Bonus Halloween Fun Time! Mickey Mouse in Ghoul Friend!

Travel Photo of the Week

Bamboo home at Green Village, Bali

For more photos and a little backstory on this home, click HERE.
To see where it is located, click HERE.

The Deep by PES

This beautiful stop motion animated film by PES uses old hand tools, nut crackers and other items to tell the story of an underwater world.

Dome House In Thailand Constructed In Six Weeks For Just $8000!

Steve Areen built this dome house for just $8000. Click here for more and pictures!

Savannah Container Home

Here's a beautiful container home in Savannah, Georgia. At least the interior is beautiful. Click here for more pictures.

Halloween Fun Time! Patrick Stewart reading The Nightmare Before Christmas Poem

And now, Part Two.

A 540-Degree Photo Rig Made Of 130 Smartphones

To promote their Snapdragon mobile processor, Qualcomm created Snapdragon Booth, a “bullet time”-style 540-degree photo rig made out of 130 HTC One smartphones. The Snapdragon Booth was in New York City yesterday, October 24, 2013.

Silicon Super Capacitors Could Replace Batteries

Silicon chip with porous surface
 being coated with graphene to
 create a supercapacitor electrode.

It seems that researchers at Vanderbilt University have discovered a way to make silicon supercapacitors that would allow the creation of batteries that charge in minutes and work for weeks before needing to be recharged.

The researchers said in a paper that instead of storing energy in chemical reactions the way batteries do, silicon supercapacitors store electricity by assembling ions on the surface of a porous material. As a result, they charge in minutes, instead of hours, and operate for a few million cycles, instead of a few thousand cycles like batteries.

For more, here is a link to their research paper published in the October 22nd issue of Scientific Reports.

Travel Photo of the Week

Shaharah Bridge, Yemen

Why Are Hundreds of Harvard Students Studying Ancient Chinese Philosophy?

“This course will change your life.” This is the claim that Michael Pruett makes to his classes at Harvard.

Pruett teaches a class called Classical Chinese Ethical and Political Theory and students are flocking to it. One student said, “The class absolutely changed my perspective of myself, my peers, and of the way I view the world.”

The core idea of Pruett's class is that we all think of ourselves as rational, reasonable creatures, but if we use that as the basis of our decision making process, we wall ourselves off to all the other, sometimes more enriching, parts of life. He teaches that the smallest actions can have the most profound consequences and urges his students to become more self-aware.

In Chinese, the word for heart and mind are the same and they believed that the two are inextricably linked. They also believed that when making a decision, the integration of head and heart would give the best result.

Adam Mitchell, one of Pruett's students, summed it up this way, “We’re expected to think of our future in this rational way: to add up the pros and cons and then make a decision. That leads you down the road of ‘Stick with what you’re good at.'”

 He added that this was the path of little risk and little reward.

Here's a link to the Atlantic article where I found this.

Small House Bliss

Here's a great site on small houses. They have a wide variety of homes featured from contemporary to Victorian, prefabs to hand built cob. A nice thing to browse when you're in the mood.

Mental Floss' Exclusive Interview With Bill Watterson

As a follow up to yesterday's FunTime, I offer this link to Mental Floss' preview of their upcoming
December issue which features an interview with Bill Watterson, the creator of Calvin and Hobbes.

And this one quote from the article......

"Owing to spite or just a foul mood, have you ever peeled one of those stupid Calvin stickers off of a pickup truck?
I figure that, long after the strip is forgotten, those decals are my ticket to immortality."

So many of us miss this wonderful comic that any new crumb or tidbit that we can have is a breath of fresh air in a stuffy and dismal media diet. I still read one strip a day and you can too. Right here.

Fun Time! Dear Mr. Watterson, A Documentary On The Impact Of The ‘Calvin & Hobbes’ Comic Strip!

Lifelike Images Of American Streets Using Toy Car Models

Photographer Michael Paul Smith has used forced perspective to create outdoor scenes using his extensive diecast model car collection. Here's a link to Colossal, the art site I found this on, where there are more examples of Smith's amazing photographs. He also has a book of similar images.

And because it's so cool, here's another shot from his website that I especially like.

Entitled "The Rescuing of Supercar."

Game Theory Shows The Way To Control Climate Change

Two weeks ago the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change delivered the clear message that climate change is real, that humans are to blame and that if something isn't done to change this and quick, life on Earth will be done in 50 years.

With the recent proof of human intransigence delivered by the U.S. Congress, one has to ask, how will we do this? The first impulse is to relegate the responsibility to act to national or global institutions, but that might not be the best course of action according to Vítor Vasconcelos, Francisco Santos and Jorge M. Pacheco from the ATP-group at Lisbon.

They used game theory, which is a branch of mathematics that studies social interactions, to show that any action taken by national or global actors is just as good as no action at all. Think of how effective the UN climate change message has been so far.

