Entertainment & Sports: October 2009 Archives
Trebuchet hurls pumpkin 1,866 feet.
Now Skagit County’s own team TreBarbaric — with a trebuchet that stands 78 feet tall, travels by semi-truck, and requires man, boom truck and crane eight hours for set-up — is headed not for the valley’s own Pumpkin Pitch but for Snohomish County, where a vast dairy farm will host the new Pumpkin Hurl.It was TreBarbaric that inspired the new Hurl and a revamp of Burlington’s Pumpkin Pitch, which will be judged on accuracy rather than distance. Last year, the team sent a white pumpkin — chosen for its firmness and roundness — 1,866 feet, just 10 feet shy of the Skagit River Park boundary.
The toss won the competition and set a world record.
If you're an engineer like me, you'll want to see more pictures and video of the TreBarbaric trebuchet.
(HT: RB.)
Apparently there are "zombie experts". I knew I went into the wrong line of work.
So why, exactly, do we love zombies so much?According to experts -- and, yes, there are zombie experts -- it's because for all their limitations, the brain-rotted, animated corpses are so darned versatile -- helping reflect whatever our greatest fears happen to be at the time. ...
Since ancient times, monster stories have been used to channel other concerns about life and death, said Andrea Wood, a graduate fellow at Georgia Tech who teaches the course "Apocalyptic Nightmares of the Living Dead" and is working on a book about zombies in popular culture.
But the zombie, she said, offers a uniquely blank canvas.
"Since the zombie doesn't have the long literary tradition of the vampire or a number of other monsters, it allows artists a degree of autonomy to conceptualize the zombie any way they see fit," said Wood.
I only hope that artificial intelligences take over before the zombies do... at least then I'll have a way to contribute to society besides my obvious physical prowess.
(HT: RB.)
