I've Got Your Picture, I've Got Your Picture

… I'd like a million of them all round my cell:

  • Fans of Japanese monster movies will want to see Iowahawk's unearthed screenplay for Crudezilla, King of All Spills (1954). A snippet:

    YAMAMOTO
    Have you mapped out Plan C, Professor? Crudezilla is stomping toward Mt. Fuji, and Nippon Petroleum is already down 4.74 in heavy trading!

    OBAMASAWA
    Just putting the final touches on it now. Gentlemen, as we all know, the root cause of Crudezilla is Japan's unhealthy dependence on fossil fuel. Therefore I have constructed this highly scientific draft legislation to  mandate accelerated depreciation tax credits for green energy technology and hybrid vehicles.

    Read the whole th… oh, you've already clicked over?

  • Jay Tea dumps the specs on his new computer. I was salivating—right up to the point he said "Windows"—but what I really liked was his little postscript:
    About The Author:

    Jay Tea's new computer rocks, it's got the clocks, but it was obsolete before he opened the box.

    … so true.

  • Speaking of geeks: last week Granite Geek David Brooks described the seemingly frivolous effort of his son to calculate and visualize the "squiggliness" of New Hampshire town borders.

    This rang a little bell in my head: hadn't someone actually done some serious research on the "squiggliness" of national borders?

    Yup. You can read an Amity Shlaes column about it here. Key quote:

    Most nations have borders that are a combination of lines and bumps, so the authors developed a mathematical measure to quantify the extent of border bumpiness, which they called squiggliness. Since borders on oceans are extremely squiggly, the authors controlled for that and studied only the squiggliness of national borders with other nations. Their thesis is that it is better to be natural than artificial, and that squiggliness is good for growth and stability.
    I think you can check out the actual paper here (PDF).)

    I dropped David a note, and his followup post (which graciously acknowledges me) is here. He promises further study. Of course, national borders and town borders are set by totally different processes, but it would still be interesting to check out if any significant correlations pop up.


Last Modified 2010-06-17 8:26 AM EDT