io9 invites us to “bask in the metallic magnificence” of this VW Beetle turned dinosaur sculpture. But, to combine another article from the same site, can we call it that? While doing just what was suggested and planning a quick post over here, I encountered a story about New York City schools’ planned ban on certain words for standardized tests. These are words that might make some students feel “uncomfortable.” Like “dinosaur.”
This all leaves me feeling distinctly…something. Not sure if “uncomfortable” is quite the word for it. Perhaps “flabbergasted” more aptly covers the emotion?
Sometimes it’s good to be reminded that people are awesome. Tonight the job is done Jarno Smeets, a inventor/engineer who has just created working bird wings for himself.
Where’s Leonardo da Vinci when you need him?
…or maybe it didn’t happen, in which case people suck. Either/or.
“We know how a word is spoken can affect its meaning. So can how it’s typed,” said cognitive scientist Kyle Jasmin of the University of College London, co-author of a study about the so-called “QWERTY effect” in Psychonomic Bulletin and Review. “As we filter language, hundreds or thousands of words, through our fingers, we seem to be connecting the meanings of the words with the physical way they’re typed on the keyboard.”
That’s…unexpected. I find myself visualizing the left side of the keyboard far more positively than the right, though (and I’m right handed). I wonder what kind of inverted brain that points to? Regardless, the subtle influences of our everyday things never ceases to amaze me!
Two years and some months later, I find myself in a very similar position to one I’ve been in before: the Mass Effect 3 collector’s edition is installing its first DLC while a new iPad (the third iteration, if that’s even possible) is on the horizon. Amazing how technology – and time – progresses when you aren’t looking.
You’d then have an approximation of what I encountered on my way down to Mont Alto in the Fleet car this morning. As I wound through the dark of 5:30 am, unable to turn on my high beams in the rain owing to a truck in front of me, I accidentally miscalculated where I was and turned about .5 miles too soon for the logging road I’d normally take. Unperturbed, my GPS merrily plotted a new course on some rather rough tracks past camps, a mere .8 miles extra distance.
Harried and still slightly groggy, I kept trudging along, though I did notice what seemed to be an increased amount of puddles as I made my way. By the .3 miles to left turn part of my journey, I looked ahead to discover that the road I should have been traveling over was more suited to small watercraft. As my lane of travel had narrowed to just wider than a Ford, I endeavored to back up away from the deluge, using a chained off driveway a bit up the way I had come as an awkward launching point for a truly spectacular multipoint turn around.
Of course I had to make my way back in the “daylight” to snap a photo to accompany my adventure tale!
Update: Hannah astutely pointed out that this comic from CaptchArt accurately, well, captures my experience:
If my former car and my current car had a lovechild, it might look a bit like the 2013 Volvo V40. Should this beast every make its way to America, I’m game. Perhaps by 2015?
There is something I’ve always loved about a city with hardly anyone living in it. I just recently blogged about China’s Ordos and before it, about others like it. Urville, though, takes the cake because it exists entirely in the head of its chief architect, savant Gilles Trehin. And he’s been drawing it for the last twenty years.
