Turns out P. T. Barnum never did say “There’s a Sucker Born Every Minute” … this is the crazy story of the Cardiff Giant From 1866 until 1868 Mr. George Hull, of Binghamton, New York studied archeology and paleontology. Over this period of time Hull contemplated how to pull off a hoax. It seems that [...]

This horse is CRAZY! He’s a KILLER!! Seriously … a couple of weeks ago Wally attacked me and Laura. He tried to kick me, backing up to me and kicking in my direction and then he bit Laura! But why? Usually he’s a gentle soul, always trying to please. Sometimes he can be stubborn. But [...]

July was a scorcher. Today we hit another record high temperature of 104 Deg. F (40° C). Last week was even worse, due to the high humidity we had the heat index reach 115 Deg. F (gefühlte 46° C) . On those days you just could just go outside and stand there …  and sweat. [...]

Thingyverse has a Colberthulhu: Wow. Weird … cool.

kalunkalunkalunk …. That’s what that truck said on Sunday. I knew it was a bad sound. Expensive. The sound of money down the drain. Well … this is the 1″x2″  hole where 5 grand of my hard-earned cash disappeared Sunday morning. My mechanic says it was a connecting rod that broke and punched that hole [...]

Yeah – another one of those weeks were “challenging” was just not good enough. At work we have to re-build our main file server and so we’re shuffling Terabytes of data around the networks, checking file permissions, backing up data, bla bla bla … Julia had a viola recital today with all the other students [...]

Not sure this is going to help resolve the crisis in Côte D’Ivoire: The UN Security Council has issued a statement saying that Ivory Coast opposition candidate Alassane Ouattara won the disputed presidential election. The statement came after three days of debate at the UN, in which Russia expressed concern that the UN was exceeding [...]

FIFA just announced some interesting choices for the Worldcup hosts for 2018 and 2022 … Russia will host the 2018 Worldcup …  considering the  safety discussion around the Worldcup in South Africa, the safety discussion should be really interesting regarding the country with the worst hooligans and worst xenophobia problems in Europe.  And Quatar? Yeah [...]

The internet has done it again. It has spawned yet another amusing way to waste huge amounts of perfectly good time: product reviews of some of the more absurd items on Amazon.com. Tuscan Whole Milk for $99??!! And … more than 1200 reviews for this product!! Or a $6,000-speaker cable … or a jar of [...]

In a recent interview about his TV Show, Dr. Stephen Hawking questioned the wisdom of trying to make contact with alien civilizations. When one of the few bona-fide geniuses of our time weighs in an any debate, it is significant. And I think the debate over whether to send signals into space or just to [...]

Last Thursday around lunchtime a truck with a huge industrial freezer crashed into the Gregson St railroad trestle – the “truck guillotine”  as some are calling it. This time I was there and I had my camera with me, so in addition to the actual crash footage I also shot some footage of the crash [...]

Not sure if this is good news or bad news: Trafigura, the company responsible for the Probo Koala toxic waste scandal 3 years ago, settled with the lawyers representing the Ivorian victims for $46 Million – that’s a little over $1,500 per person. Yes, that’s real money for most folks in Cote d’Ivoire – a [...]

Coming back from West Africa, I found some excellent truck crash footage, which I proceeded to post to my YouTube channel. Turns out that one of the trucks had some furniture on it that belongs to a guy who writes for Gizmodo and he posted the crash video on said website. Since the post appeared, [...]

So, as I said earlier, the camera I set up at Brightleaf caught several trucks crashing into the railroad trestle across the street. A couple of weeks ago I got an email from TV producer who was interested in my videos. First I was suspicious – but after a few Google searches he looked legit. [...]

About a year ago I installed a camera to record the traffic outside my office in dwntown Durham. Over the course of that year, that camera recorded several boxtrucks crashing into the railroad trestle crossing Gregson St. Here is the newest one: There’s more on my YouTube Channel. The fundamental problem here is not so [...]

As of yesterday, days will be getting longer again on this side of the globe. Of course here, in the Old North State that’s not that big a deal, anyway. But I did start paying more attention to sunrise/sunset this fall. When I bike to work and back home, I prefer to avoid the bad [...]

… accidentally. In the night from Wednesday to Thursday, 170 armed Swiss troops crossed into the tiny neighboring Principality of Liechtenstein. They got lost in bad weather in the Alps during a training exercise and strayed a mile into the unarmed principalities sovereign territory. Scrambling to prevent any escalation, both countries immediately launched diplomatic efforts [...]

Since I received my greencard ten years ago, I had very little interaction with the US immigration services – basically I showed my greencard to the friendly officers at the airport once in a while. So when my greencard was about to expire, I requested a new one. I payed the $270 (!) fee and [...]

Oops – apparently the harddrive fried on the server that hosts my website, this blog and my email server. So I was without email (at least non-work email) for two evenings, which was a bit disconcerting. And I was a bit nervous about the provider’s ability to restore all services and files and databases. I [...]

Tom Philpott (Grist) questions entomologist and biofuels skeptic extraordinaire David Pimentel (Cornell) about why crop-based energy won’t work. Interesting interview, but Pimentel does need to get out a bit more. And I wish Philpott had been a bit more probing on some of Pimentel’s assertions – like this one: Pimentel: Conserve! One word. And no [...]