They say March comes in like a lion and goes out like a lamb. The lion part is right, at least! My daffodils are sprouting through the snow. The snow hangs on through the rain, because it’s a darn cold rain. Leap Day only makes the winter seem longer (and it is, by one day). March slams our year into fast forward. Daylight Savings Time begins on March 9th, earlier than ever. Palm Sunday is the 16th, and Easter is the 23rd, earlier than I can ever remember. The vernal equinox is the day before Good Friday. There is some talk in the Catholic church of moving St. Patrick's Day to another day before Holy Week begins, which would fall right in line with this weird month. The daffodils don't keep calendars or holidays. Still, they know what to expect, and they'll survive anything. There's some inspiration for ya!



Cut the Cheese

6 Restless Corpses. This article has nothing to do with the supernatural; it’s about real bodies that just can’t seem to rest in peace, or at least had to wait for their chance.

The People’s Mario stars Mario as a Soviet-style worker/hero who fights the evil mushrooms. The look is reminiscent of classic propaganda posters.

Garfield comics make just as much sense if you throw random panels together, and sometimes are actually pretty funny. The strip is also funnier if Garfield doesn’t say or think anything. When you completely remove Garfield from the strips, the result is an even better comic about schizophrenia, bipolor disorder, and the empty desperation of modern life. (via Fark)

The Moment of Truth Finally Delivers on Its Promise to Ruin Marriages. (via Gorilla Mask)

We’ve been reading about China’s construction plans for years, and wondered whether all those huge buildings will be ready in time for the 2008 Olympics. Now those buildings are opening for business, one by one.

Retro Sabotage is a collection of classic arcade games with a twist. I would tell you what the twist is, but it’s different for each game. (via Metafilter)

Even the most carnivorous guy will eat a salad if it’s served in a cup made of bacon! The method for making them is pretty cool, too.

Cheating

(Thanks, Rich!)
A guy was trying to console a friend who’d just found his wife in bed with another man. “Get over it, buddy,” he said. “It’s not the end of the world.”

“It’s all right for you to say,” answered his buddy. “But what if you came home one night and caught another man in bed with your wife?”

The fella ponders for a moment, then says, “I’d break his cane and kick his seeing-eye dog.”

How to Behave on an Internet Forum. This should be required viewing before anyone can log on to the net.

Alternately, have you ever wanted to slip into the role of an internet troll, or hacker, or even start your own flame war? Try it without causing any real damage with ForumWarz.

The best fortune cookie ever. A little background.

The water tower that turned into a house. It’s available to rent if you’re ever in Suffolk.

If you can rig your Wiimote to do open your draperies, what else can you make it do? I’d rig one to take out the trash!

Urban Legend ER. Everything you’ve been warned about happens at once.

The weirdest news of the week.

A BORN SALESMAN

(via Phil’s Phun)
This salesman has been bugging a haberdasher for a long time for a job, and finally the haberdasher looks at him in disgust and says, "Look, I'll make a deal with you.

I've got one suit that I just haven't been able to sell -- that purple, yellow, and green thing in the corner. If you can sell it while I'm out to lunch; you can have a sales job here for life!"

And with a smug smile he goes to lunch. He comes back and the salesman runs up to him, exclaiming:

"I sold the suit! I sold the suit!"

The owner looks at him in dismay -- the salesman's clothes are ripped and torn all to hell, his face is scratched and bruised and bleeding.

The owner says, "What happened; did the customer put up a fight!?"

The salesman quickly replies,

"Oh, no; not at all -- but his seeing eye dog was annoyed"

Pulling Down a Palm Tree (via Arbroath)

Maybe they just didn’t have enough cable. Or an axe. Or sense.

Thought for today: Those who can't laugh at themselves leave the job to others.

