Posts by matt

I just finished reading the McSweeney’s story “The Tears of Squonk, and What Happened Thereafter,” about a circus elephant hanged for murder in a small Tennessee town in the early 20th Century. Brilliant. Affecting, gripping, wonderfully written, and a little bit heartbreaking. It’s one of those stories that you Google when you finish reading it, and then come to find out many wondrous things. For example, the story’s not entirely fictional. In fact, an entire book has been written about it, attempting to get at the truth behind what happened that day in Tennessee.

And then there’s the squonk, a legendary creature from the Pennsylvanian wilds said to dissolve into a pool of tears and bubbles when cornered.

There’s a throwaway reference to a ballet, “La Chauve-Souris Dorée,” by a choreographer named Plastikoff — “a rare work,” the story says, “in that it celebrated not courtship, but daily love, the often-pale and unnoticed emotions that pass between a man and wife.” Google yields no English references to Plastikoff, but “La Chauve-Souris Dorée,” or “The Gilded Bat,” is the name of a promising story written and illustrated by Edward Gorey.

I love texts that make you want to Google every word. And I love that you can.

All I have to say about the iPhone is it sure took Apple long enough to create the wifiPod. 😛

My favorite thing in my All-Ett these days is the impossibly tiny Kingmax 2-gb Super Stick. The dimensions? 1.3″ x 0.1″ x 0.5″. Two gigabytes. That’s more capacity than my high school desktop PC. And it’s made of reinforced steel or something, honestly. Best part? It costs $16.

Why hasn’t this device taken over the world yet?

This map displays US states renamed as foreign countries with similar GDP. California, for example, is re-christened France (whose GDP is $2.15 tril), Michigan becomes Argentina, and Texas becomes Canada. As the footnotes on the map indicate, it’s not a straightforward comparison, because it doesn’t include population. But it’s a pretty darn interesting visualization nonetheless.

Ha! I bet you thought I was posting an actual link to a site that was, in fact, Threadless for bumper stickers. But if such a thing exists — which it must — I’m not cool enough to know about it. Enlighten me, o ye crowd-wisdom.

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From Elizabeth Kolbert’s lovely article about CERN’s giant Hadron Collider:

It is one of the paradoxes of particle physics that fundamental particles, though pointlike and indivisible, are also generally unstable. In fact, the heavier particles are so short-lived that even to speak of their having an existence seems faintly ludicrous; a top quark, for example, is estimated to last no more than 1

Jarah blogs what may be the best headline of all time, courtesy of Wired’s Malcontents.

(Note: This blog post is essentially Jarah’s blog post, with an additional layer of attribution. I love how recursive blogging can be. I’m trying to think if I’ve ever seen a blog post retain the entire meme trail of an item before. How awesome would it be to see “Wired via Jarah via Matt via” at the end of a post? Can you guys think of anything like that?)

Neglected to post about this: This year, ASME posted all the links for the NMA finalists all on its own. I’d like to take some credit for this.

Hackety Hack makes Ruby sort of like BASIC. From the fellow who brought you Why’s Poignant Guide to Ruby, it’s a downloadable program (basically the Ruby language, the Gecko browser, and some helpful libraries) designed to introduce geek wannabes to the world of programming. For a slightly less kid-oriented approach, check out Try Ruby, which is a browser-based version of the same thing by the same guy. (MetaFilterrific.)