More and more these days it seems we like to experience life in private, without annoying intrusions from our neighbors, our fellow countrymen or our mother-in-laws.

With the success of the Walkman, listening to music became a solitary experience. With the success of the VCR, moviegoers found they no longer had to suffer through a matinee with a throng of inconsiderate candy-wrapper-opening individuals.

Of course the cell phone has made public pay phones almost obsolete and the Internet is now making it possible for more and more people to work remotely, at home, in the comfort of their private offices.

So what’s next? Well, how about a personal, one-seat submarine? I kid you not. According to the good folk over at Engadget, “A Dutch company called U-Boat Worx is finally ready to release its battery-powered C-Quester 1 to aquatic enthusiasts worldwide, which will allow them to cruise down to depths of 50 meters at a maximum speed of 3 knots for up to two-and-a-half hours.”

Check out the full story here and next time you need a gift for the person who likes to go solo, why not consider a C-Quester? They only cost about as much as a BMW 7-series…

On Saturday I saw my favorite film of the year so far (excepting my beloved POTC), which was a full-length documentary about asparagus.

Stop laughing.

Really, Asparagus! (a Stalk-umentary), which just won the “best of” award at the Rural Route Film Festival, is a fascinating exploration of (a) what happens when U.S. drug policy goes wrong, (b) factory farming and globalization’s effects on rural America, and (c) people who raise crops and the bizarre subcultures that sprout (see what I just did?) up around them. The movie follows a group of farmers in Oceana County, Michigan, as they stage their annual National Asparagus Festival (complete with a tiara-wearing queen) and struggle to compete with Peruvian growers, who are effectively subsidized by a War on Drugs law that lifted tariffs a few years ago. There are lots of good factlets in it too (did you know asparagus is a bush?). Google Video has some footage, but it really doesn’t do the film justice. To get the full effect, you had to be at the screening, which featured free PBR and an ironic-cowboy-hat-wearing-hipster but was saved from itself by the presence of the aforementioned Mrs. Asparagus and one of the farmers who doubles as a policy wonk. (The filmmakers, one of whom grew up on an asparagus farm, were also there.) Asparagus! will be traveling to film festivals around the country in the next year or so — don’t miss it if it’s near you. The filmmakers will also have a fully functioning website in about a week.

The image, by the way, is another example of asparagus meeting art: it’s François Bonvin’s “Still Life with Asparagus,” 1857.

Now that the Ernest Hemingway lookalike contest is over (that’s the winner, Chris Storm, pictured at left), the Hemingway estate can move on to bigger issues — specifically, what to do about the 50-odd cats roaming the old man’s house, a popular tourist site:

The caretakers of Ernest Hemingway’s Key West home want a federal judge to intervene in their dispute with the U.S. Department of Agriculture over the six-toed cats that roam the property.

More than 50 descendants of a multi-toed cat the novelist received as a gift in 1935 wander the grounds of the home, where Hemingway lived for more than 10 years and wrote “A Farewell to Arms” and “To Have and Have Not.” The Ernest Hemingway Home and Museum disputes the USDA’s claim that it is an “exhibitor” of cats and needs to have a USDA Animal Welfare License, according to a complaint filed Monday in U.S. District Court in Miami.

For more on these poor creatures, check out the Hemingway Home’s kitty page, which features some of them (this orange furball is Archibald MacLeish) and provides the following tidbits:

* Normal cats have five front toes and four back toes. About half of the cats at the museum are polydactyl, which means they have extra toes on their front feet and sometimes on their back feet as well.

* Ernest Hemingway was given a six-toed cat by a ship’s captain, and some of the cats who live on the museum grounds are descendants of that original cat.

* The vet comes to the museum to administer their yearly shots. The whole procedure is somewhat like a “cat rodeo.” The job must be done rapidly, since the cats soon sense that something is amiss and will begin howling warnings and slinking and scurrying in all directions.

While CBS is busy advertising on their dairy, the geniuses at the British Egg Information Service have a slightly different take on shell design. They’ve managed to create a better way to boil an egg, through a completely innovative process. In efforts to help the kitchenally challenged (a.k.a. bad cooks), the Service has decided to stamp eggs with a heat sensitive ink that turns black when your hard-boiled meal is ready. Pretty clever, eh? Called “PerfEGGs,” the self-timing breakfast treats are set to go on sale this Fall. Click here to read more, via OhGizmo.

At the foot of some of the tallest trees in the world, up on Humboldt Bay in the Redwood Forest, the small town of Eureka, California is celebrating its 150-year anniversary this summer. “Eureka!” of course, also happens to be California’s state motto, appearing on the state seal since 1849. In Greek, “eureka” means “I have found it!” and probably refers to the discovery of “gold in them there hills.”

But the original “eureka” was coined by the Greek mathematician, Archimedes, who, as legend has it, jumped out of his bathtub and ran naked through the streets of Syracuse shouting “Eureka!” after discovering the principles of density.