PS: Remember, you’ll have a head start on the links of the week if you check out Miss C Recommends every day!

humor jokes video funny games

If I don’t post something about Leap Day today, I won’t have a chance to do it again for four years! February 29th is some sort of magical day that appears and then disappears for a long time. If a year has one, then you can bet that someone is getting ready to host the summer Olympics, and someone else is running for president of the United States. On February 29th, Leap Year babies (also known as “leaplings”) are partying hard enough to last them through three more years of no birthday. Imagine, getting your driver’s licence after your fourth birthday, and retiring shortly after your Sweet Sixteenth! There’s a lot of interest in the tradition of women proposing to men on Leap Day; thanks to search engines, my post on Sadie Hawkins Day has been the most popular page here for a week!



Leap Year

Since today is an “extra” day, how about I use it for a little housecleaning. Meaning, telling you about my award and my tagging.

I was surprised and honored to receive an Excellent Award from BAC at Yikes! in this post. The burden of receiving this award is that I have to name ten more excellent blogs to send it on to. That’s a hard one, because I’d like to name about a hundred. But that’s now allowed, and some that I would have named have already won one, so here are ten excellent blogs that are due the award.
Simply Left Behind
Driftglass
PAgent’s Progress
Omegamom
Clueless in Carolina
Old Horsetail Snake
Cynical-C
Scribal Terror
The Human Marvels
Under The Bridge

I was tagged yesterday with the old “page 123” meme from Actor212 at Simply Left Behind. The rules:
• look up page 123 in the nearest book
• look for the fifth sentence
• then post the three sentences that follow that fifth sentence on page 123.
I have a half-dozen books with page 123 marked up since I’ve done this in a few comment threads before, but this is the first time I’ve been called out to blog about it. The book is The Good Women of China by Xinran.

My grandfather was already over seventy when he was imprisoned. He survived his ordeal with an astoundingly strong will. The Red Guards spat or blew their nosees into the coarse food and weak tea they brought to their prisoners.

Is that depressing enough for you? As with all memes of this sort, consider yourself tagged if you’d like to participate. Now back to Leap Day.

 

The Straight Dope explains leap years.

Some folks celebrate Sadie Hawkins Day on February 29th, although most sources put it in the fall. It is traditional that Leap Day is the one day that women are “allowed” to propose marriage to a man. If he says no, he has to buy you a gift.

The Big Day

Ten Tips for Women Who Want to Propose.

Famous Leap Day babies.

Norway's Henriksen siblings are recognized by the "Guinness Book of World Records." The three siblings were born on three consecutive leap days. Heidi Henriksen, 1960; Olav Henriksen, 1964; and Leif-Martin Henriksen, 1968. The Keogh family has three consecutive generations born on Feb. 29. Peter Anthony was born in Ireland in 1940; his son Peter Eric was born in the United Kingdom in 1964; and his granddaughter Bethany Wealth was born in the United Kingdom in 1996.

The case of the missing birthday.

There are some special deals for leaplings from various businesses.

Where the Leap Day parties are.

Q: What do you get when you cross a kangaroo with a calendar?
A: A leap year!

Leap Year Joke from Way Back

A girl looked calmly at a caller one evening and remarked:

"George, as it is leap year..."

The caller turned pale.

"As it is leap year," she continued, "and you've been calling regularly now four nights a week for a long, long time, George, I propose--"

"I'm not in a position to marry on my salary Grace" George interrupted hurriedly.

"I know that, George," the girl pursued, "and so, as it is leap year, I thought I'd propose that you lay off and give some of the more eligible fellows a chance."

Ways to Celebrate Leap Day

6. Practise leaping to conclusions.

5. Ask a bunch of men to marry you. Remember, they are supposed to buy you a gift if they refuse!

4. Buy some Mexican jumping beans.

3. See if you are still able to jump rope.

2. Drive out to Lovers Leap.

1. Watch old episodes of Quantum Leap.

Scott Bakula

Thought for today: Thirty days has September, April, June, and no wonder! All the rest eat peanut butter, except Grandma -she rides a bicycle.

humor jokes video funny Leap Year Leap Day leaplings calendar

If you could travel in time, would you? Would you go back, to be with someone who is no longer here? Or maybe go back to relive your childhood, either because it was pleasant, or because you wanted to change something? Perhaps you would like to travel into the future, so as to see what's going to happen, in order to prepare for it. Of course, we'd all like to go just far enough ahead to see the winning lottery numbers before we select ours! But haven't you heard about the danger in messing with the fabric of the space-time continuum? If you've never had a discussion about that, then you haven't hung around such geeky people as I have.

