The freakiest story

I don't know that I've ever found a website with a story as odd as today's link, titled simple The Beatles Never Broke Up.

It involves a wormhole to a parallel Earth, an unconscious author, a stolen cassette tape, and eleven downloadable tracks from 'The (alternate Earth) Beatles.'

People are fascinating.

My to see list...long term

I keep a mental, long-term, to-see list in my head at all times. Things that are on it that I want to check off but over which I really have almost no control at all...

• Clown driving a car (full make-up/wig required)
• Person I know in an airport other than Cincinnati or Dayton
• Woman riding motorcycle, man holding on behind her
• Volkswagon Beetle with flowers painted on it
• Bus with Further in the destination spot
• Adult in a superhero costume (not at Comic-Con or amusement park)
• Proposal at a restaurant
• Lonnie on a mug or pencil or something at a gift shop
• Book on bookshelves of bookstore signed by author but not marked as such 

What else should I add to the list?

Maps, huh!

19 Maps That Will Blow Your Mind is exactly what it says: 19 maps that will blow your mind.

Really, though, it's an article that can't possibly be described properly. It needs to be read with little introduction or prior knowledge. Check it out for yourself then come back and discuss...

Poorly Drawn Comics

Let me introduce you to Poorly Drawn Lines, a webcomic of occasional and severe weirdness.
I'm offering you a few of my clean favorites. Go for the stuff after the jump, because the one about the spider is brilliant.

Conversation chains

Coach Sullivan sent me the following image of a sign that he found posted to a telephone pole in his neighborhood last week...

The phone number down there would connect you to Silver Creek High School just a bit north of where the Coach lives.

I forwarded the image onward to Calen who commented that, while she appreciated the old-school, subtle joke, she thought the well image would have been better replaced with something like this...

...because it better suggests "the level of curves they’d like for their well cleaner…because, after all, skin shrinks when it’s been removed from its original form."

While I agree that such a thought, I actually like the use of the simple, plain well graphic. It sells the sign as being more real because it seems like what somebody who actually needs a well cleaner would put on such a sign, but not one to be topped, I went searching for a better woman cleaner image. With the search terms "female cleaner", I got a whole lot of images and was amazed at how many different stock images of this woman there were...


I don't always understand the internet or the world of stock photography.

Vacationing in an oat box

It's been a slow summer at Casa de ChemGuy what with The Girl having UC summer school all season. That means we didn't have any sort of actual big vacation like we've had the past few years. Instead, I got to drop down to Houston and over to Indianapolis to teach a couple of ASM Materials Science camps. In neither city, however, did I get to see any real part of the city. They're working trips where I'm hanging in the lab from seven to seven, grabbing a quick bite to eat, and heading back to the hotel to look at the next day's PowerPoint.

This week, though, I got to take a three-day vacation to picturesque Akron, Ohio.

No, The Girl didn't come along. This was just me and twenty-seven of my closest friends hanging at the National Center for Education and Research on Corrosion and Materials Performance to learn about the national problem that is corrosion. G'head and ask me just about anything about corrosion and how I'm gonna teach my students about it this year. I'm a frickin' expert now...

The coolest part of the trip, though, was getting to stay at the Quaker Square Inn, the second oddest hotel in America.

See, it's a freakish hotel that's inside the old Quaker Oats factory where they just carved into the concrete silos to make the rooms. It's more than a little odd with the whole cement murals in the lobby, and elevators in one of the silos, and the first floor rooms having fourteen-foot ceilings with a set of electrical outlets at thirteen feet from the floor 'cause...um...'cause it's odd.





The place was opened in 1976...



...but now it's half hotel (the first three floors) and half dorm (the other five floors)...very odd...



Seriously, though, if you get the chance to take the corrosion camp, you should do it. The field trip to AZZ Galvanizing alone is worth it.

When weird obsession and art meet

I may not be able to define art, but I know it when I see it, and this, m'friends, is clearly art.

Welcome to McHaughton Fine Art, home of artwork that lives in that tenuous territory where art, jingoistic radical right-wing politics, and fundamentalist Christian values overlap.

There's "One Nation Under Socialism"...

'Forgotten Man'...(do yourself a favor and click to the painting's page for the scroll-over information...it's worth it)...

