Roadside America - Guide to Offbeat Tourist Attractions

"Roadside America, your travel guide to more than 6,000 offbeat attractions, tourist traps, weird vacations, and roadtrips."

Visit: Roadside America - Guide to Offbeat Tourist Attractions.

Acronym Server Simplified

"An acronym is a label formed from the beginnings of words (Greek: acro [head] and nym [word]) -- or very rarely, from letters in the middle of words. There is no requirement that an acronym be pronounceable as a normal word (this is a curious myth perpetuated by American dictionaries): IBM is just as much an acronym as LASER."

If you've got a SNAFU bigger than NATO, than you need to see this site, ASAP: Acronym Server Simplified.

Jelly Belly Recipes

For Jelly Belly Addicts... - An online Jelly Belly menu and several "recipes" have been gathered over the years. The menu covers all 40 "official" flavors, and some of the newer flavors as well. The recipes include Banana Split, Candy Apple, Strawberry Milkshake, and more. Jelly Belly recipes

Who Cries For The Pinata?

"Think you’re up with current events and doing what you can to protect the rights of those who can’t fight for them? What about the piñatas who have no voice? Society accepts disturbing brutality towards piñatas, but one man is standing up and defending piñata rights.

Doyle Smith (Neil Grahn) in Canada created the Piñata Preserve to protect piñatas. Canadian comedy troupe Three Dead Trolls in a Baggie presents the educational piñata preservation film, “Who Cries for the Piñata?”"

BMI Calculators

"Body Mass Index or BMI is a tool for indicating weight status in adults. It is a measure of weight for height. BMI correlates with body fat. The relation between fatness and BMI differs with age and gender. For example, women are more likely to have a higher percent of body fat than men for the same BMI. On average, older people may have more body fat than younger adults with the same BMI."

Find your own BMI by using the BMI Calculators.

Guide to Springfield USA

"The mapping of The Simpsons hometown, Springfield, began in the Spring of 2001 when it became evident that no adequate map of Springfield existed either online or in print. Initially the content was derived from the City Profile and Springfield Vacation pages at The Simpsons Archive, but it has since been augmented by numerous viewings of most episodes of The Simpsons by the authors.

While the placement of most locations is arbitrary, many are placed according to where they appear in relationship to each other in specific episodes of The Simpsons. In some cases 'one-time references' to specific locations have been disregarded in favor of others more often repeated. Due to the many inconsistencies among episodes, the map will never be completely accurate."

Read more and get the Guide to Springfield USA.

SunAngle

SunAngle is an on-line tool that calculates solar angles and related information for a given location, date, and time. Useful for architects, photographers, artists, hobbyists, and others

SunAngle

Time and Date for any City in the World

At this site you see the time and date for any city in the world. You can also create a calendar, setup a personal world clock of up to 16 cities, and setup counters.

timeanddate.com

The War Prayer

"The War Prayer"
by Mark Twain
written approximately 1904-05
quoted from Albert Bigelow Paine, ed.,
Europe and Elsewhere

"It was a time of great and exalting excitement. The country was up in arms, the war was on, in every breast burned the holy fire of patriotism; the drums were beating, the bands playing, the toy pistols popping, the bunched firecrackers hissing and spluttering; on every hand and far down the receding and fading spread of roofs and balconies a fluttering wilderness of flags flashed in the sun; daily the young volunteers marched down the wide avenue gay and fine in their new uniforms, the proud fathers and mothers and sisters and sweethearts cheering them with voices choked with happy emotion as they swung by; nightly the packed mass meetings listened, panting, to patriot oratory which stirred the deepest deeps of their hearts, and which they interrupted at briefest intervals with cyclones of applause, the tears running down their cheeks the while; in the churches the pastors preached devotion to flag and country, and invoked the God of Battles beseeching His aid in our good cause in outpourings of fervid eloquence which moved every listener. It was indeed a glad and gracious time, and the half dozen rash spirits that ventured to disapprove of the war and cast a doubt upon its righteousness straightway got such a stern and angry warning that for their personal safety's sake they quickly shrank out of sight and offended no more in that way."

Read the whole prayer.

