Winter Has Arrived

Here are still captures from Cornell's webcams this morning taken from here and here. The picture on the left is the McGraw Clock Tower. On the right, I've included a picture of the Engineering Quad.

The other day, the temperature was 4 degrees with a wind chill of -2 at 7am. Luckily, it hasn't been that cold again this week. The best part was that Elmira, about 30-40 minutes
southwest of Ithaca was 5 degrees warmer that morning--twice as warm!

Urine--Your Out

Apparently, the Sacramento radio station KDND-FM held a contest where contestants tried to out-drink one another without going to the bathroom. What were they holding it for?--a Nintendo Wii! The clever slogan "Hold your wee for a Wii" encouraged 20 people to participate in this stupid contest.

According to Reuters, the runner-up Jennifer Strange, 28 and a mother of three, died from intoxication about five hours after the end of the contest. She is reported to have consumed about 7 quarts of water for the competition.

The DJs responsible for the contest have been fired, and one admits in hindsight that they should have researched water intoxication before promoting the contest. DJs are so smart.

See more about water intoxication at Wikipedia. Note that Jennifer Strange now has a page on Wikipedia describing her unsuccessful participation in the Wii contest.

Would you be more likely to pee on a fly or the wall?

Amsterdam urinals have flies etched into the porcelain to captivate the fluid-filled-man and encourage proper pointing of his urinary hose. "Fly-in-urinal research found that etched urinals reduce spillage by 80%."

I must wonder what would happen if those bugs appeared in US urinals. Would the fliers hanging above the urinals at eye-level still receive the same visibility? The smaller endowed are probably already looking down and would appreciate a target. The remaining "readers" may prefer peeing on a fly to reading about next weeks crap band. Of course, when you're drunk, where you relieve yourself is less important, and, depending on your state of inebriation, you may be satisfied with leaving the stall without a wet stain on both your kicks and jeans.

Either way, check out the pictures of these Dutch urinals here.

Snow - None Here

Earlier this week, Syracuse, NY saw about a foot of snow. Ithaca, on the other hand, barely saw a dusting. It seems that the "Ithaca is cold" slogan isn't valid this winter season. However, this might be good for us. Check out the video below. I have no idea where this is, but it's pretty funny.

Choose Your Own Adventure comes to iPod

Remember those Choose Your Own Adventure books you read as a kid? I wasn't much of a reader in elementary school, but I did read The First Olympics by Ben Baglio. For some reason, I actually remember reading this particular book (it only took me a few minutes browsing the Wikipedia entry for "Choose Your Own Adventure" to find this story. Remembering I read it has nothing to do with remembering what happened in the book. Plus, I'd have to retrace the adventure I chose when I read the book long ago. (This book sounds like a lot more work as I think about it.)

Anyway, it appears that the Choose Your Own Adventure books have turned towards the iPod for distribution. A sample book The Abominable Snowman is available as a free download
until January 25, 2007. However, according to the website, it appears that you need to have a newer iPod with a color screen and possibly the ability to display photos to read the books.