Lucubrations about Chemistry Sets

We'll get to that in a moment. First: A bright new day dawns at Pixar.

And now they've shut it down. (Via Cartoon Brew, which wonders how long the video will stay up.)

TOYS Wired, realizing the power of the fully-operational LIST, has "32 of the Most Popular Toys from the Last 145 years." You may feel as if you'll learn something from such a story, and indeed you might - but consider the arbitrary criteria. Thirty-two? Not 33? The last 145 years? Why stop there? For that matter, you may decide to regard the entire enterprise with suspicion:

Never trust any list that leaves out something because it disrupts the aesthetic cohesion. "Well, we would have included Nazi art in a survey of 20th century propaganda, but it's really not very well done." Even though some chemistry sets may have been expensive, it wasn't prohibitively so - the 350-experiment set was $4.99 in 1962, or $35.00 today. More important, though, was how many kids wanted one, and how the very existence of the Chemistry Set was a marker of aspirations and interests.

(The "$4.99" link, BTW, goes to a Flickr set of an entire Sears catalog from 1962. Hail the internet.

VIDEO The Australian newspaper does not pull punches: "If found guilty, Chadi Jomaa should be considered the world's stupidest arsonist." CCTV cameras caught him pouring gas around his grocery store, which declined to explode on his schedule, preferring instead to explode on his head. (Go HERE if the video doesn't display; Liveleak embed codes are wonky things these days.)

MOVIES I'm torn. "Prometheus" did not speak well to Ridley's aptitude with sequels to venerated properties. From Blastr:

HOW INDEED If you've given any thought to Isaac Newton lately, no doubt this has struck you as a puzzler:

I don't know; perhaps wealth allowed him to be the person he always was, except in a more conspicuous fashion? Well, I should read on before I make snap judgments.

Ah hah. Interesting article, complete with an appearance by Maynard Keynes of all people, and you will encounter the word "lucubrations." It means "pedantic or overly elaborate writings." It's from a Latin word that means "working by lamplight," implying someone who stays up late on something past the point when you ought to give it up and go to bed. "Burning the midnight oil," I suppose.