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Squizz-- Singularity

First Oil Change

Dinosaur Eggs

9 Steps to a Better Procrastinator

Squirrel Tipping

Light Speed, Time Travel, and Irreverant Relativity

Grabbing the Attention of Tourists

Water Rocket Enhancement

 

To start this one off, we need to clarify exactly what is meant by a "dinosaur egg." Go ahead and put away any ideas of cloning a T. Rex or opening a biological preserve that will make you a billionaire. If anything, these eggs will leave you cold, wet, and miserably entertained. Still interested? Good.

There are three things you need to make a dinosaur egg. The first is cold weather. VERY cold weather (a nightly low below freezing) or a large, empty freezer. The second is a balloon. Any size will do but the bigger the better, naturally. Last of all, you're going to need water.

Begin by making a water balloon. Fill the balloon up and let the air escape out the top before tying it shut to avoid any odd bubbles forming. Put the water balloon outside overnight or stick it in the freezer and let physics do the rest.

If you want rounder eggs, try placing the balloons in bowls or snowpits. The final egg will probably not be frozen solid but will be thick enough that the water inside won't pose a problem. Try chiseling the surface of the egg with a face or a design. Re-enact your favorite Shakespeare play or just drill a hole in the egg and make a mess. Some other ideas are depicted below. Try something unique. These are just some of the many cool things you can do with ice.

Squirrel* Tipping

There are few of us who have yet seen a squirrel without getting that dreaded urge to feed it something. Unfortunately, this is an ill advised thing to do and is also illegal in many places. Not to mention that squirrels are potential vectors for deadly diseases and, once they learn how to mooch food off of you, some will practically assault you for grub. In short, squirrels suck.

Next time the opportunity arises, though, you can pull a trick that will surprise and bewilder both the squirrel and bystanders. The first thing you do is find a short stick (approx. 1ft/30cm) in length with a sturdy diameter. Next item on the list is to find a squirrel or, if circumstances are favorable, one will find you. Hunch down with arms outstreched to the animal while keeping the stick flush to the ground and the "feeding hand" directly above it and slightly farther back. If all goes well, the squirrel will approach in search of an easy snack and climb right up to you and over the stick. At this point, jerk the stick into the air and watch our greedy little friend do a series of somersaults in the air. When executed sensibly, the squirrel will land, unharmed a few feet away and scamper off to saftey, never to bother humans (or at least you) again.

DISCLAIMER: Brutality is not the idea here. Anyone who thinks that we mean for you to flip the squirrel over your head and into oblivion is obviously mentally incapable and is a prime candidate for the Weenie Award. Click the link to learn more.

*note that the word squirrel in this section is a loose term and could be interchanged with "chipmunk" or "bandicoot" etc.

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The Speed of Light (for math heads)

Be wary. We are about to use a frightening word...CALCULUS. We'll wait now while you sit back and revel in the shock value of this magnificent word. One of the many uses of calculus is to aid in finding derrivatives and slopes of lines. Velocities are determined from a given situation and can provide the mathematician with painfully accurate data concerning speed...read this next part very carefully. Consider, if you will, the instance depicted here: a boat is being drawn into dock by a winch, situated twelve feet above the deck of the boat. The winch is taking up the tow line at constant rate of four feet per second. The object of this problem is to find the velocity of the boat as the rope is pulling it in. After finding a base function and pluging in numbers till the sun goes down, you get to the critical point, the rope is precisely twelve feet long. What is the rate of travel of this boat when the line has been ? Infinite! Since we can conclude that light does not travel anywhere close to an infinite speed, we have just found a point in time (in fact, everyday life) where the laws of relativity are shattered like crystal. Even though this rate is only sustained for a infintessimally short period of time, it DOES occur, accompanied by a *thud* as the boat is instantly slowed to sub light speed by the dock it just hit.

Time Travel (for Dummies ®)

Now that you know how to break the light speed barrier, we'll let you in on another secret: how to travel back and forth through time at your slightest whim. Lawyers will love this one since it deals with technical BS and questionable results while staying legally correct. When you fly in an airplane travelling west over a time zone, you race the sun and stretch the length of your day by an hour. This makes a day 25 hours instead of just 24. If you do the opposite, a 23 hour day will result. Now, assume that a plane can cross the International Dateline twice in 24 hours. It was Thursday when you left, and is now Tuesday again...or maybe it's Saturday. Sound pretty confusing?

