Jackie Soenneker

An interesting alternate order in which to watch the Star Wars movies: Machete Order.

Lightsabers, cellos, and music from Star Wars are all awesome, so of course when you combine them, the result is really awesome: Cello Wars. This video of David Tennant and John Barrowman talking about their reactions when they learned the Captain Jack/Face of Boe twist is also quite fun.

• 7 Reasons Computer Glitches Won't Go Away (Ever)
• 5 Tiny Computer Glitches That Caused Huge Disasters
• 6 Disasters Caused by Poorly Designed User Interfaces
• The 6 Most Insane Underdog Stories in the History of Battle
• 5 Scientific Advances That Should Have Changed Everything
• 7 Books We Lost to History That Would Have Changed the World
• 7 Lost Bodies of Work (That Would Have Changed Everything)
• 5 Baffling Discoveries That Prove History Books Are Wrong
• 5 Gender Stereotypes That Used To Be the Exact Opposite
• 6 Absurd Gender Stereotypes (That Science Says Are True)
• The 5 Depressing Lessons We Learned from Highlights Magazine
• The 7 Biggest Dick Moves in the History of Online Gaming
• 7 Deadly Things You Won't Believe Most People Survive
• 7 Nuclear Weapon Screw-Ups You Won't Believe We Survived
• 6 Tiny Mistakes That Almost Ended the World
• 7 Simple Questions You Won't Believe Science Just Answered
• 6 Badass Tricks You Can (But Shouldn't) Do With Electricity
• 7 Man-Made Substances that Laugh in the Face of Physics
• 6 Ridiculous Lies You Believe About the Founding of America
• The 5 Most Ridiculous Lies You Were Taught In History Class

More fun articles:

• 7 Species That Got Screwed Over by Mother Nature
• The 5 Most Clearly Cursed Expeditions of All Time
• 6 Animals That Just Don't Give A F#@k
• 6 Formerly Kickass Creatures Ruined by Evolution
• 7 Terrifying Prehistoric Creatures (That Are Still Around)
• 7 Artists Who Secretly Made Your Favorite Movies
• 5 Seemingly Random Factors That Control Your Memory
• 5 Absurd Solutions to Huge Problems (That Actually Worked)
• 5 Fish Clearly Designed by a Madman
• 5 Birds With Abilities That Put Superheroes to Shame
• The 6 Most Mind-Blowing Things Ever Discovered in Space
• What is the Monkeysphere?
• 8 Things You Won't Believe Plants Do When No One's Looking
• 5 Ways To Hack Your Brain Into Awesomeness
• 6 Beneficial Things They Made You Stop Doing in School
• 6 Books Everyone (Including Your English Teacher) Got Wrong
• 6 Great Novels that Were Hated in Their Time
• 6 Presidential Secrets Your History Teacher Didn't Mention
• 7 Classic Disney Movies Based On R-Rated Stories
• The 6 Cutest Animals That Can Still Destroy You
• 6 Mistranslations That Changed The World
• 6 Lies About the Human Body You Learned in Kindergarten
• 5 Famous Space Missions That Almost Ended In Disaster
• 7 Awesome Super Powers (Ruined by Science)

It almost feels mean to pick on the TSA at this point, but it really is a useless organization. Security theatre is both annoying and wasteful. This is a good article that presents a few excepts from an online debate security expert Bruce Schneier had with the former head of the TSA: How The TSA's Security Theater Harms Us All.

In case feeling wind isn't neat enough: moving wind-map (screenshot below)!

If interested in learning to program (it's fun!), try Code Academy or Hackety Hack.

An awesome minimalist Doctor Who poster! (Here's the source, which has more).

Apparently hiccups are caused by our brain stems forgetting that we're not fish and trying to breathe using gills, according to this article. I don't even care if the science is totally wrong, just the thought of that being the explanation for hiccups is hilariously awesome. The new cure for hiccups suggested by Wired? Remind your brain that you are not a fish. (Oh, okay, this article is from 2008. So, the hiccup cure for the last four years has been to remind yourself that you're not a fish. I'm behind the curve.)

A couple more fun Cracked.com articles:

• The 5 Most Spectacular Landscapes on Earth (That Murder You)
• 6 New Age Cures That Aren't As Full Of Crap As You Think

Ooh, TED has a set of geared-for-the-younger educational videos! Their YouTube channel is here. Adam Savage's "How Simple Ideas Lead to Scientific Discoveries" is particularly fun!

America is way too obsessed with having the "latest and greatest" when often the "older" still works just fine and frequently does almost exactly the same thing as the new version. This Boing-Boing post presents a poster from WWII that exhorts Americans to use things until the point of no repair in order to save supplies for the war effort. The author then goes on to describe an instance where he recently fixed a small electronic item of his own when it broke, rather than buying a new one.

A quote that I like from it is "I feel more attached to my old one because I invested effort in fixing it and feel a sense of ownership of it". Fixing something does make you more attached to it. You've gone to some effort for it beyond driving to a store and forking over some money.

Ever since I finally bought a computer that doesn't totally suck (my Mac), I've been dedicated to keeping it going as long as possible. If something is generally well-built replacing the odd broken piece isn't that much of a big deal, especially for something like a computer. When one of my fans went out, I replaced it. I ordered the new fan, found instructions for tearing the laptop apart enough to get at the fan, and then had at it. Complete success. My current issue is that my optical drive is getting finicky. I figure that the lens probably just needs a cleaning (I've had the computer for nearly four years, for heaven's sake), it's just that the lens isn't easy to get to in the Mac's fancy slot-style drive. Time to find some instructions on disassembling an optical drive!

This article is about a couple of British wildlife photographers who built a couple of lion-proof remote-controlled cameras-on-wheels and then drove the damn things up to lions to take pictures. He's also done other animals, from multiple places in the world. The video in the article shows the lions' reaction to the camera, and you get an idea of how impressive "lion proof" must be quite quickly. I sure wouldn't want to try to build a camera that could withstand a hundred-pound kitten. They did get some really incredible pictures out of it. Their website is Burrard-Lucas.com, and the above picture is one of my favorites.

This website has an amazing set of original Photoshop paintings done with Star Wars, Doctor Who and Sherlock themes, including a SW/DW crossover that I SO wish were real (the version on the website is much larger):



Also in the SW/DW crossover vein, this:

I've recently started reading lots of Cracked articles. Here are some of my favorites:

• 6 Horrifying Implications of Awesome Fantasy Movie Universes
• 6 Horrifying Implications of the Harry Potter Universe
• The 5 Most Badass Presidents of All-Time
• 5 Real Life Soldiers Who Make Rambo Look Like a Pussy
• 5 Spies with Bigger Balls Than James Bond
• 8 Scenes That Prove Hollywood Doesn't Get Technology
• The 5 Most Popular Safety Laws (That Don't Work)
• 5 Government Programs That Backfired Horrifically
• Third Reich to Fortune 500: Five Popular Brands the Nazis Gave Us
• 5 Ways Your Brain Is Messing With Your Head
• 6 Of Your Favorite Things That Are Secretly Making You Fat
• 5 Ridiculous Origins of Movie Sound Effects
• 8 Movie Special Effects You Won't Believe Aren't CGI
• 7 WTF Military Weapons You Won't Believe They Actually Built
• The 10 Most Bizarre Military Experiments
• 6 Insane Discoveries That Science Can't Explain
• 6 Famous Unsolved Mysteries (With Really Obvious Solutions)