Overheard at the AC&C

My submission finally made it onto Overheard in the Office! (though they got the location wrong–I overheard the conversation at the city’s Animal Care and Control in Manhattan, not the American Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals).

MIT Dome a Winner

Happy Pi Day to all you geeks out there!

On a roll from yesterday’s post, here is another great line from an article about a prank at MIT:
“The school … said it never gave permission for the building to become a gold medal winner.”
Check out the photos — the medal’s impressive.

Martians and Cardboard Beds

Studio 360 this week explored violence in entertainment. Comic Jack Handey (whom most people might know for his “Deep Thoughts” on Saturday Night Live) was invited to contribute. The result, “My Speech to the Martians,” is hilarious. An excerpt:

People of Mars, you say we are brutes and savages. But let me tell you one thing. If I could get loose from this cage you have me in, I would tear you guys a new Martian asshole. … I came here in peace, seeking gold and slaves. But you have treated me like an intruder. But maybe it is not me who is the intruder but you. No, not me. You, stupid.”

(I just did a quick search and it seems as if this “speech” first appeared in the New Yorker. It’s probably even better hearing him read it. He speaks in this deadpan, which is part of the reason I like his work. He’s not deliberately trying to be jokey. His humor’s kind of twisted, almost cruel.)

The itbed, from Swiss firm it design looks awesome. It’s kind of hard to believe that cardboard can be manipulated to support something as heavy as a mattress and sleepers, but I guess it’s all about the triangles. (Any other geeks remember building a tower out of balsa wood to support as much weight as possible?) Now that’s portability.

Odds and Ends Pt. 4

A man tries to make paper by referring to a poem. Learn about the results in his hilarious report “Recipe for Paper,” which recently aired on public radio program Studio 360.

Goto Reviews, which bills itself as “A Guide to the Most Efficient Things in the World,” is a nifty site. For example, it made a reference to the “Mealbox” table. The chairs and table are all shaped in such a way that they can be stacked together and packed into a box.

And thanks to dan dan noodles for his concern. When I tripped, it was on a poorly lit, nearly empty block. A guy walking in the other direction turned around and asked me if I was OK, and that was about it, no snickering or laughs that I could hear. Incidentally, today around lunchtime, I was walking down 14th Street, which some of you know as one of the major crosstown streets in New York, when an older woman in front of me tripped and fell. The gentleman who’d been walking in front of her and I stopped to make sure she wasn’t hurt, but she seemed more embarrassed than anything else, her sunglasses sitting askew on her nose.

Hurray for Dirt

Jesse wanted me to point out these instructions for making a nifty sod couch, a perfect project for someone looking for something both environmentally friendly and comfortable (if not a little messy):
http://www.readymademag.com/feature_6_sodcouch.php

Does that remind anyone else of the Adobe, the “sassy new Mexican import that’s made out of clay”?