Quick! What am I going to post about?

All those who believe in psychokinesis, raise my hand
seen on a bumper sticker

Think you're psychic? Take the quiz and find out whether you've got the chops or whether you've just been faking it all this time...
(via MonkeyFilter)

The hidden volcano

Lots of news today about increased seismic activity on Mt. Saint Helens. Scientists are predicting a small-to-moderate eruption occurring within the next few days, perhaps spewing ash and rock up to three miles from the crater.

A much bigger volcano with potential to wreak orders of magnitude more damage is little known, though millions visit every year. The Yellowstone caldera has been erupting regularly every 600,000 years, and the last eruption was 640,000 years ago. By way of comparison, the next eruption will be something on the order of 2,500 times more powerful than the 1980 Mt. Saint Helens eruption.

I recently read a great book by Bill Bryson, A Short History of Nearly Everything. One of the chapters went into scary detail on what to expect if (more like when) it blows again.

A nice summary of what the Yellowstone caldera is about, where it came from and what it's capable of is available if you aren't up for reading Bryson's book.

Meta-Museum

Coudal Partners brings you the indispensible Museum of Online Museums. Where else are you gonna see exhibits for The Gas Mask Museum, Foreign Groceries Museum, The Gallery of Birth Control Packaging, The Chopsticks Gallery and The Gallery of Stove Burners just to name a few (you think I'm making this stuff up, don't you?)

If your appetite for bizarre collections is but whetted, feel free to wander through the cluttered but nonetheless cool MoOM Annex, featuring hundreds more links to the likes of Dan Heller's Manhole Covers of the World and the Furnace Sticker Museum. Wow.

Get your fetish on!

Stirring up the hornet's nest

Looking at all the outraged comments posted after Wesley Kose's "One Hundred Albums You Should Remove from Your Collection Immediately", I hope he can safely show his face in public.
(via thirdredeye)

Teresa Heinz Kerry's Competition

The Ketchup Conundrum - Mustard now comes in dozens of varieties. Why has ketchup stayed the same?

and

Why does taco sauce clean pennies?
(both via kottke.org)

Borborygmi? Really?

My Favorite Word is still getting off the ground and thus a little light on content right now, but it is an interesting concept.

Borborygmi

Where In The World Is Slovenia?

If you're like me, you'll learn a lesson in humility by taking the Geography Olympics quiz. First, pick the country you are representing. Then you are then given ten randomly chosen countries; it's your job to determine where those countries are located.

I took the quiz three times. Embarrassingly, my best result was 30% (3 out 10). The other two times I scored a paltry 20%. Sorry, Team USA, I brought our national average down 0.04% to our current 66th place standing of 55.21% (view current leaderboard)

Come on, guys! Let's get some geography ringers in there and blast those wily Finlanders (where's Finland?!) out of first place! We can do it!
U!S!A!
U!S!A!
U!S!A!
(via Neat New Stuff on the Net)

Eyes & Ears

I'll be incorporating a Books 'N' Music feature in the right-hand column, just listing what is currently residing on my bookshelf and CD player. Since I am trying to do this on the cheap, I am using a service called FreeImageUpload.com. Since it's free, it seems incredible to me that they aren't blasting popups or banners or anything. I tested in Internet Explorer 6 and Firefox 1.0 Preview Release and saw nothing offensive other than what I am personally responsible for :-)

Please let me know if you are having a different experience, either by emailing me (see the "contact" link at the bottom of the page) or by commenting in this post.

Any book/music recommendations are welcome! I am a big science/math/non-fiction book geek, and really like most any kind of music.

If Bill can figure it out, so can I...

• The name of the game is Petals Around the Rose.


• The name of the game is important.


• The computer will roll five dice and ask you to guess the score for the roll.


• The score will always be zero or an even number.


Your mission is to work out how the computer calculates the score and become a Potentate of the Rose and qualify to become a member of the Fraternity of Petals Around the Rose.

Lloyd Borrett's website also has a story about a young Bill Gates and his first exposure to the puzzle back in 1977. Interesting reading...

PS. No, I haven't figured it out yet!

PPS. This didn't work for me at all in Fireox 1.0 Preview Release. It does work in Internet Explorer 6, and supposedly it works in older versions of Netscape, though I haven't verified.

"Honey, I Blew Up The Printer!"

Ever wish you could get all "Office Space" on that printer/computer/laptop at home? For the price of a Ben Franklin, the guys at WeBlowITup.com can subject your offending device to their patented C3 (Concussive Computer Catastrophe) Technology.

Watch videos of their earth-shattering and groundbreaking (literally) technology at work!

Penguin Abuse

It's the Pingu Throw/Orca Slap/Seal Bounce/Albatross Overload/Flamingo Drive Pentathlon!

This Is Your Life!/Is This Your Life?

What would you do if you found someone's digital media card from their camera left behind in your taxi? This guy has decided to post one photo a day (there's 227 photos spanning over a year) on his blog I Found Some Of Your Life. He doesn't know who the people in the pictures are, so he's taken some artistic license to provide a little backstory for the captions. Is it real? Or a hoax? If it's not a hoax, is it even legal? Either way, it's pretty entertaining... (via Slashdot)

More "found photos" with "Camera In The Woods". Guy finds digital camera in the woods, posts pics on internet. Very creepy, a la Blair Witch Project. General consensus is that these are fake.

