You may have seen an email forward in early 2008 claiming that pictures of frozen waves came from Lake Huron. I’m always skeptical of claims like that, so I had to check it out. My favorite urban legend debunking source, snopes.com, verified that the description is completely fake. However, the pictures are real. They were taken in Antarctica at a base called Dumont D’Urville in 2002, and you can see more pictures from the series at a CalTech website.

There is a famous poem by William Carlos Williams called “This Is Just To Say” which reads like an a half-hearted apology a husband may have left on a scrap of paper on the kitchen table.

This Is Just To Say

I have eaten
the plums
that were in
the icebox

and which
you were probably
saving
for breakfast

Forgive me
they were delicious
so sweet
and so cold

I heard about this poem, and the many spoofs of it on an episode of This American Life. There is some information about it on Wikipedia, as well as some examples of spoofs that they talked about on the show. There is even an online Mad Libs style generator so that you can easily create a “This Is Just To Say” poem of your own.

The Falkirk Wheel is a unique and innovative way to get boats from one canal to another. The official site describes the history. “The Forth and Clyde Canal is 35m (115ft) below the level of the Union Canal. Historically, the two canals had been joined at Falkirk by a flight of 11 locks that stepped down across a distance of 1.5km, but those were dismantled in 1933, breaking the link. What was required was a method of connecting the two canals by some means of lifting two boats down the 35m drop as quickly and simply as possible.” I found some good pictures of the contraption at a russian blog, and there are some YouTube videos of the wheel in action.

Most of the errors Jeff Deck comes across involve missing apostrophes, misplaced commas, and misspelled words. He has been making his way across the country with a typo correction toolkit consisting of white-out, different colored Sharpies and stickers which he uses to correct many of the mistakes he finds. It’s a strange hobby to be sure, but it’s also a good excuse to travel, and it’s brought him some notoriety as well. The Typo Hunt Across America has become a very popular blog, and I first saw his story on ABC news, so there has been plenty of media coverage as well. If you start to notice signs around town which have been corrected by hand, then there’s a good chance that Jeff’s typo hunt has come to a neighborhood near you.

Faith is an inspirational dog. She was born missing a front leg, and her other front leg began to atrophy and was amputated when she was 7 months old. Her owners considered her part of the family and nurtured her as she learned to walk on only her hind legs. She has become a canine celebrity, traveling around the country spreading a message of hope and overcoming adversity. See a nice collection of pictures at oddity central, and visit Faith’s official website for more information.

Body piercing and tattooing have become a common form of expression in our society, and it seems like people are continually going to greater lengths to be unique. Pauly Unstoppable, a man from Toronto, is pushing the boundaries with his eye tattoo. Metro.co.uk describes the procedure. The tattooer injected ink into the eyeball using a needle, until it was completely blue. It took more than 40 tries before the eye was filled with ink. The blue substance used was mixed with antibiotic eyewash to prevent infection. Pauly himself declared: “I really have to emphasize again that the procedure was extensively researched and done by people who were aware of the risks and possible complications and that it should not be casually attempted. Now that this experiment has been started, please wait for us to either heal or go blind before trying it.” Read other stories at inventorspot and asylum.com.

Why did it take them so long to start doing this? The New York Times describes that movie theaters are going to start showing more live events. “Movie theaters are not just for movies anymore. Coming soon will be broadcasts of live baseball games, rock concerts, classic TV shows and an array of other offerings not associated with the silver screen.” That sounds like a great idea. There are some events that I’m not willing to pay the money to see live, and some others that pose a geographical challenge. In those cases, I may want to make it special and see and hear it with better quality than my living room allows. I could see myself spending $10 to watch a concert or sporting event on the big screen.

Jack Davis, an 11-year-old from Florida, saw an injustice and decided to do something about it. There is a Florida law which states that a restaurant is responsible for their food making a person sick regardless if it was sold, donated, or given away. Because of that, eateries routinely throw extra food in the trash or send it to a composting company in bins like the ones shown here. Recognizing that much of the food is still perfectly edible, Jack wrote a letter to his congressman asking if anything could be done to change the law. State Senator Nan Rich fell in love with the idea, and it’s now on the fast track to becoming a reality. “If you think there’s a problem in the world,” Jack said, “you don’t wait for other people to fix it. You have to try to fix it yourself.”

