That first one, with the bookcase, reminds me of something my brother did in college (sadly, no pictures on the internet) where he painted one side of a building (or I think put something in front of it that was painted) so that from one angle it looked like you could see through the building to the landscape behind. It was very cool.

Actually, some of his stuff might appeal to people here--there's this one, which doesn't come across too well at that size, where he painted a landscape with a tiny UFO in the air, and then painted a closeup of the section with the UFO, with the highly visible brushstrokes standing in for the fuzzification of photo closeups. Whenever Jim talks about UFO stuff it makes me think of my brother's work.

Very neat, ethan!

Thanks, Marilee, I'll pass it along.

Oh, and I meant to ask where that "grapefruit vs. xkcd" thing came from...it's hilarious.

I highly doubt (an approximately) 21.6% of Americans know where Iraq is...

Looking at the mouseover on "grapefruit vs. xkcd", may I respectfully suggest that, taste aside, trying to open a coconut with a rock is about as sensible as trying to slice tomatoes with a steam roller.

What Would Ray Mears Do?

Clearly a reason to encourage the use of eBooks in secure government facilities.

In the absence of power tools, I've found the best way to get the coconut open is to drain it with a screwdriver and then throw it hard on a concrete floor.

The first link reminds me of the fad for transparent screens.

Sounds like grapefruit is feeling bitter.

Dave Bell: Did you by any chance catch the Good Eats: Down and Out in Paradise special? Alton Brown ably demonstrates the folly and frustration involved in trying to open a coconut.

Gavin M at Sadly No has developed a two-axis system for analyzing conservative pundits and bloggers to determine the degree to which they are stupid or lying.

(What's the word for that type of chart? I'm coming up empty. I blame libertarians.)

But it's so much more fun with power tools. Using a high-power cutting laser, for instance.

HP (#10), it's a matrix. New York Magazine (from which both XKCD and Entertainment Weekly have drawn inspiration for their versions) calls their chart the Approval Matrix, although I suspect others used matrices for snark before them (it seems like something that would have been a natural for Spy magazine back in the day).

The book clothes are cute. Of course, trompe l'oeil is more often done with some deliberate break in the illusion, to show that it is an illusion,
like this.

abi, those screens are delightful; I hadn't seen that before. Easy to make, too.

Regarding the citrus kerfuffle - rstevens (Diesel Sweeties) weighs in here and here. Some of the comments are entertaining - pomegranates are the real hidden victim IMHO...

Next time I go through my old pocket notebooks, I can footnote the Urban Camouflage pic from the 90s: "been done, ca 2007-8."

Some day, will everything in my notebooks have been done?

I recall a story in which the US Army issued its Pentagon personnel with "office-pattern camouflage", allegedly devised by blowing up a filing cabinet and phoptograp[hing the debris.

I recall reading a profile of Stanley Marsh 3 where his habit of having suits and upholstery made from the same material was mentioned. He would disappear into his office furniture...

That video is beautiful. Really amazing what some corrupted/hacked/modified code can do.

We always opened coconuts with machetes, doesn't everyone?

abi @ #8:

I particularly like the ones where there's a transparent screen in front of a transparent screen in front of a...

(And the last one, where the hand appears to be reaching into the screen.)

Bruce @11: Power tools aren't always the answer.

The xkcd comic has derived more comments than any other, including one mocking the Drake Equations, and Someone on the Internet is WRONG!.

Honors to him for including tomatoes.

The European Union entry for the Flag campaign is dumb. Countries (and groups of countries) import stuff they don't produce. Gasp! The others make a point (although some of the data seems dubious without research), but "Europeans use more petroleum than they produce! Oh Noes!!!eleven!!" really doesn't work.