Stegosaurus on Cambodian Temple

I’ve always been a big fan of anomalies because they provide a little glimpse into a Universe that we know so little about. And yet delude ourselves into thinking we know a lot about. I mean, why is an image of a stegosaurus carved into a Cambodian temple? Did a stone carver see a diorama in a museum somewhere? 2000 years ago? Or did he see one in the jungle, talk about it with his friends, and they decided “Yes, let’s carve images of animals that are part of our lives. We occasionally see the creature with the armored plates on its back, so include that in your carving project.”

Here's the full story: http://www.bible.ca/tracks/tracks-cambodia.htm

Photos from Mexico City

This site made me want to get on a plane and head out to Mejico and spend a month exploring the capital. Amazing photos taken by a helicopter pilot. I really had to study the photo on the left...it looks like a digital photo, in fact, it looks like a bad digital photo. But it’s a real live housing complex in Mexico.
http://homepage.mac.com/helipilot/PhotoAlbum31.html

A genius explains

Interesting article on a British savant who is able to explain (to a certain degree) how his mind works.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/weekend/story/0,,1409903,00.html

Professional Writing and the Rise of the Amateur

This is a very interesting web site by a screen writer, John August, and this is a rather compelling lecture he gave on how writing on the Internet is blurring the distinction between professional and amateur, and that perhaps that distinction should be firmed up. Worth reading.

http://johnaugust.com/archives/2006/professional-writing-and-the-rise-of-the-amateur

How to be Creative

I enjoy this web page a lot because it has a lot of funky ideas for being creative, most of them potently oxymoronic. 

https://www.gapingvoid.com/blog/

Profile of a Very Secure Woman

This lovely lady was not getting the results she was hoping for on the online personals so she used her smartass feminine wiles to construct a little reverse psychology:

First, the ad:

25 yar ole short fat eye meen skinnie unemployd woomin wit 10 kidz seeks yung hottiey. Mhy hare wuz brite red but has sum gray in it naow. Muh eyes is blu. Eyes growin har outta muh ears an nose but eye is a hunk magnit. Eye mek luv lak a crazed weasel!1!! Eyell be gittin dis heah poh-lice trackin braclit offa muh lag soon an we kin travil afta thet. Eyes fum da souf and eye eenvented da toofbruhs afta eye done figgered out why muh teef falled out. (No Al Gore it wer ME.) Mah fahvorit TV show be Jerry Springer. Eyes on welfair but eye colleks alunimum cans ta suppot mahself. Plus mah kids all has a big pile o cardbored sines thet say Will Work fo Food!!1!1! Eye am so lonley. Wont yew pleeze wrat me. Muh kidz needs a Daddy!!!

More About What I Am Looking For

Yung hottiee wif at leest a dublewide an a bote an lotz uv mone cuz eye haf 10 kidz an they needs a ril daddy to hep mea wif dem and dey wants mo brothirs amd sistres to.

And because she got some interesting responses (including one of my own - the one that starts “im thinkin my desnity”), she created her own blog to display all of her potential suitors:

http://personals.signonsandiego.com/blog/hunkmagnit

Chaos = Order

According to a computational study conducted by a group of physicists at Washington University in St. Louis, one may create order by introducing disorder.

I love stories like this because it involves something simple (chaos leads to order), fundamental, and paradigm shifting. Plus the spill-over ramifications for other fields (chemistry, statistics, music, ballet, architecture, etc.) are extremely broad.

http://www.physorg.com/news63381025.html

Advanced Portable Spherical Dwelling

Reminiscent of Fuller's vision for the Dymaxion House and advanced mass producible autonomous dwellings, Architect Marcin Panpuch has designed a high tech spherical house which can either float on water or be lifted by crane and fixed to a tower beside other such spheres.

I love the idea of completely re-thinking the idea of habitat. Of course, if there were thousands of the bucky ball houses floating in the Thames, navigation would be tricky.

http://bfi.org/node/810