October 08, 2005


We've rented Hotel Rwanda, and it's a ruthlessly sad movie. Little kids covered in blood, suburban-looking houses with families freshly shot dead strewn about the lawn, Don Cheadle pretty much muddling through, wife and kids not murdered before him (and us viewers) only because he came up with a pile of cash for the militias, and then the small girl upstairs started fussing pathetically into the monitor that she'd really like to use the potty—this means that she wants to get up and play—so I went up and dealt with an impossibly happy (and tired) little kid for a couple of minutes and then of course couldn't bring myself to resume watching modernity's most avoidable genocide, which is too bad since the whole thing is (was, until I stopped watching) so expertly acted and shot. No stomach for this sort of thing anymore, I guess.
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Menger sponges are what you get when you recursively chop out the middle of a cube. They're not-quite-three dimensional, and they're pretty neat. (Last Winter, you'll recall, we went and looked at a dorm that MIT, apparently intentionally, built in this shape.) Then a couple of months ago, my office mate showed me how to waste business cards making (surprisingly strong) Menger sponges. So this space is delighted to point you all at the ne plus ultra of time wasting goodness: the 66,048-card, level 3 Menger sponge:

In February, 1995 the company I worked for changed its name. My colleagues gave me their business cards. In August, 1995, my employers moved. My colleagues gave me their business cards. After we arrived at our new location, the printers sent us business cards with the new address—and the old zip-code. I got to keep them. This accounts for the 48,000 cards needed for the base, and some to spare. The 18,048 colored cards needed for the exterior paneling were provided by Jay Meddaugh of American Wholesale Thermographers of Woburn, Massachusetts, who saved bad print runs of colored business cards for me for several months.

It's not a waste of paper: it's recycling!
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