In Germany, on certain holidays, public dancing is banned. The State of Baden-Württemberg has one of the strictest anti-dancing laws: no dancing on Sunday from 3 -11 AM plus a long list of public, religious holidays. Now the State government has decided to loosen the rules and allow public dancing on Sundays, New Year’s day, […]

The sailing stones of Death Valley were one of natures curious and vexing riddles. How do the stones move to leave their distinctive trails? I wrote about this phenomenon a few years ago. Now I found the answer in this YT video published today:

First installment of “trivia that blows my mind” … yeah, Groucho Marx and Alice Cooper were buddies. Look at them having breakfast … Here is what Alice said recently about his friendship with Groucho: Well Groucho Marx – I grew up on Groucho Marx. The Marx Brothers, every time they were on, I would sit […]

This guy takes the Second Amendment to a whole new level: Stephen Forthman shoots first and asks questions later. He wears a shirt proudly displaying the words “I don’t dial 911” next to a picture of a hand gripping a sixshooter. When it comes time to contact local emergency services for assistance, he’d rather just […]

Saturday morning cartoons … Enjoy! Super Chicken: Mighty Mouse Batman Spiderman, The Jetsons, Felix, and Woody Woodpecker below the fold …

Lots of ones today – 01/11/11 at 11:11 ( or 11/01/11 for the rest of the world …) Happy one-eleven day! Any ideas for how to celebrate 11/11/11 in 10 months? Maybe a party!

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 […]

If you have read my posts over the summer, you’ll know that we pretty much spent our summer vacation building a 1200 foot (400 M) pasture fence. Well, Google Earth noticed too, and took some great pictures of our work – from space! Google hat vor Kurzem die Satelitenphotos von unserer Gegend erneuert und mir […]

This is beautiful mystery of nature: on a dry lake bed in Death Valley in California, rocks are moving around and no one knows exactly how or why. The rocks leave tracks in the dirt and they appear to move sometimes at speeds faster than a human walking. Yet, no one has ever seen one […]

Preserved at 50 Meters depth on a ship wreck in the Northern Baltic Sea, divers discovered a cache of roughly 200-year-old beer and champagne. Experts seem to think the drinks are still good, because they were “stored” at a constant temperature of about 5° Celsius in total darkness. CNN – Sept. 3, 2010: “At the […]

Yesterday was the second day at over 100 deg. F here in Durham. At RDU airport a heat record for that day was recorded at 102 °F / 38 °C. Great week for building a pasture fence …

Today was the hottest day this year, so far: 96 Deg. F / 35 Deg. C and max humidity at 90%. Summer has begun in Durham!

Yesterday, Jacob and I went to the Durham Country library and he got the current Guinness Book of World Records. So I started wondering what the connection was between the book of records and beer. Wikipedia to the rescue: On 4 May 1951, Sir Hugh Beaver, then the managing director of the Guinness Breweries, went […]

Every year the earth’s rotation slows a bit and so we have to add a second to our time keeping once in a while to keep it in sync with the old rock. Large earthquakes like the devastating tremor last week in Chile, or the Sumatran quake that triggered the massive tsunami 0f 2004 can […]

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 […]

With three stokes of his wooden mallet, the Mayor of Munich tapped a 224-Liter beer barrel today – the first of many beer barrels to be drained at this year’s Oktoberfest in Munich. He poured the first Mass for the Ministerpräsident (governor) of Bavaria. Organizers expect to sell 6 Million Mass (Liters) at €7.90, as […]

… 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 […]

Boy – Bill Gates is so not funny! Even Jon Stewart has a hard time being funny with the Ãœber-geek in the studio. “What does the F12 button do?” ??? This is a bit of an awkward interview, especially for Stewart, who is usually pretty good at it. Last night we watched the DVD of […]

The Dakar Rally has always fascinated me, even though, over the years, I became increasingly aware of its questionable ethics regarding the communities it touches, and the waste of resources on a vain, more-or-less useless sporting event. Motorsports are basically pretty stupid, but still, I cannot totally escape the fascination of a race across the […]

Today’s Word of the Day was invented (I think) by my boss: picobuckets. We got a good chuckle out of this one during the staff meeting, when he tried to illustrate his consternation at some of the strange measurements of one of his fellow researchers.