Guesses At Nothing

This map shows where every McDonald’s is in the contiguous United States. 

[From Weather Sealed via Neatorama]

And this is a satellite image of the U.S. taken at night.

Basically, if your city’s luminescence can be seen from space, then you have a McDonald’s (whose golden arches contribute to said luminosity).

And if you are wondering, the farthest you can be from a McDonald’s is 107 miles as the crow flies, or 145 miles by car.

The 8-bit version of Miles Davis’s Kind of Blue, Kind of Bloop, is well worth the 5 USD.

Seriously, make up your mind. 

[via Accordian Guy]

Huxely was right.

[via kottke.org]

These are my Twisted Words – a track from Radiohead for the unbeatable price of £0.00

David Lynch (of Twin Peaks fame) started the Interview Project that posts video interviews with random people from all about the country every three days.  

[via BoingBoing]

Old but never-the-less still creepy.

My first blogish looking thing, Jypsum, is now resuscitated as a sub directory of this blog.  I won’t update it, but it is there for historical reasons.  I liked reading all I had to say about my ‘girlfriend’ who is now my wife.

Artwork from the incomplete William Burroughs graphic novel, Ah Pook is Here.

[via BoingBoing]

He:

• Knows the trouble I’ve seen.
• Likes a whiner.
• Cares.
• Loves you.
• Knows.
• Gives a shit.
• Has a problem with it.
• Wants to know.
• Has the answer.
• Loves me.
• Does it better.
• Does it like me.
• Doesn’t like Sarah Lee.

Arr!

Dick Cheney: “F*ck the Police”

The Fresh Prince playing RBI Baseball on a NES hooked to a CRT Television wearing Jamz(?) and Nike’s with a VCR and stack of Compact Discs nearby.

The record companies sucked even waaaaaay back when. 

You’d think with the amount of paranoia in the RIAA they would have been on top of the digital revolution and figured out a viable way to monetize downloads.  I’ll call it the Oil Company Syndrome.  Fight change instead of endorsing it because there is stil potential money to be made.

I wonder if there is a theory of economics based on the potential v. kinetic paradigm. 

Potential = oil still in the ground; kinetic = green energy
Potential = CD, audio cassettes, 8 track, Vinyl; kinetic = digital

Today is 500 days since we got married.  Happy 500th Meg.  Love you.

You can find all kinds of *versaries here.

In a simple cartoon.  3.14 = 41.3

Hypocrisy, thy name is Arlington Independent School District.

The future is an oyster.  Crack it open.

http://makehistory.national911memorial.org/

While I am not in the Smokies, I have seen firefly synchronicity in my backyard.  From BoingBoing:

Long thought to be an exclusively Southeast Asian phenomenon, the dazzling behavior was only discovered in an American firefly species (P. Carolinus) in 1992. The American fireflies were first brought to the attention of scientists by a reader of Science News, who thought it odd that an article on Asian firefly synchronicity mentioned nothing about the bugs near her own home. She wrote a letter to a Steven Strogratz, a Cornell mathematician who studies synchronization:

"I am sure you are aware of this, but just in case, there is a type of group synchrony lightning bug inside the Great Smoky Mountain National Park near Elkmont, Tennessee. These bugs "start up" in mid June at 10 pm nightly. They exhibit 6 seconds of total darkness; then in perfect synchrony, thousands light up 6 rapid times in a 3 second period before all going dark for 6 more seconds. "We have a cabin in Elkmont... and as far as we know, it is only in this small area that this particular type of group synchronized lightning bug exists. It is beautiful."

I think this speaks to a different phenomenon, the tendency for academia to discover things that are common knowledge elsewhere.  Or perhaps to give names to things that most people understand, but just don’t have words for.  I think this would be especially true for psychology. Did we really need Pavlov to tell us that a dinner bell will make your mouth water?

If anybody has a name for this phenomenon, I’d like to know what it is, but in the meantime I’ll call it Academic Overt Nomenclature.  Mark this as the first recorded case Academic Overt Nomenclature in action.

The relatively old but awesome story about a secret message inside Lincoln’s watch.  From NPR:

Dillon told his family that as he held the watch in his hands, the store's owner rushed up and shouted, "Dillon, war has begun." Dillon was a Unionist — he lived in a city that bordered the South but was loyal to the North and the federal government — and as the story goes, he brashly opened the watch and secretly engraved the words: "The first gun is fired. Slavery is dead. Thank God we have a President who at least will try."

Further proof that naked men in public are always angry (via clusterflock), I present you with this story about a naked man (who I went to high school with) who nabs a would be car thief.  From the article:

Chentnik, a sous chef at a retirement home, says he was completely naked in bed about 4 a.m. Friday when Skip, the mini goldendoodle [sic] he was watching for friends, started barking up a storm. His friend and roommate, Laura Nelson, swore someone was in the house, but he told her to go back to bed.

Then she yelled that someone was stealing her car and threw a glass of water in his face to wake him up, Chentnik said.

Chentnik jumped out of bed and saw the reverse lights on Nelson's 2003 Mitsubishi Montero. Indifferent to his lack of clothing, he ran from his house in the 2800 block of Seventh Street in Boulder, opened the passenger-side door of the moving car and took the keys out of the car. Nelson called police.

The man who had tried to drive away in the car jumped out, Chentnik said, and the two men began struggling in the street. Chentnik grabbed the man by his shirt and pulled him onto the lawn.

“I was naked, and I thought, ‘If I'm going down, I better not do it in the street,'” he said.

The man had a full wine bottle — a Louis Jadot Pinot Noir — and hit Chentnik on the head with it, he said. Chentnik then grabbed the bottle and hit the man in the face.

Arnie keeps the original Conan the Barbarian sword in his office.  You know, just in case anarchy breaks out or something.  Straight from the horses mouth.

Two more bits of work from Thom Yorke coming soon.

[Photo CC Licensed by Kendo]

Creepy realistic painting of the formerly-lovable-amaranthaceae-loving sailor-man.

If I could design video games, I would make a fishing game, but instead of being a bass master, I would make the main character the fish. I imagine it would look something like this:

There's a lot you could do with the idea:

• Select what fish you wanted to be
  
• A "temptation meter" that you have to keep low by eating tasty morsels (that aren't connected to hooks)
  
• Attempt to spit the hook
  
• Fight the fisherman to tire him out
  
• Attempt to flop off of the boat
• Lives would be determined by whether or not the fisherman was fishing for sport or fishing for food.
  
• Many different lakes (or oceans) to choose form
  

If by chance any inspired game developer reads this idea, feel free to build it, and keep any profits provided you give me a copy of the game.

[Above photo CC licensed by Cliff Dix Jr

Life is not a story according to Kurt Vonnegut. At least not the kind that you are used to.

Photo CC licensed by Cliff1066