Archive for October, 2009
I had a poetry professor who said that all poems are about death — all of them. Every time he said this, and he said it a lot, I didn’t particularly like it. I suppose I was afraid he was right.
The nice thing about the Day of the Dead is that it’s frank. I don’t know whether all poems are about death, but I know for sure that the Day of the Dead is about death.
Here’s an interesting test – you fill out a questionaire and it calculates your projected life span. The questionaire takes about 5 minutes: How long will I live? It looks at a number of factors that affect life expectancy, but it also leaves out many. For example: – it does not look at the effects [...]
My friend Rob pointed this story out to me the other day, but today was the day that the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (that’s ICANN) agreed to go ahead with the Internationalized Domain Name Fast Track Process Friday morning, allowing non-Roman characters to be used in top-level domain names.
Vampire Bats Will Bite You — In the Amazon
by Sarah Dowdey | October 30, 2009
One of my favorite tabloid headlines from the now-defunct Weekly World News was this: “Vegan Vampires Attack Trees.” I can just see it — a particularly menacing vegan vampire, perhaps draped in an organic cotton cloak (wool would be inappropriate, right?), lurching toward a helpless tree, preferably maple.
But I’m here to discuss something nonvegan and decidedly bloody: the vampire bat.
Well, the big day’s almost upon us. Tomorrow is Halloween, and all this talk of picking costumes and carving pumpkins has me thinking about memorable Halloweens from years past. One year, when I was in college, I decided to be a witch (coincidently, Cristen and I talked about witches on this week’s Stuff Mom Never Told You — head to iTunes to check it out!).
High Speed Stuff Wrap-up: Motorcycles and Helicopters
by Scott C. Benjamin | October 30, 2009
Well, it’s time for another High Speed Stuff wrap-up. And here’s what Ben and I have been up to on our High Speed Stuff podcast over the past few days…
The technology is called a muscle-computer interface. By putting electrodes on the forearm, a computer can read muscle signals directly and turn them into input signals, like this: In theory it would let you type while both hands are on a steering wheel. So you could have a heads-up display screen and safely text while [...]
Motorola Droid: The first Android 2.0 phone runs Google Navigation
by Marshall Brain | October 30, 2009
The following video demonstrates the first Android 2.0 phone. This phone is also one of the first to run The Google Navigation app we looked at the other day, and the phone has an available car dock and car mode. A full review from PCMag is available here: Droid by Motorola (Verizon Wireless) One of [...]
On Monday’s podcast, Sarah and I got to wear our English major hats – our favorite chapeaux of all.
In honor of Halloween, we talked about a little ghost story competition that gave us both “Frankenstein” and the vampire.
Wednesday’s podcast brought us Marie Laveau, voodoo queen, a person Sarah and I had a devil of a time researching.
The legend of Marie Laveau speaks of a 20-foot snake named Zombie and powerful magic that could make people crawl on their bellies on the floor, disappear or fall in love.
Recent Postings by Category
BrainStuff
- Thank You and Best Wishes to Marshall Brain
- Contest – Design a $300 house and win $25,000
- How the Philtrum works – the place under your nose where your face comes together
The Coolest Stuff on the Planet
- Traveling on the Orient Express
- Deep-fried Goodness at Carnival
- The Colors of the Running of the Bulls
Keep Asking
- Why can a 5 foot 8 inch man dunk a basketball on a 10 foot rim while some people of taller stature can’t?
- What happens to our sun once it runs out of fuel?
- How do we know the age of the universe?
Stuff Mom Never Told You
- Who invented the Christmas card?
- How the Kinsey Report Fueled Whiskey Sales
- How to Get Your Wedding Announcement into The New York Times
Stuff to Blow Your Mind
- Blow Your Mind: In the Lair of the Rat King
- Mandala: Memory Palace, Inception and Simulated Worlds
- Virgin Galactic: $200,000 Ticket to Ride
Stuff You Should Know
- The Southern Death Cult, the Maya and Georgia
- Deformed Baby Spider Brains
- Amazing Medical Conditions: Maple Syrup Urine Disorder
The Stuff of Genius
CarStuff
- Was Chrysler’s “It’s Halftime in America” Super Bowl commercial a little too political?
- Why is NASA studying car safety?
- Tips for in-car Navigation Systems
How-to Stuff
- How to Make the Most of a Gallery Crawl (When You’re on a Shoestring Budget)
- How to Swim with Dolphins (When Deep Water Terrifies You)
- How to Cure a Homemade Cookie Craving Without Turning on the Oven
PopStuff
- PopStuff Show Notes: Episode 40: Did movies ruin love?
- PopStuff Show Notes: Episode 39: Urban Legends
- PopStuff Show Notes: Episode 38: Defending Disney Princesses?
Stuff They Don't Want You To Know
Stuff to Change the World
- Who will own the Arctic?
- Obesity: The New Global Crisis
- Bill Gates Makes For A Pretty Decent Cartoon
Stuff You Missed in History Class
- Butch Cassidy: Should we read between the lines?
- Are we rooting for D.B. Cooper?
- Party Time: A Look at Unconventional Politics

