Glen Davis

Three Lego pages have caught my eye with their out­landish dis­play of inge­nu­ity.

The achiev­ing the impos­si­ble award goes to the Andrew Lip­son’s Lego Page, which fea­tures clever engines and repro­duc­tions of M. C. Esch­er works. That’s right–he’s recre­at­ed those impos­si­ble draw­ings in 3D.

The we could make beau­ti­ful music togeth­er award goes to Hen­ry Lim’s Lego sculp­tures for his func­tion­al Lego harp­si­chord. Wow!

Final­ly, the ser­vice to human­i­ty award goes to the Cool Lego Site Of The Week. Get your need for geeky Lego ideas met here!

Masatoshi Koshi­ba, who just won 25% of this year’s Nobel Prize in physics (I did­n’t even know you could be a 25% win­ner), grad­u­at­ed last in his class at Tokyo Uni­ver­si­ty over 50 years ago.

He only made two A’s in his last two years of col­lege, both of which were in lab class­es where the grade was based on atten­dance.

Hmmm.… makes you think, does­n’t it?

Evi­dent­ly he took the Teacher’s words to heart: “Of mak­ing many books there is no end, and much study wea­ries the body.” (Ecc 12.12b, NIV)

The LA Times has the most inter­est­ing arti­cle I’ve seen in quite a while. It’s about a secre­tive group called The Fel­low­ship, a Chris­t­ian orga­ni­za­tion that has had mas­sive influ­ence in the pub­lic sphere.

For the last two decades, a Vir­ginia man­sion has been a pri­vate hide­away for world lead­ers, mem­bers of Con­gress, and even pop star Michael Jack­son…

The Fel­low­ship was a behind-the-scenes play­er at the Camp David Mid­dle East accords in 1978, work­ing with Pres­i­dent Jim­my Carter to issue a world­wide call to prayer with Israeli Prime Min­is­ter Men­achem Begin and Egypt­ian Pres­i­dent Anwar Sadat. Dur­ing the Cold War, it helped finance an anti-com­mu­nism pro­pa­gan­da film endorsed by the CIA and used by the Pen­ta­gon over­seas.

Last year, the Fel­low­ship helped arrange a secret meet­ing at Cedars between two war­ring lead­ers, Demo­c­ra­t­ic Repub­lic of Con­go Pres­i­dent Joseph Kabi­la and Rwan­dan Pres­i­dent Paul Kagame–one of the first of a series of dis­creet meet­ings between the two African lead­ers that even­tu­al­ly led to the sign­ing of a peace accord in July.

Inci­den­tal­ly, they’re also the ones who spon­sor the Nation­al Prayer Break­fast. There’s much more, and I encour­age you to read all about it. (Thanks to Chris­tian­i­ty Today for the link!)

A man in New Orleans was shot 25 times and lived. Here’s an excerpt from the arti­cle:

The vic­tim was walk­ing just before 3 a.m. when the attack­er walked up to him and began fir­ing a hand­gun, police said. “Once that weapon emp­tied, he pro­duced a sec­ond weapon and con­tin­ued to fire,” police said. “When the sec­ond weapon emp­tied, he pro­duced yet a third and con­tin­ued to fire.”

Read all about it!

And remember–never go walk­ing in New Orleans at 3 a.m.

The Door (a reli­gious humor mag­a­zine) deems Buffy the Vam­pire Slay­er to be the The­olo­gian of the Year. Our nation’s sea­son of tri­al influ­enced The Door’s selec­tion of Buffy the Vam­pire Slay­er as The­olo­gian of the Year. Let’s face it. In per­ilous times, we need some­one who can not only decon­struct the prob­lem of evil, but kick its hiney. And that means Buffy and her Scoo­by Gang. Read all about it!

In an inter­est­ing coin­ci­dence, Annals of Improb­a­ble Research (a sci­ence humor mag­a­zine) has just issued the 2002 Ig Nobel prizes ami­tyville hor­ror the divx movie online to hon­or peo­ple whose achieve­ments “can­not or should not be repro­duced.” [update: the offi­cial 2002 list is online with ref­er­ences]

Among this year’s win­ners are Karl Kruszel­nic­ki, a Syd­ney Uni­ver­si­ty researcher who wrote the paper on bel­ly-but­ton lint. Dr Kruszel­nic­ki, at his own expense, stud­ied 5000 bel­ly-but­ton lint sam­ples. He con­clud­ed the lint was a com­bi­na­tion of cloth­ing fibres and skin cells that were led to the navel, via body hair, “as all roads lead to Rome”. “Your typ­i­cal gen­er­a­tor of bel­ly-but­ton lint or fluff is a slight­ly over­weight, mid­dle-aged male with a hairy abdomen,” he said. (source)