 
The Essay (via Dark Roasted Blend)

You'll enjoy at least some of these Photoshopped anachronisms.

Time travel spam.

The Time Travel Fund wants you to invest in "the future". Or a bridge in Brooklyn.

This game is called Slow Motion, but the only thing slow about it is the load time. Its was fun, and easy to figure out.

A review of a new clock turned into a mini-seminar on the nature of time.

The Time-Travel resume. I guess someone had to do it.

Californian Temporal Discontinuities
It is widely held that time passes at the same rate everywhere, except as predicted by relativity theory. Anyone who has sat in a dentist's waiting room will realise that this is false. Dentist's waiting rooms are specially equipped with a device which slows down time in order to enable the patient to savour the anticipation fully.

It is my belief that the device used in the aforementioned waiting rooms was developed as an artificial version of the natural effects seen in California. Yes, in California time passes at different rates depending on the location. The granularity of this effect varies. A particular 'temporal bubble' may range in size from a few square inches to several tens of square miles. Within each bubble time passes at a different rate from the surrounding area. The bubbles do not remain stable and predictable, however--they come and go. Some seem to last longer than others.

I have many examples to support this theory, and I present a few of them now:

1) In my garden I saw a Narcissus come into flower in November. I contend that it was not 8 months late, nor 4 months early. For the bulb it *was* springtime.

2) Continents most certainly do drift. But the earthquakes that are so common in California are due to variations in relative drift rate caused by temporal discontinuities. The 'fault zones' actually mark the boundaries of the bubbles.

3) Very often at traffic lights the person at the front of the queue remains motionless, despite that fact that the lights went green ages ago. This is not because California drivers are a bunch of comatose cretins (as is commonly believed), but because the driver in question is caught in a small area, short duration CTD . For him, the light has not changed.

4) How else can one explain why computer manufacturers (so many of them based in California) publish speed ratings for their products which never seem to be achieved in the field? The manufacturer is not lying, the measurements were made in a CTD.

5) There is some evidence that some CTD's may be so intense that time goes backwards in an affected area. This can result in events happening multiple times. For example, the same conversation with Sears three times:

"Would you like an extended warranty on your vacuum cleaner?"
"No thanks, and don't call me about it again."
"OK."

This explains (in California at least) that terrible feeling of 'deja vu'...

5) There is some evidence that some CTD's may be so intense that time travels backwards in an affected area. This can result in events happening multiple times. For example, the same conversation with Sears three times:

"Would you like an extended warranty on your vacuum cleaner?"
"No thanks, and don't call me about it again." "OK."

This explains (in California at least) that terrible feeling of 'deja vu'...

It is important to realise that, while many Californian peculiarities can be ascribed directly to this phenomenon, the phenomenon itself has an unsettling effect on the human psyche. Thus those who have been exposed to the effects for a protracted period of time may appear to the rest of us to be 'a little strange'. This is to be expected, and the victims deserve our sympathy. I, for one, do not plan to place myself at risk, so I will be returning to the UK in August--unless I am offered a massive grant to research this fascinating subject in greater depth.
*****

Titanic: The Sequel

Thought for today: When you're riding in a time machine way far into the future, don't stick your elbow out the window, or it'll turn into a fossil. -Jack

Proving that time travel is a possibility, this article first appeared on April 19, 2006.

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Princess wanted help with her science. She said she had to make a sentence out of each term, without repeating the definition. OK. “Transpiration, the process by which plants give off water through their stoma.”  Hmm. The Department of Transpiration announced new water saving incentives today. “Respiration, the process of releasing energy from food.” Hmm. My stupid mother thought respiration meant breathing. “Water cycle, the process by which water moves through the environment.”  Hmm. I always wear my helmet when I ride my water cycle.

