German Tuba Urinals

This blasphemy is being committed in a pub in Germany.


From the owner, "Most people see the funny side but we've had a few complaints from musicians."

The article calls these tenor horns, I might call them euphoniums. That doesn't make the scandal any less. Perhaps a pairing of these German Tuba Urinals with the Japanese War Tubas is in order.

(via TYWKIDBI)

SHDOWFX license plate in Delaware

I have a good idea as to the reference probably intended by this license plate. First to come up with it wins bragging rights. Leave your guess in the comments.

NASA Rocket launch center practically in my backyard

I did not know that there is a NASA rocket launch center on Wallops Island in Virginia towards the tip of the Delmarva Peninsula. Compared with Cape Canaveral that is practically in my backyard. How did I not know about it and not visit it on the way to all those trips to the Outer Banks of North Carolina?

Nevertheless the rocket launch of an Air Force satellite scheduled for last night was postponed until tonight. You can follow the status here, and watch video and webcast here and twitter feed here. I am going to keep updated and sometime between 8pm and 11pm tonight I will go out and look south to see if I can see the rocket achieve orbit. I doubt I will see anything since it is about 160 miles due south of me. I also expect the rocket to take off towards the east to get the benefit of the Earth's rotation.

I must visit during a launch someday. I saw the Shuttle takeoff in February and see the next one getting ready, but that was a lucky happenstance - the last launch was delayed to the date of my trip, which would have been too early for the next launch. This one would be easier to get to.

Can you imagine an alternate reality where this launch facility was the one where they decided to do manned flight from instead of Kennedy Space Center. How cool would it be to have the Shuttle launch from Virginia. Apparently this site has the Mid-Atlantic Regional Spaceport or MARS, and its first commercial launch was in 2006 (Spaceport website), which might explain why I hadn't heard of it, though it has been around doing rocket testing since the 40's.

Rainbow over Rt202 and Rt141

Into every life a little rain must pour, but then come the rainbows.

Stop Wikipedia Vandals

A fake quote attributed to French Composer Maurice Jarre was inserted by Shane Fitzgerald into Wikipedia and fooled newspapers around the world. Supposedly it was intended as a social experiment about globalization and reporter fact checking. While it seems to have shamed the reporters and press somewhat, it is still being reported as a failure of Wikipedia somehow, even though the quote was removed from the article because it had no referenced sources, while Fitzgerald repeatedly added it.

Whenever I tell someone that I looked up something on Wikipedia they often come back with the same crap about how anybody can publish stuff there and it is all wrong. I graciously explain to them that they should always be aware of the potential errors in the source of their information wherever it might be from, and to always read the discussion page on Wikipedia. They can contribute to Wikipedia and make it better themselves as well.

I have heard of other students doing experiments where they added some incorrect content to Wikipedia and how long it stayed up. What do they think they lean from this or what they think they learn from it. Instead of encouraging students to be vandals, how about teaching about adding correct information to an article instead of defacing it, or researching and writing a new one.

Shane Fitzgerald is a Wikipedia vandal. Lazy reporters are bad, but it is also bad to vandalize Wikipedia to make your point. I am so glad the "he was wary about the ethical implications of using someone’s death as a social experiment" - and then still decided to lie anyway.

Am I naive in my hope for people to play nice together in the common areas of the web or is this prank a necessary lesson in journalism and the critical eye with which to read Wikipedia articles?

(via Castro's Favorite Color)

The bigger container is better right?

These two containers are different sizes and one is bigger than the other. However the taller one (ooh, it looks bigger) actually contains 59oz instead of 64oz in the shorter "smaller" container. Besides not fitting in my refrigerator it is a great way to pay more for less.

Prices from the Acme website show $4.99 for the tall 59oz and $4.49 for the short 64oz regardless of the type. You do get less sugar with the tall Trop50 but I would think to pay less. This looks like a brilliant Tropicana move rather than an Acme move.

If you have an Acme Supersaver card you can get them both down to $3. So 5.1 cents/oz for the Trop50 59oz and only 4.6 cents/oz for the 64oz container. You make the call.

A week of rain intermittently fills the Shellpot Creek

It has been raining for what seems like weeks in Delaware. The creek has gone through its ups and downs but last nights thunderstorms have raised it the highest in this series of storms thus far.

The good news might be that all of the branches and other junk might have been flushed away so it isn't accumulating in the streambed in my backyard.

The best thing about the rain is that it makes an interesting to watch creek even more interesting.

Galileo's Original Telescope at the Franklin Institute

We visited the Franklin Institute on Sunday so that I could see an original Galileo telescope that he made and used to make his discoveries of the moons of Jupiter, mountains on the moon, and even seeing some hint of the rings of Saturn. This is the International Year of Astronomy in honor of the 400th anniversary of Galileo being the first to turn a telescope to the skies and record his observations.

The telescope he used looks very plain, I suppose because it was early effort and a working instrument. Galileo wrote a note of the device's magnification on one end. You can see the writing in the next photo.


Galileo did make nicer telescopes as gifts for his patrons, such as the Grand Duke of Tuscany, but they only had a replica of one at the Franklin Institute. It is famous however for appearing with Derick Pitts, the chief astronomer of the Franklin Institute when he was on the Colbert Report.

Galileo made many more observations after 1609, one collection of famous ones from March 1st, 1613 to May 8th was published “Istoria e Dimostrazioni intorno alle Macchie Solari” (”The Sunspot Letters to Marc Welser”).

Massimo Mogi Vicentini took the manuscript and the observations of Jupiter's moons and turned it into a nice animation.

(video link found via Strange Paths, videos at Mogi-Vice, pictures of the telescope were taken by me without a flash, to not damage the exhibits, but against the rules, I did get caught by the guards and had to stop)

Dr. Pepper Recipe from 1880 found

I am a big fan of Dr. Pepper so news that an early notebook containing what might be an original recipe piqued my interest. I expected that it would contain things that you are not allowed to put in sodas anymore like cocaine or embalming fluid. The auction website has some of the pages in great detail, but I can't understand the handwriting of the recipe for "Dr. Pepper Pepsin Bitters" (click on the picture for bigger). The stain on the page might be Dr. Pepper.



The notebook is expected to sell for more than $50,000. I am content with a few high-res pages.

City Hall peeks behind the buildings

William Penn atop City Hall in Philadelphia peeks out from behind some building in Center City.

He used to be on the tallest building in the city, but no more.