Viewing fireworks from a drone

Note to President Obama: this is an acceptable (and awesome) use of drones...

Man playing Wagner on the trombone while skiing downhill

Playing the trombone is difficult. Playing "Ride of the Valkyries" on the trombone is even tougher. Playing "Ride of the Valkyries" on the trombone while downhill skiing is, well, no less than impressive.




I'm with Dave Barry, who asks, "Why is this not a Winter Olympics event?"

Turn your Christmas tree into a rocket

Looking to recycle your Christmas tree? Turn it into a rocket.

Mark Twain's amazing insight into human nature

Tom said to himself that it was not such a hollow world after all. He had discovered the great law of human action, without knowing it -- namely that in order to make a man or a boy covet a thing, it is only necessary to make the thing difficult to attain. If he had been a great and wise philosopher, like the writer of this book, he would now have comprehended that Work consists of whatever a body is obliged to do, and that Play consists of whatever a body is not obliged to do.

(via Facebook)

Rebuilding Detroit...with zombies?

Detroit is a dying city. People are leaving in droves. Entire neighborhoods have been completely abandoned, evoking images of Chernobyl or scenes from some post-apocalyptic film. Government officials have pretty much run out of ideas about how to revitalize the city and have asked the public for help.

One group has come up with a rather unique proposal. The project is entitled Z World Detroit, a "zombie themed experience park":

Imagine that you're living through the zombie apocalypse. You and your group are looking for sanctuary in an abandoned urban landscape. You are out of ammo so you are relying on your smarts to survive. As you start to adjust to your new surroundings, your relative calm is broken by a pack of zombies.

People panic and start to run. Some in your group aren't fast enough and fall to the zombies. Soon they will also be zombies. Where do you go? The odds say make a run for it and you listen. Your group runs down the street and hides in an old warehouse. Is it safe in here? Will the growing zombie horde pass without noticing you? What about your supplies? What about the friend that was lost in the chaos? How long will you survive? Will you make it through the night?

This sounds like an interesting video game, but where is the real thrill in a video game? Suppose this was real. Suppose you were in this with your friends. Suppose you were really running and hiding. Now that would be interesting.

As far as urban renewal plans go, this really isn't that bad. It's certainly better than anything some city planning commission would come up with.

The Miracle of Flight

Takuo Toda, an engineer from Japan, recently tried to break his own flight record. He fell short by a mere 1.8 seconds. (Full story here.)

Still, at 26.1 seconds, it was the best time on record for a paper-only airplane. Toda, who heads the Japan Origami Airplane Association, hopes to one day realize the dream of every paper airplane pilot: breaking the 30-second barrier.

"I will get the 30-second record," he said. "It's just a matter of time."

Godspeed, Mr. Toda. Godspeed.

America's Love Affair with Cars Is Over

P. J. O'rourke eloquently describes the end of the affair:

We've lost our love for cars and forgotten our debt to them and meanwhile the pointy-headed busybodies have been exacting their revenge. We escaped the poke of their noses once, when we lived downtown, but we won't be able to peel out so fast the next time. In the name of safety, emissions control and fuel economy, the simple mechanical elegance of the automobile has been rendered ponderous, cumbersome and incomprehensible. One might as well pry the back off an iPod as pop the hood on a contemporary motor vehicle. An aging shade-tree mechanic like myself stares aghast and sits back down in the shade. Or would if the car weren't squawking at me like a rehearsal for divorce. You left the key in. You left the door open. You left the lights on. You left your dirty socks in the middle of the bedroom floor.

I don't believe the pointy-heads give a damn about climate change or gas mileage, much less about whether I survive a head-on with one of their tax-sucking mass-transit projects. All they want to is to make me hate my car. How proud and handsome would Bucephalas look, or Traveler or Rachel Alexandra, with seat and shoulder belts, air bags, 5-mph bumpers and a maze of pollution-control equipment under the tail?

And there's the end of the American automobile industry. When it comes to dull, practical, ugly things that bore and annoy me, Japanese things cost less and the cup holders are more conveniently located.

Read the full article here.

Scientists Find Monkeys Who Know How to Fish

No kidding.

