eclecticism

Sometime between 13:09 and 13:51, I thought this stuff was interesting. You might think so too!

• A Word for That:: grawlix, n. A string of typographical symbols used (especially in comic strips) to represent an obscenity or swear word.
• A twist in high-flying mystery: In the Northwest's most enduring mystery — who was D.B. Cooper? — about the only thing we've ever been certain of is that the legendary skyjacker was a he. What if he wasn't?
• Register to Vote in Washington State: In theory, you can update your address online, but that's not working right now. Meh.
• Robin Williams comedy filming in Wallingford: The new independent comedy is "World's Greatest Dad," in which Williams plays a high school poetry teacher who finds his son dead under embarrassing circumstances involving a "freak masturbation accident." (Um…this is a comedy? Sounds hilarious so far.)
• NASA/JPL Climate Time Machine: This series of visualizations show how some of the key indicators of climate change, such as temperature, sea ice extent and carbon dioxide concentrations, have changed in Earth's recent history.

Sometime between July 14th and July 16th, I thought this stuff was interesting. You might think so too!

• Recent Volcanic Activity - The Big Picture - Boston.com: Some days it's hard not to link to every post at this weblog. Gorgeous shots of recent volcanic eruptions, including some incredible photos of Alaska's Mt. Augustine (the 8th photo on the page looks like something out of a fantasy movie).
• July 16, 1945: Trinity Blast Opens Atomic Age: The effects could well be called unprecedented, magnificent, beautiful, stupendous and terrifying. No man-made phenomenon of such tremendous power had ever occurred before. The lighting effects beggared description.
• Joss Whedon Waxes Dr. Horrible: Dr. Horrible's Sing-Along Blog, a direct-to-the-web musical from Joss Whedon, tells the story of an evil wannabe villain who vlogs, bungles experiments and takes regular lessons from a voice coach to finesse his evil cackle.
• Aurora Feint: One of the best iPhone/iPod Touch games I've seen yet, and it's completely free! This is going to suck up a lot of my free time….
• Cube Runner: My favorite iPhone/iPod Touch game yet. Temporarily offline at the Apple Store, but should reappear soon.

Sometime between 11:50 and 17:00, I thought this stuff was interesting. You might think so too!

• Blackbird that can mimic the sound of ambulance’s siren makes family’s life hell: He can ring like a mobile phone, peal like a car alarm, wolf-whistle and every morning as the sun rises he lets out a wail that sounds exactly like an ambulance siren.
• Citizen Camera: Neat idea: tie disposable cameras to a few different locations with a note telling people to have fun, then walk away. Pick up the cameras a few hours later, and see what's on 'em.
• McCain encourages adoption, unless you’re gay.: Mr. McCain, who with his wife, Cindy, has an adopted daughter, said flatly that he opposed allowing gay couples to adopt. “I think that we’ve proven that both parents are important in the success of a family so, no, I don’t believe in gay adoption.
• Building demolition based on old Japanese game: Kajima Corporation, a Japanese construction company, demolishes high-rise buildings from the bottom up. They install giant hydraulic jacks on the first floor, break up all the building material on that floor, then lower the jacks and repeat the process.
• FoxTrot does Webcomics: I recognized all three of the webcomics in this FoxTrot strip, and currently read three of them.

Sometime between July 9th and July 14th, I thought this stuff was interesting. You might think so too!

• The Greatest Sideshow Video Ever Made: The Greatest Sideshow Video Ever Made was shot at the Moore theater in Seattle in 1992. The oddball cousin of Seattle's grunge music scene, the Jim Rose Circus Sideshow mixed vintage sideshow acts with novel stunts never before seen.
• A Web of Geeks, Every One of Which Knows a Lot about Something: Vegging Out vs. Geeking Out. Romance as the MSG of film. The bifurcated careers of Lucy Lawless, Sigourney Weaver, and Hugo Weaving. Characters making smart decisions vs. stupid decisions. Neal Stephenson discusses Sci-Fi/Speculative Fiction…
• iPhone BookShelf: BookShelf is an easy to use electronic book reader for the iPhone and iPod Touch. Available through the AppStore, BookShelf installs easily on your mobile device.
• Snack Foods That Sound Like Sex Acts: Immature, yes. Really damn funny, though.
• Wonderlic Test: I'd never heard of this before, but just took it yesterday. The average score is 24. I don't remember exactly, but I'm very sure my score was at least a 36, perhaps as high as 40. Apparently I'm a smarty-pants!

