#5 KATEQ, #14 THEMINDFANTASTIC: thanks for posting those links! When I saw this post I was reminded of the Toohey's video but couldn't remember how to find it, and I remember hearing about the inflating subway-grate art, but I never got around to checking it out before.

I'll second #18 Frank_In_Virginia on the Tillamook cheddar. I couldn't say what, if anything, makes it better than other cheddars, but it's really really good.

Most of my grilled cheese is made with Cabot jalapeno jack or habanero cheddar on Matthew's whole wheat bread. I put cheese on one slice of bread, and toast it and another slice to 'medium' in a toaster oven. After the toasting is done, I press the pieces together and enjoy. If I'm getting fancier I'll use Tillamook cheese and/or cook it in a skillet with oil and/or have tomato soup on the side.

...and while we're discussing unusual variations, I also love to eat grilled "chreese" sandwiches, where instead of cheese, you use a vegan cheese substitute made with nutritional yeast and a few other ingredients. Call me a heretic, but it's delicious.

I feel compelled to bring up another example of more or less the same William S. Burroughs reference bleeding into other media:

The song "Bug Powder Dust" by Bomb The Bass

I prefer the Kruder and Dorfmeister Remix of the song, but the original is catchy too. Both can be found on youtube.

That's amazing. I think this is a great example of the particular beauty and fascination that objects heavily worn through use can develop.

It immediately makes me speculate about what could have been different about that typist to have worn the keyboard down that way: (Warning: my projected stereotypes about "medical transcriptionist", and use of the singular "they" below)

-Is that polished-smooth abrasive wear, or the result of something dissolving the material of the keys?

-Do they use any products on their hands, that might contain solvents or make their skin or fingernails harder or more abrasive or just change the tribological properties a bunch?

-Do they just type really hard with normal skin and fingernails?

While I'd love for there to be a a non-lead based*, really food-safe** version of this product, on the bright side, maybe this can be used as an emergency conformable radiation shield! Shield your impromptu x-ray experiments or form it around your groin to protect your precious reproductive material from mutagenic ionizing radiation!

*(According to the FAQ, the product is made from a nitrile rubber sandwich around a thin layer of lead. I presume the funnel uses lead because it doesn't tend to fatigue and break between it's rubber covering, but maybe some kind of tin or alloy could do what this does without failing from metal fatigue?)

**(It seems like it would be useful as a funnel/bowl/plate for camping, kind of like Orikaso products but more versatile.)

Space junk or scrap metal, it might be fun to run some tests to figure out what metal it is - mild steel, an aerospace alloy, or the blends of elements that are found in meteorites, or what? Send it to a bunch of materials science undergraduates with lab facilities (XRF, metallographic microscopy, XRD, etc) and have them identify it as a class project!

I would assert that crunchy stuff makes a lower sound when you chew it and crispy stuff makes a higher sound when you chew it. For example, Cinnamon Toast Crunch vs. Cocoa Crispies. You just can't cruch crispies, and the cinnamon toast-esque rectangles are too large and thick to be exactly 'crisp'.

...and then there's the topic of Butterfinger bars and superpositions of crisp/crunch states, but I digress...

Yeah, it's a joke. Those are just static-dissipative finger cots for use in electronics assembly. They're black because the latex they're made of has some carbon mixed in for conductivity.

See www.labsafety.com

$33 for a bag of 720 of them, much better than $9.95 for 25. (Of course, it would still be very silly to use these on an iPhone, but maybe you have some static-sensitive electronics assembly to do.)
What we need more of is science.

Amphigorey: Sure, some of the kids will just look at porn or play games. And there are lots of us just sitting around reading blogs and commenting instead of spending every minute, every waking hour, working as hard as we can to save the world and improve the lives of the unfortunate everywhere.

What I think will happen, though, is that some percentage of the kids who get these kids are going to learn more than we can imagine. One of the things they're going to learn is what the rest of the world is like, and a lot of them are going to want what we have (in terms of standard of living), and a lot of them are going to be really really hungry for it. Then they might learn to start competing with us, which I think will be a good thing.