
11'-8"
Since 1956 trucks have been hitting the Gregson Street train trestle in Durham, North Carolina. Often enough that Jürgen Henn has a website called 11foot8.com with videos and photos of the unfortunate incidents. Warning signs and flashing “overheight” warning lights were insufficient and the railroad company installed a protective steel crash beam in front of it. The beam has already been replaced once.

Not "to learn as much as possible", but "empty, hollow, bare, deserted"
If you email them a photo, Hanzi Smatter will tell you what those Chinese characters tattooed on you or yours bodies mean.

The GoTopless image censured by Facebook
From the UFO religion that brought you Clonaid, sensual meditation, Raël Girls, and the planned Elohim embassy (a Third Temple) for the extraterrestrials; now the Raëlians, are sponsoring GoTopless day in at least nine American cities including Chicago. While Raëlians (and their fellow travelers) will march to stand up for women’s right to go topless in public, men are asked to coverup in solidarity.

As seen in the Congressional Record
Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi called Representatives back to Washington this week to pass what the media are calling the “$26 billion jobs bill,” but it’s name of record is “The ______ Act of ______.” The most recent version of House Resolution 1586 was passed as a substitute amendment by the Senate last week. A substitute amendment clips out everything in a bill and puts in all new text. In their haste to leave for their summer recess they forgot to rename the bill. If the House had properly named the bill this week, it would have made it necessary for the Senate to also reconvene to pass the newly amended bill. So on August 10 the House agreed “to the Senate amendment to the House amendment to the Senate amendment,” and later that afternoon “The ______ Act of ______” was signed into law by President Obama. NOTE: Some news outlets are erroneously referring to H.R. 1586 as the “XXXXXX Act of XXXX.”

Cill Airne, Ireland
For the phototactic. Somewhere it’s daybreak. This westbound chain of webcams broadcasts the dawn.

Hum along with the Übermensch
The webpage featuring this year’s Cambridge University Press biography of Nietzsche also features 17 free downloadable musical compositions of the philosopher in mp3 format.

Simulated Vinyl record, tone-arm being bumped at FreeSound
The Nature Sounds Player allows you to create your own relaxing sound mix using .wav files found at The FreeSound Project. You can also save your mix by exporting it to a file. Avoid the lemur. And why a horse snort?

Not my keyboard
Check what famous writer you write like with I Write Like’s statistical analysis tool, which analyzes your word choice and writing style and compares them to those of famous writers. Stump Connolly’s “The Facebook Pol” got David Foster Wallace. Catch’s “Apres David After Dentist” got J. K. Rowling (meh), this blog entry got Kurt Vonnegut; but my “Star-Spangled Stravinsky” got H.P. Lovecraft (woohoo). But then, Nixon’s resignation speech got H.P. Lovecraft and Kurt Vonnegut got Douglas Adams.

A Geocities-ized The Week Behind
Enter the URL of any website, and the Geocities-izer will add proper graphics, motion, and sound to bring back that classic Geocities feeling.

Is this going to be forever?
Last year’s second most popular video on YouTube and to date, over 62 million views. A 7-year old Florida boy named David asking existential questions while drugged out in the backseat of a car after the dentist. Business Insider just published an article in which enabler Dad (who has quit his day job) revealed they have made about $150K from YouTube and from selling stickers and t-shirts on their web site. So which one is the one trick pony?