Category: Quickhit

[The Caltech basketball team, winless for 21 years](http://myespn.go.com/blogs/truehoop/0-28-335/Nerd-Squad–The-Tale-of-Quantum-Hoops.html). The documentary, *Quantum Hoops*, sounds great. This is the kind of thing that restores my faith in sport, which the Olympics will surely challenge later this year…

Or the lack thereof… In 1994 Linda Katx started a joke website that pretended to sell tumbleweeds. [People didn’t get the joke, and she now makes $40,000 a year selling them](http://potw.news.yahoo.com/s/potw/55334/rolling-in-cash).

[A Japanese arcade game has led to a rise in illegal beetle imports](http://gadgets.boingboing.net/2007/09/12/japanese-arcade-game.html). Of course, this could be a case of ‘Japan is weird’ instead…

[3kg Linux computer with solar panel](http://www.aleutia.com/products/e1specs.html). Still a little heavy, but the perfect way to blog from the highest mountains. Assuming you can get an Internet connection, of course.

[A 23-foot stretch ferrari](http://gizmodo.com/gadgets/cars/first-gullwing-stretch-limo-ferrari-299096.php). A stupendously ugly vehicle – I’m not a big Ferrari fan, but this is some kind of sacrilege. There’s also no way that can still do 0-60 in 6 seconds…

[How to earn 1000 XBox gamerpoints in 60 seconds](http://www.joystiq.com/2007/11/18/new-avatar-game-awards-1-000-gamerpoints-in-two-minutes/). *Avatar*, soon to be the most rented game of 2008. This is very stupid stuff, but I have to admit to being tempted – 1000 points so easily…

[Some suggestions on how to improve the voting system](http://clubtroppo.com.au/2007/09/17/voting-for-the-voting-system/). Some really nice ideas here. But it’s hard to imagine any of them ever being implemented – even preferential (or ‘instant runoff’) voting is hard enough to explain to punters. Personally I think concerns about strategic voting are overplayed when you’re looking at most electorates in…

[Wikileaks compares two versions of the Gauntanamo Bay operating manual](http://wikileaks.org/leak/gitmo-sop-2003-2004.html). All kinds of ways to learn things from apparently simple sources of information.

[A history of image manipulation from 1860 to today](http://www.cs.dartmouth.edu/farid/research/digitaltampering/). I never knew that famous image of Lincoln was a fake, Pictures (and film) are so dangerous because they’re so very easy to trust, but so very easy to manipulate.

[What if the original plans for going to space had been followed?](http://manconquersspace.com/MCSPg3.html). Seems to draw heavily on the major points of the genre for its look, should be fantastic.