Category: Cool

From the San Fran Chronicle article, linked from Obscure Store: Talent earned the Cal Poly Wind Orchestra an invitation to Carnegie Hall, but it’s sex appeal that will get them there. Thirteen female members of the orchestra posed nude, with their instruments strategically placed, for a calendar to help raise money for the orchestra’s trip to Carnegie. Needless to say, the calendars are selling well.

From SearchDay: The Online Books Page has links to more than 18,000 English works in various formats that are all free for personal, noncommercial use. That’s right: You can read and download nearly 20,000 books free of charge. The site is ten-years old this year, and is one of the best research sites around, especially so for folks who don’t live near a major library.

Dave Barry, arguably one of the funniest columnists and writers of all time, now has a blog. It’s only been up a couple days, but just the little minor notes have been funny as heck. An example:

It’s cold tonight, even down here in Deep South Florida.

Q. How cold is it?

It’s so cold that we lit a fire. It’s really great — toasty and warm.

Of course it would be even better if we had a fireplace.

Keep an eye on it!

At least according to Fox Sports. I actually have seen all those commercials, and they’re all quite good, but some of them listed I wouldn’t consider “all-time greatest.” You be the judge. Link from Fark.

Full story at the Reg and Google News. And I have to say, I hope whomever replaces her isn’t nearly as much of a pain in the butt. Besides plowing over what the Constitution stand for, fixing CD prices, as well trying to shut down Internet radio and poisoning peer-to-peer file sharing networks, there have just been far too many things that the RIAA has done wrong. I know I won’t miss her.

Titled Image Gate, I can see this site becoming insanely useful as a research tool. From their site:

Image Gate is The New York Public Library’s first full-size working version of its new digital image database. Image Gate provides free and open online access to thousands of digital images from the collections of NYPL’s four research libraries: the Humanities and Social Sciences Library, The New York Public Library for the Performing Arts, the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture, and the Science, Industry and Business Library.

They didn’t just win the tournament, they killed everybody. They won games with the scores of 12-2, 5-0, 5-1, 5-1, and then 4-2 in the championship. I think one of team members said it best: “It was fun kicking their butt.” Full Story.

You just have to love Jack LaLanne, who could still run circles around 90% of the population at age 88.

They like to do things big in Texas. And I thought the 36-ounce burger at the Pilot Butte Drive-Inn was big. It was done as a publicity stunt to show you what you could get in Austin for $41 (as he had got wind that you could get a 20-ounce burger in New York for the same price). He figured out how much of a burger he could make for $41, and he created a 24-pound monster. Full Story Here.

From Al’s Morning Meeting: “Suppose someone was handing out $20 bills and almost nobody wanted one? That’s roughly what’s happening with a massive price-fixing settlement involving states and compact disc companies.

The deal calls for payments of as much as $20 for customers who bought CDs between 1995 and 2000. But so far, only a few people have signed up, and officials fear the money will go begging. Full AP story here. Anyone who bought a CD, cassette tape or vinyl record at a retail store between 1995 and 2000 is eligible to make a claim before March 3rd. The site does not ask for receipts or proof of purchase, only that you promise you actually bought a CD in that time period.

In case you didn’t hear about the settlement back in October, here’s a story about it.