"Hyperlink Crescent"

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• Phil: [pen] Same guy has also done a 1976 catalogue on the same site. I wasn't aware of Argos in those days, to be honest. Certainly was by 1985, with a Rubik's cube as evidence :)
• Tolken: Since I posted that link, the same guy has been livecasting from his phone in central NYC up to 18 hours a day. It jumps between riveting and really dull... but it shows how technology can be a force for democracy... until someone finds a way to shut it down or discredit it.
• Merlyn: [CdM] I'm not sure whather to take that seriously?! I'd love to meet the people willing to be in the control group!

  Phil] Marvelous indeed.

December 2011

• Herr Bratsche: Name the countries of the world. 15 minute time limit. I got 148/196.
• Graham III: 143 though some I missed were stupid which is annoying
• Phil: Only about 115 :(
• Phil: A blog I'm enjoying (NVSFW due to some language - no nudisms etc though).
• Merlyn: HB's World - Only 107 'officially' but I named a couple of dozen others which I couldn't spell properly: Equador, Butan, Lichtenstein etc...
• Merlyn: And my weaknesses were similar to G3's
• ImNotJohn: 150 - I ran out of time before I ran out of countries I could think of. Annoyed about a couple
• Néa: [INJ] Meanwhile, I gave up pretty soon since I realised that I just don't know the English spellings/names for a lot of countries.
• penelope: Here's a 10-second interval time lapse movie of Saturday morning's operation when the sails were removed from the windy miller's mill . This is phase 1 of the deconstruction process before restoration begins (once the money arrives). De Hoop at Maasdam is a 200-year old corn mill that is slowly slipping down the centuries-old dyke (It's the 'Kaiserdijk' referring to Charlemagne).
  This time-lapse movie was made by Cees, one of the millwrights; you can see him clambering about on the cap of the mill as the crane starts to lift the sail stocks. More about the mill on its Facebook page.
• flerdle: Correlation or causation? I like number six.
• flerdle: [pen] cool!
• Blob: Interactive maps for London - in particular crimes and deaths - from C17th to C19th mapped onto a GIS compliant map of 1746 or current Google Map Locating London. I haven't had a good look at it yet, but it sounded interesting on Today on R4 this morning.
• ImNotJohn: [Néa] Yes - I reckon that was the problem.
• Tuj: Late quiz answer: 177/196, missing odd ones all over the place. But apparently that's 2 better than the last time I did that quiz, although I do better on the one with all the flags.
• Merlyn: A warning on Blob's london link - you will need to do it in a fairly up to date browser, ie6 doesn't work
• Merlyn: I would have no chance on Flags beyond Europe, except some of the major world players (USA, Japan etc)
• Merlyn: Correlation] What happened in the 80's to plummet the murder rate in New York (other than the introduction of mountains)?
• Dunx: I was going to say that it might have been the zero tolerance policy, but that wasn't introduced until 1996.
• ImNotJohn: Now is the time for all good men to use the word 'assholocracy'
• spliggo: Which reminds me of my favourite neologism., from the Washington Post.
• Merlyn: Down with the Assholocracy of Trump
• JLE: [Merlyn] I suspect it was just the police not bothering to record it if both victim and prime suspect were non-white.
• Merlyn: [JLE] ooh you cynic!
• Dan: Do they accept nominations from abroad? Because I want to recommend someone for this.
• CdM: Well, it took an embarrassingly long time to bring to fruition, but on the other hand it is almost 1,300 pages long.
• Néa: [CdM] Yay!
• Merlyn: I know some of you are into Call of Cthulhu.
• flerdle: [CdM] Well done!
• ImNotJohn: [CdM] Oh, so that's what you were doing!
• Blob: [CdM] Wow ! Very impressive ... but your mini biog under "Authors (2)" makes absolutely no mention of your Crescenting credentials, shome mishtake shurely ?
• ImNotJohn: Good likeness, by the way.
• Merlyn: Blob] It does mention 'coordination games' though - what a wonderful way to describe Wii Golf. Well done CdM, looks like a good book.
• I Say, Porter!: Coins is a nice puzzler I don't think we've had before.
• Dan: [CdM] If Chapter 9 contains anything but the words "tax breaks for billionaires" then it's a damn commie lie.
• Dan: P.S. congratulations
• I Say, Porter!: [CdM] Well done! I confess that the tagline puts me off ("Developing your students' aptitude for economic thinking and present key insights about economics that every educated individual should know") my bold.
  Research has shown that poor English on retail websites deters potential purchasers.
  Shurely either "developing... and presenting" or "develop... and present". </pedant>
  More power to your elbow! If I meet any educated individuals I'll certainly recommend the book to them.
• I Say, Porter!: [CdM's Magnum Opus: supplemental] Hmmm. Can't work out how to buy it for my Kindle. Amazon says it was published in 2009 (although FlatWorld says this is version 1.0) is only available in hardcover and paperback and is out of stock... That should probably read "only unavailable in..."
• Merlyn: IS,P] I was considering whether there were any UNeducated individuals to whom I could recommend it!
• Merlyn: I cant get the Coins game to play - there doesn't seem to be a 'start' button, and I am not seeing anything I can start playing...
• Boolbar: [Merlyn] Did it get as far as the menu screen with "play" top right? After that you have to do the examples given (by drag and drop of coins so they all end up in the shaded area.)
• I Say, Porter!: [Merlyn, Boolbar] That's interesting. On Internet Explorer, 'play' is top left. What browsers are you using?
• Boolbar: [ISP] Firefox, in a mirror. (Top left it is).
• Merlyn: IE 6 or 7, I think - it has a big empty square in the middle, so there is probably sdome plug in missing. I wouldn't worry. I think I've played this with real pennies!