Bee and Wasp Stings

According to Lisa Bradley, a research assistant with the Texas Honey Bee Identification Laboratory at Texas A&M, "A person allergic to bees can die from only one sting. For the rest of the population, death takes nearly 10 times the number of stings as your body weight in pounds. That means it would take about 1,200 to 2,000 stings to kill a person weighing 200 pounds."

Learn more: Bee and Wasp Stings Management Guidelines

Worth1000.com - Photoshop Contests

"Worth1000.com: is a creative competition and photoshop contest site on the web. They have 2,685 galleries of 86,974 original images."

Bird Songs

What's that bird you hearing singing? If you can't identify birds by their calls then visit Bird Songs. Songs and calls of some New York State birds.

Broadband » Speed tests

Want to know how fast your cable or DSL connection really is? Is it really the speed they told you it would be? Use this site to check your broadband speed.

Ian's Shoelace Site

Learn to tie your shoes: "This site's main aim is to teach both my Ian Knot and my Ian's Secure Knot here as well, some of it useful, some just for fun. If you wear shoes with laces (or anything else that does up with laces), you're bound to find something here that they don't teach in kindergarten. If you still reckon it's all a bit frivolous, then I hope you at least get a laugh out of it."

American Rhetoric: The Power of Oratory in the United States

American Rhetoric: "Index to and growing database of 5000 full text, audio and video (streaming) versions of public speeches, sermons, legal proceedings, lectures, debates, interviews, other recorded media events, and a declaration or two. 200+ short audio clips from well-known speeches, movies, sermons, popular songs, and sensational media events by famous (and infamous) politicians, actors, preachers, athletes, singers, and other noteworthy personalities. Complete index to and partial text and audio database of the 100 most significant American political speeches of the 20th century. Full text, audio and video database of over 50 Hollywood movie speeches."

How Everyday Things Are Made

AIM Manufacturing Videos and virtual factory tours: "If you've ever wondered how things are made - products like candy, cars, airplanes, or bottles - or if you've been interested in manufacturing processes, like forging, casting, or injection molding, then you've come to the right place."

Speech Accent Archive

This site examines the accented speech of speakers from many different language backgrounds reading the same sample paragraph. Currently, the site has obtained 337 speech samples.

Visit web site.

Geographic Encyclopedia

Placesnamed.com is a database of United States place names. Search for towns with your last or first name.

Morphases

Visit the Morphases website:

"Morphases is an online next generation software in face manipulation. It allows user to modify and create human faces from different elements in real time with almost an unlimited power. All elements are divided individually and stored into genebank."

Free stock photos archive

Morguefile.com: "A place to keep post production materials for use of reference, an inactive job file. This morgue file contains free high resolution digital stock photography for either corporate or public use.

The term 'morgue file' is popular in the newspaper business to describe the file that holds past issues flats. Although the term has been used by illustrators, comic book artist, designers and teachers as well. The purpose of this site is to provide free image reference material for use in all creative pursuits. This is the world wide web's morguefile"

Time in a Capsule

Alan and Nancy Bixby have buried 10 time capsules containing memorabilia intended for their grandsons in remote wilderness areas of the western United States. Their hope is that their grandchildren will venture forth to find the capsules with the aid of Global Positioning System devices. The site provides step-by-step instructions for others who want to do the same.

Full story

The Official U.S. Time

View Official Time

Find cheap gas prices in your city

GasBuddy Organization Inc



"GasBuddy.com is the portal site to more than 170 web sites that help consumers find cheap gas prices."

Imaging Study Shows Brain Maturing

The brain's center of reasoning and problem solving is among the last to mature, a new study graphically reveals. The decade-long magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) study of normal brain development, from ages 4 to 21, by researchers at NIH's National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH) and University of California Los Angeles (UCLA) shows that such "higher-order" brain centers, such as the prefrontal cortex, don't fully develop until young adulthood.

A time-lapse 3-D movie that compresses 15 years of human brain maturation, ages 5 to 20, into seconds shows gray matter - the working tissue of the brain's cortex - diminishing in a back-to-front wave, likely reflecting the pruning of unused neuronal connections during the teen years. Cortex areas can be seen maturing at ages in which relevant cognitive and functional developmental milestones occur.

