corsinet.com is an excellent, intelligent
way to waste time on the internet: discover unusual facts, learn some
new things, wake up your brain cells and have some fun.
We've been wasting time on the
internet since before there was an internet!
Our collections:
Brain
Candy was first posted on the internet
in 1990, as a way to store the accumulation of word play, riddles and
jokes we had compiled through the years.
Trivial
Trivia is our collection of weird facts and unusual information, much
of it is totally useless unless one is training for Jeopardy or a trivia
contest.
Chicago
Collections is a huge resource about Chicago. A little history, some
quotations and song lyrics, and links to great Chicago area attractions.
DesignWeb
started because people liked our web sites and asked for help in designing
theirs. We are currently taking new clients only on a very selective basis.
TC
is Tony's artwork. He doesn't sell it & doesn't answer his email,
so don't even bother.
Our
Garden is a work in progress. It's what we've learned about installing
and maintaining a koi pond in our back yard. There are lots of pictures
of our pond and plants we've had success with in a shady yard, in the
brutal weather of the Chicago area.
Do you know the land
where the lemon-trees grow,
in darkened leaves the gold-oranges glow,
a soft wind blows from the pure blue sky,
the myrtle stands mute, and the bay-tree high? ~ ~ Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
Pre-posted links ... (visit
them one per day, or all at once, whatever ...)
The
art of the US stamp. From undersea creatures to Hollywood legends,
most stamp subjects are suggested by the public—in more than 50,000
letters each year. Developing a stamp can take two years or longer, but
by the time the Postmaster General approves the final art, everyone involved
has held to the most important dictum of stamp design: Work small, but
think big. (via fishbucket)
vacation post
Toilet
peculiarities: The toilet has different names in different countries.
It is called a bie zasah gar in Mongolia, it is a bathroom or an outhouse
in the US. russian outhouseIn Russia the toilet has a variety of names:
it is a toilet, a sortir, a closet, a public use place, a where-can-I-wash-my-hands-here
place, M and ô, a thinking room, a reading room and so on and so
forth. In France, when a man is intended to go to a men's room in a restaurant,
he can tell his lady: "Madam, I am now going to help my friend, who
you are going to be introduced to a bit later." Read about the history
of toilets at theplumber.com.
vacation post
Mary
Jane Begin is an illustrator and artist whose advertising and merchandising
work includes imagery for greeting cards, posters, prints, games, mugs,
gifts, textbooks, magazines, and advertisements for such clients as Hasbro,
Milton Bradley, Celestial Seasonings, Popshots, See's Candies, Franklin
Mint, and Disney.
vacation post
In 1796, the first U.S. patent for a medical device
of dubious distinction was issued to Dr. Elisha Perkins for his Metallic
Tractors, a set of metal prods attached to a Galvanic cell (battery).
Even before that time, useless pills, salves, and liquid nostrums were
widely hawked by pitchmen who extolled their mythical virtues. Of course,
medical devices promoted with false and/or misleading claims are still
numerous today. Device Watch
has a list of them.
vacation post
Each week the BBC News Magazine picks out snippets
from the week's news - interesting newsbites that we learn along the way,
and find their way into 10 Things We Didn't Know This Time Last Week every
Saturday. So at the end of the year, here is an almanac of 100
things we didn't know this time last year.
vacation post
Tokyo
today bears little resemblance to the city it was 100 years ago. Sadly,
little remains behind to remind us of this time period when the new capital
and the whole of Japan were coming to grips with rapid industrial modernization
and social transformation. Browse vintage hand-tinted images of Tokyo,
Japan from 1903-1923 at OldTokyo.com.
vacation post
FILM
THREAT'S FRIGID 50: THE COLDEST PEOPLE IN HOLLYWOOD 2004
Their top 10 choices?
Michael Moore; remember, it’s not always about you. Lose the chip
on your shoulder.
Halle Berry; her post-Oscar film choices have demonstrated a passionate
commitment to doing anything for a buck.
Michael Eisner; he proceeded to single-handedly suck the soul out of Uncle
Walt's baby.
