Cool Waste of Time - Cursor!

by , 4:20 PM EDT, June 8th, 2007

You are a veritable walking encyclopedia. If knowledge were money you'd be Bill Gates.

Jeopardy bores you. You reign supreme in Trivial Pursuit. You don't even bother to show off your Mensa card anymore.

You know that the bright evening star is usually (but not always) Venus. You understand the reproductive process of most mammals. You are familiar with the inner workings of you average modern computer.

You are one smart cookie.  Or are you really?

Did you know that Mercury is sometimes the Evening Star? You did?

Bet you didn't know that there's a mammal that lays eggs like a bird. "That's an easy one," you say. "The platypus has a bill like a duck and lays eggs," you answer confidently. You would be right, but you'd also be right if you said the spiny anteater. (Egg-laying mammals are called monotremes, but then, you knew that too.)

How about the inner workings of your computer? What's going on in there? If you say that there's a bunch of circuits and electrons speeding around inside your computer, this time you'd be wrong. Hard to believe, I know, but we have proof, and our proof is the subject of this installment of A Cool Waste of Time.

Through the magic of virtual quantum magnification we are able to see, in real time, what happens when we move the cursor around on our screen.

It's amazing! It's fascinating! It's fantastic! It's a marvel of Japanese engineering!

The Japanese have made a name for themselves by producing everything in miniature; miniature cars, miniature radios, miniature tape players. and now they've outdone themselves.

Behold!! Computer magic REVEALED!!!

...um, when you click through to the page and you just see a screen with an almost invisible circle in the center then you may need a bit of instruction:

1. Slowly move you cursor towards the circle.

That should do it.

Hats off to Japanese ingenuity.

And you thought you knew it all.

Do you have a Cool Waste of Time you found on the Internet? Tell Vern Seward all about it, and he's pass it around...