The researchers scanned the same 13 healthy children and teens every two years as they grew up, for 10 years. After co-registering the scans with each other, using an intricate set of brain anatomical landmarks, they visualized the ebb and flow of gray matter - neurons and their branch-like extensions - in maps that, together, form the movie showing brain maturation from ages 5 to 20.

It was long believed that a spurt of overproduction of gray matter during the first 18 months of life was followed by a steady decline as unused circuitry is discarded. Then, in the late 1990s, NIMH's Dr. Jay Giedd, a co-author of the current study, and colleagues, discovered a second wave of overproduction of gray matter just prior to puberty, followed by a second bout of "use-it-or-lose-it" pruning during the teen years.

The new study found that the first areas to mature (e.g., extreme front and back of the brain) are those with the most basic functions, such as processing the senses and movement. Areas involved in spatial orientation and language (parietal lobes) follow. Areas with more advanced functions -- integrating information from the senses, reasoning and other "executive" functions (prefrontal cortex) - mature last. Intriguingly, time-lapse movies of Alzheimer's disease showed the opposite anatomical sequence - the last brain regions to develop in childhood are the first to degenerate in dementia; and the earliest developing brain regions - controlling vision and sensation - are spared until the very latest stages of Alzheimer's disease.

See the videos

The history of the PEACE SIGN

"In the late 50's a young lady started (or was involved in) a movement to stop the use of Nuclear Power. She was starting to get a following and wanted Eternal Nuclear Disarmament. To reach her goal she decided not to have a name for her organization, actually it is said that she didn't want an organization just the realization that Nuclear Power is dangerous and needs to be used in a much more controlled environment. Weapons do not fall in this category yet.... but I digress................ She asked her father if he could help her come up with a symbol that she could use to show what they (the organization that isn't an organization)  (Later to become the CND) wanted. Her father worked for the railroad for a long time and he told her that on the railroad trains go by signs so fast that they can't read words so they use semaphore. Semaphore is the use of a symbol instead of a word so the driver can see, read and react to the Semaphore symbol from a great distance. He asks his daughter what she wants to say in her symbol. She wants Nuclear Disarmament. So her father said that a strait line through a circle stands for No or N. And a Curved line stands for D.

Buy putting them together, moving and shaping them a little, you get the modern day Peace Sign."

Read the full story here.

Year by Year: 1900-2004

Year by Year: 1900-2004

Find out what happen in any year from 1900 to 2004: The Year in Review, Month-by-Month Headlines, The Nation, The World, People in the News, Disasters, Supreme Court Decisions, Science Discoveries, Awards, Deaths.

ArchNet: Islamic Architecture Community

ArchNet http://archnet.org:

"ArchNet is an online community for architects, planners, urban designers, interior designers, landscape architects, and scholars, with a special focus on the Islamic world."

"ArchNet provides an extensive, high-quality, globally accessible, intellectual resource focused on architecture and planning issues and includes restoration, conservation, housing, landscape, and related concerns. It is to be achieved by providing on an accessible server, images, Geographic Information System and Computer-Aided Design databases, a searchable text library, bibliographical reference databases, online lectures, curricular materials, papers, essays, and reviews, discussion forums and statistical information."

Christmas Lights on West 37th Street in Austin Texas

If you really want to experience an Austin original, you must see the
Lights of West 37th Street. During December, just on the fringe of the
Hyde Park at Guadalupe, the halo from West 37th Street can be seen for
miles. (Okay, part of the glow comes from the taillights of cars lining
up to get to West 37th.)

This unassuming little street dotted with modest bungalows from the
early 1900s begins its transformation into THE holiday attraction the
week after Thanksgiving. Thousands of lights crisscross the street and
are daisy chained from tree-to-tree and house-to-house. Old stoves,
medicine bottles, cars, hedges trimmed to look like cars, headless
mannequins, porch swings, space ship mockups covered in foil, Barbie
dolls, television sets, a spinning icosahedron (a 20 sided polyhedron,
which looks like a big dreidel) suspended from a tree, lawn chairs, and
clotheslines are just some of the items that the residents of 37th
Street have drenched in bright, twinkling, colored lights.

Read the full story.

The Payphone Project

Payphone Project Website

The Payphone Project contains thousands of payphone numbers, with photos, stories, and links related to pay phones and phone booths throughout the world.

