The Curiosity Shop

1. The mysteriousGurdon Light can be seen many nights along a lonely stretch of railroad track outside Gurdon, Arkansas.
2. Conjunctions: "She and I" or "Me and her", which is right? It's easy to tell if you know the trick.
   
3. Some stories:
   • "On Softball and Women." - a true story written by my friend Steve.
   • "A Business Trip Gone Wrong" - a true story.
     
   • "Stanley (and Steve) Knee Deep." - a story about my dad from an email from Steve.
   • "How My Father Killed a Cow with an Airplane." - a true story.
     
   • "My First Wedding Cake" - a true story.
     
   • Steve and "The Solitary Reaper" - a story from Steve.
   • Steve and the Visiting Professor - a story from Steve.
   • Chance Meetings - another true story of mine.
4. For those who remember The Whistling Wizard, a T.V. show from 1951.
5. Why do mirrors reverse right and left, but not up and down? Find out why. Includes email exchange on mirrors with a dissatisfied reader.
   
6. The Ghost of Pine Bluff, Ark.
7. League Game Scheduling: You have 12 teams and each needs to play a different team each weekend. There's an easy way to figure out the schedule.
   
8. Especially for cake decorators - Mr Dana's method of baking better cakes from mixes.
   
9. Gravity and the Common Cold.
   
10. Rays from the sun at dusk and dawn.
    
11. You can make sugar cubes glow in the dark by twisting and grinding them together as hard as you can in a really dark place. Be persistent, it may take a minute or two and the green glow is dim, but you should be able to see it.
12. If you get a friend to crunch Wint-O-Green Lifesavers in the dark with his/her mouth open you will see flashes of light. These are much brighter than the sugar cubes. "James the younger", at Lake Ouichita (pronounced wash-i-tah) State Park, Arkansas says this is called "sparking".
    
13. My daughter Verene's Winchester Mystery House Page gives you curious facts and pictures about a very curious place. A new addition is 18 pictures from the Winchester Mystery House from the early 1940s
14. I was told by a specialist in computer programs that try to understand the English language that he has a favorite challenge for his colleagues' programs. It is, "Time flies like an arrow. Fruit flies like bananas."
15. Take a look at the Mystery Egg. If you know what it is send me an email.
16. On second thought,....
17. I've been to the end of the rainbow. (But I don't know how it happened.)
18. "Never end a sentence with a preposition!" - Good advice gone wrong.
19. Solution to the Cracker Barrel Restaurant Puzzle.
20. My Bicentennial 7up can collection.
21. A Cute 30 second MPEG movie that was circulating at work. Rumor has it that it was produced at Silicon Graphics, but probably not officially. This may not be entirely politically correct in all circles, so if you are easily offended don't watch it, or watch it only for the quality of the animation, in which case you should copy it to your computer first and watch your copy. If you don't have software to play mpeg you can download Quicktime for PC or Mac from Apple.
    
22. "For every action there is an equal but opposite reaction." What does Newton's third law of motion really mean? Find out here.

Some other rather curious sites

1. A simulation of the World War II era mechanical Curta calculator. (For you youngsters, that is well before the age of digital electronics and before the word 'computer' acquired its current meaning.) See the Curta manual to learn how to use it.
2. Mirages in Finland
3. Michael J Colitz's Wacky Patent of the Month
4. Decrypting the Eclipse (The mystery of Foucault pendula.)
5. Earthquake Rose from a pendulum near Seattle after an earthquake.
6. Join NASA in the Search for Extra Terrestrial Intelligence (SETI@home)
7. A letter to Dr. Laura on Richard Stallman's page
8. E-World which, among other things, contains "The Scriptural Basis for a Geocentric Cosmology"
9. The unusual number 1/89 (This works again: 6-1-2000.)
10. Soda Play
11. EDGE: To arrive at the EDGE of the world's knowledge.
12. CAT/MEO at NYU.
13. BrowserSpy: Everything about your browser and you.
14. Urban Legends by topic.
15. DMHO: a "dangerous" chemical all around us. :-)
16.   The Wychwood Brewery - see their gallery. See also the almost lost labels page of 2001 - 2002.
17. Butterflies for sale