'Wake Up America' (again, the scroll-overs are enlightening)

The man may not share my political views, but he's at least willing to go out on a limb...way, way out on a limb...

You go, John McNaughton.

Made of meat

Weird stuff, man...weird...

More covers

This time, though, it's physical covers...as in the covers of cds and dvds and such.

Turns out there's a website called Coverdude that has scans of tons of cd, dvd, blu ray, wii, xbox covers - in case you lose the cover to your cd, dvd, blu ray, wii or xbox game and want to print a new one in color.

It's a niche but could turn out to be a useful one.

Alternative assessment

In education we occasionally talk about alternative ways to allow our students to prove that they understand a concept. Sure, there's the ever-familiar test/quiz/lab report method, but there has to be something different for those students who are intelligent but just march to a different drummer. Not everybody likes to explain things while sitting still in a perfectly quiet room.

Some folks like to dance...



I've watched this video and the other three (all after the jump), and I hate to say that I really understand the sorting methods way better for them. I may be lightly mocking here, but I think it's a frickin' genius way to explain the various types of sorting.

Thank you to AlgoRyhtmics...

The Silent Man

How can this be true?

Clarence Thomas has been on the Supreme Court since late 1991. This year marks the twentieth anniversary of Tomas's appointment to the court.

At some point this year, Clarence Thomas may step up and ask a question during oral arguments. When he does, it'll be his first question...his first question in five years.

C'mon, seriously?

Five years and absolutely no questions asked at all...none...not one? And one question in the past thirteen years?

The Supreme Court is absolutely the coolest part of our government. These are people appointed for life...forever...for always. They have no checks and balances in the least at all. These people are in control of enforcing that everything that we do in our country follows the Constitution. They are the defenders of our most sacred document.

And this man doesn't think that he has anything to ask...anything...nothing at all?

That's a joke.

This bothers me

I don't give a crap about Malcolm's problems. Apparently he's got a girlfriend, and thir relationship had a rough night.

Whatevs...

My problem is with this picture that buzzfeed provided to illustrate the story.

Look at the girl's left foot.

Is her left leg like six inches shorter than her right? Is it behind him or in front of him? Is it flat on the ground or floating in the air?

Is that photoshop, or am I just this messed up this early in the morning?

The Universally Stupid Record Database

Welcome to the Universal Record Data Base, a web collection of foolish and inane records entirely self-attempted, self-verified, and self-important.

Check out...

• 117 members of the Christ's Church at Mason youth group sat on balloons and popped them at the same time as they became the largest group to sit on balloons and pop them at once.
  
• Some bearded guy as he becomes the fastest man to drink a 2-oz bottle of Tabasco through a coffee stirrer.
  
• The most Casio preset rhythms played at once.
  
• The famous people who have hopped on the dorky bandwagon.

There are, of course people who hold multiple such records. Those people seem kinda pathetic.

And my question for you today...which record could you make up and hold?

Not even remotely normal much less XtraNormal

The Girl forwarded this video along, something made by a friend of hers about why you shouldn't become a librarian.  I particularly enjoy the "do you like being shanked by a pair of safety scissors" line.

The video is made from a website called XtraNormal that has a surprising amount of functionality.  There are a dozen different sets, various camera angles, a bunch of characters for each set, different voices, facial expressions and animations for the characters.  Some of the options are premium - meaning you have to pay - but there's enough free choices that you can make some pretty creepy little flicks.

Kinda cool...

Beardyman...human beatbox extraordinaire

The man is amazing...

Check it tomorrow, folks

Thanks to StumbleUpon and this page for pointing out tomorrow's chronological oddity.

Except, of course, that a similar occurrence will take place next year at seven seconds past 5:06 AM on August 9th.

I'm a horrible person

There are all sorts of reasons that I'm a horrible person...

Today's opener is the fact that I know that the secret to comedy is a midget. My general standing argument is that everything is funnier with a midget.

Yes, it's an offensive thing to say, and for that I apologize. But it's kind of true.

For evidence, I offer you Under the Rainbow and Terror of Tiny Town.

I also recognize that the reality of life as a midget would be incredibly tough, trying to manage in a world designed for people built drastically differently than you. Because of this, I realize that midgets are not - in and of themselves - funny in any real-world way. Yet I continue to insist that midgets are the keys to comedy.