In August of 2007, the coastline near Sydney, Australia became a churning bubble bath. Foam swallowed an entire beach and half the nearby buildings, including the local lifeguards’ center, in a freak display of nature at Yamba in New South Wales. One minute a group of teenage surfers were waiting to catch a wave, the next they were swallowed up in a giant bubble bath. The foam was so light that they could puff it out of their hands and watch it float away. It stretched for 30 miles out into the Pacific in a phenomenon not seen at the beach for more than three decades. Scientists explain that the foam is created by impurities in the ocean, such as salts, chemicals, dead plants, decomposed fish and excretions from seaweed. All are churned up together by powerful currents which cause the water to form bubbles. That sounds disgusting to me. The last thing I would do would be to go play in a foam of seaweed excretions and decomposed fish. See the full story on DailyMail.co.uk.

A 15 story office building in London is being demolished from the bottom up to make way for a new futuristic tower. The structure was built in 1965 using a unique method of construction. There is a strong concrete core in the middle of the building which holds up a huge beam, and each floor hangs from that beam. Matthew White, the project director, said “When you demolish the building, you have to take the weight off the structure first, from the bottom up. Eventually the beam will be deconstructed at roof level, leaving the core, which will be demolished from the top.” Check out the full story.

The smallest house in Toronto is up for sale. If you are looking for a single family home in Canada, don’t need a lot of space, and have $180,000 to spend, then this may be just the place for you. The lot was originally designed to be a driveway for the neighboring house, but when it wasn’t used for that purpose, Arthur Weeden decided to build on the land so that it wouldn’t go to waste. At 7.25 feet wide and 113.67 feet long, the parcel of land could only accommodate a one bedroom one bathroom house with 300 square feet of interior space. Theres a good post from a Toronto blogger about the house, including a collection of pictures, and the house also has an official site where you can read about the history, the renovations, and the press it has received.

A British court annulled the marriage of a couple who didn’t realize that they were biological twins. The two were adopted by different families when they were babies and neither of them knew that they had a twin sibling until after they were married. Pam Hodgkins, chief executive officer of the charity Adults Affected by Adoption (NORCAP) said there had been previous cases of separated siblings being attracted to each other. “We have a resistance, a very strong incest taboo where we are aware that someone is a biological relative,” she said. “But when we are unaware of that relationship, we are naturally drawn to people who are quite similar to ourselves. And of course there is unlikely to be anyone more similar to any individual than their sibling.” Read the full story.

Each year Central Connecticut University releases a list of America’s most literate cities. After two years at number 2 behind Seattle, Minneapolis took the top spot in 2007. Below is a description of the criteria used to determine the ranking as described on the site.

A total score was tallied for each city across six different literacy categories: Booksellers; Educational attainment; Internet Resources; Library Resources; Newspaper Circulation; and Periodical publications. All categories were compared against the city’s total population.

The top 10 Most Literate Cities in America

Wired magazine hands out the 2007 foot-in-mouth awards for science and technology. Follow this link to the full story for a better explanation of the context, but the entries include these gems.

Marc Zuckerberg, the founder of Facebook:

Once every hundred years, media changes.

Steve Ballmer, CEO of Microsoft on the iPhone launch:

There’s no chance that the iPhone is going to get any significant market share. No chance. It’s a $500 subsidized item. They may make a lot of money. But if you actually take a look at the 1.3 billion phones that get sold, I’d prefer to have our software in 60% or 70% or 80% of them than I would to have 2% or 3%, which is what Apple might get.

Steve Jobs, CEO of Apple on the sudden iPhone price drop:

That’s technology. If they bought it this morning, they should go back to where they bought it and talk to them. If they bought it a month ago, well, that’s what happens in technology.