Yet more found photos (with some really funny posted comments) at Spillway, which I discovered through one of the comments posted in the Slashdot story. I couldn't get all the Spillway pages to open, though. Perhaps you will have better luck.

Kinda reminds me of The Trachtenburg Family Slideshow Players. Watch a clip from their appearance in McEnroe's show. Is it me or does that dad in the band look like Chuckie from Rugrats?

Back To The Futurama

From Wil Wheaton -- author, actor, blogger, poker-player and all-around nice guy comes a link to The 25 Best Futurama Moments Ever.

There's also rumors floating around that due to decent DVD sales, Futurama may be brought back to TV a la Family Guy.

O Death, where is thy blog?

Three buddies die in a car crash, they go to heaven to an orientation.

They are all asked, "When you are in your casket and friends and family are mourning upon you, what would you like to hear them say about you?"

The first man says, "I would like to hear them say that I was a great doctor of my time, and a great family man."

The second man says, " I would like to hear that I was a wonderful husband and school teacher which made a huge difference in our children of tomorrow."

The last guy replies, " I would like to hear them say... LOOK!! HE'S MOVING!!!"

Discovered the interesting The Blog Of Death today, which isn't as forboding as it sounds. It's basically an obituary blog for famous/relatively famous/infamous folk.

A number of good links in the sidebar as well. Here were a few of my favorites:
Find A Grave
Tombstone Generator
Death Clock

Also found a pretty amazing set of photos from the cemetery at St Paul's Church, Birmingham, England posted on a site called Mourning_Souls. Kinda must be where they got the idea for the ending of the movie Carrie...

Wood/Work

David C. Roy makes wooden absolutely stunning kinetic sculptures that are showcased at his Wood That Works site. Of course, I not only can't afford even the smallest of his works, I probably can't even afford the gas used to deliver the wood to his shop...

Where's the love?

The Ten Most Hated Men In Rock (not, you know, including Sting, which is a given... not that he really rocks anymore anyway)
(via Chromatic Musings)

"If you vend it, they will come"

Bizarre items sold in vending machines, including: beer (in the convenient 3-liter mini-barrel!), hamburgers, poached eggs, beetles and frogs. Oh, and The American Museum of Atomic Energy in Oak Ridge, Tennessee used to vend radioactive dimes. Get 'em while they're hot!

More than just a beer

The Guinness Book of World Records is 50 years old this week. To commemorate, The Mirror (UK) lists their nominees for the 50 Weirdest World Records. But how did they miss this one?

The Most Dangerous Game(s)

RetroCRUSH muses on some of the dangers of childhood play.

The most dangerous coolest playground ever made
Deadly and dandy playgrounds of yesteryear
Top 10 toys of the 70's
Deadly toys of days gone by

For Our "Matchless" Friends!

A collection of links devoted to the hobby of Phillumeny (the collecting of matchbook covers). No, really.

The least geeky and most accessible and humorous would be over yonder at Lilek's Matchbook Museum. (while you're at it, check out the rest of Lilek's as well. You'll thank me later.

Rathkamp Matchbook Society holds the coveted title of "The Oldest Phillumenic Organization In The World!" Heartbreakingly, you just missed their 2004 convention, which wrapped up a few weeks ago. But there's always next year! Better pre-register now!

RMS also lists a cubic buttload of other people with this strange hobby.

What's my age again?

I usually think I have no skill in guessing people's ages. But I am doing pretty well at The Age Project. Maybe I can get that dream job guessing weight/age/birth moth at the carnival after all!
(via Sarcasmo's Corner)

Shave and a haircut

Bad haircuts, courtesy of Tan's Barbers. Sports fan? No problem at Tan's! Look ridiculous and support your team!

You mean to tell me some little kid's choice was not Spiderman or Incredible Hulk, but "Remembering JFK, Jr."? Or a freaking NATO haircut?! I don't think so...

PS. Kinda looks like Horseshoe Guy is regretting his impulse buy, dont ya think?
(via small.to)

D-liver D-letter, D-sooner, D-better!

del·ti·ol·o·gy n. The collection and study of postcards.

Google-ing for old postcards brings up a mind-bogglingly wide assortment of links, just a few of which I'll list here.

OldPostcards.com offers over 3 million old postcards, grouped by topic, including Sumo Wrestling, Elephant Tusk and Animals Smoking.

Postcardman.net is another biggie. Cards covering Dead People, Leper Colonies and Washerwomen.

Three guesses what "Postcard Bill" Judnick collects and sells. He runs lotsofcards.com, lotsofstamps.com and the interesting lotsofcovers.com, a huge collection of envelopes, postmarks and other postal artifacts.

Deltiology.com isn't the prettiest of sites. He has background images that make most of his pages practically unreadable, so when you see the link to turn them off, you might want to do so. He does have a cool Old-Time Postmark Calendar, though. Every day of the year shows an old postmark from the corresponding date. The bad news is that the calendars are from 1995, left over from the original printing run. The good news is that they're still interesting to look at, and in 2006, the dates will match up again and the calendar will be useful once again! He's asking a mere $3 apiece, or 5 for $12.