HOME |
RSS | 
Sure the price of gas is hurting a lot of us right now, but there are some that say $120 oil is actually good for consumers in the long run:
"Nobody at Goldman Sachs wants to see a fuel truck pull up and say "Ok, here’s your 60,000 gallons of gasoline,’" said Michael Cosgrove, president of the commodities brokerage Amerex Brokers, which handles transactions for both banks and end users of oil like refineries. "Ultimately, it’s the consumer."
Which is one reason why $120 oil is necessary – to limit demand in a supply-constrained world.
"I think the market is working," said Joseph Stanislaw, an independent energy adviser at the consulting firm Deloitte & Touche. "It forces us to make decisions as individual consumers that will change our behavior. It needs to be done."
Emily Jo Cureton has a fantastic blog featuring her NY Times Crossword Drawings. These are illustrations inspired by the daily New York Times crossword puzzle, where she cleverly incorporates two or more answers from the puzzle in her art!
Attention gamers: do you have a hard time firing? Perhaps you’re suffering from a medical condition called P.D. (Projectile Dysfunction). But worry not, there is a cure: Stroyent (humanifil killemal).
Here’s the viral ad from Enemy Territory: Quake Wars: hit play or go to Link [YouTube] | Stroyent website – via AdFreak
"The cynic knows the price of everything and the value of nothing."
– Oscar Wilde, author and playwright
Artist Elsa "Elsita" Mora created these fantastic (and cute to boot!) sculptures out of bits and pieces of flowers and leaves, called
"Flower Girls."
Check out many more examples at her blog: Link – via ohdeeoh
UK online retailer drinkstuff.com has this clever drink coaster set shaped like an "American burger" (I suppose us Yanks just call it "burger"). The buns, tomato, meat patty, cheese, and lettuce all function as drink coasters, and when you’re done – stack ‘em all up like a burger!
Link – via I Like Totally Love It, thanks Malte Goesche!
This creepy (but kind of neat – in a creepy way) baby face tile is made from clay by Sue Kniffin Davidson.
You can check out her other "baby" ceramic sculptures (don’t miss the baby face planter) at her Etsy shop: Link – Thanks lilydustbin!
Le Train de Nulle Part (The Train From Nowhere) is a 233-page French novel written by Michel Thaler. It is written without a single verb.
Sample (from Wikipedia):
Quelle aubaine ! Une place de libre, ou presque, dans ce compartiment. Une escale provisoire, pourquoi pas ! Donc, ma nouvelle adresse dans ce train de nulle part : voiture 12, 3ème compartiment dans le sens de la marche. Encore une fois, pourquoi pas ?
Fool’s luck! A vacant seat, almost, in that train. A provisional stop, why not? So, my new address in this nowhere train: car 12, 3rd compartment, forward. Once again, why not?
Thaler said this about verbs: "The verb is like a weed in a field of flowers. You have to get rid of it to allow the flowers to grow and flourish. Take away the verbs and the language speaks for itself." (Source)
Yay! It’s time for this week’s collaboration with What is it? Blog: can you guess what this strange spiky tool is for?
Place your guess in the comment section. Please post no URL (let others play). You’re playing for fun and bragging rights only today, folks!
For more clues, check out What is it? blog. Oh, and Miss C, it’s NOT an instrument of torture, mmkay?
Update 5/9/08 – the answer is: A combination carving fork and meat holder, similar to the one in patent number 2,496,062, which states:
One of the particular uses for the improved holder herein is its use to hold meats, fowl, and other foods from slipping or twisting or oscillating while being carved either at the table or in the kitchen or at the restaurant counter or elsewhere.
Congratulations to Sherman Warren who guessed right!
It’s hard to believe that some of these theatres are close to 3,000 years old, and it’s amazing that they’re even still standing. The amount of engineering knowledge that our ancient ancestors had developed is just as mesmerising especially when some of these auditoria rival present-day outdoor theatres in terms of acoustic properties.
On the one hand, it’s difficult to imagine drawing such large crowds in times when there weren’t as many people as now. On the other hand, there were few other forms of entertainment, so most likely everyone went to every performance. Pictured is the Aspendos Theatre in Turkey. Link -Thanks, Andy!
Esquire’s list of things every man should master contains some good advice, and some surprises.
11. Swim three different strokes. Doggie paddle doesn’t count.
14. Chop down a tree. Know your escape path. When the tree starts to fall, use it.
27. Play gin with an old guy. Old men will try to crush you. They’ll drown you in meaningless chatter, tell stories about when they were kids this or in Korea that. Or they’ll retreat into a taciturn posture designed to get you to do the talking. They’ll note your strategies without mentioning them, keep the stakes at a level they can control, and change up their pace of play just to get you stumbling. You have to do this — play their game, be it dominoes or cribbage or chess. They may have been playing for decades. You take a beating as a means of absorbing the lessons they’ve learned without taking a lesson. But don’t be afraid to take them down. They can handle it.
29. Understand quantum physics well enough that he can accept that a quarter might, at some point, pass straight through the table when dropped.
Sometimes the laws of physics aren’t laws at all. Read The Quantum World: Quantum Physics for Everyone, by Kenneth W. Ford.
30. Feign interest. Good place to start: quantum physics.
Link -via Gorilla Mask
(illustration: Leif Parsons)
