We’ve all heard of them: Boyle’s Law, Keynes’ Law, Metcalfe’s and Murphy’s.
Wikipedia’s list of eponymous laws is your one-stop resource for those observations and predictions that are named after a person.
For others that don’t make the cut, see the ‘adages’ category.
With a lengthy US road trip in the pipeline (’09 or ‘10, hopefully), I was pleased to read Charlie Brooker’s commentary on his recent excursion to “the Kingdom of Road Trips”.
My ideal holiday is a road trip. All that variety! And sitting down! It’s like watching television, but better, because every so often you get to step out into the landscape you’re watching and interact with it. And it’s in 3D! Perfect.
Apart from one tiny problem. I can’t drive.
We arrived in San Francisco and picked up our car: an unsexy people carrier the size and shape of an industrial refrigerator. A sports convertible may sound fun, but just try driving through the desert in one: within the hour you’d be hallucinating with sunstroke so badly, you’d swerve off the road, thinking you were traversing the rings of Saturn or driving inside Joan Collins’s face.
Remember xkcd’s map of online communities? Well, Franklin Veaux has gone and done the same… but for sex.
I always thought I was pretty well-versed in slang of all types, but the sex map tells a different story. Hopefully this isn’t a sign of ageing.
via Rudius
Farley Katz challenges Randall Munroe to a cartoon off: as expected, hilarity ensues.
The Rules—each contender is to draw:
- The Internet, as envisioned by the elderly.
- String Theory.
- 1999.
- Your favorite animal eating your favorite food.
In the obligatory post-contest interview:
Cartoon Lounge: Tell us a little bit about yourself and xkcd.
Randall Munroe: Well, I draw xkcd, a webcomic about stick figures who do math, play with staple guns, mess around on the Internet, and have lots of sex. It’s about three-fourths autobiographical.
This short video of Salvador Dali’s appearance on What’s My Line? is rather entertaining.
Naturally, he’s as surreal as his art. At one point a contestant mused: “You are a human being?”