They found that best way to act is at the local level, with a punish-thy-neighbor approach. Click on the link for a full understanding of why this method will work.

And after all, doesn't everyone like games?

Travel Photo of the Week

Finn Slough, British Columbia, Canada

Negative Thinking - There's A Gene For That

It's been discovered that there is a gene that predisposes one towards negative thinking. Recent research has identified the gene in question as the ADRA2b deletion variant, which influences the hormone and neurotransmitter norepinephrine. I seems that people with the variant gene experience events more vividly than those without it.

Inside A Boeing Engineer's Impossibly Small Dream Pad

Casa Cúbica, A Gorgeous Container Home

From Small House Bliss comes this gorgeous container home called Casa Cúbica. The wood accented interior is beautiful and the deck on top perfect for entertaining. Sleeps four with two bunk-bed style doubles on the left end and a queen sized Murphy bed that drops down next to the cooking area. When the bed is not in use, a table drops down for eating or other table-related activities.

Fun Time! How To See New York's Secret City Hall Subway Stop!

To see this architectural beauty, the City Hall Station, take the 6 train to the Brooklyn Bridge stop and stay on. The train will use the station to turn around et voilà!

The Math That Saw The US Shutdown Coming

An article in New Scientist discusses the work of mathematical ecologist Peter Turchin. It seems that he has been applying the mathematics of complex systems to problems of political instability.

He believes that he has identified historical cycles that are two to three centuries long of political instability and breakdown affecting states and empires from Rome to Russia and he argues that that similar cycles are evident in US history. Quoting from the article. "Workers or employees make up the bulk of any society, with a minority of employers constituting the top few per cent of earners. By mathematically modelling historical data, Turchin finds that as population grows, workers start to outnumber available jobs, driving down wages. The wealthy elite then end up with an even greater share of the economic pie, and inequality soars."

If you add this information to polling data offered in an article in Salon that shows that the radical fringe of the GOP will become even more extreme and strident in the coming years, you just might have the "end if the world" scenario that so many evangelicals (a significant segment of the GOP) lust for.

Cheer up. Tomorrow's Fun Time will make up for all this doom and gloom.

Was Christianity Invented By The Romans?

Joseph Atwill has proposed what is perhaps the most controversial idea of the last millenium: Jesus and Christianity was invented by the Flavian Court of the Romans as an act of psychological warfare to manipulate and control the masses. If this is true, this revelation will pull back the curtains on almost two thousand years of mind control imposed not only by the ancients, but that also continues to this day. Watch the video and then click here for more information.

If this is found to be true, the Earth will shake.

Travel Photo of the Week

This is what sunset would look like on a planet that circles a binary star system.

At Long Last - Fusion

Well, folks it seems like the age of abundant, almost free energy is about to be upon us.

The BBC is reporting that scientists at the National Ignition Facility (NIF) in Livermore, California have used 192 laser beams to heat and compress a small pellet of hydrogen fuel to the point where fusion has occurred. They are also reporting that the energy created exceeded the energy absorbed by the fuel.

Although they are is not yet the point of creating a self-sustaining reaction, this event has been described as "the single most meaningful step for fusion in recent years, and demonstrates NIF is well on its way towards the coveted target of ignition and self-sustaining fusion."

The Global Cardboard Challenge

The Imagination Foundation's Global Cardboard Challenge is an annual event that gives children an opportunity to design and build using cardboard, recycled material and their imagination.

During September, kids work on their creations at schools, community centers, backyards, homes, libraries and sometimes even parking lots and then on October 5th their communities gather to celebrate the work and play together.

This was inspired by Caine's Arcade, an arcade designed by nine year old Caine Monroy and then built by him and his father. It also raised over $231,000 to create a college fund for Caine. Here's a link to the original video.

The first Global Cardboard Challenge was held in 2012 and there is plenty on video floating around the web if you want to have a look. You can also organize your own event and the Imagination Foundation can help. Below is video from this year's Children's Museum of Blacksburg (Virginia) event.

David Frazee's Frank Lloyd Wright Project

Here's a photo spread from Archinect of the "Miner's Shelter," a student project by David Frazee, for one of the Frank Lloyd Wright School of Architecture's workshops.

Fun Time! Amazing Robotic Projection!

Attention Walmart Campers!

It has been long known that Walmart allows "boondocking," letting folks stay overnight in their parking lots (one night only, no chairs or barbecue grills) in their van, camper or RV.

In this article in the New York Times, photographer Nolan Conway documents some of the visitors to the lots of several Walmart's in central Arizona.

Banksy In New York City For October

During the month of October, world renown graffiti artist Banksy is in "residence" in New York City creating art in the streets for an exhibition entitled Better Out Than In. Check his website. You can also call 1-800-656-4271 with a code that corresponds to each work. Here are links to his Instagram and Twitter site that also offer more information.

Travel Photo of the Week

Tso Kiagar Lake, Ladakh

Hippie Van Burning Man Video