Nothing terribly new here, I’ll admit, but I just stumbled across this, and I’ve had this rant (or variations upon the theme) many times over the past few years: Two Phrases That Destroyed American Culture:

The phrase ‘The Customer is Always Right’ is the single worst philosophy that has ever been adopted by American culture. It gave an entire generation of people the green light to be as impolite, unreasonable, and demanding as their little hearts desired because they were always going to be considered right. It destroyed the entire concept of courtesy and rendered manners obsolete. People began to treat their peers in the service industry like incompetent morons, lacking in feelings or human dignity, who deserved to be browbeaten and abused for no other reason than they had the audacity to run out of a particular brand of coffee. Furthermore, instead of suffering negative repercussions for their appallingly disrespectful behavior, they are awarded with free coupons and plenty of ass kissing. In reality, they should be shunned and humiliated for behaving like such self absorbed little children.

Speaking of respect, another idea that has ruined American culture is the one that states, ‘I don’t give respect freely. You have to earn my respect.’ This one is most often uttered by punk kids with bad attitudes and black fingernail polish.

Fucking gag me.

I mean, how egotistical does one have to be to automatically assume that their respect is so fucking important that one must jump through multiples hoops in order to earn it? How about we give people respect because they are humans with lives and feelings just as important as our own? Why not give people a default level of respect and more or less can either be won or lost based on the behavior of the individual? The loss of respect is something that should be based on actions. The idea that that one must win basic respect in the first place is incredibly belittling. How narcissistic can you be to embrace that ideology?

Flickr user SLOWLORIS was hanging out on her balcony taking video of a thunderstorm, when she was hit by lightning. She’s fine, and apparently so is the camera — ‘cause she’s got the video to prove it!

From what i understand, it went through my left hand holding the camera, crossed my back and exited out of my right hand holding onto the metal railing. No entry or exit wounds, just a really good zap!

Just amazing.

Sometime between July 8th and July 9th, I thought this stuff was interesting. You might think so too!

• Octopuses given Rubik’s Cubes to find out if they have a favourite tentacle: Scientists believe the intelligent sea creatures have a preferred arm out of eight that they use to feed and investigate with. They are now testing this theory with a month-long observation project in which the octopuses will be given food and toys…
• New Nikon D700: Extreme weather photographer Jim Reed was asked to test-drive Nikon's D700 during the 2008 storm season. The following gallery contains fifteen assorted images from the record-setting period.
• Getting your point across: Wei Shengchu, 58, a supporter of traditional Chinese medicine, poses for photos in front of Beijing Railway Station with his head covered with acupuncture needles depicting 205 national flags and an Olympic torch, 7, 2008.
• Ayluro → Corkboard. ⌘C and ⌘V are so 1984.: This is the first clipboard replacement/enhancement software I've seen that catches my eye. Could be handy.
• Exposure: Exposure brings the wonder of Flickr to your iPhone and iPod touch. If you like great photography, Flickr has the images and Exposure brings them right to your mobile device.

Sometime between July 4th and July 7th, I thought this stuff was interesting. You might think so too!

• Brendan Fraser lays out the 12 steps to an action movie’s success: Parents should know their children and what they're capable of watching. Every kid is different.
• How English Is Evolving Into a Language We May Not Even Understand: Ultimately, it's not that speakers will slide along a continuum, with "proper" language at one end and local English dialects on the other, as in countries where creoles are spoken. It's that Chinglish will be just as proper as any English on the planet.
• Michael Bay’s Rejected “The Dark Knight” Script: Michael Bay Presents, in Association with Michael Bay Productions, and Michael Bay, Director: Michael Bay's The Dark Knight by Michael Bay. Featuring dialogue scripted by Michael Bay.
• No Matter How It Is Sliced, It Is Still Bologna: Downtown Anchorage split into four districts: Historic, Arts, Convention…and SoNo. For 'South of Nordstroms.' Really? That's…funny and sad at the same time. Nordstroms must love the free advertising, but what if they ever get bought out?
• A bike for the final frontier: It’s not new by any means, the picture being from the 1982 San Diego Comic Con, but it is worthy of sharing since it shows that nerd evolution has been at a stand still for almost 30 years.

Sometime between July 1st and July 4th, I thought this stuff was interesting. You might think so too!

