Temporarily stymied on the cup stacking front (awaiting arrival of official Speed Stacking equipment) and slightly bruised and frustrated from the Astrojax, the team was in serious danger of having to do some work when Jack was kind enough to suggest another amusement… Truck Dismount.

Truck Dismount is a physics simulator that allows you to finally answer nagging questions like “How much damage would a person take if he were riding on top of a truck when it went over a ramp and then slammed into a wall? (Answer: between 15000 and 45000 points.) You place the crash test dummy (on top of the truck, in the truck, in front of the bumper, etc.) and up to two ramps. You choose the truck speed and a couple other parameters. Then you press the big “Dismount” button and watch as the accident plays itself out.

My personal favorite is the catapault, where the guy starts out on top of the truck and completely clears the wall. It never scores very high, but there’s just something about those windmilling arms and legs that brings a smile to my face. Best viewed with the camera angle that is fixed on the guy, of course.

My personal best score is 56887. Several people at work have scored in the 56000-57000 range, but no one has been able to beat it. The posted high scores on the web site go above 200K. If anybody has suggestions for what sorts of arrangements produce such high scores, I’d be very interested to hear them.

The scoring is a little suspicious… rolling the truck over length-wise so that it falls directly on top of the dummy should really do more than 5000 or so points of damage. Also, I’d like to see some concept of style points. It’s so disappointing when you do something really nifty, like landing the guy on top of the wall, or balancing the truck on its nose, and the score isn’t very high. What you really want to hear is that the US and Canadian judges both rate it an 8, but the Russian judge only gives it a 6.

Addendum: I wrote this last week, when the collective high score was in the 56-57K range. When I came in this morning, I discovered that Jim had managed to get 137K by getting the dummy’s head stuck in the grill (where it was mashed between the truck and the wall). So the bar has been raised.

While taking a break from wanton destruction with his Astrojax, Jack mentioned the sport of cup stacking. Apparently, very bored people living in very cold states compete in cup stacking. They stack cups in pyramids and break them down again. For speed. Competitively. Really.

For a stunning example of this, go to the Speed Stacks video page and click on the link titled “Emily Fox does Cycle in 7.43 seconds”. Turning on sound will enhance the experience. Keep in mind that the stacking in question is being shown real time.

Naturally, our first reaction was “Pffft. We could do better than that.” We immediately descended on a conference room with a stack of paper cups. We were having lots of problems with them sticking together, so we made some very scientific modifications with the pointy part of a pen. Our efforts met with limited (actually no) success. We might have saved ourselves the trouble if we had first consulted the Speed Stacks cup comparison chart. Apparently, you need to use official plastic cups with shoulder ribs, air holes, and exterior texturing in order to be competitive. I have a set on order.

Astrojax is a modern, Swiss take on the yo-yo. It has three very hard plastic balls on a piece of string. My very cool manager ordered several sets of Astrojax and distributed them among the team last week. In the process of trying to master the basic tricks, we’ve been gleefully sending them flying towards cubicle walls, monitors, and faces. It’s amazing that we have yet to lose any teeth.

If you want to get a feel for what we would be doing with them if we were 16 and coordinated, check out the Astrojax videos.

What happens if you cross The Truman Show and Big Brother? Joe Schmo, coming soon to an obscure cable channel near you…

Money quote from the article Worm turns out to be one of man’s closest relatives:
“Up until now Xenoturbella had been thought to be related to the bivalve molluscs – which include mussels and oysters,” said Dr Telford. “We found this hard to believe as it looks nothing like a bivalve mollusc.”

I find this amusing in light of the fact that they discovered that the worm was closely related to man. I would have thought the worm looked more like an oyster than, say, Dr. Telford.

The instructional film that everybody must see: Keep Your Parents Off the Net

(Apologies to Mom and Dad.)

THIS is what I call an image. Dave Barry considers it further proof that the end is nigh. I have to say, it doesn’t look good for the home team.