Unusual Stuff

Margaret O’Callaghan had a need for a new type of kitchen utensil.  The round-bottomed ladle and the spatula are just not good enough when you’re dealing with things like crock pots and serving dishes.  That’s why she invented the scrudle, a combination ladle and spatula designed to scrape the deliciousness from any sort of cooking […]

Every day, Tom Baker deals with the issue of traffic.  Given Southern California’s massive concentration of cars, it’s no wonder that Baker would get frustrated dealing with the daily traffic routine.  That inspiration resulted in these great images of Los Angeles without the cars.   Here’s the full image gallery, and it’s awesome.
I love the […]

Have you ever wondered where salt comes from?  I mean, salt is in everything from fertilizers (potassium chloride) to the dinner table (sodium chloride), but where does it actually come from?  Why, salt mines, of course!  They’re not just for horrible industrial accidents or mad scientist lairs anymore.  English Russia has a great look inside […]

For some reason, the kids these days love the Twilight saga.  Believe me, it pains me to call it the Twilight saga, because to me a saga is a great, sweeping work of masterful literature, not a teenage vampire romance novel.  Either way, the latest movie based on the Twilight books, New Moon (officially The […]

People worry about all kinds of crises as the world ends, but as the movie Zombieland taught us, sometimes it’s our snack foods that are most important to our happiness.  For Tallahassee, it was his beloved Hostess Twinkies.  If your favorite food is the humble Eggo waffle from General Mills, then you’d best head to […]

I love goofy little websites like this.  From the Wal-Martians to quality engineering, I love a nice, odd corner of the Internet to investigate.  If it’s something that can result in some comedy thanks to random word generation, even better.   That’s why when Mysterio offered to predict my holiday gifts, I jumped at the […]

Linguist d’Armond Speers is an odd bird.  How else could you explain someone that taught his son Klingon as his first language? For the first three years of his son’s life, Speers spoke to his son only in the fictional alien language Klingon from the Star Trek universe.  His reasoning?  It was an experiment to […]

The idea is there.  You take a pair of normal workout pants, combine them with the MP3 player of your choice, and then figure out a way to turn the kinetic energy generated by movement (like running or biking) and turn it into actual energy to power the MP3 player.  That’s the idea behind the […]

Accidents happen, but who is responsible for those accidents?  When Shane Reese, a 12-year-old kid at Intermediate School 219 in the Bronx, New York, took a soccer ball to the face during an impromptu dodgeball game involving over 100 students, he got hurt.  It’s not surprising, considering soccer balls are much harder than those soft […]

I love these pointless little declarations about the English language from companies like the New Oxford American Dictionary.  Every year I keep an eye out to see what the new word of the year is, and every year it’s something that, well, I figured already existed.  For example, the big word this year was unfriend, […]

As the old saying goes, “Be careful what you wish for, you must might get it.”  No doubt Cheng Yu was like every other kid growing up and wished he could have dessert for every meal.  Then he met Tian Mae, compulsive baker.  Now his marriage is on the rocks thanks to cake for every […]

There is nothing more exciting to the mind of a creative person than the allure of infinite possibilities.  And what sort of novel utilizes infinite possibilities more than science fiction?  There is no genre of literature that has so captivated the mind and so inspired the inventor than sci-fi, as you can see by these […]

Everyone wants to eat healthier these days.  With all the weird chemical preservatives and colors in our food, it’s no wonder people are looking for any way they can to eat a more natural, balanced diet.  Shockingly, some people who aren’t me don’t want caffeine pumped into their food, even if there is the possibility […]

In the predawn hours tomorrow, November 17th, keep your eye on the sky.  The annual arrival of the Leonid meteor shower is scheduled to peak in North America sometime between 3:30 and 5:30 Eastern time.  While the display is a yearly event, this year’s shower is expected to be especially impressive thanks to the limited […]

It’s not often that a professional football player feels the need to apologize for his on-field behavior when he does something smart, but Maurice Jones-Drew isn’t your ordinary football player.   Generally listed at 5′6, MoJo is a human pinball on the field, using his 200-pound bulk to run through and bounce off tacklers, making […]