Do you find that you're overwhelmed by the need to check your email every hour, read hundreds of feeds on your feedreader, or chat with everyone on IM? Do you need an off-ramp on the Information Superhighway?

Here's what Mark Bittman, a self-professed tech-addict, wrote in the New York Times about unplugging himself from teh interwebs for one day a week:

On my first weekend last fall, I eagerly shut it all down on Friday night, then went to bed to read. (I chose Saturday because my rules include no television, and I had to watch the Giants on Sunday). I woke up nervous, eager for my laptop. That forbidden, I reached for the phone. No, not that either. Send a text message? No. I quickly realized that I was feeling the same way I do when the electricity goes out and, finding one appliance nonfunctional, I go immediately to the next. I was jumpy, twitchy, uneven.

I managed. I read the whole paper, without hyperlinks. I tried to let myself do nothing, which led to a long, MP3-free walk, a nap and some more reading, an actual novel. I drank herb tea (caffeine was not helpful) and stared out the window. I tried to allow myself to be less purposeful, not to care what was piling up in my personal cyberspace, and not to think about how busy I was going to be the next morning. I cooked, then went to bed, and read some more.

Link (Illustration: Scott Brundage)

Are you outgrowing your apartment? Need an extra room? Well, just hang one outside your window (hope those cables are strong!). Here's a "walk-in sculpture" called the Rucksack House in München, Germany.

The cube is a light and empty space, free from connotations and open to its user's needs. While still being inside a private atmosphere, one has the impression of floating outside of the confines of the actual dwelling above the public space. Folddown furnishings and a multitude of built-in openings on the inside provide extra living space with direct daylight. Sections of the walls unfold, with the help of hidden magnets, into a desk, shelves, and a platform for reading or sleeping. The Rucksack box is suspended from steel cables that are anchored to the roof or to the facade of the existing building. The construction is a welded steel cage with a light birch veneered plywood interior cladding. The outside cladding is exterior grade plywood with an absorbent resin surface punctuated by plexiglas inserts.

Link - via Freshome

The Muppets Bert and Ernie were designed by Don Sahlin based on two fruits: Bert was a banana and Ernie was an orange.

Rumor was, Bert and Ernie were named after two characters in Frank Capra's "It's a Wonderful Life" (Bert the cop and Ernie the cabbie).

Here's a crazy YouTube clip of dirtbike racer (and all-round crazy guy) Travis Pastrana jumping out of an airplane without a parachute ... Hit play or go to Link [YouTube] - via metafilter

Photo: Kowalski

Michael Cook of The Vanishing Point wrote about his experience exploring the depth of the tailrace of the decomissioned Toronto Power Company Hydroelectric Plant at the Niagara Falls. (Tailrace is the downstream part of the dam where water re-enters the river):

Imagine a tunnel more than ten storeys underground, a hundred years old, bricklined, wet, and completely inaccessible save by descending through a narrow slit in its ceiling thirty feet above the floor, and then returning up the same rope you came down.

Now imagine that this tunnel flows into Niagara Falls, emerging behind the pummeling curtain of water that nearly everyone in North America journeys to see at some point in their lives.

This tunnel exists. In the autumn of 2004, thanks to the work of two people with the experience and equipment to make it happen, I had the chance to feel Niagara Falls.

Link | Other parts of the Hydroelectric Plant

Psst, want to lose some weight? Turns out your mom's right: eat breakfast.

University of Minnesota scientists did the 5-year study of more than 2,000 younsgers and found those who skipped breakfast weigh about 5 lb. (2.3 kg) more than those who ate "the most important meal of the day." What's more interesting is that the breakfast-eaters actually consumed more calories on a daily basis.

"It may seem counter-intuitive," said Mark Pereira, who led the research. "But while they ate more calories, they did more to burn those off, and that may be because those who ate breakfast did not feel so lethargic. [...]

"They skip breakfast because they worry about weight gain - and it's ironic that the ones who aren't worried and eat in the mornings are the ones who keep their weight down."

Link

The official Star Wars website has a very neat post comparing the comic adaptation of the movie by Marvel (1977 to 1986 series) to that done in Japanese manga style by Media Works (1997 - I believe these are created by Tamaki Hisao, published in English by Dark Horse comics).

When the two are placed side by side, the contrast couldn't be greater. Take, for instance, the battle between Luke Skywalker and Darth Vader in Episode V: The Empire Strikes Back. The manga version showed the gruesome scene in two-page spread. Marvel, on the other hand, were forced to tone down the visual by hiding the action behind a "convenient scenery."

The manga version

The Marvel version

Check out the entire article here: http://www.starwars.com/eu/lit/comics/f20080227/index.html

Photo: NASA

NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter space probe took a snapshot of this avalanche on the Red Planet's north pole

The image shows tan clouds billowing away from the foot of a towering slope, where ice and dust have just cascaded down. [...]

