Category Archives: Fun

For science nerds:

Slagsmålsklubben – Sponsored by destiny from Tomas Nilsson on Vimeo.
hat-tip.

Want!

In the meantime, go vote for the best SciBlings’ pie.

Isn’t it?

I know John would love one, but a hundred bucks is a lot. They seem to be a dynamic and responsive company – perhaps if a bunch of us ask they will start making a miniature version as well, one that can fit in one’s traveling bag and is not as costly?

Starting to trend up: see #4, #5 and #8:

Today’s logo:

Make your own:

Context

Did you forget that today is the Squirrel Appreciation Day?

The inner workings of the North Pole:

Of course, the elves are the backbone of Santa’s work force. It’s never clear to me that they are happy workers.
I hear occasional rumors that the elves have tried to organize a union, only to be thwarted by the man in red.
I’m not even sure Santa pays the elves, and they seem to live on site.
The North Pole is a company town. How jolly is that for those paid in Santa scrip?

If I Were Santa’s Public Relations Guy…:

For such a high-profile, influential figurehead, Santa’s PR could really use some work. I mean, the merchandising is pretty neat but there’s a lot more potential there.
So… here’s what I’d suggest if I were running Santa’s communications.

Santa Claus is for parents:

I’m not a parent, and it’s not my place to say one way or another if you choose to engage in what is a relatively harmless tradition. But I do think that I’d like the whole thing a lot more if people quit spinning self-serving tales about how Santa is there for the kiddies. I realize that parental sadism is not P.C., and so in order to engage in it, parents have to convince themselves and others that it’s for the kids’ own good. But I say fuck that. Parents wipe asses, give time-outs, worry about nutrition, lose sleep, and get kid germs. Parents deserve a little payback. Santa may not be great for kids, but it’s great for parents, and that’s reason enough in my eyes. Just so long as the parents admit it. Not everything in this world has to be for the children, and people who think that everything in the entire world should be sculpted around the raising of children to be good people are, at best, tedious bores and many of them run the risk of writing tedious letters to the FCC because Bono said “fuck” at the Grammys. Perhaps having a little fun with the kids at the expense of the child’s credulity isn’t the worst thing in the world. What’s bothersome to me is playing it off as something it’s not.

It’s hard to tell which one is the original, I think it’s this one, as YouTube is full of well-done parodies of the Citroen Tranformers commercial. Of course, I am partial to this one:

Hat-tip: Mom

Jeff Cohen put them all together:

For years I have been intrigued by the local celebrations across America where they “drop,” or in many cases lower, something from above to ring in the New Year. Many of these traditions are relatively recent and are based on the ball dropping in New York’s Times Square. I have been blogging about these celebrations since 2005, especially the quirky ones. I used to just stumble across them by chance, but eventually I discovered a wikipedia article that seemed to do a comprehensive job of listing them all. It also provides lots of links to the celebrations’ web sites or media coverage of the events. I summarized the article in several lists, which I found interesting.

Laaaaaaargecat:

Looooooongcat:

[From]

This was the unbeatable UK hit in 1981. I was in the UK for two months that summer and this song was #1 on the charts throughout that time:

See here. Love the photo albums…

Perhaps we should buy this: No Limit Texas Dreidel – Jewish Gift Pack Family Entertainment:

Let My People Go All In!! Take Dreidel, combine it with poker, and you’ve got a new dreidel experience that is truly fun, and a game that is the talk of the Jewish community. You’ll check, bet, raise, or fold depending on the strength of your dreidel hand (or how much you like to bluff). Standard edition game is for 2-4 players (not suitable for children 3 and under/choking hazard). Each set includes 4 shakers, a “spinner” button, 4 small dreidels and 3 large dreidels, and comes in a heavy quality drawstring pouch. Complete instructions are also included, prior knowledge of poker is NOT essential (but it helps!). Chips are not included – we recommend using kosher chocolate gelt coins, jelly beans or other fun candies (sold separately).

Then play it while listening to Erran Baron Cohen’s version of ‘Dreidel’:

While these gifts for geeks don’t really excite me, I wouldn’t mind putting my giant hamsters into one of these (more cool images, including of stuff one may want to own – here):

And now that everyone is on an elephant-blogging spree, here are clips from two of my favourite childhood movies, both featuring elephants – Elephant Walk and Hatari:

Continue reading →

Old-timey-looking pictures are here.

The kind of astrology I can have and eat it, too.

Creation Museum, step aside! Welcome to Dinosaur Kingdom, a Virginia roadside amusement park in which plastic dinosaurs eat plastic Union soldiers:

Dinosaur Kingdom is a twist on the biblical Creationist view that people and dinosaurs lived together. Here, people live with dinosaurs — but only until the dinosaurs eat them.
As the tour begins, visitors are asked to imagine themselves in 1863. A family of Virginia paleontologists has accidentally dug a mine shaft into a hidden valley of living dinosaurs. Unfortunately, the Union Army has tagged along, hoping to kidnap the big lizards and use them as “weapons of mass destruction” against the South.
What you see along the path of Dinosaur Kingdom is a series of tableaus depicting the aftermath of this ill-advised military strategy. As you enter, a lunging, bellowing T-Rex head lets you know that the dinosaurs are mad — and they only get madder. A big snake has eaten one Yankee, and is about to eat another. An Allasaurus grabs a bluecoat off of his rearing horse while a second soldier futilely tries to lasso the big lizard. Another Yankee crawls up a tree with a stolen egg while the mom dinosaur batters it down. Mark has augmented some of these displays with motors: toothy jaws flap, tails and tongues wag.
Mark explains that he originally wanted the dinosaurs to attack Pancho Villa and his troops at the turn of the 20th century, but then decided against it. “I was really looking for some villains,” he explained. “The Pancho Villa thing — nobody remembers that.” Which is true. Instead, Mark’s substitution of Union soldiers seems certain to win him favor, at least locally. “I mean, for Christ’s sake, people still fight the Civil War down here,” he said. “I would gladly have changed the color of the uniforms — if I was from the North.”

[Hat-tip; Image from…]

Have you ever heard of Cummingtonite?

Cummingtonite or magnesium iron silicate hydroxide is a metamorphic amphibole with the chemical composition (Mg,Fe)7Si8O22(OH)2. Monoclinic cummingtonite is compositionally similar and polymorphic with orthorhombic anthophyllite, which is a much more common form of magnesium-rich amphibole, the latter being metastable. Cummingtonite shares few compositional similarities with alkali amphiboles such as arfvedsonite, glaucophane-riebeckite. There is little solubility between these minerals due to different crystal habit and inability of substitution between alkali elements and ferro-magnesian elements within the amphibole structure.

Well, there are many chemical compounds with funny names. Some of those are inadvertently funny, some on purpose, some are funny only when one looks at the structural formula, others only if one mispronounces the name slightly.
But they are all collected here – three long pages of funny examples. What I like about that site is that it is not just a simple listing of names. For each molecule, there is some additional information, e.g., the structural formula, a picture of the mineral, some chemical properties, how humans may use it, or how it got its name in the first place. So, you can find everything you need to know about Dickite, Fucitol, and Clitorin, for instance.
And once you are done with all three pages and want more, go to my SciBling’s blog Molecule of the Day and see how even the compunds with somber, serious names can be fun and interesting.