This got slashdotted on Monday. They assembled a Lego Star Destroyer in 10 hours, the video they made is kind of cool. I would recommend downloading the torrent of it, as its very quick (I’m helping to seed ;)).

If anyone is thinking of getting me an ‘early’ christmas present (or even a late birthday present), have a look here, here and here. Would be mighty handy for our upcoming trip to Australia and New Zealand.

“As I’m sure you guys know by now, it is extremely difficult to stay alert and attentive, instead of getting hypnotized by the constant monologue inside your own head (may be happening right now). Twenty years after my own graduation, I have come gradually to understand that the liberal arts cliché about teaching you how to think is actually shorthand for a much deeper, more serious idea: learning how to think really means learning how to exercise some control over how and what you think. It means being conscious and aware enough to choose what you pay attention to and to choose how you construct meaning from experience. Because if you cannot exercise this kind of choice in adult life, you will be totally hosed. Think of the old cliché about quote the mind being an excellent servant but a terrible master.
This, like many clichés, so lame and unexciting on the surface, actually expresses a great and terrible truth. It is not the least bit coincidental that adults who commit suicide with firearms almost always shoot themselves in: the head. They shoot the terrible master. And the truth is that most of these suicides are actually dead long before they pull the trigger.
And I submit that this is what the real, no bullshit value of your liberal arts education is supposed to be about: how to keep from going through your comfortable, prosperous, respectable adult life dead, unconscious, a slave to your head and to your natural default setting of being uniquely, completely, imperially alone day in and day out. That may sound like hyperbole, or abstract nonsense. Let’s get concrete. The plain fact is that you graduating seniors do not yet have any clue what “day in day out” really means. There happen to be whole, large parts of adult American life that nobody talks about in commencement speeches. One such part involves boredom, routine, and petty frustration. The parents and older folks here will know all too well what I’m talking about.”

Pointer from Doc Searls Weblog. As Doc says, “Its wise from front to back”

Full version of Dave Foster Wallace’s commencement speach to graduates at Kenyon University

Another old bookmark I found. It shows some of the extra-ordinary lengths that have to be taken to keep the Robert C. Byrd Green Bank Telescope free from RF interference.

“I’m 1 mile east of command central in the Quiet Zone, sitting in a Dodge pickup with Wesley Sizemore, Keeper of the Quiet. In a world saturated with radio waves, the Quiet Zone is a haven and an anomaly. A unique combination of geography and legislation has rendered its 13,000 square miles nearly free of electromagnetic pollution. Sizemore’s job is to keep it that way.”

I found this link in my bookmarks. It quite a neat idea.

“What in heaven is a digital sundial?” That was the title of an article in Scientific American (August 1991), which prompted a flurry of mental activity in many a smart brain. One answer is on display here: a sundial that displays the time, not by throwing a shadow on a set of lines, but in plainly readable digits. The dial functions from 8:00 to 5.55�hr, in 5�minute steps. There is a smooth transition from one reading to the next.

Nifty! Santa, you reading this?

Thanks for this one Shane.

Research on elementary particles has revealed that the heaviest element known to science, Administratium, exists in two forms.

The newly discovered element, Managerium, is unique in that it has no protons or electrons, which means that it has an atomic number of 0. However, it does have 1 neutron, 125 deputy neutrons, 75 assistant deputy neutrons, 11 assistants to the assistant deputy neutrons…..

Read it all here.