I thought it was pretty clever (especially the guys with the laser) but had to really chuckle when I learned this was actually a "public art project" that was the Masters' Thesis (in Fine Arts) for the organizers.

www.cmu.edu/news/archive/2008/November/nov11_streetwithaview.shtml

The description on the above link is a real hoot.
I quote:
"For one day, artists and citizens turned a small, one-way alley in Pittsburgh's North Side into a dream world, an elaborate montage of spontaneous performance and provocative visual art."

AND

"Integrating fiction, community storytelling and performance art into the platform of instant-access, 360-degree imaging, the "Street With A View" project explodes the barrier between reality and performance, life and art. It represents communities and artists taking back the power to define themselves and their environments and to use technology as a tool of self-expression."

Somebody is really taking themself a little too seriously. Come on.... It was a funny prank, but a Master's Thesis project?

I'm not sure what liphttam is talking about... blank one? huh? It works for me...

Anyhow, I'm a huge fan of old non-fiction and Google Books is one of my favorite spots to peruse.

It really is a GREAT deal to have all these classic PopSci issues available for easy browsing! For years both my father and I were Popular Science subscribers. I finally canned it about 10 years ago when the magazine really degenerated and adopted a "jam anything & everything green down your throat editorial policy" ... They've basically morphed into Popular One-Sided Left Wing Science and the science is particulary weak these days. Of course, they were never as egg-heady as Scientific American (itself a disaster today for the same reasons... quite a shame) but they did focus on emerging technology and generally presented a neutral political stance and objective editorial policy. Well, those days are long gone.

But at least we can look back on these old classics that aimed to teach people and present alternate views on future technology. Good stuff, but sad how far things have fallen with them.

hah hah, ted beat me to it again.

While I've no doubt that somebody can come up with something creative from plastic rubbish, this isn't it.

I think choosing Atlantis instead of a real city for which there is archeological evidence (which she would need to match) merely gave her a very escape route -- she didn't have to make it very realistic since no one can argue what Atlantis really looked like. Compare that with needing to duplicate the Pantheon, Circus Maximus, and Flavian Ampitheatre in Ancient Rome.

The post here is a little misleading, but the link clears it up. If this cat (from Cornwall) makes it another 2 years, it will reach the *UK* (not world) record of 29.

If one considers Guinness to be the keeper of records on such things, this cat is not currently the world "oldest cat", nor even the current UK "oldest cat" because such a claim hasn't been officially made to them yet. That's where in the article, the Guinness guy encourages the owners to give Guinness a call. If Guinness accepts the claim, it sounds like it would be the current UK senior cat.

As the link notes, Creme Puff made it to 38 and is the world record holder but was a US based feline. Mischief needs to worry about the UK record first...

I've had a couple of 19 year old cats, one of which could have been older. My current geezer will by 18 in the Spring and is doing pretty well. Indoor cats generally live a LOT longer than outdoor-only or indoor/outdoor.

Wow, looks like some serious white-trash dietetic cuisine.

clearly a ripoff. It's a whole lot more than a loose inspiration.

10/10. This should be pretty easy to anyone who took high school biology. Actually, the distinction is even easier than that. A gradeschooler could handle it IF the material was covered in what masquerades as "Science" class these days in the (US) government schools.

The neologism "sea star" for what had been formerly called a starfish irks me. Yeah, we know it really isn't a fish. Duh. Is it really necessary to create a new name to make this clear to us supposed undereducated masses?

My wife and I visited the Monterey Aquarium a few years ago and had fun watching the docents spend LOTS of time patronizingly correct ever little kid who said "Look at the starfish!" or "What pretty jellyfish!". (Jellyfish are *sea jellies* now).

I asked the docent why she was repeatedly being such a douche (OK, I was nicer than that) to all the little kids, and she exclaimed "well, they aren't really fish, you know!" at which point I retorted that they weren't really stars either. I also alerted her that seahorses weren't really horses either, so she better come up with a new name for those as well.

The funny thing was she didn't seem to be able to answer too many technical questions about the animals themselves... Her job training seemed to have been concentrated at correcting anyone who didn't use the new P.C. terminology. She wasn't the only docent there doing this, either; I heard others, but didn't bother harassing them as it started to get more busy.

Must be the best place in town to drag race. They pretty well set up a public "Christmas tree" ...

I've had some poor luck.

I enter:
"The Gallic Wars" by Julius Caesar

It recognizes the title/author, but I get:
"Unfortunately we currently have no recommendations
for the books you have entered." Hmmm. OK, so maybe that title IS a little dated.

so I try instead: "A History of the English Speaking Peoples" by Winston S. Churchill. -- this is the book that earned him the Nobel Prize in Literature. It's not an obscure title.
...SAME RESULT

so I try "The Story of Civilization" by Will Durant
... SAME RESULT

sounds like (for non-fiction at least), it is better suited for titles seen on Oprah.

I'd be tempted to buy it if it was Napolean Dynamite's hand. Not a cast of his hand, but the real hand.

Vote for Pedro.

As my dad would say, "If you don't like it, you don't know what's good for you'."

The ultra-processed bricks they sell in supermarkets are pretty lame, but good fruitcake is plenty tasty.

We buy my dad one every year from the monks (yeah, real monks) at The Abbey of the Genessee in Western NY (plug: www.geneseeabbey.org/bread-store2.html). Awful yummy good.

Good call on including Freeman, but let's not forget the guy who originally developed the lobotomy procedure (Dr. Egas Moniz). Moriz actually got the 1949 Nobel prize in Medicine for his work.

Freeman (a neurologist) together with James Watts (a surgeon) "optimized" Moniz's original procedure, coined the term "lobotomy", and busily promoted the procedure. When old Joe Kennedy had his troublesome daughter Rosemary lobotomized by Freeman, the profound damage incurred finally brought some public scrutiny to the issue.

Hey hey hey...
Misogyny and sexism are NOT synonyms. Whilst this ads may be sexist by today's norms, they are not misogynistic.

By the way... some of you siad you tried it and found it not to work well... you might want to try cold water instead of room temp water. A Stirling engine's efficiency is improved by making either the hot side hotter or the cold side colder or both.

And if yours works OK already, I think it should spin faster with cold water. Let me know if this proves true.