Remember– There’s a Party in Sweden’s Pants!
Via an academic blog (believe it or not) I read once in a while, a thaumaturgical compedium.
Click here
The 1-click Award, a site from Japan. But that’s pretty much all I know, other than it’s kinda funny.
Will Krause, Science Olympian
I think it’s fair to say that Annette, Will, and I are just now recovering from our grand experience at the Washtenaw (county, that is) Elementary Science Olympiad on Saturday.
I didn’t get any good pictures frankly, but the Ann Arbor News did:
This is a water propelled bottle rocket contest; cute, huh? And here’s the article in yesterday’s Ann Arbor News— you have to go through the registration rig-a-ma-roll with the site if you want to see the piece, but it is probably worth it.
The article said there were 300 students competing, but I swear it felt more like 1,000. We got there (it was held over at an elementary school and middle school complex on the other side of Ann Arbor) at about 9 am or so and we were there until about 5:30, and it just seemed like one sea of parents and kids and teachers in chaos pretty much the whole time. Thus the long recovery period.
Will competed in two events– well, technically, three. He was on the science pentathlon team, which was this event where the kids had to answer a science trivia question and then complete some kind of minor athletic task– bouncing a ball, throwing something through a hoop, etc. Will’s team didn’t do so hot, in part because they were short a player.
He was a “second stringer” on the “Wright stuff” team, which is a competition where they build these ridiculously precise airplanes from balsa and tissue and then fly them with rubber band props. Will and his partner’s airplane was the “B team,” so they didn’t get to compete. But the “A team” for his grade level won, so I think of that as Will winning too. Hey, the bench warmers are still on the team, right?
And then he was also on the science jeopardy team, which was a team-oriented jeopardy contest. They lost their first round quite badly, but they rallied and actually ended up in fourth place, which was an unexpected triumph.
Actually, Estabrook did quite well in this thing overall, I’d say in the top third of schools that competed. I don’t often have “Ypsi pride,” but I have to say I was very proud that our scruffy little band of kids competed well with the ones from the “good schools” in Ann Arbor. Will’s looking forward to it for next year, and I might even volunteer to coach something. We’ll see….
Mmm… computers… waffles… computer waffles…
I’m going to assume that this is some sort of photoshop trick, but it does make me think about buying a waffle iron….
The end of the term…
…changes me into a monkey.
Hobbit doll house
Via boing boing comes this very cool doll house rendition of Bilbo Baggins house. Since at least my wife and one of my good friends/colleagues are a bit too in to this sort of thing.
The Landlord
Will Ferrell and a small child (I presume his?) in “The Landlord.”
Interestingly enough, this “viral video” that “everyone has already heard about” is something I read about this afternoon in that dinosaur blog technology, the newspaper.
Rolling Stone and “The Dark Side of Oz”
I forgot the book I was planning on reading while at the gym, so I instead picked up a recent (current?) copy of Rolling Stone and thumbed through it while on the elliptical trainer. Kinda fun to browse Rolling Stone about two or three times a year.
Anyway, there was a piece in there about Pink Floyd (I didn’t finish it, but it was a sort of “history of” kind of thing) and they mentioned a link on the web to infamous “Dark Side of Oz/Dark Side of the Rainbow” thing.  Basically, if you watch The Wizard of Oz while listening to the Pink Floyd album “The Dark Side of the Moon,” you get this weird effect of things synching up. I remember one time in Oregon, we tried this with some friends out there (sober, more less too), and I thought it was bullshit.
Well, I still do think it’s kinda stupid. Still, these “mashups” on the Rolling Stone web site are kind of interesting.
Andy’s Amazing Card Trick
(It took me a while to figure out how this works, but the initial shock of the trick is pretty cool).
Books worth listening to
I still haven’t really gotten into podcasting as a recreational listening thing. But this might be an interesting way to change my iPod listening habits, at least at the gym.