A Peanut Butter Diamond Is Forever

Scientists are creating diamonds by subjecting peanut butter to extreme pressure. Courtesy of Improbable Research.

London's Thwarted Car Bombings

In regard to today's car bombing close call in London, here is a photo of a WWII era British poster. Chin up.

World's Oldest Car

This nifty De Dion-Bouton et Trapardoux built in France in 1884 will soon be for sale as the world's oldest car. Got 2 million dollars?
Story here.

Bad Interior Design

Here is a good slide show of bad interior design from Europe in 1974.

Rich Kids (And How To Save Them)

This is a subject I have always found fascinating. How can extremely wealthy parents properly raise their children who grow up lacking most real-life experiences? Often they are made dysfunctional by such wealth.
On a recent episode of "Charlie Rose", Warren Buffet revealed that wealthy people he meets are not interested in business advice. They ask him more about how best to raise their children amid such fortune.
Here is a related article at the UK Times.

Stories From Ordinary People

Some old friends are working on this great project called StoryCorps - "extraordinary stories from everyday people". Check out this one about an encounter with reclusive author J.D. Salinger

Fact (x3)

If a statue of a person in the park on a horse has both front legs in the air, the person died in battle.

If the horse has one front leg in the air, the person died as a result of wounds received in battle.

If the horse has all four legs on the ground, the person died of natural causes.

Bad Analogies

List of worst analogies from high school essays courtesy of Strange Places. Here's a taste:

"McBride fell 12 stories, hitting the pavement like a Hefty Bag filled with vegetable soup."

Rejection Rejection

This letter from a job applicant.

Servicemen In Iraq 1943

The University of Chicago Press is publishing the 1943 manual "Instructions for American Servicemen in Iraq During World War II". This ironic document was created while Iraq was part of the worldwide offensive against Germany and points out that "Herr Hitler knows he's licked if the peoples united against him stand their ground".

Here's an excerpt describing Iraqi fighters:

"That tall man in the flowing robe you are going to see soon, with the whiskers and the long hair, is a first-class fighting man, highly skilled in guerrilla warfare. Few fighters in any country, in fact, excel him in that kind of situation. If he is your friend, he can be a staunch and valuable ally. If he should happen to be your enemy - look out! Remember Lawrence of Arabia? Well, it was with men like these that he wrote history in the First World War. Yet you will also find out quickly that the Iraqi is one of the most cheerful and friendly people in the world. If you are willing to go just a little out of your way to understand him, everything will be okay."

The Joy Of Cycling

David Byrne expounds on the joys of riding a bicycle in a city - from his website here.

Best Of CraigsList

I think it's fair to say that this soldier is pretty angry.

Graphic

Cowell Curveball

Simon Cowell gets thrown a curve ball.

Fact

The average four year-old child asks over four hundred questions a day.

Spelling Bee Winner Interview

This hysterical interview from CNN is a classic. The anchor tries real hard, but...

Spelling Bee Winner

Posted Jun 05, 2007

Not For Cat Lovers

Find this offensive? Read no further. Think it's funny? (Like I do) Go to Night Swim.

Fear Of Odor

Here's what I was posting about yesterday - a product that releases good smell when you move - in case you're afraid you have body odor (FEAR).

Assessing Fear

The exploitation of fear has become a powerful tool used by politicians and advertisers alike. This culture of fear has consumed our society. There's an excellent article about it over at spiked by Frank Furedi - long, but worth a read.

A final section sums it up:
"Twenty-first century fear culture is increasingly being normalised as a force in its own right. In such circumstances, fear is a means through which people respond to and make sense of the world.
This stands in sharp contrast to the approach taken by US President Franklin D Roosevelt in his inaugural address in 1933, when he stated that the ‘only thing we have to fear is fear itself’. Roosevelt was trying to assure the public that it is both possible and necessary to minimise the impact of fear. His was a positive vision of a future where fear would be put in its place by a society that believed in itself."

Sadly, in post 9/11 America, we have become a culture driven by terror and not composure. We'll see more of this as the next election approaches. The fear card is a powerful tool that is not always rooted in reality and often fueled by the media.

From Furedi's article:
"According to Stefanie Grupp, in her paper on the ‘Political implications of a discourse of fear’, individual fears are cultivated through the media and are less and less the outcome of direct experience. ‘Fear is decreasingly experienced first-hand and increasingly experienced on a discursive and abstract level’, concludes Grupp. She also suggestively notes that ‘there has been a general shift from a fearsome life towards a life with fearsome media."

It's interesting stuff that affects us all and worth a read. Think about it next time a candidate tells you there's a terrorist following you home or when you see a toothpaste commercial with gruesome animated germs attached to someone's teeth.

Photos

Site of photos taken of children under water.

Best Of CraigsList

Good one here.

News Item

When a woman in Germany witnessed what she thought was a young boy being taken away in the boot of a car she alerted police to a child kidnapping.
But police found the "boy" was in fact Klaus "Shorty" Mueller, a dwarf mechanic.
He had climbed into the boot and asked to be driven around so he could track down the source of a rattling noise in the car.

Graphic

One Mad Duck

Bitter duck haikus by Jay Silverman courtesy of McSweeney.