Now what would happen if you were sitting right on top of the North Pole, the convergance point of every time zone? Friend, you would be sitting on one of the world's great time machines. All you would have to do is walk around the pole in a counter clockwise direction, crossing back over the International Dateline for every 360° rotation. Each of these rotations would send you a day into the past. The implications are limitless! Say you're coming up on a nasty deadline, all you need to do is walk in a few circles and give yourself a couple more days to prepare. Or if you want to grow a snappy gotee to impress your girlfriend (I don't know what this would equal in a girls' world), spin like crazy in a clockwise dirction to zip into the future where you'll have enough facial hair to turn anyone's head. The nice thing about traveling in this way, is that it isn't prone to the usual paradoxes that are asocciated with conventional time travel which doesn't work to begin with. You're always standing on firm ground throughout the process. The only problem would be that, if you wanted to call someone back home while you were doing this, the long distance rates would be astronomical. Imagine asking the operator that you wanted to call the future of Los Angeles, CA which is how many millions of miles away?

We can't speak for you, but we personally find the attention spans of camera wielding tourists to be very entertaining. Scampering here and there, snapping pictures of anything that moves and most things that don't, they drag their kids or are invariably dragged by their kids wherever they go. After several days of wandering the streets of Santa Fe we hit on a smash up way to divert the camera lenses of these weekend warriors and motorhome muffins. Simply put, if you look at even the most dull things with enough enthusiasm you can make shutters click and fingers point.

In the Canadian Rockies they have things called bear jams. Someone will allegedly spot a bear on the side of the road, pull over and, with their trusty Kodak film, proceed to shoot roll after roll into a patch of bushes. If you have good binoculars and a lot of patience, you just might spot something resembling an animal. In many cases there can be up to ten cars on the shoulders and in the grass on both sides of the road. It makes one wonder, how many of them actually see anything.

Try this. If you ever go through a national park that is heavily populated with roaming tourists looking for wildlife, pull over to the side of the road and begin taking pictures. Of course, you're going to remember not to load the camera with film. This will work best if you have some one with you to give your ploy more credibility. Once in a while point and say something to the other person. Better yet, break a group into indivdual teams of two or three and try to see which group can entice more tourists to pull over and join them. Extra points for the teams that can cause major traffic tie ups.

Rocket

Remember those by gone days of childhood when you would go out in the yard and launch plastic water rockets 3 feet in the air with piddling little plastic pumps. Those days of getting laughed at for being short by kids 2" taller than you. We can't do much about the height issue but we can bring back the fun of the water rocket. Imagine the rush of shooting off those "harmless" projectiles at blinding speeds and to nose bleed altitudes. Do we have your interest? Good.

The first thing you need to have is a relatively inexpensive foot pump. When you use it to launch water rockets, it's gonna get a bit of water sucked into it. Don't do this to any $40 pumps, it would be bad. You can find inexpensive foot pumps in Wal Mart or just about any auto store. Make sure it comes with a set of attachments for the nozzle. Specifically, you need an attachment that is shaped like a cone as this will be the new launch pad for your rocket. Secondly, you'll need a set of pliers to assist in lift off. Third, get a friend to operate the pump.

When you get it all set up:

• Fill the rocket with the indicated level of water and jam the end onto the conical attachment so it's nice and snug. Oh yeah, point the thing away from your face, we'd really like to avoid being sued.
  
  

• When everything's set hold the nozzle of the pump firmly so that rocket will go up, not down, and tell your partner to pump to about 80-100 psi. If the rocket goes off before this pressure there's either not enough grip on the attachment (wrap it in electrical tape) or you just didn't jam the rocket down tight enough. Tsk, tsk.
  
  

• If you get this far sucessfully then it's time to pull out the pliers. Grip the attachment right below the rocket "engine" and push up on it so that the rocket breaks free. At this time you will feel very wet and dazed. Look up and try to find your rocket before it is lost forever. Better yet, get your friend to do it for you.
  
  

• Congratulations! Assuming all went well, you are probably going to have a fun little search ahead of you. The point of this is just to have a good time and to lose as few rockets as possible. As a possible enhancement, tape party sirens to the outside and make some noise. Experiment.