HOME |
RSS | 
For those of you looking for ideas for a romantic Valentine’s Day date, the Newtown Creek Wastewater Treatment Plant in Brooklyn is offering a morning tour of its sludge-processing facility.
Put on some comfortable boots, snuggle up with your companion, and hold your breath when the plant’s ruggedly handsome superintendent, Jimmy Pynn, explains how the city cleans 1.3 billion gallons of wastewater each day.
You’ll get to see every aspect of the plant’s waste treating process, and even take a trip through its suggestively shaped digester tanks, where plucky microorganisms break down what you and your date ate for lunch yesterday, producing methane and carbon dioxide gas.
And at the end of the tour, Pynn will give each attendee a Hershey’s Kiss — because there’s nothing sweeter than protecting the environment.
One thing’s for sure -it will be a Valentine’s Day neither of you will ever forget. Link -via Breakfast Links
(Image credit: New York City government)
Those who jot the date down in a certain style today may have noticed that it is 2-1-12. Fans of the Canadian rock group Rush are celebrating the date as it is written by listening to the 1976 album 2112. Or any of their favorite Rush songs.
Hopefully most of you know that today’s date is Feb. 1, 2012. Or 2.1.12. If you’re a Rush fan, there’s a good chance that you’re geeking out over the fact that it’s as close as you’re going to get to the year 2112 — barring any success achieving the same immortality already enjoyed by Rock Gods Geddy Lee, Alex Lifeson and Neil Peart.
“2112? is, of course, the conceptual title track of the veteran Canadian rock trio’s masterful prog rock epic and breakthrough album from 1976 that, when boiled down from it’s far-out, intergalactic plot, basically sets the idea of individual versus the state. More important: it freakin’ rocks!
If you don’t have your favorite Rush songs handy, you can listen to eleven fine selections at Reverb. Link -via Rush is a Band
This picture came in from redditor zynoda, who lives in Australia where it’s starting to look like summer. Link
Comments Off
I enjoy the challenge of trying to figure out when a world map was made by looking at the countries on it. That challenge is easier with a handy chart from Replogle Globes that tells what year nations came into existence or changed names. Metafilter, on the other hand, took the question and made a joke thread, with each joke trying to one-up the one before.
My globe is so old…
HOW OLD IS IT?
My globe is so old it still says “here be dragons.” On France.
The chart does not yet have South Sudan listed, but may someday soon. Link
Ron Gordon, the teacher who brought us Square Root Day, wants everyone to celebrate another calendar event, Odd Day, which is tomorrow (7/9/11).
Odd Day is coming Saturday, 7/9/11. Three consecutive odd numbers make up the date only six times in a century. After 7/9/11, only two days remain in this parade of Odd Days which began with 1/3/5. The previous stretch of dates like this started with 1/3/1905—13 months after the Wright Brothers’ flight.
We’ve established a contest and are offering the date in dollars ($791.1) to be shared by the winners. Prizes will be distributed to those who involve the most people in the Oddest Parade of Odd Characters, write the best Odd Ode, or create the best Odd Celebrations.
I was one of the winners of a similar contest Gordon held to promote Square Root Day. Happy Odd Day! Link
Computer scientist William Tunstall-Pedoe, developer of the search engine True Knowledge, has determined that April 11, 1954 was the most boring day of the 20th Century. His conclusion is based on an estimate of notable births, deaths, and events:
Every day something of significance happens, a person is born who is destined for fame, there is an event in the arts or sports, history is created. With 300 million of these facts fed into the “brain” of True Knowledge, Tunstall-Pedoe’s Cambridge company, the computer was asked: “What was the most boring day in the 20th century?”[...]
Nearly five million people are using True Knowledge every month, asking their own questions and contributing factoids and context to improve the quality of search.
Many of these facts include dates. The system has a unique understanding of the importance of the entities in the world which can be calculated as a number, such as events beginning and ending, births, deaths, wars, founding of businesses and the release of publications. So you can find out what happened on a particular day. For example, who was born on May 3, 1983?
“It occurred to us that we are able to objectively measure the importance of every day in history. Some days are highly eventful and on some days far less happens and we can also objectively estimate the importance of these events.
Link via First Things | Photo by Flickr user Samuel Kreutz used under Creative Commons license
The Hendrix Estate has announced that March 9th will be the release date for a new album of studio recordings from the late guitar maestro, Jimi Hendrix. The tapes of sessions, in which the plan was to create a new concept sound, have been stored in a vault for 40 years.
Called Valleys of Neptune, it was remastered by Eddie Kramer, the same engineer who was there to record the (likely) bluesy, churning songs that are typical of Jimi’s style at the time.
Kramer says he spent a year remastering the old analog tapes, using state-of-the-art digital technology to clean up the sound. But not too clean: Kramer says he was trying to bring out the essence of Jimi Hendrix.
“This is Jimi, when he plays the guitar, and it jumps out of the track. The hair on the back of my neck just stands up,” he says. “It’s so raw and in your face.”
“He was the greatest guitarist I ever had the privilege of working with,” he says.
If it’s anything like his 1994 album, :Blues, it should be amazing.
Link. (Photo: Creative Commons)
January 2, 2010 is a palindrome, at least in countries that write the date in the mm/dd/yyyy form. Personally, I’ve been writing the date without initial zeros, like 12-3-9, but that’s just me. Who notices such things? Professor Aziz Inan of the University of Portland, who teaches electrical engineering but loves math puzzles.
A native of Istanbul, Inan creates math puzzles in his spare time. So it was a big day when he looked closely at his own name and saw a pattern. His first and last names are both vowel-consonant-vowel-same consonant — and, if you write the names in all caps, switch the vowels and turn one set of consonants 90 degrees, both names are the same.
“I jumped in my chair,” he said of the day two years ago when the connection hit him. “My parents had no idea.”
The next palindromic date will be November 2, 2011. Link -via J-Walk Blog
Picture this: a man and woman came back to his apartment after a date. The house is nice and clean, then he mixes a margarita … and when her neck is a little stiff, Mr. Man offers a little shiatsu massage to make her feel better.
Can this be it? Has she finally found a man better than chocolate?
Then she turns on some music …
You’ll never guess the ending of this video clip – see for yourself at our partner Very Funny Ads: Link
In the long line of stupid criminals featured on Neatorama before, this one is probably the stupidest (and probably loneliest): Stephfon Bennet, 20, allegedly robbed a woman and then returned a couple of hours later … to ask his victim out on a date!
"We are not exactly sure what he was thinking at the time," said Columbus police Sgt. Sean Laird. "She recognized him right away when he returned and was able to have her cousin call 911."
Officers arrived and arrested Bennett in front of the house, police said.
