Photo: Flickr user lifeontheedge

Saturday, September 15, 2007

Globus Cassus is a utopian project for the transformation of Planet Earth into a much bigger, hollow, artificial world with an ecosphere on its inner surface.

Wednesday, September 12, 2007

The first programmable robot and drum machine, circa 1206 a.d.

Via Timeline of the most important human inventions. (Spoiler: everything before the 16th century was invented in china or n. africa.)

War Plan Red was a military document outlining a hypothetical war between the United States and the British Empire (the "Red" forces). It was developed by the United States Army during the mid 1920s, and was officially withdrawn in 1939, when it and others like it were replaced by the five "Rainbow" plans created to deal with the Axis threat.

The war was intended to be a continental war, waged primarily on North American territory between the United States and the British Empire. The assumption was that Canada would represent the ideal geographic forum through which the British could wage war against the United States.

Defence Scheme No. 1 was a plan created by Canadian Director of Military Operations and Intelligence Col. James "Buster" Sutherland Brown, for a Canadian counter-invasion of the United States.

Monday, September 10, 2007

The glass harmonica is a type of musical instrument that uses a series of glass bowls or goblets graduated in size to produce musical tones by means of friction, making it a crystallophone. Note that despite being played with wet fingers, the sound is produced by the glass, so the glass harmonica is not a hydraulophone even if played completely submerged in water.

Sunday, September 09, 2007

David Phillips (pudding)

2 millionth wikipedia article

Apparently, it's El Hormiguero

The mailing list says:

Apparently, the 2,000,000th article in en-wp is El Hormiguero, on a Spanish comedy and science TV show. (This is not yet officially confirmed by WMF, and seems to be under a bit of bickering.)

We should get them to do a skit about Wikipedia for one of their shows, and then release it under a free license permitting reuse and derivative works... then we can set up a kiosk with a television monitor playing that show in a continuous loop (with English subtitles) along with other Wikipedia/Wikimedia stuff (like a speech by Jimbo), and put it in the Jordanhill railway station, thus combining the 1,000,000th and 2,000,000th topics in a place that Wikipedians can make pilgrimages to.

A premature obituary occurs when someone's death is reported while they are still alive. List of premature obituaries.