Tim Danner

Normally I’m all for consistent enforcement of the law, but this is a bit over the top.

I wonder how these guys load their dishwasher?

“Researchers can use any technique to boost longevity, including genetic manipulation and stem-cell therapy.” The preceding statement applies to mice, by the way. (via KIPlog)

Have you ever wanted an annoying cartoon character sitting on top of your monitor making comments about your instant messaging conversations? Now’s your chance! (via Gizmodo)

And here’s something you don’t see everyday: a toy sold by Marx Toys, hosted by Fountainhead Technologies Group. I wonder what would have happened if Karl Marx had bumped into Ayn Rand, über-capitalist novelist/philosopher and author of The Fountainhead?

I can see the appeal of a wooden hot tub. In the pictures, they look quite nice. According to the FAQ, they are made from Western Red Cedar. If you had a deck made of the same, the matching tub would be a no brainer, especially compared to the traditional above-group hot tub material, fiberglass. Heating the hot tub with a wood-burning stove is a bit of a stretch, but some people like to go rustic. Who am I to stop them? But what I can’t figure out is why, if you’re going to sell wood-burning cedar hot tubs, you would advertise them with pictures of naked gnomes.

And check out the picture at Cool Tools which shows what looks like a group of people who decided that their Snorkel hot tub was sea-worthy. Yeah.

This optical illusion page was floating around recently.

This morning NPR played a song by the Austin Lounge Lizards called “Why Couldn’t We Blow Up Saddam?” (Windows Media 9). I was cracking up in the car.

Very silly: a new hotel in New York decided to number its 60 rooms using the Dewey Decimal system. The rooms are decorated and stocked with books according to their room number’s Dewey Decimal category.

Unfortunately they didn’t check whether that classification system was free for their use - apparently the Dewey Decimal System is trademarked. Presumably something will be worked out.

I never knew this, but it turns out that marshmallows are actually a cash crop!

With most consumer products, huge amounts of money spent on R&D in a fiercly competitive market results in rapid and continuous improvement in value and quality. Strangely, this seems not to be happening with cell phones.

A list of the 18 worst jobs in science, with helpful icons to classify the nasty aspects of them.

Zeldman calls this the “Worst Flash intro ever”. He’s right. You’ll need sound on for the full effect. Histology-World!

I read pretty much everything that gets posted at The Morning News. This is a website maintained by a bunch of (mostly) residents of tiny New York City apartments. They write everything from music reviews to hilarious social commentary to stuff that is actually more disturbing than funny. But always original.

Today I link to The Mnemonics of Mnailguns, because it made me laugh.

From BoingBoing (as usual), a link to a project of great scientific import: How many CDs can you label with a Sharpie?

An very amusing satire of the Japanophile stereotype. Read the whole thing.

Flash is now the preeminent medium for the artwork of the completely nuts.

The Mac Classic-to-fishtank conversion is a cliché now, but this… is new.

Last Thursday, some engineers at a Lockheed Martin lab in Sunnyvale, California, needed a few special bolts. So they borrowed them from another project that wasn’t using them. And what happened two days later when that project needed them again? An 18 foot long environmental observation satellite worth $239 million fell over. Oops.

Here we have a whole bunch of old ads for station wagons. I mean a lot. These are just really entertaining to click around. Note that the thumbnails are just slices of the larger pictures you get when you click through. It’s very amusing to consider the hip new wagons coming out (Suburu WRX, BMW 3-series, Audi A4, Jaguar X-Type, etc) as the second coming of these behemoths. Don’t forget Clark Griswold’s “family truckster” in National Lampoon’s Vacation!