Archive for the ‘Curious Stuff’ Category
Way To Go, Wayne!
I want to congratulate my long-time friend Wayne on being recently named the Wolfskin (Oglethorpe County, GA) Volunteer Fire Department "2009 Firefighter of the Year". Wayne is dedicated and enthusiastic about his work for the department, and I think it's a well-deserved honor. The plaque is cool too; you can see a picture at his […]
In: All, Curious Stuff, Personal Notebook
Faster or slower?
A few days ago I ordered prescription refills. They will be delivered to our house from some remote location. The medications on my list come in two types: 1) plain old pills, requiring no special handling; and 2) temperature-sensitive insulin, which is usually sent in special packaging containing cold packs via expedited delivery. I got […]
In: All, Curious Stuff, Raised Eyebrows Dept.
A Murmuration
For a couple of months I kept track of a Language Log article about "talking" starlings (Mark Liberman, "Vocal mimicry on the web", Language Log, 1 November 2008), not so much for all the interesting scholarship on vocal mimicry contained therein, but because of the amusing video that reminded me of something, a tiny missed […]
In: All, Books, Curious Stuff, The Art of Conversation
The Mini Santa-Creche
Knowing my predilection for small but wonderfully tacky nativity scenes, our friend George gave me the item shown in the photo at right.* This little Santa is a shade under 3-inches high, and about 1.5 inches in diameter. The surface texture is slightly fuzzy, in a lightly flocked sort of way. Where, you might be […]
In: All, Curious Stuff, Personal Notebook
Chocolate Bacon
I thought I'd mention that I'm sitting here right now, at the end of my light supper, enjoying a treat of chocolate-covered bacon. By that I mean, of course, actual bacon that's been dipped in chocolate. Our friend George decided to make some at Isaac's birthday party as a special experiment and we still had […]
In: All, Curious Stuff, Food Stuff
Beard of the Week LVI: Hand-Made Vacuum Tubes
This week's beard belongs to Claude Paillard, also known since 1959 as F2FO when he apparently received his amateur-radio license. M. Paillard's beard is on view after about 15 minutes in this 17 minute video, although his hands are visible much more frequently. The title of the film, "Fabrication d'une lampe triode" ("Build a triode […]
In: All, Beard of the Week, Curious Stuff, It's Only Rocket Science
Hearing Things in Noise
There is a false rumor that snopes.com reported on recently ("Doll Talk", 14 October 2008): an email is circulating, claiming to be from a woman in the Texas panhandle (possibly true) who went to a Wal*Mart store where she listened to the (recorded) sounds made by a Fisher-Price "Little Mommy Real Loving Baby Cuddle and […]
In: All, Curious Stuff, Personal Notebook
The Doubleday Fart
I am fascinated to learn (via Brainiac, "Fact of the Day", who heard it from the NYTimes, "The Time of Their Lives: The Golden Age of Great American Book Publishers, Their Editors and Authors" by Al Silverman): Doubleday, a proudly "middlebrow" company, was founded by Frank N. Doubleday, who suffered from flatulence. As a result, […]
In: All, Curious Stuff, Old Fartdom
Tooth & Neck
I'm sure it says something deep and revealing about me that as financial markets crumble about my head I listen to how people talk. Perhaps it's just the result of my long years of aching to be recruited for the grammar police, or perhaps my few years in the crucible of the usenet group "soc.motss", […]
In: All, Curious Stuff, Such Language!
Personal Chocolate Cake
I am so enchanted by this concept–and ultra-simple recipe–for a personal, one-serving size, made-from-scratch-in-the-microwave recipe for chocolate cake that I'm putting a link to it here so I won't lose it before I get to try it. Y'all are free to try it, too. It's called "Chocolate Cake in 5 Minutes!" and takes only 3 […]
Beard of the Week XLII: The Pyramidiot
This week's beard belongs to one Charles Piazzi Smyth (1819–1900), who served as Astronomer Royal for Scotland from 1846 to 1888. That's not the reason for my interest, however. It's his pioneering work in pyramidology that I found out about today and wanted to bring to your attention. At the center of it all: the […]
In: All, Beard of the Week, Books, Curious Stuff
Thomas Tallis: Nine Psalm Tunes
This evening we were listening, with quite a bit of pleasure, to a recording we recently purchased. It's called "Heavenly Harmonies"; it records the 13-voice a capella group "Stile Antico" singing William Byrd's (c. 1540–1623) "Motets" (from Cantiones sacrae I & II) and "Mass Propers for Pentecost (from Gradualia, 1607), interspersed with "9 Psalm Tunes […]
The Mystery of the Magenta Icing
Sometimes one provides one's own amusement without even realizing it; perhaps life is more Oscar Wilde-ish than we realize.† Especially with a memory-sieve like my brain, there's always my blog for little surprises and occasional delights. Yes, it was another google: "how to make magenta frosting". An odd request, certainly, but not beyond making sense […]
In: All, Curious Stuff, Food Stuff
Baroquen Bean-Paste
Matthew Guerrieri, at Soho the Dog (in "Miso, Soy of Man's Desiring") alerted me to a new product of immeasurable possible interest: Bach-Infused Miso Bean Paste. According to company officials, the bean paste fermented for 150 days while the music of Johann Sebastian Bach was playing continuously (nearby? loudly? within its hearing?). There is, however, […]
In: All, Curious Stuff, Raised Eyebrows Dept.
Edward Lorenz and His Butterflies
The image at right is a gorgeous rendering† of a mystifying object known as the Lorenz Attractor. It shares its name with Edward Lorenz, its discoverer, who died earlier this month at the age of 90.* Edward Lorenz is sometimes called "the father of chaos", and the Lorenz attractor is the reason. Lorenz was a […]
In: All, Curious Stuff, It's Only Rocket Science
Park on UFOs
On 1 February 2008, Robert Park (in his What's New) reported this incident: OTHER DIMENSIONS: THE GOVERNMENT’S UFO COVERUP. I was invited this week to join a panel of "experts" on "It’s Your Call with Lynn Doyle," an Emmy Award-winning, viewer-interactive news talk show on the Comcast Cable Television Network. The subject was "Are we […]
In: All, Curious Stuff, It's Only Rocket Science
Odds & Odders
What to do with goofy stuff that would just get lost in the already over-extended bookmarks? Blog them, of course! Any of you who are organists, or any of you who are married to organists, plus a whole bunch of other people, have already heard the relatively insipid Toccata from Charles-Marie Widor's "Organ Symphony #5". […]
Eyes & Mouths
Here are the entries in a Photoshop contest called "Mouth Eyes pictures". The idea was to take an image of a person or animal (or something similar) and replace the eyes with little mouths. The results repulsed and amused me, which is an odd feeling.
In: All, Curious Stuff, Laughing Matters
Knitting by LEGO
Yes, we know that virtually anything can — and sooner or later will — be built from LEGO blocks,* so this should be no surprise. But, the other night a friend pointed out this YouTube video for the LEGO knitting machine. It's a lovely film, complete with very appropriate soundtrack (Phillip Glass?) I was fascinated, […]
Wind Machines
Believe it or not, for years — decades even — I have been fascinated by the use in music of the wind machine. Honestly. You may not be aware that the device even exists, but it does and it is used occasionally in orchestral music (romantic era and later) to create the very realistic sound […]
In: All, Curious Stuff, Music & Art