a history of our numerals from Zero: The Biography of a Dangerous Idea. It wasn’t until the 16th century that the 5 finally stuck as five.
Which is better? The bicycle bell or the bicycle horn? The *ring ring* on your left! or the *toot toot* on your left! or… OR… BOTH! *ring toot* *toot ring* Imagine the combinations! You could be a traveling symphony! A…
I’m thinking about taking one of my blog posts a week and making it into a comic strip. There are some really nice comic strips out there that are inspiring… Daily comic strips: √Ø American Elf by James Kochalka: Cute…
The lack of stars in the city sky surely has to affect people somehow. Perhaps we get too grounded and not enough of looking beyond. A self-portrait in my alley at 3am looking up at the sky. Also posted on…
Can a regular freezer–like the one that’s a part of your refrigerator–create a solid block of ice that is one foot cubed? Obviously we can make little 2-inch regular ice cubes. But something seems like it would go wrong if…
I’m joining a football fantasy league this year and I need to come up with a great team name. My brother‘s team name is Fighting Tokugawas. Oh this is like the bowling team names. Anyone have some good suggestions?
1,450 feet is pretty far After measuring the 1,450-foot distance with this measuring wheel, it was surprising how far it was. (for explanation of this project, see this previous post). The distance was far enough away that it seemed…
Libraries are great places to explore books, but it would so fantastic if there was a Netflix for books. Oh wow, to have your own list of books that you are interested in and you get three books at once…
Why is Sammy Sosa so popular? Yes, he’s a homerun machine, but he’s also got personality. And lots of things that give him a story. Players become fan favorites when they have something to hang their hat on–something unique about…
Recent comments on a post about about throwing things and throwing your shoes sparked more interest on this topic. Why do we enjoy throwing things?Even young babies enjoy throwing whatever is placed in their hands.My web search have only yielded…
My brother was telling about this personality test that tells you what job you should be in. Each of the 71 questions presents three options. You have to pick what you most want to do and least want to do…
Not having dumped my junk mail folder since February 9th, there are 69,528 pieces of spam in there… 473 a day. Here is the face behind 850 million pieces of junk mail.
Every time someone says, “Did you know that Chipotle is owned by McDonalds,” this offender owes $1.00 to the person that they told. This will be a nation-wide trend on par of the slugbug/punchbug and “pinch poke owe me a…
This record has GOTTA be an easy one to break: The longest time a coin has been spun until coming to a complete rest is 19.37 seconds by Britain’s Scott Day. WANNA BREAK THIS RECORD? Here’s what you need to…
√¨Faith was a recognizable dimension of everything he did in public and private life. It was never a badge or an ornament to make others uncomfortable, but always a star he checked to set his own course.√Æ –a statement given…
The Mayans had two calendars: Solar Calendar: 18 months of 20 days each, totally 360 days (with five days tacked on at the end of each year to get 365) Ritual Calendar: 20 weeks of 13 days each. Both calendars…
The quotes on the transformers tech spec cards tend to over-intellectualize the transformer being depicted. None better at representing this polarization is Swoop the Dinobot. His tech spec quote is: “Fear can hit targets unreachable to bullets.” And then in…
I like to push buttons. Elevator buttons are fun to push. Even more fun to push are BIG buttons. What are some buttons that are really large? * Soda pop machine buttons (those big ones) * Car horn * Those…
Last friday there were a few guys out with video cameras scoping out Chicago’s Wacker Drive. photo 1, photo 2. There was enough of them, and they looked “real” enough that they were “big-time” movie people planning out their scenes.…
Dots on the sidewalk left by people’s gum. It’s quite amazing how so many dots form. The history of sidewalk gum dots. A) For all these gum spots to appear, there has to be lots of people who spit their…
Great news! An America 24/7 rep sent me an email saying that I was accepted into the Illinois book! I’m waiting for her to respond with which photo was accepted. Here’s a gallery of the 50 photos I submitted: https://www.spudart.org/photo/america247.…
Listening to a baseball game’s tv and radio broadcast is like being at a party and listening to two conversations at once. This party has the Chicago Cubs’ Ron Santo/Pat Hughes on one side, and the White Sox’s annoying Darrin…
Did you know that "smarmy" originally meant "smooth and sleek?" Discover the fascinating history behind this word and how it came to mean "ingratiating, unctuous."
GoLive is for the creative individual and Dreamweaver is for corporate cogs… Both web design programs Adobe GoLive and Macromeda Dreamweaver have windows that control a site. These windows have a side for local files on your computer and a…
There’s this fantastic croquet sweater on ebay. It’s so hilarious. Check out the back of the sweater. The guy is in a very interesting position behind the girl. Oh yeah! I would wear it to one of our croquet matches…
Being who you are, and facing against the wind… The phrase “against the wind” is quite interesting how it functions in nature and society. There are some wonderful parallels… Here’s one example: One of the rules learned by an airline…
Every Friday at work, we have New Toy Friday. This Friday was three-foot long sticks of gum bought at the dollar store. The challenge was to see if one could fit an ENTIRE piece of yardstick gum into his/her mouth…
