I love how Recaptcha takes an action that is going to be performed anyway and makes it useful. (It is “a captcha system that uses successful decodings to helps digitise books for online use”.) I wonder if something similar could be done with schoolchildren’s work, like feeding their incorrect spelling test answers to spellchecker suggestion […]

Too bad this library book vending machine is only at the Pittsburgh/Bay Point BART station (so far, anyway):
A vending-like machine located at the station will hold some 400 books that can be checked out for free by anyone with a valid Contra Costa County library card. A patron will insert the card, get access to […]

ajazzy
Function: adjective
1. using ajax in a way that is hip and lively
2. using ajax in a way that is excessively fancy or flashy
Example usage: Your new social networking website is so ajazzy!
The beauty is that you can let your audience decide which meaning you have in mind.

Wouldn’t it be cool to have a Möbius strip that you could wear — in the form of a t-shirt with just one never-ending side? I did a quick web search and found a company named Möbius t-shirts, but I think that is just their name, not something they make. Maybe once I learn to […]

Found on a recent jaunt through Wikipedia:
POSSLQ is [an acronym] for ‘Persons of Opposite Sex Sharing Living Quarters,’ a term coined in the late 1970s by the United States Census Bureau as part of an effort to more accurately gauge the prevalence of cohabitation in American households.
The article includes part of a poem by Charles […]

Sometimes I find myself thinking things like “They should make a law that people can’t have children until they’ve passed a test to show they know how to be good parents.” But is there any “they” that we trust to make and enforce such a law?
I’ve been reading A Gift of Fire lately because I […]