Mötley Crüe will soon be on the silver screen, as a deal to turn their autobiography The Dirt into a screenplay has apparently been signed. Somehow I don’t think it will be as good as Rock Star.
Wired Magazine has a very interesting story of how MIT students pooling their intellects beat the odds at casinos, until their painstakingly-thought out team strategy was discovered. Another engaging series of stories entitled “A Casino Odyssey” is featured on kuro5hin.org.
SkyscraperPage.com is a really nicely-done site that lists all of the world’s largest buildings, graphically comparing them by location, architect, and year and includes a large amount of statistics to boot. Searching by city yields illustrations of other buildings as well; pretty cool!
Check out this graphical family tree/flow chart depicting the relationships between Arthur Andersen, Enron, WorldCom, Imclone, and other corporations recently caught in financial scandals. I had no idea that there were so many ties between them…
USA Today reports that “Professional athletes, rap artists and urban youths are installing TVs throughout their luxury cars — including in the middle of steering wheels.” As one would expect, 38 states have laws making it illegal for TV monitors to be visible to the driver, to say nothing of the idiocy of removing an airbag just to show off. However, “Rap singer Kaleidaskope says removing the air bag to install a TV in the steering wheel of his Mercedes-Benz CL 55… ‘makes a statement. It says you’re either a ballplayer, a rapper or making some serious cheddar [money].’” Oh, then I guess I’ve been looking at this all wrong. NOT. What morons…
“Steady” Ed Headrick, the the inventor that perfected Frisbee flight, died at the age of 78. While a somewhat sad story for a Frisbee afficianado like myself, the story turns a little unusual. Apparently his “ashes will be molded into a limited number of ‘memorial flying discs’ which will be distributed to family and friends, and sold to help fund a future Frisbee/disc golf history and memorabilia museum.” I guess that’s an, um, interesting way to immortalize yourself, but I just find the thought a little morbid for some reason. Anyway, I also found a nice page with the history of the Frisbee, including some original patent drawings.
Just for fun, here’s an online bar code generator.
I had no idea that snakes can fly, but apparently the paradise tree snake indigenous to south and southeast Asian rainforests can glide and maneuver with remarkable precision.
purportal.com is a nice resource to check before you forward the latest urban legend/chain letter/virus warning to all of your friends. It allows you to search several authoritative hoax, urban legend, and computer security sites to verify whether a story is real or just another chain letter scam making its rounds. As a humorous aside, this site has a nice rant on some of the more egregiously annoying forwards that have made their rounds in the past.
Photographer Bill Biggart was killed in the collapse of the South Tower of the World Trade Center on 9/11/2001. Although the three cameras and film he was carrying were destroyed, the flash card in his digital camera miraculously escaped damage. This website showcases some truly amazing pictures of that horrifying day and is a fitting memorial to this artist.
