Domo-pumpkin, originally uploaded by scpetrel.
I can’t take credit for this creative effort, but isn’t it fabulous? This is our team entry for the pumpkin decorating contest at work.
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The commentary is hilarious, too.
She follows in the pawprints of Tenzing, who was also featured on the site.
With all the political news around (which I am not touching in this particular forum, except to say that everyone needs to make sure they are duly registered and participate in the process), I was glad to see the 2008 Ig Nobel prizes awarded. For those who aren’t familiar with them, the Ig Nobels are meant to “honor achievements that first make people laugh, and then make them think.”
I laughed. Did I think? Maybe.
My favorites this year:
- NUTRITION PRIZE. Massimiliano Zampini of the University of Trento, Italy and Charles Spence of Oxford University, UK, for electronically modifying the sound of a potato chip to make the person chewing the chip believe it to be crisper and fresher than it really is.
- BIOLOGY PRIZE. Marie-Christine Cadiergues, Christel Joubert,, and Michel Franc of Ecole Nationale Veterinaire de Toulouse, France for discovering that the fleas that live on a dog can jump higher than the fleas that live on a cat.
- PHYSICS PRIZE. Dorian Raymer of the Ocean Observatories Initiative at Scripps Institution of Oceanography, USA, and Douglas Smith of the University of California, San Diego, USA, for proving mathematically that heaps of string or hair or almost anything else will inevitably tangle themselves up in knots.
The physics prize, in particular, is very relevant, as anyone who has ever handled a pair of headphones already knows.
I think the 2007 awards had more flair, but still.
I’ve been asked occasionally where my “scpetrel” handle comes from — no, it’s not “South Carolina Pet Relationships,” although that’s a good guess. No, it’s really not. Sorry. My alma mater’s mascot is a stormy petrel, which is a seafaring bird akin to an albatross. It was the favorite bird of James Edward Oglethorpe, who founded the state of Georgia and gave his name to the university. I wrote a features piece for the college paper back in the day about the origins of said mascot, including some original source citations about the poor petrels (which are oily birds) being set on fire in a storm so that the sailors could follow them to land. I am not making this up, I swear. Anyway, how’s this for a word of the day? I like the second definition.
Tags: humor, what the hell?
I spotted this in the break room at work and couldn’t help but take a photo. Food poisoning, anyone?
Tags: humor, photos, what the hell?
Wisdom
"Imagine if every Thursday your shoes exploded if you tied them the usual way. This happens to us all the time with computers, and nobody thinks of complaining."
