Month: February 2005

Fantasy Planes makes the claim that some of the most interesting airplanes are the ones that never got built, and I can’t say that I disagree. The site has very nice galleries of unusual aircraft that never flew as well as a good collection of links to other sites.

Along that line, The Strange Mechanism Museum has a great collection of images of unusual aircraft, ships, and other vehicles. It appears that the site creator’s first language is not English, but if you ignore the typos etc. the page has a lot of fun stuff to browse through.

Slate rates celebrity wines, including Francis Ford Coppola, Greg Norman, and Emeril Lagasse. Coppola got the best reviews, although he is widely acknowledged as more than just a “celebrity winemaker.”

If you ignore all of the Nabisco product placement, 3D Billiards is actually a pretty fun online game…

The Bugs Bunny, Daffy Duck, Road Runner, Tasmanian Devil and Wile E. Coyote cartoon characters are to be revamped in the upcoming show Loonatics, a Saturday morning cartoon to debut this fall. The article says that the show is “Set in the year 2772, [and] the heroes are descendants of the original favorites.” I don’t like it because they just don’t look right. That, and I fear change. :-p

Check out the The History of the Universe in 200 Words or Less:

Quantum fluctuation. Inflation. Expansion. Strong nuclear interaction. Particle-antiparticle annihilation. Deuterium and helium production. Density perturbations. Recombination. Blackbody radiation. Local contraction. Cluster formation. Reionization? Violent relaxation. Virialization. Biased galaxy formation? Turbulent fragmentation. Contraction. Ionization. Compression. Opaque hydrogen. Massive star formation. Deuterium ignition. Hydrogen fusion. Hydrogen depletion. Core contraction. Envelope expansion. Helium fusion. Carbon, oxygen, and silicon fusion. Iron production. Implosion. Supernova explosion. Metals injection. Star formation. Supernova explosions. Star formation. Condensation. Planetesimal accretion. Planetary differentiation. Crust solidification. Volatile gas expulsion. Water condensation. Water dissociation. Ozone production. Ultraviolet absorption. Photosynthetic unicellular organisms. Oxidation. Mutation. Natural selection and evolution. Respiration. Cell differentiation. Sexual reproduction. Fossilization. Land exploration. Dinosaur extinction. Mammal expansion. Glaciation. Homo sapiens manifestation. Animal domestication. Food surplus production. Civilization! Innovation. Exploration. Religion. Warring nations. Empire creation and destruction. Exploration. Colonization. Taxation without representation. Revolution. Constitution. Election. Expansion. Industrialization. Rebellion. Emancipation Proclamation. Invention. Mass production. Urbanization. Immigration. World conflagration. League of Nations. Suffrage extension. Depression. World conflagration. Fission explosions. United Nations. Space exploration. Assassinations. Lunar excursions. Resignation. Computerization. World Trade Organization. Terrorism. Internet expansion. Reunification. Dissolution. World-Wide Web creation. Composition. Extrapolation?

According to the website, this was the inspiration for the book A Briefer History Of Time, which the author Eric Schulman has made available for download under a Creative Commons License. Definitely an interesting read…

Hunter Thompson + Bill Murray = Shotgun Golf?! I’m not even sure how to describe this; read the article and see for yourself…

Since the NHL season has been cancelled, I’ve chosen the cheesy hockey rink anthem Rock And Roll, Part 2 by Gary Glitter  as the next MP3 Of The Moment. Enjoy!

Slashdot reports that the trailer to the upcoming cinematic adaptation of The Hitchhiker’s Guide To The Galaxy is available on amazon.com. However, waxy.org has linked to a better quality video; I suggest you download that one.

For those of you that aren’t familiar with HHGTTG (shame on you!), it’s the first novel in the five-part trilogy penned by Douglas Adams. He’s one of my favorite authors, and I’m still saddened by his recent death.

The casting for the movie looks pretty spot-on, especially Martin Freeman (of BBC’s The Office fame) and Sam Rockwell, and it also appears that John Malkovich has a small role. The movie is due out on April 29, and it might even get me into the theater… 🙂

Check out this video clip of Dan Castellaneta and Harry Shearer (page with embedded Windows Media Video) on Conan O’Brien. For those of you who aren’t familiar with those names, they are most readily known as doing most of the voices of The Simpsons; funny stuff…

Most of you have probably heard that the NHL has cancelled the entire season after failing to resolve the expired Collective Bargaining Agreement between the owners and players; an interview with Players Association Executive Director Bob Goodenow has some more details.

Considering how long this has dragged on, I’m not at all surprised that it has come to this, but that doesn’t mean I’m happy about it. I’m not going to get into the blame game over why this happened, as there are cases to be made against both sides. However, I think the players and owners are equally delusional about what this will do to their already dwindling market share, and they should have both taken greater steps to ensure that this didn’t happen. People are comparing a possible fan backlash to the one that happened to Major League Baseball after 1994, but I think that this will be much worse, as the NHL’s fan base is a lot smaller to begin with and has been rapidly losing ground. It’ll be interesting to see what happens next year…