Category Archives: Fun

Comics as Literature

Literary Hub: Why Calvon and Hobbes is Great Literature. “On the Ontology of a stuffed tiger and finding the whole world in a comic.” By Gabrielle Bellot.

“Calvin and Hobbes feels so inventive because it is: the strips take us to new planets, to parodies of film noir, to the Cretaceous period, to encounters with aliens in American suburbs and bicycles coming to life and reality itself being revised into Cubist art. Calvin and Hobbes ponder whether or not life and art have any meaning—often while careening off the edge of a cliff on a wagon or sled.”

Link via MetaFilter: “Oh, blood-red eyes and tentacles! / Throbbing, pulsing ventricles!”.

Electric Train

Physics Girl: World’s Easiest DIY Electric Train.

These trains are so much fun! I’ve actually built one last year with students after I saw the instructions on a Swiss/German site that sells neodymium magnets:

Supermagnete.de: Der einfachste Elektrozug der Welt.

The hard part was finding copper wire without insulation, which doesn’t seem to be available in German hardware stores. If you try and build one, don’t be surprised if the battery runs out fast – it’s short-circuited by the coil, so the fun runs out after a short while.

If you need more inspiration, take a look at World’s Simplest Electric Train (2) by Amazing Science.

“My next video will be called Seven Chords; it will feature every song ever.”

Has every popsong ever been already written?

Axis of Awesome: Four Chord Song 2009, Four Chords 2011.

BennyThe Jukebox: Another Four Chords and Six Chords. He writes: “More songs that sound alike to me. My next video will be called Seven Chords; it will feature every song ever.”

This hasn’t been a recent trend, it started all the way back in the 18th century with Georg Friedrich Händel, as proven by the Ukulele Orchestra of Great Britain with their song Fly Me Off The Handel.