Odds and Ends, Sun 27 September 2009

   1. "Learn Something Every Day"
     <http://www.learnsomethingeveryday.co.uk/>

   2. "Artist paints landscapes from Google Street View"
     <http://www.telegraph.co.uk/technology/picture-galleries/6162704/
        Artist-paints-landscapes-from-Google-Street-View.html>
   "Bill Guffey, an artist who cannot afford to travel, uses Google Street
    View to visit locations around the world and capture them in paint."

   3. "New online Monopoly game is streets ahead"
     <http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/gamesblog/2009/sep/07/1>
   "Monopoly City Streets, a link up between game owners Hasbro and Google
    Maps, launches on Wednesday for a four-month period. It enables one, in
    theory, to buy any street in the world."

   4. "Question Suggestions"
     <http://questionsuggestions.com/>
   "small voyages into the collective psyche of humans who ask google
    questions"

   5. "Waiting for the Weekend"
     <http://www.theatlantic.com/issues/91aug/rybczynski-p1.htm>
   "A whole two days off from work, in which we can do what we please, has
    only recently become a near-universal right. What we choose to do looks
    increasingly like work, and idleness has acquired a bad name. Herein, a
    history of leisure"

   6. "The mysterious equilibrium of zombies"
     <http://www.boston.com/bostonglobe/ideas/articles/2009/09/06/
        the_mysterious_equilibrium_of_zombies/?page=full>
   "... and other things mathematicians see at the movies"

   7. "Book of Space"
     <http://bldgblog.blogspot.com/2009/09/book-of-space.html>
   "You pick up a book, and you open the covers... and a series of rooms
    begins to pass by, like the frames of a film or sequences in a flip-
    book, and it's all due to laser-cut gaps and remainders."

   8. "What's wrong with this picture?"
     <http://www.scripting.com/stories/2009/09/16/whatsWrongWithThisPicture.html>

From The Curiosity Show to Mythbusters

   My interest in science and technology can probably be traced back to a
   little Adelaide TV program called "The Curiosity Show":
     <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Curiosity_Show>

   I always looked forward to coming home from school to watch the latest
   episode.  Thanks to YouTube, clips from the show can be viewed online.
   For example, here's a piece about how films and movies work:
     <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UL0et1YZNMM>

   Around the same time, the ABC had a science show hosted by an American
   scientist, Julius Sumner Miller:
     <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Julius_Sumner_Miller>

   His stock phrase before explaining the science underlying an experiment
   was "Why is it so?", which is how the show got its name.  Episodes are
   available officially on the ABC site:
     <http://www.abc.net.au/science/features/whyisitso/>
   Of course, there are lots of other clips featuring JSM online via YouTube.

   Later, my curiosity for how stuff works was met by a couple of English
   presenters in a series called "The Secret Life of Machines".  The
   videos for all episodes are available at:
     <http://www.exploratorium.edu/ronh/SLOM/index.html>

   In the modern era, Mythbusters maintains the tradition of using
   experiments to explain science, albeit in a more entertainment-oriented
   way:
     <http://dsc.discovery.com/fansites/mythbusters/mythbusters.html>