Ukelele?!?

Unless you are a very strange person, you will never before have heard a ukelele that sounded like this:

Roadside Ear Cleaners...

Apparently roadside ear cleaners (that is, people who specialize in cleaning ears who ply their trade at the side of the road) are common in India.  This is one of 10 things I didn't know about India...

Let's Hear it for Weirdos!

I take some pride in being weird – a weirdo.  I've long proclaimed that being normal is boring.  This morning I read a great blog post by Michael Lazerow that ends with this:

Weirdos don’t see anything as impossible. Anything is possible. Just give us enough time.

Weirdos are contrarians. They think differently and act even more differently. Normals try to fit in. Weirdos stick out without really trying.

Weirdos aren’t driven by money. Money is a destination. Weirdos are all about the journey.

Weirdos don’t care what others think. They only care THAT they think and want to change HOW they think.

Weirdos come in all shapes and sizes, colors and countries. And they're not new to the tech industry, or industry in general.

Weirdos thought it made sense to get on the Mayflower from England to settle in a new land.

Weirdos thought we should get rid of slavery.

Weirdos insisted that women should also have a vote.

The world would suck if it weren’t for weirdos.

Instead of trying to get our kids to fit in, we should help them celebrate why they are different.

Let’s start to teach kids to embrace weird. Weird is good.

And let’s not stop until weird is normal.

A high-Q resonance here...

Giant Arapaima...

British fisherman Steve Townson caught a 250 pound freshwater fish, an arapaima.  He released it after weighing and taking photos.

Awesome...

We Had One of These...

Back in the '60s my family somehow acquired a gigantic boat of a car: a Chrysler station wagon.  It was equipped with a couple of gadgets that even then struck me as quite odd.  One was a push-button automatic transmission (no lever, just dashboard mounted push-buttons).  The other was a record player, exactly like the one at right.  I ran across this on Retronaut.

We could never play the darned thing, because we didn't have any of the 16.66 RPM records for it.  I don't even know if ours worked...

The Centrifuge Brain Project...

I bring you the strange:

Disposable Penis...

I find this...disturbing...on several levels...

Wow! Wait a Minute...

I just received this email from LinkedIn:

Really?  Top 5%?!?  Why on earth would that be? 

But then I did the math: 5% of 200,000,000 members means I'm one of 10,000,000 in that same top 5%.  Somehow that doesn't seem quite so special :)

Now I'm trying to figure out why LinkedIn thought they should send me this mail.  It doesn't ask for anything – ah, yes it does.  When I click on the Read More button, I end up on a page asking me to share this on social media.

Which I'm doing, sort of.  But probably not in the way they wanted me to :)

Curiosity Discovers Something Odd on Mars...

What is it?  It looks metallic.  The mission scientists don't know yet what it is, other than weird.  But they're working on it...

Birthday Distribution...

It's not a surprise that more babies are born on some particular dates (month and day) than on others.  The distribution of those more “popular” dates was a big surprise to me.  For instance, all ten of the ten most common dates for babies to be born are in September (where my birthday is).  Here's a heat map showing those dates (and you can find an interactive version here).

No Demonstration at Benghazi Before the Attack?!?

The U.S. State Department is now denying that it ever thought there had been a demonstration about the anti-Islamic movie prior to the attack on our Benghazi consulate that killed four Americans.

What kind of game is being played here?

The first thing that came to my mind is that Hillary Clinton is yanking the rug out from under Obama – first he blames the Benghazi attacks on that stupid movie for weeks, then she says her department knew better all along.  Is this actually true?  If so, then some State Department folks never got the word, because they initially backed Obama's take.  Or is Hillary seeing the political problem, and distancing herself from it in order to better position herself for a 2016 run?  Or is she just being spiteful? 

I don't know any of these things, of course – just all random thoughts that came to mind after reading this extraordinary statement. 

Of course, another perfectly reasonable interpretation is that our government is run by a bunch of incompetent clowns.  But we know better than that, don't we?  Don't we???

The Fake 9/11 Survivor...

This is just plain weird!

My Weird Family, Continued...

My sister finds more weird and awesome mushrooms in her yard...

A USB Typewriter?

This may be an elaborate hoax, but it sure looks real.  The tagline looks like a joke, though:

The USBTypewriter™ is a new and groundbreaking innovation in the field of obsolescence.

The claim is that this fellow has developed a circuit board that can be attached to any old-fashioned mechanical typewriter, converting it to a USB keyboard input device.  From a technical perspective, this is completely plausible.  From just about any other perspective, it's some degree of crazy (and leaning toward very crazy).  Here's the company page, the Etsy storefront, and below is their marketing video.




I'm pretty much speechless...

Copernicus Reburied...

Copernicus (1473-1543) was the astronomer who challenged the Roman Catholic Church's dogma of Earth-centricity (by demonstrating that the Earth and the other planets revolved around the sun), and was condemned for his excellent work.  Yesterday, in a slightly more enlightened times, his remains were exhumed and reburied – now honored by the church that once condemned him...

Holy Moley!

A hailstorm in Oklahoma:

This Guy is Just Plain Crazy!

Via reader Tom B...

Think the Red Light Scameras Are Bad?

Get a load of this!

Just When...

Just when you've accumulated enough experience in life to think that the human race has few surprises left to offer you...they surprise you again.

Offered without comment: Steven Ferrini's recent run-in with the cops.

Chatroulette...

This is just plain weird.

And before you ask: no, I haven't tried it yet.  The very thought makes me uncomfortable...