[For those who haven’t voted yet, there’s still time!]

Thanks to every one who came up with captions for our Second Caption Contest. We had close to 200 entries this time, which makes narrowing it down to a few finalists pretty challenging. So instead of 6, we’re going with 10 this time.

Now the fun really begins: it’s up to YOU to pick the winner. As with last time, each finalist is labeled with a letter. All you have to do is decide which is the best (whatever your definition of “best” is), and drop your ballot in the comments below.

Remember: only one vote per person. We don’t expect any hanky-panky, but I thought I’d remind you just in case you think we’re not watching.

And the finalists are…

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Actors are a mercurial bunch, to say the least. They can land a career-making role, only to spend the rest of their lives complaining about it. A few cases in point:

1. The guy who didn’t want to be Mike Brady

Brady Bunch dad Robert Reed had been was a thorn in producer Sherwood Schwartz’s side since Day One. He always maintained that he’d only signed his Brady Bunch contract because the pilot was lame and it wouldn’t get picked up as a series. The show had also been described to him as a serious look at blended families. Instead, the serious dramatic actor who’d trained at London’s Royal Academy of Dramatic Arts found himself “trapped on Gilligan’s Island with kids.”

2. A very reluctant Radar

Gary Burghoff appeared as Corporal Walter “Radar” O’Reilly in every episode of the first three seasons of M*A*S*H. By season four, he was disenchanted with the direction his character was taking. He’d started out as crafty and sneaky, and not adverse to helping himself to Colonel Blake’s brandy. But the writers eventually turned him into a naïve farm boy who never sipped anything stronger than a Grape Nehi. Burghoff only appeared in about half the episodes over the next three seasons, and the CBS brass convinced him to stay long enough to play the focus of a two-part send-off during sweeps week in season eight. M*A*S*H writer Ken Levine notes that Burghoff partially expressed his disenchantment during his last appearance by refusing to wear his “Radar hat” during those final episodes, making him look less like the twenty-something company clerk he was playing and more like the balding, middle-aged man he was.

Gilligan’s Island, Good Times and more all after the jump…

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For the past week, I’ve been offering up trivia treats about sweets you’re likely to encounter on Halloween. Our last featured candy is Sixlets, with lots of links below. Happy Halloween, everybody!

1) Sixlets include red, brown, green, yellow and orange. White, pink and blue are added for Easter (brown is removed).

2) The center of the candy is made from a mixture of carob and chocolate, which gives them that distinct malted flavor.

3) Special edition dark chocolate Sixlets have recently been released.
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Today we’re treating you to some of the more interesting and coincidental events to occur on this day in history. While you all know today is Halloween, you may not know that on this date…

-Martin Luther began the Protestant Reformation, nailing his 95 theses to the door of the Wittenberg Palace church in 1517.

-John Keats, who later wrote a sonnet titled “Written in Disgust of Vulgar Superstition,” was baptized in 1795.

-Nevada, a state now known for the revelry and costumes of Las Vegas, became the 36th state in 1864. (===>)

-Arthur Conan Doyle’s “The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes” was published in 1892.
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Think you can recognize celebs when you see them? Wait, are you sure? See if you can pick the imposters out of the crowd by taking our Celebrity Look-alike quiz. Oh, and be sure to come back and report your scores in the comments below.

For us old-school Mac users, AppleInsider’s Road to Mac OS X Leopard: System Preferences article really brings back memories. It walks through the evolution of Mac System Preferences (formerly known as Control Panels) going all the way back to 1984 and ending up at Mac OS X Leopard, which was released last week.

Simply scrolling through the article provides an interesting view of the process of revision in software design. The original Control Panel (which was technically a Desk Accessory named “Control Panel”) was brilliantly simple, if a little cramped — it controls roughly nine different functions all in a 315×177 pixel window. Clever use of icons (rather than text labels) enables the panel to be very efficient in its use of screen real estate, and also means it doesn’t need to be translated for non-English operating system releases.

Watching the Control Panel expand to meet the growing needs of the Mac system, you can watch the system designers trying out various strategies for cramming in more information in a similar space. At one point (ahem, System 7) the unified “Control Panel” interface is abandoned in favor of a folder full of mini-applications — more clicks to open and close them, but lots more flexibility in design for each one. This approach becomes untenable in Mac OS 8 and 9 as the sheer number of Control Panels makes it very hard to find what you’re looking for, just by browsing in a Finder window.

As Mac OS X enters the picture, the designers finally hit on a method that works for them — a scrolling menu of panels on the top, with the panel below. Ironically, this is very similar to the menu-on-the-left design of the Control Panel in 1987. In later Mac OS X releases, this approach is refined, with lots of attention focused on grouping and organizing the panels so related things are near each other.

Anyway, if you’re into Mac geek history, check it out. (You may also appreciate this earlier post about Mac history.) And just try to tell me those 80’s black and white Control panels don’t bring you straight back to the beige 80’s!

