This page leads you to a veritable olio of stuff I hope
will entertain you. Or at least some of it. Or at least some of you.
Immediately below is a list of what's immediately below the list immediately below.
You
can read about Dan Quayle and the flag, then
you can relax. You can read
about crossword puzzles. You can read about IRC(and 20 Questions and Charades). You can read
about some words. You can read about an unfair Mensa test. You can read
about how to best the lotteries. You can read
about an odd
poem. You can read
about being a claims adjuster. You can
read about logical fallacies. You can
read about a few Web sites
I like. You can't yet read about my take on nationality. You can't yet read about my take on selfishness. You can't yet read about my take on boxing. How many U.S. states are
north of Canada?
I've been working crossword puzzles for a few years now, and awhile
back I decided I had something to say about them, so I wrote it down. Then I
realized my handwriting is kind of hard to read, so I typed it out for this Web site.
OK by me. If you promise not to drift off into other
subjects, I want to read the essay on crossword puzzles.
IRC
IRC is short for Internet Relay Chat, the worldwide chat room.
If you've never heard of IRC, get started here. If you are an IRC pal of mine, hi.
Okey doke, tell me more about Internet Relay
Chat (and the game of 20 Questions and the game of Charades).
Words
Not a few words about a few words, in two main pages.
If you're more intelligent than 98% of humans you can join a club
called Mensa. I tried to join by paying nine bucks to take a pre-qualifying test,
and I concluded that the test is illegitimate. Do you agree?
Even if you don't read any of these
other stories so far, at least try this
one.
Logical Fallacies
There are many ways to make mistakes in logic, and most of them have
names and understandable explanations.
As I see it, we humans should never fall prey to logical fallacies. The less we do the better, and it's useful to know which
ones are available to trip us up, to make us make mistakes.
RinkWorks is similar to The Onion
except that it's not weekly.
For several months in this space prior to February of 2001 I linked to a hilarious but harmless page at a site called Christian Web Site
Designs. Then it disappeared, which was too bad. Then I discovered how to resurrect it.
All Your Base, first suggested by my friend Nick Dallett
Darwin Awards, a justifiably well-known Web site you should peruse or at
least know about
NASA satellite tracking shows you, in real time, where some of the
stuff we've put into Earth orbit is.
How Stuff Works is a gratifyingly large collection of articles on just
what the name says -- how stuff works. It's better, and worse, than I thought it would be.
Straight Dope is similar to "How Stuff Works" in that it answers a lot
of questions you might have. A lot.
Wikipedia is a remarkable mass of information on almost any subject
you can think of, collected and presented in a way that uses the power of the size of the Internet in an
efficient way.
North of Canada, etc.
Bar bet. This is a simple exercise in eidetic memory,
specifically your memory of the hundreds of times you've seen maps of North America.
Here's the question:
How many U.S. states have any portion of their borders north
of the southernmost part of Canada?
(This is not a trick question. For example, it's not like
Canada owns some unheard-of territory in the South Pacific.)
This is such an extremely multi-media site that we
also bring you an original animated gif.
I was tickled by the realization a few years ago that
the word "rotator" is spelled the same backwards as forwards. If I were
better at building animated GIFs, the one below (which is supposed to be two gears
rotating against each other) would be much more impressive.
You can't yet read about my take on nationality.
You can't yet read about my take on selfishness.
You can't yet read about my take on boxing.
