Someone scanned a book from 1952 called, How to Perform Strong Man Stunts. This is the kind of thing you could buy from the end pages of comic books. This throwback has the best intro:

One of the truest statements ever made is, “All the World Loves a Strong Man.” Every man, woman and child admires strength, and there is not a man who does not crave it. To be stronger than your friends is to be looked upon as a natural leader, and an invincible defender. Strength is the biggest hallmark of manhood. It demonstrates true he-man masculinity.

This guy has a fantastic audio clip of a recording he made of being harassed by, then harassing, a cold caller. Must hear.

Google Maps exposes some hooks so that web developers can integrate them into their applications. For instance, here’s one that displays housing classifieds from Craig’s List on a map. But Chicagocrime.org’s takes the cake. It maps where crimes take place in Chicago. You can filter by date, time, district, and type of crime. So if you want to know where to find a prostitute or a drug dealer, or more accurately, where they get arrested, just filter it.

This is a single sleeve that you wear that tells you that someone is text messaging you. It communicates with you by changing the pattern of pleats in the cloth. You then brush them a certain way to reply with, and I quote, “i call you back”. Yes, it’s stupid, but also might be dangerous. It looks remarkably similar to those more protective sleeves that are used to train attack dogs. There’s no mention on whether it comes with a rabies vaccine.

Engadget has a blurb claiming that Apple has announced that iTunes 4.9 will have one-click subcriptions and iPod syncs to podcasts without the need for 3rd party apps. While that functionality will be nice, this could mean the end of some free podcasts.

Here’s an article and slideshow of the user interface of the X360. I like the “Arcade” idea where you pay a couple of bucks to get little games like Bejeweled.

On April Fool’s Day this year, Scientific American had a great satirical concession speech on their recant of evolution. From the article:

Nor should we succumb to the easy mistake of thinking that scientists understand their fields better than, say, U.S. senators or best-selling novelists do.

I’ve posted before (1, 2) about the $25 million Creation Museum set to open near Cincinnati, Ohio. Yesterday’s Cincinnati Enquirer has a long profile of founder Ken Ham. In the article, Jerry Falwell says that Ham is “the most informed creationist in America” and that the museum is “going to be a mini-Disney World.” From the Enquirer article, here are a few of Ham’s beliefs:

• Earth is about 6,000 years old, a figure arrived at by tracing the biblical genealogies, and not 4.5 billion years, as mainstream scientists say.
• The Grand Canyon was formed not by erosion over millions of years, but by floodwaters in a matter of days or weeks.
• Dinosaurs and man once co-existed (see above photo), and dozens of the creatures – including T-rex – were passengers on the ark built by Noah, who was a real man, not a myth.