Riddle
Saturday, January 29, 2005, 08:54 - Miscellaneous
What is greater than God
but worse than the devil?
The poor have it
but the rich need it.
If you eat it you will die.


Totally Useless Facts
Friday, January 28, 2005, 07:37 - Miscellaneous
On average, 100 people choke to death on ballpoint pens every year.

Los Angeles's full name is: "El Pueblo de Nuestra Senora la Reina de losAngeles de Poriuncula" and can be abbreviated to 3.63% of its size, "LA."

Tigers have striped skin, not just striped fur.

The human heart creates enough pressure when it pumps out to the body to squirt blood 30 feet.

A pig's orgasm lasts 30 minutes.

Some lions mate over 50 times a day.

The strongest muscle in the body is the tongue.

All of the clocks in the movie "Pulp Fiction" are stuck on 4:20.

No word in the English language rhymes with month, orange, silver, or purple.

It's impossible to sneeze with your eyes open.

The original name for butterfly was flutterby.


More Totally Useless Facts.


Twins born 6 weeks apart
Friday, January 7, 2005, 23:27 - Miscellaneous
A Romanian woman has given birth to a son and is due to give birth to his twin six weeks later in what has been called a medical first in Romania.

The twins were conceived from the same egg in May, but had separate placentas. The mother, Maricica Tescu has two uteruses due to a congenital malformation. Her first child was born on December 11, the second twin is due to be born at full term at the end of January.

There have been about a dozen similar cases worldwide.


2005 Weblog Awards
Thursday, January 6, 2005, 22:59 - Miscellaneous
From now until 10:00 PM EST (GMT-5) on Monday, January 10, 2005, anyone can nominate their favorite weblogs for the 2005 Bloggies.
The Bloggies are a set of 30 publicly-chosen awards given to weblog writers and those related to weblogs.
Everyone's invited to take part in the awarding process, so find out how you can nominate and vote for your favorite blogs!


World's longest palindrome
Tuesday, December 28, 2004, 01:49 - Miscellaneous
I came across this page by Ken Seehof, who claims to have a 12 billion words palindrome. A palindrome is a word, or in this case a sentence, that is exactly the same when read backbards as forwards.
On his site he publishes a much shorter version, which still is very long. The sentence appears to be highly repetetive, but it is non-repeating in the mathematical sense. I must admit though that the sentence doesn't make very much sense...

However, when you shorten his sentence even further, you get a palindrome that does appeal to me:
A man, a plan, a cat, a dog, God at a canal -- Panama!


2.5 Gigapixel image !?
Tuesday, November 16, 2004, 04:16 - Miscellaneous
TNO (the Dutch applied physics research institute) has created what they call a 2.5 gigapixel zoomable picture of Delft (where I live) and The Hague in the background (where I work). It's a panorama photo created from 600 regular digital pictures that they took from the tallest building in Delft: the faculty of Electrical Engineering (where I got my MSc) of the Delft University of Technology.

They created an automated setup that took the pictures in 1 hour and 20 minutes. It then took 20 hours to fit them together, and 3 days on 5 high-end computers to create the composite.

I think it's a really cool picture, especially because it's all known territory to me.

(If the zoomable image on above link is not loading, use this mirror.)


Cuddle Party
Monday, November 15, 2004, 02:48 - Miscellaneous
I just read an article about Cuddle Parties. Apparently this is the trendy response to a world getting colder and harder.

At a cuddle party, people get together in their pajamas and lie against and on top of each other in a puppy pile, caressing, massaging and kissing each other. There are a few ground rules one should obey and therefore there even is a cuddle lifeguard on duty. Sex is strictly forbidden and I especially like Rule #7: "No Dry Humping" :)

It seems to be very big already in New York City and is spreading around the world. I myself have never been to such a party and I doubt that I ever will. I'm just not a very cuddly person myself. But we'll see....



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