The original intention of the Payphone Project was to promote random contacts among complete strangers. By listing public payphone numbers throughout America it invited people to pick up the phone and call some random street corner in some random town and talk to whoever answered.

That original purpose is now nearly moot. Virtually all payphones reject incoming calls. Those that accept calls would be programmed otherwise once people start calling them. Other payphones and phone booths sit in outlying areas (where cell phones rarely work) as a public service in case of emergencies. It would be irresponsible to encourage people to monopolize these resources by unnecessarily calling just for laughs.

Ant Formula for Sugar Loving Ants

2 parts molasses
1 part sugar
1 part dry yeast powder

After mixing put a dab of this on strings of cardboard near the line of ants. They gather around the feast and later they gather for a mass funeral.

From: The Super Handyman - Famous Carrell Formulas

Mix Your Way To A Greener Lawn

An Oklahoma man boasts the best lawn in his neighborhood. He developed his own speical tonic that he sprays on the lawn. He claims household ammonia helps turn grass green and helps it grow. He said mouthwash, kills bugs and grubs and he says soda and beer help the dead grass break down quicker.

Here`s the formula he mixes in a 10 gallon sprayer, to spray over his lawn:
1 can beer
1 can soda
1/2 cup household ammonia
1/2 cup mouthwash
1/2 cup liquid dishwashing soap

Source: KARK News

Second Life

Second Life: Your World. Your Imagination.



Second Life is an online digital world, built, shaped, and owned by its participants. On this world one creates a shared reality in a world full of people, activities, adventure, and fun. If you are a designer, programmer, or inventor you will be pleased at the variety of opportunities Second Life provides.

Create beautiful scripted 3D objects in a totally live online environment - from weapons to clothing lines to motorcycles to housing projects.

Explore a rapidly changing and expanding world simulated on over 100 servers (with new land added almost daily), containing hundreds of thousands of user-created objects, daily and nightly hosted events, games to play, and people to meet.

Buy and sell land, create a business, or exchange virtual for real currency. It’s up to you. Second Life is yours to imagine and inhabit.

WiFi - ArtCache

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"Along with the Bedouin project, Bleecker is also working on a more artistic endeavor he calls Wi-Fi.ArtCache . As with Bedouin, ArtCache is a free floating 802.11 Wi-Fi node purposely disconnected from the public Internet.

"There are artistic experiments -- on-the-ground practical ways you can bring together proximity, technology and social interaction in productive ways," says Bleecker.

Instead of accessing the Internet, ArtCache consumers can only access the ArtCache network. Users then download to their Wi-Fi-enabled devices artist-created Macromedia Flash animations whose narratives, Bleecker says, "respond to social and location-based activity occurring within range of the Cache's 802.11 network."

Unlike Bedouin, however, ArtCache is stationary and requires users to move within range to access its files. To connect to it, you must be physically in the presence of the ArtCache installation. The range varies, but in general someone within roughly 30 feet could access the network. (The Bedouin has a tested range of roughly half a square city block.)

While the art is hard to conceptualize without actually seeing it, the two most important elements are that each piece is designed to dynamically respond to its environment, and that each piece has a limited number of copies, or times it can be downloaded.

"On the Web," explains Bleecker, "there's an infinite number of PDFs or images -- you can download them forever. Ours creates a sense of preciousness to digital media. There's a limited number; things can change. You can take out and put back a piece, or take it out and walk off -- but now that art is more precious because only a certain number are left."

Quoted from: Wi-Fi Planet

WiFi - Bedouin

"WiFi - Bedouin is an art-technology project. WiFi - Bedouin is a wearable, mobile 802.11b node disconnected from the global Internet. It forms a WiFi 'island Internet' challenging conventional assumptions about WiFi and suggesting new architectures for digital networks that are based on physical proximity rather than solely connectivity. Most significantly, WiFi.Bedouin facilitates the creation of a truly mobile web community.

With the proliferation of 'WiFi Hot Spots' and the mobile devices that access them, the public and private space surrounding us has become literally soaked through with Internet data. The promise of ubiquitous access to the Internet from anywhere, anytime is quickly being fulfilled."


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