January 2012

• Rosie: Right, bugger all on here since before Christmas so I'm afraid it's a steam train video. This is what happens when people think steam engines are magic. Ignore the comments, which come mainly from bed-wetters, except for the guy hiyadroog. Rather a crap video, actually. Be patient.
• Blob: [Rosie] Poor old thing - you could hear it was labouring from the start - in fact it reminded me of me climbing hills these days !
• Merlyn: If you cant find it, at list it'll crack a smile telling you
• Rosie: (INJ) A pretty good engine by steam standards but asked to do the impossible, as a back-of-an-envelope calculation would have shown. They were playing trains - all very silly.
• Blob: [Rosie] Er, was that for me rather than INJ ? Talking things steamy - Not sure if I mentioned it before but we were pulled along by this shiny new beastie in the summer - nice bit of kit.
• Rosie: (Blob) Not for INJ. Cockup on the reference front, don'cha know. Tornado would have cantered up that gradient in the previous video and have done it fairly quietly (3 cylinders, double chimney etc). It's big and in steam days a driver was heard to remark "I could kill a fireman with one of these". No engine is bigger than its fireman.
• Rizmage: Had a lot of fun out of this, it does a better job than a lot of similar sites.
• Boolbar: Rotate Your Owl
• Raak: Kim Jong-il looking at things. Genius.
• Raak: And by the same person, I like it, what is it?
• spliggo: A zoomable 360° panorama from the Shard at dusk
• Blob: [spliggo] Excellent panorama - pity the panning controls are counter-intuitive (for me anyway).
• Chalky: [spliggo] Fascinating. Thanks.
• Phil: [Raak] Re: Kim Jong-Il: addictive, sad, hilarious and weird at that same time.
• I Say, Porter!: [Raak] Many thanks. Who'da thunk there was anything to look at in North Korea?
• penelope: [spliggo] lovely!
• spliggo: Audio clip about an unusual accident - NSFW unless you have headphones
• Merlyn: Raak] Kim Jong Il is increadibly good at looking at things. Who'da thunk it? I love that all his entourage have matching coats with him.
• Merlyn: Boolbar] Where do I get a rotatable owl?
• Boolbar: [Merlyn] Whoo knows? It makes my head spin, but I really don't give a hoot (etc.)
• Parky: [Merlyn] Ah yes the Pyongyang United Car Coat. Pyongyang United have won the North Korean Soldier-Worker Juche Football League and Cup double for a record-breaking forty years in a row.
• Parky: I wish I had made up that last comment but I didn't. I stole it from a blog post by the inimitable ScaryDuck
• Parky: And don't forget the son who is also Looking At Things
• Merlyn: Looks like the young Un's got the Pyongyang United Car Coat as well!
• Phil: Tidy. Nice.