Ingrid Daubar Spitale of the University of Arizona, Tucson, who works on targeting the camera and has studied hundreds of HiRISE images, was the first person to notice the avalanches. "It really surprised me," she said. "It's great to see something so dynamic on Mars. A lot of what we see there hasn't changed for millions of years."

Because she was the first person who noticed them, these avalanches are now called "Ingrid's Avalanches": Link

"Young men want to be faithful, and are not; old men want to be faithless, and cannot."

- Oscar Wilde, poet and author (1854 - 1900)

James Lovelock [wiki] is a climate scientist (he was the first to detect widespread presence of CFCs in the atmosphere) and a maverick (he proposed the Gaia Hypothesis, which proposes that earth, and everything living and non-living on it are part of a complex interacting system that can be though of as a single organism).

In 1965, James Lovelock predicted that environment will be the biggest challenge in the 21st century. And in general, he was right.

In an interview by Decca Aitkenhead of The Guardian, Lovelock explains why global warming had passes a tipping point, catastrophe is inevitable, and we are all doomed:

"It's just too late for it," he says. "Perhaps if we'd gone along routes like that in 1967, it might have helped. But we don't have time. All these standard green things, like sustainable development, I think these are just words that mean nothing. I get an awful lot of people coming to me saying you can't say that, because it gives us nothing to do. I say on the contrary, it gives us an immense amount to do. Just not the kinds of things you want to do."

He dismisses eco ideas briskly, one by one. "Carbon offsetting? I wouldn't dream of it. It's just a joke. To pay money to plant trees, to think you're offsetting the carbon? You're probably making matters worse. You're far better off giving to the charity Cool Earth, which gives the money to the native peoples to not take down their forests." [...]

He saves his thunder for what he considers the emptiest false promise of all - renewable energy.

"You're never going to get enough energy from wind to run a society such as ours," he says. "Windmills! Oh no. No way of doing it. You can cover the whole country with the blasted things, millions of them. Waste of time."

Link (Photo: Eamonn McCabe)

Is your child a tagger? The City of Santa Ana, California, published this handy-dandy guide for parents to determine whether your kid is a graffiti vandal. Tips include:

Your child has large quantities of “Hello My Name Is” stickers, priority mail stickers, or number or letter stickers. These stickers may have drawings or a tagging moniker written on them. These stickers are used to “slap tag.” They are slapped upon a surface and are difficult to remove and generally leave a residue.

Your child has or carries a black artist notebook that contains tagging or drawings. These books are called “bibles” or “piece books.”

Link - via ectoplasmosis

Ever wonder why winter is flu season? Well, scientists finally found the answer:

Experts have long pondered why flu and other respiratory viruses spread more in winter. No one explanation, such as people staying indoors more, or the destructive effect of the sun's radiation in summer, has fully explained it. [...]

Influenza viruses coat themselves in fatty material that hardens and protects them in colder temperatures -- a finding that could explain why winter is the flu season, U.S. researchers reported on Sunday.

This butter-like coating melts in the respiratory tract, allowing the virus to infect cells, the team at the National Institutes of Health found.

"Like an M&M in your mouth, the protective covering melts when it enters the respiratory tract," said Joshua Zimmerberg of the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development (NICHD), who led the study.

Link (Photo: tanjila [Flickr]) - via Blue's News

Credit: Donald "Rusty" Rust

Donald "Rusty" Rust is a prolific painter and an excellent camouflage artist. See if you can find the lion in the zebra picture above.

For more of Rusty's art, check out his website: Link - via Fresh Pics and AQFL

Ever heard of the late 1930s swallowing live goldfish fad that swept the nation (well, okay, colleges)? Turns out it's a centuries-old tradition in a rural area of Belgium:

Taking a deep breath, Rudy Van Acker raises a silver chalice to his pursed lips, hesitates ever so slightly, then takes a sip before downing the contents in a couple of swift gulps.

Van Acker, the senior Roman Catholic priest in this rural area of Flanders, is undertaking one of his more unusual pastoral duties: drinking live fish, washed down with red wine.

For centuries, thousands of revelers in this part of Belgium have celebrated the Krakelingen festival - named after the bread that will be thrown to the townspeople. The pageant, commemorating the onset of spring, combines pagan and Christian symbols and culminates in the consumption of tiny live fish immersed in red wine at a ceremony presided over by three men dressed as druids.

http://www.iht.com/articles/2008/03/02/europe/fish.php (Photo: Jock Fistick/International Herald Tribune)

What happened to the cast of M*A*S*H? Miss Cellania wrote this neat post on YesButNoButYes:

Although the Korean War only lasted three years, the cast of M*A*S*H was with us every week for eleven years. The final episode on February 28, 1983 was the most watched episode in American TV ever, drawing 106 million viewers, or 77% of the audience that night. It’s been twenty-five years since we said Goodbye, Farewell and Amen; let’s see what the gang has been up to since then.

I just found out that Jamie Far, who played Klinger in the TV series, published a children's book and sponsored a golf tournament; and Wayne Rogers who played Trapper John McIntyre is now in stock investment field.

Link - via Miss Cellania