Items of Interest – Page 62 – The Finch and Pea

Bruce the Shark

In the spirit of Whose Line is It Anyway?, these lyrics were composed on the fly in response to The Frogger requesting, “Daddy, sing a song about a shark.” Not knowing any songs about sharks, I found myself inspired by the opening scene of Jaws.

BRUCE THE SHARK

*Sung to the tune of “Lily the Pink” as arranged and performed by Dirty Dishes.

Here’s a story, a little bit gory,
A little bit happy, a little bit sad,
About Bru-uce the-e Shar-ark
And how he bit my leg in HALF!

CHORUS
And we’ll drink, we’ll drink, we’ll drink
To Bruce the Shark, the Shark, the Shark
The greatest hunter in the sea-ea-ea
He used his pointy tee-eeth
To bi-ite into me. Continue reading “Bruce the Shark”

Rapture insurance

This is a scam of which I actually did think, but seem to lack the lack of moral fiber required to implement it (who knew?). It goes something like this:

When you are raptured (rupture?, hanged/hung?) and your vehicle becomes pilotless, that vehicle instantly becomes a hazard to everyone around it and virtually guaranteed to cause an accident. While the poor bastards your vehicle will certainly mow down are not saved, failing to take financial responsibility for the injuries and damage caused by your unguided property is hardly the Christian thing to do.

Being a responsible citizen, I know you carry a reasonable and legal amount of automobile insurance. Unfortunately, your regular insurance will not cover these damages as the Rapture is, by definition, an Act of God.

Therefore, we are offering “Rapture Insurance” to provide generous compensation to those injured in body or property when you are taken up into the heavens in the middle of your commute at reasonable premiums based on the latest actuarial data.

*I take no responsibility for any scallywags that actually try to implement this scam. Unless they give me a cut.

Orrery

An orrery was a mechanical device designed to show the position of celestial bodies at different times. In this modern era, we are able to dispense with the “mechanical”, as well as the hopelessly flawed geocentric models of the solar system. The other day I happened to come across a couple of versions of modern day orreries online. In the spirit of old school orreries, the first (from Dynamic Diagrams) allows you to see both a geocentric model and a Copernican heliocentric model.

The second allows you to see a more true Keplerian model.

And, boom, you have wandered through 2000 years of progress in astronomy. And it was pretty.

Now I am become Death, the destroyer of Worlds

Of course, in the actual Universe each act of destruction is potential act of creation. We, ourselves, are made of the collected debris of super nova. “Universe Sandbox” looks like it will give you the opportunity to explore the dynamism of the Universe in a delightfully visually and happily sped up time frame (waiting millions of years to see something happen is something that only appeals to old school, turn based strategy game fans). Hopefully, it will live up to its promotional video (and make its way to Macs).