Another installment from our new book In the Beginning. Enjoy!

A Few Newspapers and Magazines

Sure we know all about the birds and bees. But periodically, we like to explore where the rest of the buzz is coming from.

The New York Times

Founded in 1851, the Times made serious history just 20 years later: In 1871, its muckraking brought down the famous Boss Tweed of Tammany Hall. (The term “muckraking” hadn’t actually been coined at the time, however; it was an early-1900s phenomenon.) Bought by Adolph Ochs in 1896, it was soon given its famous slogan “All the News That’s Fit to Print,” which was more than just a boast: it was also a jab at its rivals’ infamous “yellow journalism.” The Times moved into its new digs on 42nd Street in 1904, giving its name to the surrounding area, known today as Times Square.

The Washington Post

Like the Times, the Post – one of the city’s most venerable non-government institutions – produced high-end copy right from its founding in 1877. Unlike the Times, it needed some extra help to increase circulation. In 1889, in a bid to get people excited about reading the paper, the Post management commissioned, we kid you not, a theme song. The resulting tune, named simply “The Washington Post March,” is often heard by oblivious spectators at patriotic parades: It’s the work of John Philip Sousa.

Time and Newsweek

In 1923, Briton Hadden and Henry Luce – old buddies from the tony Hotchkiss School in Connecticut, as well as Yale – got together and decided to start a magazine. They thought at first that they’d call it Chance or Destiny, which is a little mind-boggling considering that they’re opposing concepts … but the magazine’s real fate was to be named Time. Although the men were only 24, they were able to raise a boatload of cash from wealthy family friends. Still, the first issue was met with “a burst of total apathy on the part of the U.S. public,” as well as some pretty strong criticism from more established editors. Undeterred, the pals redesigned the magazine then crossed their fingers and put out a second issue. By 1929, the mag was firmly established, and Henry Luce was well on his way to becoming a legend. (Hadden died tragically that year at 31.) Like the Pepsi to Time’s Coke, Newsweek – or as it was then known, News-week – got its foothold just a few years later, during the Depression. Also like Pepsi, Newsweek was an immediate direct rival to Time; its founder had left the latter magazine with hopes of “run[ning] Henry Luce out of business.”

Scientific American

more after the jump…

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Regular readers of this blog may have noted a (perhaps unhealthy) fascination with abandoned places and ruined buildings on my part; past entries have included photographic explorations of the “exclusion zone” surrounding Chernobyl, blighted portions of Detroit which are being reclaimed by nature, the abandoned mines which litter California or creepy deserted Japanese amusement parks.

Now I can add to that list a place close to my own heart: the 18th-century farmhouse that had been in my family since the 1940s, until it was sold to a conservation group a few years ago. I recently returned to the Eastern shore of Maryland to visit family I hadn’t seen in awhile, and also to see what the conservation group had done with the old place. To my great surprise, the answer was nothing. All the furnishings, mirrors, carpets and knickknacks had been removed, leaving the enormous, rambling place eerily barren. I had assumed they would turn the house into an office for the local Department of Natural Resources, as had been mentioned, but no one lived there, and it stood there empty, doors unlocked, slowly crumbling. It was both heartbreaking and enthralling, and I immediately grabbed my camera and began framing shots. (more…)

It’s Day 3 of Quiz Week!! (the week so big it needs two exclamation points) and we’ve got a special sci-fi quiz for you. Just match the spacecraft to the TV shows they came from. And be sure to post your scores in the comments below. Good luck!

Most of you have probably heard of the phantom limb sensation, which is what amputees sometimes complain of feeling after losing a limb. Described as painful by many, people say it feels as if the amputated limb is still there, even though it clearly isn’t.

Though certainly not nearly as unfortunate, another phantom phenomenon has been making the news lately: phantom BlackBerry vibrations. That’s when you feel like your PDA or beeper is vibrating even when it isn’t. I know this phenomenon all too well and often find myself digging hastily through my many pockets to locate my Treo (which has been set to vibrate since the day I bought it) even when it really isn’t buzzing.

All this got me thinking about other phantom phenomena. Here are four more that really annoy me:

Phantom Ocean Waves

This is the sensation you feel after you’ve been rocked around on a boat at sea, or even playing in the water at the beach. It’s that rolling feeling that sometimes affects you not just hours later, but DAYS later. For instance, I remember being bothered by this rolling sensation while trying to sleep at night a full week after a 2-week cruise, island hopping in Greece. Doctors have a name for the extreme version of this phantom: Mal de Debarquement Syndrome. For some unfortunate souls, it actually lasts years.

Phantom Grass Itchies

This is an odd one: after lying in the grass, I often feel the blades on my skin hours later as I’m walking around or driving in my car. And it frequently itches something awful!

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