What's really interesting, however, is that they seem to get by just fine without having to worry about licenses, size and possession limits, or angling method restrictions. And they certainly don't concern themselves with fishing only when it's in season.

It's like that old saying: Give a monkey a fish, feed him for a day. Teach a monkey to fish, and he'll violate every Minnesota DNR regulation in the book.

Lazy Lawn Care

I grew up in the country where the lawn was just the area of weeds that you mowed. Now that I'm a suburbanite, I've had to adapt to at least a few expectations about keeping one's lawn up to snuff. In a little over ten years, I've learned a few lazy ways to keep your lawn looking nice, even above average, while breaking minimal sweat:

1) Don't cut your grass so short. Leave your mower deck up at it's highest, or maybe second-highest position. The grass stays greener with less watering, and better shades out weeds if you let it grow long. Grass that looks "too long" is really just grass that's uneven. You don't have to mow any more often to keep long grass looking just as neat as short grass.

2) Get a mulching mower. Really, do you actually enjoy bagging all those grass clippings? Knock it off and just mulch. Over the course of the summer, this is the near equivalent of one whole additional application of fertilizer. Of course, this means you do have to mow a little bit more often, so that the mower can effectively pulverize all the clippings. But I don't think that's any more work than bagging a ton of grass after it gets too long to mulch. Side discharge mowers are low-labor, too, but if you can avoid visible grass clippings altogether and get the fringe benefits of mulching, why not?

3) Fertilizer: good timing is more important than quantity. Given the fertilizing benefits of that mulcher mower, and the greener, healthier-looking grass you get by letting it grow a little longer, quit doing all that labor-intensive fertilizing. There really is only one important time to fertilize. Sometime in early to mid-May (before the lilacs bloom) put down a coat or two of that spring fertilizer with the crab-grass preventer in it. This will greatly minimize crab-grass later in the year (crab grass is an annual, not a perennial), and the spring fertilizer is not as harsh as the stuff they sell for summer application. It doesn't "burn" the grass when you accidentally get a little too much in one spot. If you're going to go to the trouble of treading all over your lawn with a spreader, you might as well be killing two birds with one stone by both fertilizing and stopping the crab grass. As for that "weed and feed" stuff they sell for later in the year...that's time and effort you could much better spend lifting a beer. It's too easy to burn your grass with it, only does a so-so job of killing broadleaf weeds, and does nothing about crabgrass. If you need to kill some weeds, it's better to get the liquid weed-killer that you mix with water, and one of those cheap pressure-driven pump-up garden sprayers, and spray directly only on the areas that need it. No, don't buy the liquid ready-mixed in those spray bottles. You'll use it all up right away, when the concentrated stuff will last you a couple years for the same money. Besides, ever try to cover your whole yard while bending over and constantly pumping that spray trigger with your hand? Ouch!

4) Watering: Don't go overboard. If you've got the money for a monstrous water bill and an irrigation system, fine. But I have to haul out sprinklers when I have to water, so I keep it to a minimum. When it's needed during those long, hot, dry days in July and August, I do just enough watering to keep the grass reasonably alive, and not too brown. Then I use one of those little yellow "tractor" type sprinklers that will move itself from one end of the lawn to the other. Water sooner than later, before the grass goes dormant, and don't waste your time watering in the middle of a hot sunny day when half the water you spray just evaporates in the heat. They say early morning is best, because watering in the evening and leaving a lot of moisture in your grass overnight can encourage fungus growth, but I'm not a morning person, and I don't water enough to keep fungus alive...only grass. And, again, that's grass that's left longer, not mowed short. Longer grass stays greener with less water.

5) Planting and over-seeding grass: timing is everything. Look, it's up to you. If you gotta fill in that bare spot NOW, and you really want to fuss with planting new grass seed in the spring or summer, and babying it constantly for weeks on end, go right ahead. But can you just wait for fall? And I mean late fall! Wait until you're done with all your mowing and raking, and you're not going to be bothering the lawn anymore until spring. Then, just before the snow flies, spread some grass seed around in the thin spots. If the spot is totally bare and hard-caked, you should probably till the soil up just a little bit with a rake, but otherwise just let the snow-pack drive that seed in all winter long, and let the snow melt and early-spring rains provide all that extra moisture grass needs as it's just getting started. Presto! You'll have grass there the next spring, and it'll fill in all on it's own within one season if you'll just have a little patience.