• VW’s ~230 MPG car: Cool, cute and efficient…I'd love to have one of these!
• iTunes K-12 launches with resources for students, parents: Yesterday, at the National Education Computing Conference in San Antonio, Texas, iTunes K-12 was announced as a service on the iTunes Store, similar to that of iTunes U, but aimed at primary and secondary education.
• The importance of focus and quick tips on how to get it right: Focus is about a lot more than simply sharpness or being able to see what you are looking at. It can enhance a subject by making it stand out from or blend into its surroundings, it can draw you in, and the right focus can create an emotional connection.
• Ignore reply tweets and SEO URLs with Twitter Tools WordPress Plug-in: If you use Alex King’s Twitter Tools, you will want to make the following changes to his code. The first one beautifies your tweet-post URLs by not splitting words at the end. The second keeps reply tweets (’@username’) from becoming posts in your b
• Seattle Gothic Pageant Presents - More Goth Pride Photos: More photos collected by stillbourne.

Sometime between June 30th and July 1st, I thought this stuff was interesting. You might think so too!

• Obama to expand Bush’s faith based programs: I've got to admit, this is disappointing and worrying. On the one hand, I can't see myself voting for McCain or 'throwing away' my vote on a candidate who has no hope of winning. On the other hand, sometimes I really don't like what Obama's doing.
• Seattle Gothic Pageant Presents - GOTH PRIDE 08!: stillbourne's roundup of Goth Pride photos (so far). I really need to get to work on mine…
• Photos of last night’s heat lightning storm over Seattle: I missed it, so these photos are great to see. Most impressive (to me): the first two shots are two views of the same lightning strike, from different viewpoints. Really cool.
• World’s fastest man: Tyson Homosexual: Apparently, [rabidly anti-gay website OneNewsNow] have set a filter to change many instances of “gay” to “homosexual,” which is how Tyson Gay, who set a record in the 100-meter dash this weekend, changed his name.
• Eye on the Universe  (July-August 2008): [Harvard Magazine] asked a few [astronomers] to choose their favorite images, photographs that have been important to advancing humanity’s scientific understanding of the universe.

Sometime between June 27th and June 30th, I thought this stuff was interesting. You might think so too!

• Top 10 Strangest Anti-Terrorism Patents: Technology has always played a big role in fighting terrorism. Some inventions are truly useful and will undoubtedly save lives, whereas others are so bizarre that one wonders how in the world they got patented.
• The best God joke ever - and it’s mine!: Once I saw this guy on a bridge about to jump. I said, "Don't do it!" He said, "Nobody loves me." I said, "God loves you. Do you believe in God?" (Obviously, that's not the whole joke. Click through and keep reading.)
• Metafilter looks at ‘Christiane F’, or ‘Wir Kinder vom Bahnhof Zoo’: We watched the film in my high school German class, and though I've not seen it since then, I've never forgotten it. Probably a prime reason why my experiments with drugs never went as far as shooting up.
• Presbyterian assembly votes to drop gay clergy ban: The denomination's General Assembly voted 54 percent to 46 percent today to drop the requirement that would-be ministers, deacons and elders live in "fidelity within the covenant of marriage between and a man and a woman, or chastity in singleness."
• The Presurfer: Oops!: Some ladies wanted to thank George Brownridge. They soon realized their mistake and the next day this advertisement appeared.

Sometime between June 26th and June 27th, I thought this stuff was interesting. You might think so too!

• Perfect multi-column CSS liquid layouts - iPhone compatible: This series of website layouts use percentage widths and relative positioning, and they work with all the common web browsers including Safari on the iPhone and iPod touch.
• What’s the Best Pixar Movie of All Time?: I agree with the bottom one and the top three, but would rejigger the middle a bit.
• George Carlin’s Last Interview: I’m not an angry person, just very disappointed and contemptuous of my fellow humans’ choices…people mistake it for a personal anger but it’s more dissatisfaction, disappointment and contempt for these things we’ve settled for.
• AT&T Whistleblower: Spy Bill Creates ‘Infrastructure for a Police State’: [Wednesday]'s vote by Congress effectively gives retroactive immunity to the telecom companies and  endorses an all-powerful president. It’s a Congressional coup against the Constitution.
• Spokane man accidentally shoots self in face: Police say when someone expressed concern about the gun early today, the man attempted to prove it was unloaded by pointing it at his face and pulling the trigger. (Can you get stupider than this? Oh, probably, but geez, people!)

