Category: Web

Steve Cook, who does somethingorother in the Biology department at the Imperial College of London wants you to know exactly what vegetable-looking-things are vegetables and what are not…I guess. I find these things fascinating.

Most of the time, actually. I was recently horrified when my flatmate was surprised to find out that aubergine (eggplant) is actually a fruit, and not a ‘vegetable’, whatever that means. Here, for the greater good and knowledge of humankind, is an exhaustive (well, it exhausted me) list of all the things made from plants you’re ever likely to meet and eat, and what they actually are.
The first thing I’ll clear up is that ‘vegetable’ is pretty much meaningless: it’s not the opposite of fruit (as the aubergine thing clearly demonstrates), and it’s not the opposite of plants you eat for pudding (carrot cake, courgette cake, rocket and raspberry salad, etc.), and it’s not savoury plant products either (sweetcorn, anybody?). Vegetable doesn’t really seem to mean anything, so unfortunately, we will have to leave the cosy world of fruit and vegetables, and get our heads round some nasty botanical concepts, like the difference between a leaf and a flower, and some even nastier words. Nevermind, on we plough regardless…

Admittedly the new OQO computer is one of the smallest 20GB PCs I’ve ever seen, and the keyboard should bring back memories of the ZX Spectrum. But OQO’s Promotional Quicktime has to contain the most annoying use of motion graphics I’ve seen in some time. My eyes hurt after watching it, and not because the screen is small.

A nicely organized online version of Baudelaire’s Fleurs du Mal. All four editions are here, along with censored poems, in French and in an assortment of English translations. Goodness gracious me.

The only in-depth article on Spalding Gray’s disappearance (and possible suicide) that I’ve read. It’s depressing. Why can’t we wake up in the morning and find headlines like: “Dick Cheney Disappears, Talked of Suicide, Unbearable Guilt”?

Short little Quicktime of the humongous line in Ginza, Japan waiting for the nation’s first Apple Store to open. Cripes.

Apparently, they now have emulation programs for pinball machines, going all the way back to the 1950s. Unfortunately, it’s only for Windows, but I’m sure somebody somewhere is figuring out a Mac port. I came of game-playing age at the beginning of the video game era, so pinball was endlessly fascinating to me. You just had to compare the graphics and hands-on feel of a machine to the early Pong and space games to figure out why I preferred pinball originally.
VPinMAME
IRPinball
From Boing Boing, of course.

A terrific site linked off Kunstler’s main page in which he rips new ones in the backside of ass-backwards American architecture. Because of bad web design, it’s better you start at the most recent entry and work backwards. The man’s loathing and disgust at suburbia and bad civic planning tickles me, and while reading it, I was sure he was in his 30s. Turns out he’s in his late 50s, which is in a way cooler.
Eyesore of the Month by James Howard Kunstler
Kunstler’s main page offers links to his books and blog.
By way of Boing Boing

How cool is THIS? At last I have an airline named after me. I’m itchin’ to get ahold of some gear and other trinkets emblazoned with the name.

This later turned out to be the remains of some art project, but still, how cool is it to come across this on a hike?

Mystery surrounds 70 pairs of shoes filled with butter in woods
By The Associated Press
(10/10/03 – STOCKHOLM, Sweden) A couple hiking in the mountains of far northern Sweden found 70 pairs of shoes, all filled with butter. Officials have no idea who put the shoes there, or why.
A provincial spokesman says the buttered footwear ranges from sneakers to boots. There are even butter-filled high heels and tap shoes. Each contains about a pound of butter.
The province spokesman says they’d like to catch the person who did it and make them clean it up. He says it’s going to create quite a mess when the butter starts to spoil.
Officials say they’ll wait for snow, so they can get a snowmobile into the area.

NEWS.com.au | Man and cat reunited after 10 years (September 26, 2003)