Friday, February 29, 2008

News of the Day -- Friday, Feb. 29

+ Yahoo is reporting that a sea turtle will be getting an all-new artificial flipper. He'll also be getting a GPS system, a voice-activated MP3 player, an all-new leather interior and a chance to serve as the pace car in a future NASCAR race.

+ This nifty time-waster allows you to set 10 musical notes (or use a pre-set scale) and then using those notes as integers from 1 to 10, generate a melody based on Pi -- out to 10,000 places. If I wrote a song based on Pi, you know what I would call it?

"Pie."

You know what it would be about?

Cake.

+ Everyone get ready and start practicing your sentence diagramming. National Grammar Day is coming up this Tuesday, March 4. So if anyone in the office gives you a hard time for correcting their grammar, just say, "Piss off, grammar illiterate. This is my day to shine." And then maybe shove them and dangle a participle as you walk by just to show 'em who's boss.

Thank you to Park Bench reader Scrap Irony for sending in that item.

3 comments:

Chewbob said...

Oh, man, I so thought up the idea for Pi music by basing notes on digits about three years ago! But I was too lazy to do it, so I'm pretty pumped about that website.

Also, am I the only freak who actually likes diagramming sentences? I used to ask the teacher to give me extra ones for fun. I was the only kid in my class who aced the diagramming test. Which is sad because I did pretty poorly in every other aspect of English class. (Diagramming is the mathiest part! I'm a math nerd.)

Liz said...

Oh I loved diagramming sentences. I used to have so much fun with that. I didn't like having to go up in front of the class to do it, but as homework, it was great.

Kirstin said...

It's not fair! I never got a chance to diagram a sentence until college. I took an entire class on grammar and it was probably my favorite class. I think I was the only one who enjoyed it though.

There's a great book all about the history of sentence diagramming called Sister Bernadette's Barking Dog. I highly recommend it. It even talks about the newer method of sentence diagramming called sentence treeing which I also dig.