"Many in the group of residents saw manual labor as spiritually inhibiting..."

I gotta try that one on my boss.

Or I would, if I had a job.

There's also the Dirkon, a paper camera which you can download for free in PDF format, print out and build, and shoot with. I've never been able to get any decent photos with one, but that doesn't mean one shouldn't try.

Or you can make a pinhole camera from a matchbox, which I've gotten some great results with.

As long as we're picking nits, I'd point out that the DeLorean wasn't really "made famous" by the movie. When "Back to the Future" came out, I was 13, and it was common knowledge among everyone I knew what a DeLorean was. Heck, that was part of the reason we were excited to see the movie.

I got 35 in about five minutes, then I got bored and gave up.

The only one I'm surprised I missed is LBJ; don't know why I forgot about him.

Great story. Reminds me of Dr. Jerri Nielsen, the woman who was iced in at Antarctica when she discovered a lump in her breast. She did a biopsy on herself, and administered her own chemo until she could get home for better treatment.

Granted, she was a trained doctor, but the "medical emergency in impossible isolation" is similar.

John, the description at the left of the page says that if your screen is set to 72 pixels/inch, the page is eleven miles wide.

I live in Memphis, and we're very much aware that we're in the New Madrid Seismic Zone. About two years ago there was an earthquake in Arkansas that was strong enough for us to feel it here.

I've heard the "@" sign called an "ampersat." I assume this is by analogy: "Ampersand" means "and," so therefore "ampersat" must mean "at." I can't find any source backing this up, though.

Also, the interrobang is a punctuation mark whose time, I think, has come: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Interrobang

I always thought the most disappointing tourist attraction was the Odessa Meteor Crater in Texas: http://www.texasbob.com/travel/tbt_odscrt.html

Plymouth Rock looks worse, though.

Frank, glad you mentioned it, but the spelling is "res ipsa loquitur." Loquitur is linguistically analogous to "non sequitur" in this case.

There's a key point some folks seem to be missing here. According to the Neatorama post, this isn't done for entertainment; the post begins, "Do you have a problem with squirrels, chipmunks, or other outdoor critters? If so, there’s now a solution - the squirrel catapult."

In other words, this thing was made to get the damn squirrels off the porch. Squirrels are tenacious, ingenious, near-unstoppable little bastards, who will tear up your house, lawn, wiring, or anything else that they feel a need to tear up for whatever squirrely reason. The entertainment value is a side effect.

And frankly, I seriously doubt that the squirrels are even fazed. I've seen a squirrel take a 70-foot fall out of a tree; on landing, it immediately ran right back up the tree. I suspect the squirrel launcher is, at most, an inconvenience to them.

The phrase "a close-fitting piece of rubber material that slips over the head" sounds like a sure-fire recipe for an accidental suffocation.

I'd never heard it before, but Tiny Tim's cover of "Do You Think I'm Sexy" is no worse than the original.

It's a croupier's rake.

I collect and use old cameras that I get at estate sales and on eBay. I've run across this site before, in researching this or that new camera that I've bought. Great site; very thorough and informative.