Kathleen Charters and Lawrence Charters
Explorations large and small
I was just alerted to a new site, ackuna.com, that is promoting their crowd-source translation capabilities by showing how bad machine translation can be. To illustrate this, you type in some text, and their “Bad Translator” feature runs it back Continue reading Automatic translation
What happens when a high-tech urinal crashes? It no longer flushes, but it does flash an indicator light and occasionally beeps. No, it was not made by Microsoft. The beep sound occurs only about once every ten seconds. This is Continue reading When plumbing fails
This is a nicely evocative sign for a breast feeding room in a government building. Not only is it a charming graphic, but it is a definite sign of our times that such a sign exists and such a room Continue reading Breast feeding in public buildings
There are niche markets, and then there are niche markets: an upscale vinegar and oil store in Annapolis, Maryland.
Run, everyone! There’s a giant hand erupting from the ground!
On a cold winter’s night, a band of 2,500 crazed individuals lined up at the Kennedy Center for free tickets to the annual Messiah sing-along. Between the wind whipping in from the Potomac and the poor light, it was an Continue reading Sing-along Messiah at the Kennedy Center
Yes, this photo was taken while driving, and driving in the rain, no less. On the other hand, it was a heavy rain, and the traffic was very slow. Plus: the car was stopped by a red light, which you Continue reading Patriotic van
1690 Theo Jansen is a Dutch artist who does Rube Goldberg one better. While Goldberg’s creations were spectacularly clever and astoundingly useless, they were very much artifices: without a human creating them, they wouldn’t exist. Your typical Rube Goldberg device Continue reading Beach creatures
4471 Your typical Frank Franzetta or Boris Vallejo book cover or magazine cover featured a scantily clad damsel fighting off an evil orc or BEM (Bug Eyed Monster) or heavily armored galactic overlord. The damsel might have a sword and a Continue reading Sensible shoes for armored women