Sometime between June 25th and June 26th, I thought this stuff was interesting. You might think so too!

• Albanian Custom Fades - Woman as Family Man: For centuries, in the closed-off and conservative society of rural northern Albania, swapping genders was considered a practical solution for a family with a shortage of men.
• He let them down. He ran around and hurt them. | MetaFilter: "Robert" had just pulled off the most epic rickroll in intertubes history. The author of the game had never really intended for it to be a game at all. He just thought it would be funny to put up some creepy notes and see what sort of attention they got.
• The Big List of Things I Like About LibraryThing: I've been using LibraryThing for quite some time now to track my book collection and what I'm reading. This post has a nice roundup of some of LT's best features.
• Olympic start gun gives inside runners an edge: Runners in lane eight got off the mark on average about 150 milliseconds after runners in lane one, Dapena found. A time delay of that magnitude translates to about a metre's difference at the finish line.
• Chrysler will offer wireless Internet access in 2009 models: "With the added Internet connectivity, drivers and passengers will be able to get such devices as laptop computers and Nintendo Wii consoles online." Terrifying, though there's a certain dark humor to it. Steering wheel in one hand, Wiimote in the other
• The Fly: The Opera: Directed by David Cronenberg, music by Howard Shore, and conducted by Placido Domingo. No, I'm not kidding.

Sometime between 07:42 and 13:30, I thought this stuff was interesting. You might think so too!

• Really clever advertising campaign for Breeze Excel laundry detergent:: Send detergent samples through the mail wrapped in t-shirts. After the mail has thoroughly munged up the t-shirt 'wrapping', the recipients wash the shirt with the included sample.
• An epic Bill Gates e-mail rant: "The lack of attention to usability represented by these experiences blows my mind. I thought we had reached a low with Windows Network places or the messages I get when I try to use 802.11."
• Religious Groups’ Official Positions on Same-Sex Marriage: Although the Episcopal Church has not explicitly established a position in favor of gay marriage, in 2006 the church stated its “support of gay and lesbian persons and [opposition to] any state or federal constitutional amendment that prohibits same-sex
• NYT: Reporters Say Networks Put War: Paul Friedman, a senior vice president at CBS News, said the news division does not get reports from Iraq on television "with enough frequency to justify keeping a very, very large bureau in Baghdad." He said CBS correspondents can "get in there very quic
• Lit 101 Class in Three Lines or Less.: 1984: WINSTON: Don't tell the Party, but sex is way better than totalitarianism. EVERYONE: Surprise! We're the Party. WINSTON: Oh, rats.
• Others’ grass not so green after drunken drive on lawn mower: "The first thing that went through my mind was someone was stealing our mower. And then I thought, wait a minute, we don't have a riding mower."

Sometime between June 23rd and June 24th, I thought this stuff was interesting. You might think so too!

• June 24, 1947: They Came From … Outer Space?: Pilot Kenneth Arnold sights a series of unidentified flying objects near Washington's Mt. Rainier. It's the first widely reported UFO sighting in the United States, and, thanks to Arnold's description of what he saw, leads [to] the term flying saucer.
• Bob Dylan On Abraham Lincoln: Tracing the origin of Bob Dylan's Abraham Lincoln quote: "You can fool some of the people all of the time, and all of the people some of the time, but you can't fool ALL of the people ALL of the time."
• Ten Big New Features in Mac OS X Snow Leopard: There's a bunch of pretty high-level (Low-level? Technical bits.) geek stuff in here, but it's a nice overview of what's coming with Snow Leopard. The slimming down of apps is impressive.
• Neighborhoods Map - Neighborhoods Program - City of Kent, Washington: Oddly, Kent doesn't seem to be as well divided into discrete neighborhoods: there's just Kent, and a few small areas within designated as neighborhoods. Our new apartment isn't in any of them, so I guess we don't get a neighborhood?
• Seattle City Clerk’s Neighborhood Map Atlas: I use this a lot when tagging images I upload to Flickr. Click on a larger region to zoom in to more precise neighborhood boundaries.
• The Paragraph in Web Typography & Design: Paragraphs are punctuation, the punctuation of ideas. After selecting a typeface, choosing the right paragraph style is one of the cornerstones of good typography. This is a brief inquiry into paragraph style for the Web.