I love stuff like this: deep explanations into everyday things that are amazingly complex. We all know that it’s a logistical miracle how fast products can get shipped from one side of the globe to the other. Or even, say, some warehouse in Utah to your front door. This video breaks down how the major shipping companies in the US…

This is has nothing to do with the Olympics but is a must-watch. It is equally amazing and creepy. The best parts are about halfway through this piece, when you see the ice surface flexing and then cracking after Marten Ajne skates across it. I can’t ice skate, so I’ve never been tempting to go out on our lake when…

Here is one of the greatest things I saw over the holidays. “Euverus” used the game Cities: Skylines to test how traffic would flow at a 4-way intersection using 30 different road configurations. I love the examples with no controls, especially the little software glitches that allow vehicles to pass through each other. And some of the higher-end examples are…

They’re the worst. Two stories of awful people I’ve encountered recently. A couple weeks back I was at the grocery store. I rounded one aisle and turned into the next. A woman – probably 45–50ish – was looking at some items on the shelf. She had her cart parked so that the entire aisle was blocked. The way she was…

A few quick, random thoughts to share. Why do you have to verify that you are at least 21 years old before you access the website of a brewery? It’s not like you can pour a free sample out of your monitor once you put in your birthdate. And there’s no age requirement to watch the 8000 beer commercials that…

Last day of the year. As is my routine, this morning I paged back through the site’s archives for the last 12 months and jotted down some highlights. In January we kicked off the Worst Winter Ever[1] with nearly 20” of snow in three days, followed by the first Polar Vortex. Of a possible 35 hours of school the first…

Unloading some things I’ve scribbled down in the notebook over the last few weeks. I’ve always wondered why there are so many hand-made signs selling mattresses at most major intersections. This isn’t just an Indiana thing, is it? I know mattresses cost a bundle, but a mattress is at the top of the list of things I would never buy…

This quick, odd summer of 2014 is officially closed. After a fine start, in which most days were pleasant but not oppressive, things turned cool and rainy right about the time our swim season ended. So there were a lot fewer trips to the pool this July and August as compared to last year. Since Mother Nature is a bitch,…