If I'm ever a teacher I want to be like Mr. Doyle:
Mr. Doyle
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A Man and His Machine
Western civilization is saved: a man has invented a machine to separate Oreo cookies from their creme middles.
No Holding and No Folding
In poker knowing when to hold or fold is a critical skill. In North Carolina the legislature has decided that some people can't be trusted with knowing whom to hold (that would be a reference to the ban on same-sex marriage) or when to fold (that would be a reference to a proposed law that would require a two year waiting period and compulsory counseling for any married couples pursuing a no-fault divorce). Combine that two year waiting period with loosened gun regs and you have yourself a recipe for some interesting situations don't you?
The Larranaga Shuffle
As a GMU alum I will always have a special place in my heart for Jim Larranaga. If you need to know why, here's just a small taste of what makes him a great coach for any school he graces with his presence.
Go Miami!
The Opener
You gotta love the simplicity of this bottle opener design:
Public Art or Not
Some folks see grafitti and think "Now that's art" and others see it as the defacement of property. Personally I find even grafitti I like to be a defacement of someone's property unless of course the property owner invited the artist to work his magic. That's why in the realm of "unapproved" art I prefer something that's creative, easily removable and inherently temporary. Here's a great example:
Then there's the stuff that's approved and is anything but art. Like cell towers disguised as trees.
The Blogfather
Ed Cone was blogging before "blogger" became a pejorative. The Greensboro dead tree product carries a story about his decision to quit the blogging scene.
From his office three floors above South Elm Street — where he has an action figure perched on his window and a framed handwritten response from gonzo journalist Hunter S. Thompson on his wall — Ed wrote about it on Word Up.
Will it return? Who knows? Ed doesn’t. But there is this story I heard once about Ed’s great-grandfather, about how he used to row out to the middle of a lake in Maine and sit.
I ask Ed about it. He tells me he understands it now. It’s that need for quiet, for some contemplation. That’s what Ed is doing. For now.
Class Act
The first time I saw CJ Harris play was in the Frank Spencer Holiday Classic his senior year at Mt. Tabor High School. He was easily the best player on the court and it was encouraging to know that he was staying in town to play at Wake Forest. Unfortunately (for him) his tenure coincided with one of the most challenging times in the history of Wake Forest basketball. Fortunately (for us) he stuck it out and didn't transfer to another more stable program. He, along with Travis McKie, have been the players who have been most responsible for keeping the program from totally flaming out. They've shown tremendous character in fulfilling their roles for the Wake hoops program so it should not come as a surpise that Harris would write this thank you letter to the Wake Forest community. Here's an excerpt:
Thank you so much for the kind words and love that you have shown me and my family over the past four years. That is more precious to me than any victory on the court, as your words have truly help define who I am today.
While I am sad that my career at Wake Forest has come to an end, I see nothing but a bright future for the Deacs. I know that I have helped lay the foundation for this program to achieve the success we can all be proud of. My teammates and the coaching staff are working hard to get there, and they deserve your continued support and enthusiasm.
Thank you again for making these past four years truly special.
Always a Deac!
CJ
Gravity Light
Two things about this story are amazing: that something so seemingly simple hasn't been developed before and that something so seemingly simple still took a lot of work to, well, make simple.
British industrial designer Martin Riddiford has created a pineapple-size lamp powered by a 25-pound weight that falls about six feet in a half-hour. That may not sound like much, but it’s enough to drive a silent motor at thousands of rotations per second. The GravityLight, which shines slightly brighter than most kerosene lamps, requires a certain amount of elbow grease: Once the weight reaches bottom, it must be manually lifted to repeat the process.
Riddiford, 57, a co-founder of London-based product design firm Therefore, got the idea four years ago after leaving a meeting with a charity interested in solar tech. “I just sort of had this vision of, well, why can’t you use human power and store it as potential energy rather than in a battery,” he says. The designer, whose Brinlock Abacus calculator was the first with number-shaped buttons, and whose firm has developed products for Toshiba, Samsonite, and Nike (NKE), says he regrets not having done charitable work overseas in his youth and hopes to make up for it with his light. The first prototype, a large-scale contraption involving a bicycle wheel and a windup LED flashlight, was refined over four years into its current cheap yet durable plastic version. “It’s technically quite tricky to get it so it doesn’t jam, but we solved that problem through lots of experimentation,” Riddiford says.
“The time has come for us all to act like we’ve got some sense.”
Winston-Salem Journal sports reporter Dan Collins, who covers the Wake Forest beat, wrote the sentence that is the headline for this post. He wrote it as part of a piece on what he thinks we need to see from Wake fans who are at odds over the direction the school's basketball program is heading. He also wrote:
What does rankle me, however, is to see the utter lack of respect some have for opinions other than their own. And it rankles me to see what lengths some go to discredit and even vilify those who decline to walk lockstep in any direction they feel the argument should — no, must — go.
It's very important here that I repeat, I'm talking about voices from both sides of the divide…
The worst moments, though, have come with the ridicule and vilest of rhetoric that has been tossed back and forth. Such hate and vitriol should be denounced by any fair-minded individual.
The unfortunate incident at the end of the Wake-Maryland game left a bitter taste I've yet to get out of my mouth. I've heard some say that what the person did was unacceptable, but they understand his frustration.
No, that's wrong. Unacceptable is unacceptable. To qualify it with the word but is to mitigate how wrong it was.
Collins is being very politic in his choice of words. There's a phrase that could be used to describe the fans' behavior and would be both succinct and accurate if not politic: Many Wake fans have been showing their butts and they need to just stop.
Befuddled 