Random

I get quite a lot of e-mails from 7-year-olds. At least the content suggests they're 7-year-olds.

So I would like to dedicate the film I have embedded to them. For it reveals, once and for all--with a definitiveness that offers vast relief--what technology Santa Claus uses in order to bring the gift of, well, tons of gifts to the world's young and restless.

Larry Silverberg, associate head of North Carolina State University's Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering Department, has clearly spent much of his life attempting to solve the Santa problem.

I am grateful to WRAL in North Carolina … Read more

As anyone who has ever pulled a white rabbit out of a black hat will tell you, the art of fooling people depends on doing things right in front of their eyes.

What, then, might one think of the explanations being offered to the poor, frightened people of Cowley County in Kansas? For just a few hours ago, they witnessed what some of them suspected was an extra-terrestrial craft being wheeled through their streets.

It was only last Monday afternoon when a vast shrink-wrapped, saucer-shaped thing was seen being towed down Cowley County's Highway 77.

Street signs had to … Read more

I always wondered how Santa gets things down the chimney without them being covered in soot.

Which sometimes makes me wonder how, at Christmas time, those nice men from FedEx always ensure the package arrives absolutely, positively in one piece.

Then I saw this YouTube video, one that suggests that, perhaps, FedEx guys don't always try to ensure things arrive whole. In this case the package was a Samsung computer monitor.

It is unclear where this video was taken or who the poster is. Which will, of course, lead to some skepticism as to its real-lifeness.

However, the poster … Read more

Sometimes, information will stop you and make you reconsider your world view.

"Indianapolis Colts win," did it for me today. So did a Bloomberg Businessweek headline that said: "Lego is For Girls."

I had never considered Lego to be anything other than a precursor to an engineering job. Some people make it, some don't. Most of those people seem to be boys.

But I'd never imagined that Lego would find the need to launch a special line of toys specifically for girls. Yet here we have, debuting in 2012, Brick Barbie. Not, not quite. … Read more

If you've ever been to a casino, you know that the general purpose of the exercise is to, well, lose.

Very occasionally, people do win. But do they always come out with the money?

I muse on this state of world affairs because of the painful tale of Behar Merlaku. Merlaku, a 26-year-old Kosovar Albanian, was reportedly pushing the buttons on a slot machine in Bregenz, Austria, when it suddenly told him he had won a lot of money: forty-three million euros--which, at current prices, is just under $57 million.

Few on this earth would have felt anything other … Read more

Houston is a wonderful place.

I've always wanted to write that sentence and here, finally, is an opportunity.

For America's executives have decided to dump their irrational loathing upon a city that tries its very best, despite a climate the devil would reject, the 72nd best public transit system in America (out of 100 metropolitan areas), and freeways that seem to go on longer than former San Francisco Mayor Gavin Newsom.

You see, ON24, a Webcasting and virtual events company decided--no doubt in its own self-interest--to discover which cities business executives would most prefer to avoid for a … Read more

When you suddenly have a piece of outer space in your hands, the temptation to slip it into your pocket or purse is just a little too great.

Such is the impression given by a report published yesterday by NASA. It was entitled: Where The Blazes Has All Our Moon Rock Gone?

Well, it wasn't quite that specific. But such was the gist.

The Associated Press pilfered the news that NASA's Inspector General is quite concerned that so much outer space material is out of its hands.

There are apparently around 500 pieces of moon rock and bits … Read more

I wonder which member of the "Mythbusters" production team was told to go to a nice suburban California house and ask: "Can we have our cannonball back, please?"

You see, it seems as if there was a slight miscalculation on the part of the science-meets-stunts show when it fired a cannonball on a bomb disposal range in Dublin, Calif., yesterday.

According to the San Francisco Chronicle, the projectile was supposed to hit some rather large trash cans filled with water before piercing a wall.

Strangely, it missed the trash cans, tore through a cinder-block wall, bounced … Read more

Here we are, burning up our planet until it is a wasteland fit only for Denzel Washington.

Yet the minute we discover that there might exist another place out there whose average temperature is 72 degrees, we get all excited that it's "another Earth."

We don't even say "another San Diego," which seems more approximate to that average temperature than, say, New Jersey. No, we're excited because there might be more people like us out there. Or, perhaps, because there might be somewhere to which we can escape when we finally blow up … Read more