Cursor!

June 7th, 2007 at 3:00 PM - by Vern Seward

You are a veritable walking encyclopedia. If knowledge were money youid be Bill Gates.

Jeopardy bores you. You reign supreme in Trivial Pursuit. You donit 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 didnit know that thereis a mammal that lays eggs like a bird. "Thatis an easy one," you say. "The platypus has a bill like a duck and lays eggs," you answer confidently. You would be right, but youid 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? Whatis going on in there? If you say that thereis a bunch of circuits and electrons speeding around inside your computer, this time youid 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.

Itis amazing! Itis fascinating! Itis fantastic! Itis 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 theyive 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 heis pass it around...