WOW!!

And no, it's not a post about World of Warcraft. Check out these awesome pencil carvings. All I can say is: WOW!

Happy No Pants Day!

For a visit to the lighter side of life, click here.

Check it out

For those of you who love sports, check out this blog I found. It's called American Legends and it's all about sports. Have fun.

Cartoon of the Day

My oldest son has to find political cartoons once a week for school. Yesterday he found this one which I thought was particularly good, so I decided to share. This and other cartoons can be found at caglecartoons.com

My Map

At home on our refrigerator each family member has a map of the US with the states they have visited shaded. Oddly enough, everybody's map is different except for my two youngest boys (and theirs were different until this summer when Middle son finally caught up with Youngest son). A friend told me about a site where you can make the same sort of thing for your blog. Here is mine (I'm actually in the lead at my house).


create your own visited states map


I didn't count states where I have only been at the airport and changed planes. If I did I could add Utah and Ohio.



In this map (which I edited) I added the states I've only landed in (yellow) the states I plan to visit next year (purple), the state I most want to visit but haven't (green)

h/t: Poliblog

Professorial Funnies

Some funny stories from professors around the blogosphere.

Dr. Richard Scott Nokes has two stories here and here.

Dr. Steven L. Taylor links to one here and has his own here.

I'm sure I find these particularly amusing because I'm married to a professor and I hope to be one myself someday. Enjoy!

Must See

Now this you've got to see. Steven Taylor has posted a great video of Tony Blair "singing" "Should I Stay or Should I Go". You've got to check it out. Whoever made it did an excellent job.

MSN TV - 2006 Emmy Awards

MSN TV - 2006 Emmy Awards
I just couldn't resist linking to this one. It's a funny article and it nominates William Shatner in the "Best Performance by a Hairpiece" category. It also mentions Chris Noth, I didn't even realize he wore a hairpiece. I guess I'm just behind on pop culture. No big surprise there.

A little fun . . .

at Dick Cheney's expense. Always worthwhile. Click!

h/t: The Wilson Tag Team Blogfest

Real or Hoax - Update

In an earlier post, I directed you to a fun sight called snopes.com, which debunks several urban myths. My eldest son got a real kick out of the sight and was reading a lot of their stories. At the dinner table last night, he mentioned that one of the stories snopes marked as true, he had seen proven false on the TV show Urban Legends. So I decided to check into it a little more.

On the sight, there is a subsection called "The Repository of Lost Legends (TRoLL)" and that is the section where Eldest Son had seen the story in question (about the showing of the Poseidon Adventure on the Titanic). I read one of the stories it called true and it sounded completely bogus to me, so I clicked on the link at the bottom of the page that said "more information about this page." Which took me to this page, which said everything in the TRoLL section was made up. So, a word to the wise, you can't even trust the people who claim to be setting you straight on what everybody else told you. In the world wide web of information, apparently A LOT is actually misinformation. They do make a good point in their explanation of why the TRoLL section exists:

This section graphically demonstrates the pitfalls of falling into the lazy habit of taking as gospel any one information outlet's unsupported word. We could have put up a page saying "Don't believe everything you read, no matter how trustworthy the source," but that wouldn't have conveyed the message half as well as showing through direct example just how easy it is to fall into the "I got it from so-and-so, therefore it must be true" mindset. That's the same mindset that powers urban legends, the same basic mistake that impels countless well-meaning folks to confidently assert "True story; my aunt (husband, best friend, co-worker, boss, teacher, minister) told me so."

No single truth purveyor, no matter how reliable, should be considered an infallible font of accurate information. Folks make mistakes. Or they get duped. Or they have a bad day at the fact-checking bureau. Or some days they're just being silly. To not allow for any of this is to risk stepping into a pothole the size of Lake Superior.

To that I must say, Well said! In fact the whole "False Authority" page is worth a read.

Real or a Hoax?

I'd really like to thank "anonymous" and Jay for directing me to this really cool website snopes.com. Although the picture I was sent was a hoax, snopes has some good pictures they insist aren't hoaxes, including a scary picture of Michael Jackson and a somewhat humorous tombstone. Check the website out and keep them in mind the next time you get an email with a story that seems a bit incredible. They address all sorts of urban legends and email hoaxes. It's definitely worth a look.

Update: Always be cautious with anything you read on the internet. Click.