Some years ago I developed a crackpot idea I call The Theory Of The Precious Object. This theory is based on the following observations: Crows, racoons and other animals are known to be attracted to shiny objects. Many products which succeed in the marketplace resemble the objects which attract these animals. Our attraction to these […]

There was a 5.4 earthquake here in southern California today, and it had a curious effect: All the heavy black areas were knocked off of my Kakuro puzzles. While they are slightly less attractive, I’m told they use up considerably less ink and toner this way, so I guess I’ll keep ’em. I hope you […]

Via this Digg post, I found this awesome image manipulation tool called MathMap, and a Flickr group of photos using Escher’s Droste effect. Mathmap has been around for a while, as a plug-in for GIMP and more recently as a standalone program for Mac OS X. If you want to get a better idea of […]

The Onion reports that the Hubble Space Kaleidoscope finally went online Tuesday, capturing the first images which prove beyond a doubt that the universe is utterly crazy looking. According to the article, the HSK features three fine-guidance optical control sensors, a wide field and planetary camera, a faint object spectrograph, and three primary rectangular plane […]

Weezer recently invited the audience to bring their own instruments, while they were taped for Nissan Live Sets. My friend Mike attended and had a blast. He’s one of the guitarists on the left. More videos from this event here: link