M. Night Shyamalan; fooled the audience who paid their hard-earned coin
into thinking they were about to embark on an enjoyable movie experience.
Ben Stiller; seems to have a lock on mass-produced mediocrity.
Owen Wilson; too often takes paycheck roles that undermine his meager
credibility.
Nicole Kidman; always lovely to look at, but her films are so butt-ugly
bad that they hurt.
Reese Whitherspoon; should stick to the mindless comedies where a smile
and a chic wardrobe can compensate for her lack of acting depth.
Jimmy Fallon; the guy most notorious for blowing his lines on Saturday
Night Live crossed over to the big screen.
Paris Hilton; she's dumb to the point where even "dumb" is embarrassed.
Ben Afleck; should restrict all film work to cameo appearances in Matt
Damon’s movies.
Star
Wars Origins: How did George Lucas
create Star Wars? This website is filled with educated guesses as to what
might have influenced George Lucas when he created the original Star Wars
trilogy. The question is never where Lucas found his inspirations, but
rather how he wove them together with such intelligence, insight and compassion.
What gives a story the power to touch us? How does the imagination work?
12 January
In
the summer of 1975, Bruce Jackson found a group of about two hundred 3x4
inch prison identification photographs, dating from between 1914 and 1937,
in a drawer in the Arkansas penitentiary. As large-format (13x19 inch)
images, their fading colours digitally stabilised, the human dignity of
their subjects begins to re-emerge. Mirrors
was exhibited at the Nina Freudenheim Gallery, September 11 through October
14, 2004. (via ramage)
11 January
Dare
to ask, dare to answer: Y?, the first and only site of its kind, gives
you a way to ask people from other ethnic or cultural backgrounds the
questions you've always been too embarrassed or uncomfortable to ask them.
If you have the courage to ask, Y? will evaluate your question, consider
it for posting and try to get someone from that background to answer.
If needed, we'll get an expert to weigh in.
Buy the book containing the "very
best" of Y? and never-before-published expert answers.
The
Smoking Gun has compiled an authoritative,
behind-the-scenes account of the prosecution's case against the King of
Pop, Michael Jackson, who was indicted last April on ten felony counts
for the alleged sexual abuse of a Los Angeles boy in early 2003.
9 January
My current addictions: Same
Game: Double click two or more blocks of the same type that touch
horizontally
or vertically to make them disappear. Scrabble:
Just like the board game, make words from your letter tiles. Turbo
21: Stack cards in groups that add up to 21. Pogo membership required,
but it's free. Word
Leaves: Find words of 4 letters or more before the caterpillar climbs
the tree.
8 January
Wackiest
warning label: A toilet brush with
a tag that says "Do not use for personal hygiene" has taken
top prize for the wackiest consumer warning label of the year, according
to an anti-lawsuit group.
How did a small-town Swede like IKEA
founder Ingvar Kamprad, a billionaire who travels economy, counts
the slices of cheese on sandwiches and knows how many meatballs are served
per portion in the in-store restaurants, become a world style guru?
5 January
The number of people killed in Asia's tsunami disaster
edged up towards 146,000 Wednesday, with bodies still being found on the
Indian Ocean's devastated shorelines 10 days after the catastrophe. In
World's
Deadliest Disasters the author has collected history's most serious
disasters, both natural and manmade. Infoplease
lists disasters involving great loss of life and/or property, historical
interest, or unusual circumstances.
4 January
While many serious stories made the news in 2004 there
were also some seriously strange ones making the news. Here are some of
the oddest events of the year:
from new.com.au
from boston.com
from wftv.com
3 January
Eye
of Science, EOS, a two-person team of photographer and biologist combine
scientific exactness with aesthetic appearances to bridge the gap between
the world of science and the world of art. They are committed to scientific
investigation but also to the use of color as a creative and harmonious
tool to achieve beauty. Their microscopic photography is unbelievably
beautiful.
2 January
Here's your chance to find out, to finally get some
answers to life's bigger questions, like what becomes of the seconds,
minutes and hours. What are you doing with your life and why is it so
expensive? Where
did the time go?
