via Open Culture.

This morning I awoke suddenly aware that I hadn’t yet linked to Shady Characters, a lovely blog that records the history of some of the more interesting typographical glyphs: ¶, ‽, #, &

I chose the AC. If I want to be able to see at night, I have to walk all the way across the room and actually turn on a lamp, like a Neanderthal.

…

On the other hand, there’s a colony of prairie dogs living like a mile down the bike path. So, big picture, everything’s actually awesome.

A few decades ago, the Yugoslav government commissioned a series of huge sculpture/monuments to be built at a few historic locations. They’ve since been abandoned, so the Balkans are now scattered with what look like the relics of an ancient and completely alien civilization.

Also, on a personal note, I’m spending the summer in Boulder, CO, interning with the lovely people at Foraker Labs! So, you know, FYI. You should probably visit — Boulder is just incredibly awesome and I have a remarkably comfortable floor moderately comfortable futon.

The video above depicts an insertion sort implemented through Romanian folk dance.

See also: bubble sort, selection sort, and Shell sort.

Have you seen Merel Karhof’s Wind Knitting Factory? I guess if you read swissmiss you have. Which you should.

The site’s worth checking out — there’s a video. If you go watch it, I’ll spare you a really weak “windsock” joke.

So clearly this results in a pretty cool set of images. What I’d really like, though, is a 3-d graph depicting signal strength on a 2-d field.

Imagine if we replaced the rod with a disc composed of a set of concentric circles of lights. Suppose the number of circles that light up correlates with the strength of the signal, so that more signal => more light. Head to the city park, wander around in a grid pattern with this device, point the camera down from a building, and take a long exposure of the results. Signal would be represented as pools of light.

Someone go do this for me. Send me pictures.

I sure hope some other person in the world finds Wikipedia’s List of Screw Drives page as fascinating as I do.

In 1758, he planned an addition to the Champs-Élysées in Paris, to be constructed where the Arc de Triomphe now stands. It consisted of three levels, to be built in the shape of an elephant, with entry via a spiral staircase in the underbelly. The building was to have a form of air conditioning, and furniture that folded into the walls. A drainage system was to be incorporated into the elephant’s trunk. The French Government, however, was not amused and turned him down.

Little of his work now survives.

Apparently Lego is now selling a model of Frank Lloyd Wright’s Fallingwater. They’re making a few other architectural models, like the Guggenheim and the White House, though they’re much simpler.

I’d love to see them try to model something by Frank Gehry, but I won’t hold my breath.