Today is the special day of the year when logophiles everywhere pause and remember that a good pun is its own reword.
In honor of April Fool’s Day, a few obscure engineering conversion factors:
1. Ratio of an igloo’s circumference to its diameter = Eskimo Pi
2. Time between slipping on a peel and smacking the pavement = 1 bananosecond
3. Half a large intestine = one semicolon
4. 2000 mockingbirds = two kilomockingbirds
5. 5 statute miles of intravenous surgical tubing at Yale University Hospital = One I.V. League
OK. I’m long overdue for a posting of miscellany that I have found interesting. Most of this is topical and serious, because, ummm, I’m a serious kind of guy. 😛
The Mind is a Metaphor. A database of thousands of metaphors organized by category, like 18th century, Liquid, or Jacobite. It’s maintained by University of Virginia English Professor Brad Pasanek.
Fender Factory Tour 1959 – Leo Fender in the second shot. A day when “everything was done by hand… It is amazing to realize that every guitar made that year is now worth a small fortune.” The 1959-63 era Stratocaster is called one of the 50 guitars to play before you die.
How to buy a top hat – Charles Henry Wolfenbloode gives advice on buying a topper.
The United Stated Geological Survey has finished a six-year effort to map the surface of Jupiter’s moon Io.
4×5 Kodachromes from the American war effort in 1942.
Brendan Fitzpatrick took x-ray photographs of flowers that can be magnified by clicking on them.
Oh, My Hand: Complaints Medieval Monks Scribbled in the Margins of Illuminated Manuscripts.
Microworlds is the blog of biology student Daniel Stoupin, and he also has a photography website as well. His chosen subject is microphotography, especially of living things. Perhaps the best place to start is his latest post, where he uses fluorescent dyes to take pictures of a rotting flea embryo. Other favorites are shells of microscopic crustaceans, colorful plant seed fluorescence and mosquito larva in polarized light. He has also made a video, and explains the process here.
Wikipaintings is a fantastic resource, a well curated database of the world’s great paintings that will blow your mind. Click the logo in the top left corner for a collection of a random artist’s work in chronological order. Their popular artists and popular artworks.
10 Amazing Old Things That Still Work!
Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart is well-known for having been a child prodigy. A previously unknown composition of his, dated c. 1767, when he would have been 11 years old, (PDF of score) had it’s premiere earlier this week.
Less Wrong, a community dedicated to rationality, is compiling a list of The Best Textbooks on Every Subject.
“Why are small businesses such frequent targets? Because they offer hackers the easiest path to your financial information. In fact, security consultants say, there’s an entire underground industry built around extracting customers’ credit card numbers from retailers’ point-of-sale systems.” Slate: Why it’s so easy for hackers to steal financial information from restaurants
In honor of my sister getting her bachelor’s degree, the Smithsonian Institution Archives (SIA) is pleased to present a sampling of images documenting women scientists and engineers from around the world, most of whom were pioneers in their respective fields, or were the first women to receive advanced graduate degrees in their discipline
The Gallery of Default Anonymity What being nobody looks like all over the web.
Näher an der Klassik (Closer to the Classical) is an advertising campaign for the Berlin Philharmonic which features macro photographs that turn the inner spaces of musical instruments into lovely, cathedral-like spaces.
Pax Vobiscum