February 2012

• Parky: Und zo Cherman..
• Néa: [Parky] Except the guy's actually Swiss :-)
• Blob: [Phil] Very tidy - raised a smile that one.
• Blob: (The fir branch reminds me on an Airfix® kit)
• Raak: With rising technology, one more job gets outsourced: reception staff.
• Dunx: [Néa] Swiss, eh? I do not think that diminishes the point.
• Boolbar: Fancy a sandwich?
• Merlyn: Boolbar] That is just WRONG! [Phil] that amount of orderliness just gives me the shivers.
• Phil: [Merlyn] I was just telling my family last night about a German-speaking Swiss guy I met, who was describing the French- speakers around Geneva as passionate, wild-at-heart, reckless and frivolous, due to their latin spirit. Perhaps that explains why Herr Wehrli is the way he is...
• Boolbar: [Tidy] There is no spoon in the second ordered example. [Merlyn] I know! White bread, so unhealthy.
• Phil: A lovely pe riodic table with isotope distribution. I never knew that Bromine-80 doesn't exist, yet its molecular weight is given on school tables as 80.
• Raak: [Phil] Curious that every element with more than two stable isotopes is in an even- numbered column. Presumably there's a deep physical reason for this.
• Phil: [Raak] Quite possibly, although you seem not to have spotted Potassium
• Blob: [Phil] The one I don't quite understand is Oxygen - it has three stable isotopes: 99.76% ¹⁶O,  0.039% ¹⁷O,  and 0.201% ¹⁸O - so all have at least 16 nucleides ... but its Atomic Weight range is 15.99903 - 15.99977 (i.e. < 16) ... why's that then ?
• Phil: [Blob] Dunno why, but ¹⁶O has an atomic wt of 15.99491461956, which would explain the figure of 15.9994 that we use at work.
• Raak: [Blob,Phil] Packing fraction.
• spliggo: Jiskefet - English sport
• Phil: [Raak] Cool :-)
• Dunx: [spliggo] "Look how he fringes the ring." Exquisite.
• Blob: [Raak] Thanks for that - I must've missed that lecture !
• Blob: ... though we did have an entire lecture on the Fine Structure Constant (~ 1/137) which one of our profs was particularly keen on and thought that it was the most important constant in all physics - I have to say his arguments went so far over my head as to be virtually in orbit.
• Phil: An example of google's guesswork coming in handy.
• Tolken: I really don't know where else to put this, but people ought to be told. Approximately 1 minute 40 seconds into this recording, "World Affairs Correspondent" Humphrey Hawkesly gives his personal description of Nelson Mandela. I won't spoil it for you: Cyanoacrylate?.
• Blob: [Tolk] Bit of an epoxy analogy.
• blamelewis: This reminds me of the classic old "powers of 10" video, but with added flashiness... The Scale of the universe
• Merlyn: blamelewis] I'll give that a wow²⁴

March 2012

• Blob: I've never seen quite such blanket coverage of one image on Google Images as here Scroll down to PAGE 3
• Phil: [Blob] Well, that's my cuteness-capacity used up for the whole of March.
• penelope: [Blob] I feel deprived, having never seen that before.

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