now reading: Lu Xun, Diary of a Madman (and other stories)

Just finished watching Randy Pausch's uplifting last lecture. He's gotten more out of life at 47 than most people ever will. It was inspiring to see him on stage just radiating joy in the face of his own mortality.

Recently I've abandoned my calculator for Google. There's nothing more convenient, especially for unit conversions (15.23 in in mm, 5 cups in liters, etc.). It even does binary! In typical Google fashion, there are also some secret hidden values, which finally makes it possible to calculate the number of horns on a unicorn baker's dozen acre in teaspoons per light year.

This discovery led to a quick side trip into humorous units of measurement. My favorite is the Sheppey, "a measure of distance equal to about 7/8 of a mile, defined as the closest distance at which sheep remain picturesque."

This post about time traveling back to 1000 AD (followup) sparked some interesting discussion. I daydream about fantasies like this more than I'd care to admit. I think it would be very easy for a time traveler to "invent" Tetris, assuming the necessary electronics existed. Then again, at that point it'd probably be much easier to get rich on the stock market. What inventions had the greatest profitability-simplicity ratio? Positive global impact-obviousness ratio?

"Architectural designer" Eric Clough secretly built cryptic clues and objects into a New York apartment that revealed hidden messages and treasures (more pictures here). Supposedly, J.J. Abrams bought the rights for a movie adaptation. This would be an absolute dream come true for me. I spent an unhealthily large part of my childhood plugged into the old LucasArts and Sierra adventures, and I always wished I could experience something like that in Real Life. I think there could be a huge market for immersive experiences where guests hunt for treasure in puzzle-filled ruins or infiltrate a secret base while avoiding guards. There are already similar attractions in the form of the more elaborate haunted houses. The one in Japan's Fuji-Q Highland had a 1 km route through a zombie-infested hospital. Guests are given tiny flashlights and follow a dark, snaking path for about 50 minutes. There were even actors that would actually chase you through the corridors. Now being trapped in Resident Evil wasn't my idea of a good time, but I think it shows how a large-scale role-playing attraction could work with a enough visitor throughput to be profitable.

21 leaf clover!

Mesmerizing video of magnetic fields. While possibly entertaining, this is a superpower that would be highly distracting with only marginal utility.

The recent discovery of water ice on Mars has revitalized hopes for finding traces of life. Nick Bostrom argues that stumbling upon Martian fossils "would be extremely bad news for humanity." Charlie Stross offers some different perspectives.