Recently in Informational Category

Yesterday evening, my girlfriend and I were driving home from my grandmothers just after sunset. We were driving straight east and there was a huge looming full moon just over the horizon. It was absolutely amazing. As it turns out, this full moon is no ordinary full moon. It's called the Harvest Moon. Leave it to NASA for a great explanation of the Harvest Moon. They also explain why the moon looked so large. The harvest moon rises just over the horizon, and horizon moons look larger due to an optical illusion known, not surprisingly, Moon Illusion.

The Florida Marlin's batboy has been suspended for 6 games for accepting a dare to drink a gallon of milk in under an hour without throwing up. That must be a pretty bad offense since Rafael Palmeiro only got a 10 game suspension for steroids. And on top if it, he didn't complete the dare, and doesn't get the $500. Bummer.

I've been investigating I-GO Cars, which is essentially a pay as you need car. It has a one-time fee of $75. And their standard plan is $6 per hour and 50¢ per mile. So, say I use it for 2 hours per week for 4 miles (for some shopping and stuff), that would be $56 per month. And that includes insurance *and* gas. Oh, and of course all maintenance. Given how much I pay for parking, insurance, gas, and maintenance, this looks very interesting. I'll probably keep my car until it goes belly up, but if it ever does, or I need to save some extra cash, I may serious look at I-GO.

There is now a Darth Vader Mr. Potato Head called, and I'm not make this up, Darth Tater.

And no, not the Pixies... Fannie May Pixies candies. Yup, that's right, they're giving away one-pound boxes to the first 500 customers when they open at 10am. When I walked past the store around 9:40 this morning, the line was over half a block long. That seems ridiculous... it's only $20 worth of candy, people! So... how long would you wait in line for $20 worth of free stuff? 15 minutes? 30 minutes? 1 hour? 2 hours? I think my threshold is somewhere around 15 minutes.

The municipal flag of Chicago is rife with symbolism. Most may know that the blue stripes represent the two branches of the Chicago river. And some may know that the four stars represent Fort Dearborn, the Chicago Fire, the and the World's Expositions of 1893 and 1933. But who knew that the points of each star as well as the white stripes have symbolism, too? Check out the Chicago Public Library's full explanation of the symbolism.

And for those that didn't know, the Chicago Flag was ranked the second best American city flag. How are flags ranked? Well, by the 5 basic principles of flag design, of course! Provo, UT is probably the ugliest one on that list, in my opinion. That thing is terrible!

I've been meaning to write about this for a while. I saw The Walking Dude on Michigan Ave. this morning, and it reminded me to post about The Walking Dude: A Dudementary. Whether you call him The Walking Dude, Walking Guy, or 70's Italian Loverman, if you've spent some time on Michigan Ave., you know who this guy is. Check out the movie... it's hilarious!

I've known the myth behind the modern 26 mile marathon to be the 26 miles between the cities of Marathon and Athens in Greece. Phidippides ran the 26 miles to Athens to warn of an upcoming invasion and ask for help. He then ran back to Marathon, and died of exhaustion upon arrival. This story is apparently wrong. It is an even more impressive run than the 26 miles between Marathon and Athens.... 142 miles between Marathon and Sparta! Twice! And he didn't even have Clif Bars.

A Flash rendition of Kubrick's The Shining!