A sudden glut of bicycle wines

I noticed at my last trip to the wine store that a number of wine bottles had prominent pictures of bicycles on their labels. Why is this?There is the ever popular Cycles Gladiator that I had already tried the Cabernet Sauvignon and liked, but I also noticed:Red bicyclette from France.Como Sur from Chile.and finall Ipsum from Spain.All this when I merely glanced around the store. Is there something about bicycles and wine. Are these wines trying...

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The flowers of spring

Some flowers of Spring arrive even before the Spring. Just a few days of nice weather and the snow is gone and the earliest flowers are starting to bloom.The snow drops were first.Then came the crocuses.The other bulbs have sprouted and have green on them. More flowers will arrive so...

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March Madness Simulations - Game winning probability schemes

After my recent success with simulating Playoff Fantasy Football, I wanted to apply that success to a simulation of the NCAA Basketball playoffs known as March Madness. Given the amount of data analysis that I have done over the years (2009, 2009, 2008, 2007, 2007, 2006, 2006) that even enabled me to win one year, I figured that a simulation might help.My simulation matches up the teams that play in the NCAA bracket and uses one of the schmes below...

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Water shooting out of drain next to Shellpot Creek

This manhole cover had water shooting out of it today due to the large amount of rainfall. It is right next to Shellpot Creek at the lowest part of the valley so I can see why water might be under some pressure when it finally gets there.UPDATE (3-21-2010): Apparently water shooting out of the manhole cover means that it is broken. That week we saw crews examining the manhole cover and apparently they replaced it and its cement collar and everything.Above...

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FCC testing your broadband speed

Boing Boing and others have pointed out that the federal government is testing broadband speeds. I tried it, but the java applet seems to fail before it is complete.Clicking the test button opens a small window in front of the webpage and first asks for your address, but not e-mail or name. The privacy statement says that it will record the IP address as well.Then it runs a download, upload, latency and jitter (variation in latency) test. I was...

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The Honest Hypcorite in equations

Neatormama points to the Inverse Graphing Calculator. It takes you words and turns them into an equation which would produce the shapes of the letters if it were graphed.(make your own at Inverse Graphing Calculat...

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Redneck sighting - duelie pickup with silver balls

I think these are called Truck Nutz. I was surprised and perhaps I show my prejudices to see this truck in the Brandywine Hundred turning off of Marsh Road to someone's house. Does someone with this poor taste in truck accessories live there? We will never know.Just add this to the culture studies catego...

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Accident with State and County police blocking RT141&100 at

Yestereday at 2:30pm I saw this accident at RT 141 and RT100 just south of the Tyler McConnel bridge. I was travelling northbound to go over the bridge but this person looked like they had just come over the bridge and was travelling SB. The front is all smashed up but I did not see another car with corresponding damage. I am guessing that they hit someone turning left onto RT 100 in fron of them. State troopers and County police were already...

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Obsolete professions - el lector - reader to cigar rollers

Boing Boing points to a post about obsolete professions and highlights one called the lector, a person who read newspapers to cigar rollers. When we were in Key West on vacation on October of 2007 we went to the The Key West Museum of Art & History in the Custom House where we saw a painted wood carving called "Old Island Days No. 99 - A Fabulous Industry" which depicted cigar rollers being read to by el lector.From the artwork description:Old...

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Two curling cartoons in honor of Olympic curling

I have not finished watching all of the Olympic women's curling on my DVR, so do not tell me the results. At one point I had 12 hours on there, and I am sure I have watched 24 hours worth, compressed down to 50% to 33% with aggressive skipping (a curling pun if you get it). Partly the reason you can watch three hours of curling in one is because NBC tends to cut about 4 to 8 rocks out of each end, usually the first ones, and fill it with commercials,...

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