Photo: Flickr user lifeontheedge

Thursday, February 16, 2006

Plain language is good. The Transportation section of the "Gaza Strip" article gives a better gestalt of the situation there, and the wider conflict, than many other things I've read.

Tuesday, February 14, 2006

Sunday, February 12, 2006

WACK-a-Pedia! is a blog very similar to this one. (I should figure out how to add tags.)

Numbers stations are shortwave radio stations of uncertain origin. They generally broadcast people reading streams of numbers, words, or letters (often using a phonetic alphabet). It is not known where these signals originate or what purpose they serve.

Birthday attack

Tuesday, February 07, 2006

The smallest park in the world.

Indie music (from independent) is any of a number of genres, scenes, subcultures and stylistic and cultural attributes, characterised by (real or perceived) independence from commercial pop music and mainstream culture

A proverb says that "all roads lead to Rome". Roman roads were designed that way to prevent provinces from organising resistance against the Empire.

Sunday, February 05, 2006

Euphemisms can eventually become taboo words themselves through a process called the euphemism treadmill

Hundertwasserhaus was built between 1983 and 1986 by architect Univ.-Prof. Joseph Krawina. It features undulating floors ("an uneven floor is a melody to the feet"), a roof covered with earth and grass, and large trees growing from inside the rooms, with limbs extending from windows.

Michael Malloy was a New York City vagrant in the early 20th century. He is known solely for his constitution, rivalled only by that of Rasputin. It is said that 30 attempts were made to murder him, all unsuccessful but the final one.

Check out this picture of Brazil. (It's amazing how much it looks like Simcity.)

Tuesday, January 31, 2006

An eponym is a person whose name has (or is thought to have) given rise to the name of a particular place, tribe, discovery or other item. (Scroll down for the list of lists. Eponymous adages is especially cool, despite being only a mediocre band name.)

Monday, January 30, 2006

"This IP has been blocked. It belongs to Information Systems, U.S. House of Representatives and is responsible for a large amount of vandalism."

Spark that lit the news story. Digging through Congress's sorry edit history.

A slashdot poster puts it well: "What a funny reflection of the world (or at least the US) today; politicians meddle with something that belongs to the public, making it worse, using it to their own advantage, and the public has to kick them out."

Silver lining: the fact that it's news at all, that service providers will be contacted and, I hope, staffers fired or bitched out. Transparency breeding accountability. We'll see what happens as the election season draws closer.

Friday, January 20, 2006

Brfxxccxxmnpcccclllmmnprxvclmnckssqlbb11116 (pronounced albin) was a name intended for a Swedish child who was born in 1991. It is one of many unusual personal names.

Thursday, January 12, 2006

The Louis Braille article before google linked a search for "lewis braille birthdate" from its logo. The article 24 hours later. (Wikipedia Signpost on the subject. And the current version of the article, for the hell of it.)