6) Got trees? Especially pine trees? With thin, weedy, slow-growing grass underneath? The secret is not fertilizer, it's lime. No, not the fruit; garden lime (pulverized limestone). Farmers know about because it's great for neutralizing livestock...er...discharge on barn floors. Besides neutralizing that kind of acid, it also neutralizes the acid in your soil caused by decomposing tree leaves and twigs. Fertilizer in those areas is counterproductive, only raising the acidity of the soil even further. And lime is way cheaper than fertilizer. Spread some of that under your trees at the same time you throw that grass seed down in the fall (and make the grass seed a shady-area mixture). Presto! Next year you'll have happy, healthy grass there.

In my experience, that's about all you need, in a northern climate, to keep the neighbors saying "nice lawn", so long as they're looking at it from a comfortable distance.

Don't ask me for gardening tips. I don't do gardening. All that crawling around in the dirt, pulling weeds by hand, bending over below your waist...yech! I grow grass because you can take care of it with power tools! Be a man! Mowers, weed wackers, and those motorized leaf vacuum/chipper/shredder units are all good for raising your garage's all-important "cylinder count". Maybe sometime I should write another one of these on keeping small engines running smoothly and tinker-free from season to season. It ain't a labor-saving device if it doesn't start on the first or second pull!

38 Hours to Kill

Why do Star Wars fans always seem to have so much time on their hands?

Let It Snow, Let It Snow, Let It Snow!

Another snowstorm is on its way. From the Star-Tribune:

Second scoop of snow coming -- maybe a foot! In case you missed last weekend's snowstorm, the tape's been rewound and is about to replay today through Friday. As much as a foot of snow is expected across much of Minnesota and west-central Wisconsin, with the brunt of it disrupting this afternoon's rush hour as well as both rush hours Thursday in the metro area. Warnings issued: The National Weather Service upgraded winter storm watches to warnings across much of the state and west-central Wisconsin on Tuesday afternoon. In the metro area, Minnesota highway department crews were beginning to spread de-icing materials on bridges, ramps and other ice-prone areas. Ease off cruise control: The State Patrol has warned drivers to be cautious and, in particular, not to use cruise control during icy and snowy conditions. Drifting snow expected: High winds out of the southeast today will shift to the northeast Thursday and are expected to cause significant snow drifting, said National Weather Service meteorologist Tony Zaleski. The drifting will be a particular problem for drivers traveling north and south, he said. But the snow will be heavy again thanks to temperatures around freezing. Reminiscent of 1982: Zaleski said the second storm following in the first storm's footprints has reminded some forecasters of the combination that hit the Twin Cities in January 1982. The 17.4 inches on Jan. 20 to 21 set a single-storm record for the Twin Cities, but it was broken later that week when 20 inches fell Jan. 22 to 23. They now rank as the second- and third-greatest single snowfalls behind the 1991 Halloween blizzard. The Twin Cities received an official 9.1 inches of snow Friday through Sunday, paltry compared to the depths in surrounding areas in the state. Hewitt, about 40 miles west of Brainerd, claimed 17 inches, suburban Andover, 14.3, and Winona, in southeastern Minnesota, 28 inches.

Hey, who's complaining? I just LOVE not having a snow blower!

Welcome to the Iowan Alps

Here's a cool story from south of the border:

CEDAR FALLS, Iowa - As temperatures drop to 17 below zero in the frozen plains of Iowa, those looking for excitement bring a mountain sport to their farms by showering the silos with water, which creates an ice field of sorts.

"You're not supposed to be ice-climbing in Iowa, but we're doing it," said Don Briggs, who admits it feels like "cheating" somehow.

Briggs uses garden hoses and some jury-rigged shower heads to water the silos every evening, and the wind and cold create towering stalactites that stretch 70 feet straight up.

This bizarre marriage of agriculture and extreme sports was the brainchild of Briggs, who teaches physical education at the local university. The idea came to him while working on a neighbor's farm.

Come on, Chris, admit it. This looks way more fun than your vacation to Disney World, right?