This was brought on by the recent Rock the List about the most sensational midgets ever. Which is wrong because they forgot Billy Barty.

---

There's this guy that The Girl used to work with who runs a scavenger hunt / Amazing Race kind of thing every spring and fall. He signs up a dozen teams of four and runs 'em around our county collecting receipts, taking photos, buying stuff (in the fall) and accomplishing various stupid tasks (in the spring).

He's helped out by a half dozen of his friends who judge the various events and help run things.

And I hate two of them.

Hate them.

They don't necessarily seem like horrible people, and I've heard that they do a lot of good work for the local school system and all. The lead guy seems to like them, and he seems to be a pretty good guy.

But I can't stand being anywhere around them. And it's mostly because of their voices.

They're twins - yes, Calen, you probably know the guys I'm talking about - and they drive me frickin' batty every time they open they mouths.

Their tone of voice is so grating and snotty and nasty that I have to leave their presence almost immediately upon hearing them speak. At the Amazing Race a couple of years ago, in the heat of one of the events (trying to throw gumballs into a series of buckets a la Bozo's Grand Prize Game) I'll admit that I called one of them a rather vulgar term when he wouldn't make the rules a little clearer to me - and continued to just chatter on unhelpfully about how I wasn't supposed to be doing things.

It isn't something that I was proud of, but it happened. The voice finally got to me.

I should be mature enough to realize that people can't help the voice that they've been given, but I'm not really able to.

---

And finally, I'm desperately inspired by the donut and bacon candidate, but I have totally ignored every call from MoveOn.org and the local democrats to help out with the campaign. I probably could find a couple of hours to help out, but, man, I'm just tired.

I spent this afternoon hanging on the couch, writing to you folks. Sure, I could've made a few phone calls for Mr. Frazier, but I didn't.

Where not to buy toys

When you're serious about science, United Nuclear - now of New Mexico but soon to be of Michigan - should be your supplier of choice.

Sure, the sell books and fun stuff, but they also sell some stuff that clearly isn't heading to the kids.

The scariest things that they offer are their - surprisingly - the supermagnets found about halfway down the linked page. The magnets are strong enough that these words are among their warnings:

If carrying one into another room, carefully plan the route you will be taking. Sensitive instruments like computers & monitors will be affected in an entire room. Loose metallic objects and other magnets may become airborne and fly at great speed to attach themselves to these magnets. If you get caught in between the two, you can be severely injured. These magnets will crush bones in the blink of an eye.
Two of these magnets close together can create an almost unbelievable magnetic field that can be incredibly dangerous.
Of all the unique items we offer for sale, we consider these items the most dangerous of all. Our normal packing & shipping personnel refuse to package these magnets - our engineers have to do it. This is no joke or exaggeration - and we cannot stress it strongly enough. You must be extremely careful - and know what you're doing with these magnets.
Two Supermagnets can very easily get out of control, crush fingers and instantly break ribs or even your arm if opposing poles fly at each other.

A small child recently lost his hand when his father left two # 31 supermagnets unattended. The child picked one up and when he approached the other magnet on a nearby table,
it became airborne and obliterated his small hand.

...these are not things that I want to be dealing with.

The DMSO and other chemicals that they sell, on the other hand...or the aerogel...or the tritium light sources...meteorites...glow-in-the-dark paints...

If you need radioisotopes, UN has 'em and a bunch of other radioactive stuff including big samples of uranium metal.

And, seriously, they'll sell this stuff to any schmuck, you or me.

A lot of what they sell is for the explosives, nuclear, and pyrotechnics industries, but that doesn't mean they won't sell to li'l ol' you and me.

And a lot of it is just cool.

Mrs. Butterworth?

Seriously, man...Mrs. Butterworth?

I'd say this was a stretching things a bit, but it's actually pretty funny.

And here's another commerical that they've been showing during the US Open. I dig the kid...

He's just so cute and primeval

Now, if you were looking for a plushy Cthulhu, you'd have lots and lots of options - even a hand puppet to truly terrorize your bonnie wee bairns.

But if you wanted the cutest Old One around...the sweetest little plastic engine of destruction, you'd clearly want to check out My Little Cthulhu complete with its very own Little Victims.

There are also more standard resin statues, but who wants that?

Personally, I'm all about My Little Cthulhu.

He's just so darn cute...