WaffleBox

by eggman913

TakeNote.com.au lets you write and send notes, via snail mail, to a friend, yourself or a complete stranger. Simply type in your message into the ultra slick notepad, seen below, click send and it will be whisked on its way to anyone who asks for a note. Unfortunately you can only receive a note if you live in Australia.

Go to takenote.com.au and write a note to someone, anyone.

SFGate.com has a great little tale of how coin dealer John Feigenbaum disguised himself to look like an average Joe, wearing flip-flops, to transport 1 of the 9 known 1894-S dimes worth $1.9 Million from San Jose to New York.

So nervous, Feigenbaum didn’t eat a bit or sleep a wink during the non-stop flight.

All across the country, Feigenbaum kept checking to make sure the dime was safe by reaching into his briefcase to feel for it. Feigenbaum did not actually take the dime out of his briefcase, as it is suspicious to stare at dimes.

He does recall fishing around — somewhere over the Rockies, over the Midwest, and over the Alleghenies — for the dime. For the rest of the flight, he kept his flip-flopped foot planted on the briefcase and his eyes wide open.

User timjpriebe over on reddit.com points out his favorite quote from Feigenbaum.

“He told Feigenbaum he had bought it strictly as an investment and did not intend to spend it, as there is no longer anything to buy in New York for 10 cents.” - permalink

Link to the article: ‘I didn’t eat and I didn’t sleep’ - Coin dealer flies dime worth $1.9 million to NYC

DiscoverMagazine.com lists 20 things you didn’t know about mosquitoes, one of them being

Once a feeding mosquito is full, a chemical signal shuts down the intake. When that signal is disabled in the lab, mosquitoes suck until they explode.

Link to article: 20 Things You Didn’t Know About… Mosquitoes

Trifter.com has a compiled list of McDonald’s menu items from around the world highlighting items that we don’t have here in the U.S. I actually took a food and culture class at University and we spent quite a bit of time discussing McDonald’s impact around the world, how they alter their menu for different cultural needs such as using no beef or beef fats in India. So I was really excited to run across this web page running through a handful of McDonald’s menu items… The McLobster is probably the grossest looking of all.

Go to the article: McDonald’s Strange Menu Around the World

photo credit: Jalapeño

What the hell is going on in this photo? I am so baffled by it. I’ve been trying to figure it out for about 10 minutes now. Is there a context to it that I just don’t know about. Some protest? Someone please explain.

Found here: http://www.maj.com/cgi-bin/gallery.cgi?i=284369

I was copying some old HI8 video tapes to digital formats when I ran across a video I filmed back in ‘97 of the band AFI at the Fireside Bowl here in Chicago.

There was an incident during the show which I had completely forgot about… Mark Stopholese, AFI’s original guitarist, hopping all over the place, unable to fight temptation climbs up on to the monitor speaker at the front of the stage and slips off, cracking his head open as he flips backwards. Yes. I did catch it all on tape. It is about 2:01 into the video below.

Song: File 13 Date: 25 November 1997

File 13 was their second song in and Mark played flawlessly for the rest of the show, never mind the concussion.

What is really funny is that the bassist, Hunter Burgan Geoff Kresge (I believe this was their bassist at the time), had cracked his head open the night before, and was sporting a white shirt with his blood stains all over it.

Side note: At the time I believe they went by A.F.I., “Asking For It”. Now it is “A Fire Inside“.

Sorry for the poor video quality. YouTube really took a bite out of the quality, presumably to get the size down to their minimums. I may just have to upload my videos as .avi files since the quality is so much better

Update: The bassist at the time was Hunter Burgan, as noted above. And they were known as “Asking For It”. Thanks LAt3rAluS.

I have a new found respect for Jason Calacanis, not that I had lost any I guess, but I just finished listening to his FULL interview (CalacanisCast Beta 28) on NPR’s On The Media with Brooke Gladstone. He really is passionate about media and clearly has some interesting and agreeable views on the way journalism should be conducted.

(I say full interview because Jason released the fully unedited version of the interview while NPR released their edited version)

The topic in discussion was on the media purposely mis-quoting interviewees in favor of “gotcha moments” for the purpose of boosting ratings. Also, that the process of journalistic editing is important, if not crucial, to help define a conclusion as to what is the truth within a given piece. The argument Jason made is that readers are bright and smart people, that they have the ability to get to and understand the meaning behind questions and answers in regards to interviews. This ability should not be taken away from them.

My favorite part of the interview comes when Brooke Gladstone explains to Jason…

Sometimes we will ask a question half a dozen times before the person we are interviewing gives us the answer.

Jason interjects…

The answer that you’re looking for?

Gladstone answers…

The real answer to the question.

Hmm… Jason continues to argue that the audience should be given the right to be treated intelligently and be shown each question asked and each answer given. That multiple answers should not be edited down to the one the journalist sees fit. If an interviewee gives 3 different answers to the 6 questions asked, how does the journalist know which is the “real” answer? They don’t. They take the liberty of deciding, something Jason clearly is against.

To believe so highly in your editing prowess is a complete insult to listeners and I applaud Jason for taking such a strong stance on this issue simply because there are NO unbiased editors, it is an impossibility simply for the fact that we are all human with our own set of opinions and beliefs that are impossible to shake, big or small.

Another interesting moment is at the beginning of the interview when Brooke Gladstone argues that the spontaneous nature of voice recorded interviews offer a human element to the interview. In my mind this goes against the argument that editing is crucial. Why remove that spontaneity in favor of something else? If you listened to NPR’s version, you would have missed some really funny banter at the end of the interview when Gladstone makes a mistake as to Jason’s employment, all heard on Jason’s version.

I believe clearer lines need to be drawn between what is opinion and what is fact and editing interviews, an interaction so human, makes absolutely no sense to me.

Yahoo has a really nice piece on Phil Hansen as part of their People of the Web series entitled Strokes of Genius. The Yahoo piece includes a video that was really interesting. I wrote about Phil Hansen not too long ago, he painted a portrait of Kim Jong Il in his own blood and judo chopped a painting of Bruce Lee.

Phil has done some amazingly interesting work, paintings that he presents in a time lapsed video posted online. He uses a style of pointillism he calls “kinetic fragmentism”, pointillism in motion, and primarily explores highly political issues.

© 2007 Phil Hansen. Title: Daudi Date: 3-2007

You can go to Phil’s website at philinthecircle.com.

Looking for that special gift for that special girl in your life? You want something that screams originality, that maybe plays into her inner child, something fun and youthful, but also tasty.

Well look no further that PancakeMeow.com which sells “Deliciously Scented Dessert Charms and More”, such as the cupcake charm pictured to the above.

Israeli girls hit their favorite ice cream shop for a scoop… Ah, the difference in culture.

photo from popamericana.com/!/Buying_Ice_Cream.jpg