Archimedes is also the man whose experiments with circles led to the discovery of the constant: “pi” - π, (or 3.14) – if you can remember all the way back to geometry class. Which leads us “full circle” back to Eureka, California, where, much to the locals’ delight, a Marie Callender’s bakery has recently opened. If you’re headed north this summer for the celebrations, be sure to stop in and ask for a nice piece of pecan π.

I saw a link to a weird LA Times article today on BoingBoing. The reporter writes:

“Bird flu has killed 134 people around the world, sickened hundreds more and forced the culling of millions of poultry from Vietnam to Nigeria. Now it is smashing the world of badminton.” I bolded that last line because it’s just that powerful. And then the reporter continues by writing ”Die-hard players are bracing for the worst.”

Maybe the world will really get serious about stopping the bird flu now that the quality of badminton play is being threatened.

As bizarre as the article is, I did learn a few things and have to admit I didn’t realize that serious players still used shuttlecocks with real feathers. A few facts:

• The best shuttlecocks are made from goose feathers, plucked in China.
• Each feather in the premium shuttlecocks is hand-selected.
• Even after inspecting an entire goose, it’s not uncommon for that goose to only provide two premium feathers for a shuttlecock.
• Professional players can send a shuttlecock flying at around 150mph.

I know this is my second doggie post, and my third one that ends in a question mark, but seriously:

I found this “work” by Taipei-based artist Hung-Chih Peng on the WeMakeMoneyNotArt blog, and I can’t for the life of me figure out why you’d dress your dog up in it. This is what I’ve come up with so far:

• Because Halloween’s Coming Up
• Because Mom and Dad didn’t get you the breed that you wanted
• Because Rover’s going through a mid-life crisis
• Because it’s going to confuse the bejeezus out of Grandma
• Because you hate your dog

Whatever the rationale, it’s definitely too funny to resist. I think ‘ima get me one as soon as I save up some.

If your pampered pooch is getting fed up with that plain old bowl of tap water you keep perched next to his bed, you might want to check out K9 Water from Dog Bliss. Varieties of the filtered good include Puddle Water, Toilet Water, Gutter Water, and Hose Water (flavored to taste like Liver, Chicken, Beef and Lamb respectively), with no artificial colors or preservatives. The site claims the product will encourage dogs to drink more water and help “with proper hydration.” Of course, we think that’s just a bunch of dogwash.

Link via ThisNext blog.

I was doing some editing work for our next magazine this weekend (it’s our annual 10 Issue!), when I read through Mark Juddery’s fascinating piece on 10 TV Shows that Changed the World. And while a ton of the entries were pretty intriguing (”Dallas” made the list for helping to knock off a dictator!), I was particularly impressed by his entry on “Star Trek”—which I figured would just be about how it influenced inventors or something. It was far more intriguing than that, though.

“Star Trek” was also an inspiration to minorities and women, not just tech junkies. Lieutenant Uhura, played by African-American jazz singer Nichelle Nichols, showed audiences that black women could be senior officers and hold positions of power. In fact, when Nichols contemplated quitting the series during its first year, she was persuaded to keep the role by none other than Dr. Martin Luther King, who said, “don’t you realize how important your character is?” Years later, women ranging from Whoopi Goldberg to Dr. Mae Jemison, the first African-American female astronaut, cited Lieutenant Uhura as a major inspiration in their careers. Nichols even spent time working for NASA on an astronaut-recruitment program—an initiative that roped in such people as Sally Ride and Guy Bluford, the first American woman and African-American in space, respectively.

Of course, the article has to go through the editing process (to our fact checkers and copy editors), but I thought the Martin Luther King bit, in particular, was too interesting not to post about. I had no idea the show was influencing anyone other than my bizarre next door neighbor.

Having thoroughly tired ourselves out over the weekend with cheese racing, my husband and I are looking for another quirky sport to adopt. mental_floss research editor Sandy Wood suggested sausage racing, which has a spicy new twist this year:

Wearing an oversized brown sombrero and a bright yellow shirt emblazoned with the number five, Chorizo became the fifth pork product to run the famed sausage race at the home of the Milwaukee Brewers. …

Chorizo will be put through the grind in the minor league, so he can get some extra seasoning before rejoining the other sausages next season, Melvin said. The team was given special permission to include Chorizo on Saturday, Schlesinger said, to coincide with its first celebration of Hispanic contributions to the sport. Brewers players will wear jerseys with the word “Cerveceros” on them — “Brewers” in Spanish. …

The sausage race has been a staple of every home game since 2000, though the event began years before as animation. The sausages were propelled into the national limelight in 2003 when Pittsburgh Pirates player Randall Simon took a swat at the Italian sausage with a bat.

Apparently player/sausage rivalry is a bit of a tradition; check out this video of Braves players in the dugout throwing stuff at the sausages as they trundle by. Jeez, guys, lay off, it’s not like they’re the Yankees.