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Freaky Friday: DIY Lie Detectors and Redneck Roller Coasters |
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Dr. Samuel Says -
Weirdness
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Written by Dr. Samuel Centralia, Ph.D., D.D.S., Esq.
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Friday, 01 February 2008 |
The nature of websurfing has, at its essence, a certain quality of lateral drift that I much enjoy. I might start out the day browsing for recent trends in sub-symbiotic artificial intelligence, say. Or major league baseball. And within a few dozen clicks I find I'm scanning Swiss real estate ads, or downloading Gaelic instrumental covers of Led Zeppelin songs. You just never know.
This afternoon I started at one of my favorite mainstream media
destinations, CNN.com, which I like to scan just to see how close
our culture is to utter collapse. Some recent, actual headlines from the top-level menu at
The Most Trusted Name in News (I collect these as a hobby):
- Conjoined 'bowling ball' twins divided at last
- Rush hour! Baby can't wait, born on interstate
- Buster the bus-riding dog
- Elvis-crazy PM hits high notes at Graceland
- Pastor's wife snapped over money, agent testifies
- Star Jones: 'View' viewers deserve the truth
- State's top DUI cop charged with driving drunk
- Rob Schneider collapses on movie set
- Freak accident sends Hasselhoff to surgery
- More human heads found in Acapulco
- Man fights alligator to save girlfriend's dog
- Pink gut beats 'Big Sexy' in belly flop contest
 Sorry,
went off on a tangent there -- I could complain about this all day.
Happily, however, a few clicks later I landed at one of my favorite
Internet destinations, the blog over at Make magazine. Make does noble
work, reporting upon and encouraging do-it-yourself technology
projects. The blog is particularly fun. After just a few clicks, I was
reading about a DIY lie detector kit, a folding bicycle wheel, an
inflatable mouse (the computer kind), and the remarkable specimen of
Canadian-flavored DIY insanity that is … the Redneck Rollercoaster.
Check
the link for the fascinating tale of a severely yet brilliantly abused
1991 Chevy Cavalier. I have always applauded the pioneering spirit and
essential bad-assedness of the Canadian people. Premium beer + long
winter months + national health care = fertile breeding ground for
resourceful science.
The lateral drift continued, as I wheeled
through the Web for much of the afternoon. The ride ended, predictably,
deep in the archives of a certain specialty video store out of Rio.
See, my tastes run to a particularly obscure variety of Brazilian "art
film" that I have to mail order and -- actually, never mind. I've
probably said enough.
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