She doesn’t ask me for help much anymore.



Stephen Hawking is soooooo bad . . . .

A duet of singing Tesla coils.

The 10 Most Bizarre Scientific Papers.

41 Hilarious Science Fair Experiments. And they are real, unlike the one to the right.

Research LOLcats.

String Theory explained in two minutes. They explained it, but I still don’t understand it.

What’s the difference between Physics and Chemistry?

The 6 Most Important Experiments in the World.

Two Forks, One Cup. It took me a an hour of reading comments to figure this out.

Neutrino Poetry.

It’s a crash course in science at your fingertips! Evolving Thoughts has a list of articles on Basic Concepts in Science.

Could you pass eight grade science? Take the quiz! I did well, partially because I help my fifth-grader study these exact things for her science class. (via Geek Like Me)

Hotel Mauna Kea, a song about the observatory in Hawaii. It’s clever, and really draws my sympathy for the poor folks who must make their living stargazing in paradise.

A Short History of Women Inventors and Scientists.

The periodic table of elements on tarot cards. My past is gold, my future is oxygen, and my lovelife is carbon.

Scientists are often considered to be geeks. Bloggers are always considered to be geeks. Science bloggers, however, are the geekiest people in the world. Put them together in one room, and you’ve got this post.

14 really cool research facilities around the world. Posted in three parts, because everyone has their own favorite to suggest.

xkcd explains the difference between scientists and everyone else, below. Click to enlarge.

Murphy's Ten Laws for Experimentalists

(1) if something can go wrong, it will do so just before your grant is up for review;

(2) if the reading on your detector is correct, then you have forgot to plug it in;

(3) if several things can go wrong then they will do so all at the same time;

(4) if nothing can go wrong with your experiment, something still will;

(5) left unto itself, your experiment will go from bad to worse; on the other hand, if you pay attention to the experiment then it will take three times longer to complete than you thought it would;

(6) Nature is both subtle and malicious (Murphy stole this one from Albert Einstein);

(7) a straight line will never fit your data, and using a wiggly line will result in the rejection by referees of the publication of work;

(8) if you make a great discovery today, you will find a major error in your methods tomorrow (experienced experimentalists call this effect "here today, gone tomorrow");

(9) in contrast to a radio, banging your apparatus when you are at peak frustration will not fix it but permanently break it (for this reason, it is important for experimentalists to remain calm at all times);

(10) when your experiment is just about to succeed, you will run out of grant money.

TRASH CANS

(via Phil’s Phun)
At a recent conference of science and mathematics, a physicist, a mathematician, an engineer, and a statistician were all staying on the same floor of their hotel.

The engineer woke up in the middle of the night to find his trash can had started on fire.

He jumped out of bed, quickly filled his ice bucket with water, extinguished the flames, and went back to sleep.

A little later, the physicist woke up and also discovered his trash can to be ablaze.

He paused for a moment, pulled out his slide rule, and made a few quick calculations. He filled up his ice bucket with exactly 1/2 liter of water and used it to extinguish the fire, and then went back to sleep.

Shortly after, the mathematician was awoken and his trash can was also on fire.

He grabbed a piece of paper and a pen and frantically scribbled out pages and pages of equations. When he found the solution he went to bed, comfortable just knowing that the solution existed.

And the statistician?

He was found running around lighting other people's trash cans on fire because he needed a bigger sample size.

Previously at Miss Cellania: Science Class, Science for Dummies, Scientific Experiments, Advanced Science Class, Physics, Physics 201, Chemistry, Astronomy, The Laboratory, Bad Science,  Remedial Science Class,and  Schroedinger's Cat,

Thought for today: The most exciting phrase to hear in science, the one that heralds new discoveries, is not "Eureka!" but "That's funny..." - Isaac Asimov

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