Before I started clicking through to see the answers, I was able to come up with 33 of the 46 movies from the Empire Poster Quiz. I might have been able to come up with a few more if I would have stared at them long enough, but the temptation is strong to pull up the full posters of the ones you can’t quite think of. At any rate, this is a fun little quiz, and you’ll surprise yourself that you can come up with so many movies from just one letter. Then you’ll be surprised again when you see the answers for the easy ones that you couldn’t think of. Be honest now … how many did you get before you started cheating?

You’ve got to admire scientists who think outside the box to come up with interesting ideas which may or may not catch on. These living tree root structures may one day be houses outside of which Al Gore would be proud to park his Toyota Prius. “The concept of coaxing living trees into useful objects, sometimes called tree shaping, arborsculpture, living art or eco-architecture, isn’t new. But now engineers and plant scientists from Tel Aviv University have taken their leafy designs to the next, and more practical and playful, level. Pilot projects under way in the United States, Australia and Israel include streetlamps, gates and playground structures made entirely from trees, as well as hospital park benches that grow their own foliage for shade.” There’s no doubt that the idea is cool, but I think it will be a long time before it moves from benches and lamp posts to single family homes.

This week’s completely pointless website is the tower of bears. A bunch of teddy bears make an innocuous pyramid like some 10-year-old girl’s fantasy cheerleading team. Mouse over a bear to see it topple to the ground, taking with it any teddy standing on it. Leave them alone for a bit, and they will dutifully recreate their original configuration like a little stuffed Sisyphus. Estimated time wasting potential: 3 minutes.

Finally a stick figure family decal has been put to good use. Someone took a picture of the Ass Family minivan and posted it on flickr. Maybe they will add a dog named Lard.

First there was the mini-scandal about updates to the page about Tim Russert before his death had been officially announced. Now Wikipedia is at the center of another manufactured scandal about the Sarah Palin page. NPR reports that “Someone, and apparently it was just one person, felt like the existing [Wikipedia] biography wasn’t appropriate for a vice-presidential candidate. On Friday, 15 minutes before the rumor that John McCain had picked Palin as his running mate, a Wikipedia editor discovered 30 mostly favorable changes had been made to the Alaska governor’s profile.” Is it suspicious? Maybe. But isn’t that what Wikipedia is all about? If someone has new, different, or better information, then they can update any entry they want. Someone else may have conflicting information, and if they have better sources to back it up, then they have the right to make their own updates.

Stupid websites are all around us, and as an advocate of reusing and recycling the web, I’m happy to point them out whenever I come across them. Here’s one that will keep you occupied for no more than 10 minutes. 4 cartoon horses stand and blink at you, inviting you to click on their long faces. Each time you do, that horse contributes his harmony to the overall barbershop quartet style song. it’s almost unbearable to hear all 4 parts at once, but singing cartoon horses are admittedly a little bit humorous.

Have you heard the old rule of thumb that one is not able to fold any piece of paper more than 8 times? I have, and I believed it after I tried it a couple times. According to the historical society of Pomona County, there is one girl who took the challenge seriously enough to prove it wrong. “Britney Gallivan has solved the Paper Folding Problem. This well known challenge was to fold paper in half more than seven or eight times, using paper of any size or shape. In April of 2005 Britney’s accomplishment was mentioned on the prime time CBS television show Numb3rs. The task was commonly known to be impossible. Over the years the problem has been discussed by many people, including mathematicians and has been demonstrated to be impossible on TV.” Thanks to her extra credit project, we now have mathematical proof that it’s possible to fold a piece of paper in half 12 times.

There are those ideas which seem funny and clever when a couple of brothers are heading to Sears to create that special portrait to give to mom on Mother’s Day. Some of them just don’t stand the test of time, and others probably weren’t even clever to begin with. These Navy brothers and their Busch Light can clinking moment are a case in point. Luckily we have the internet where a blog called sexy people collects all of these wonderful portrait moments for us.

From a description of the top attractions to visit in Trondheim, Norway: “Designed to assist bike riders in their ascent of the steep hill, this mechanized conveyor belt (most of which is concealed underground beneath a metal-edged groove in the pavement) hauls bicycles, with their riders, up a steeply inclined stretch of a scenic bike path. The cost for 15 minutes of continuous operation is 100NOK ($15), which you can pay by inserting coins into the machine’s coin slot. Frankly, most individual riders either walk their bikes or cycle in low gear up the relatively short hill, but as a conversation piece, the Sykkelheis is worth a look.” Click the more link to see more pictures.
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I love going to the movies, but I’ve been settling for watching them mostly on the small screen since my son was born 2 and a half years ago. So, when my wife and son were away for the weekend, I headed to the local megaplex for a full day at the movies. And I mean it when I say it was a full day. I watched 4 full movies back to back which is a new personal record.
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Some things are more fun when they are presented in a different way. Take the montage of Simpsons couch gags, for example. It’s most (though not all) of the couch sequences from The Simpsons sped up to fit into a five minute video. From swapping heads, to vending machines, to space aliens, to medieval times, all of your favorites are represented. See the full video here.

Accessibility has always been taken into consideration in computer design. There are screen readers, magnifiers, alternative point and click devices, and more. I imagine that it’s still difficult for a blind person to comfortably use a computer, and Jonathan Lucas is trying to make a difference with the Siafu display. “It lays flat like a tablet and allows the user to fully interact with it by way of touch. The surface utilizes a conceptual material called magneclay or magnetized liquid. This material has the ability to morph upward into any shape via a controlled electromagnetic field enabling the device to create a braille surface for reading and even pictures in 3D relief.”

How many times have you gotten close to the end of a jar of peanut butter and you end up spending an extra 30 seconds scraping the bottom of the jar to get the last bit of peanutty goodness? I know, it hasn’t really happened to me very often either, but one enterprising inventor thinks that this is a problem that needs to be solved, so he’s come up with a better jar. It has no shoulders to get in the way of your knife scraping, and there is a cap on both ends, so if you can’t get at the stuff from one side, you can close it up, flip it over, and try again. The idea is good, I think, but it just seems like overkill to solve what amounts to a fairly minor problem. Plus, if the cost of my Jif is going to go up so that they can afford to put it in fancier jars, I’d rather save the money and continue to do a little more scraping.

Esquire magazine has an article listing 75 things every man should know how to do. There are some that you’ll likely disagree with, but many of them are interesting and fun. Here are some of my favorites. Click through to see the full list and read the Esquire explanations.

It’s a little scary to think about criminals latching onto this idea. Wired magazine has a story about the project and a short description about how it works. The device “is simple, consisting of a circle of infra-red LEDs mounted on a headband. The infra red is invisible to The Man, but will cause CCTV cameras to flare out over the face of the wearer, obscuring his identity and making this the digital equivalent of a hooded sweatshirt.”