Estray Bonajour is Escravos de Jo

This just in:

Estray Bonajour:



Is actually



Escravos de Jó"

See this for the full story.

from Bernie DeKoven, funsmith

Turtle Racing at your local bar and zoo

Wikipedia informs us that Turtle Racing that is "a popular event in the Central United States which is usually held at county fairs or picnics in which turtles are placed in the center of a circle by children and are allowed to walk around until one of them crosses out of the circle."

The neat ones at Neatorama recently posted an article about the aforementioned semi-sport having purportedly become "a trend in metropolitan bars like Bucky’s Grill and Pub in Indianapolis." As a newly converted semi-Hoosier, I was especially intrigued to learn that such goings on actually go in locally, at Bucky's Bar and Grill.

My subsequent Internet searches, however, led me inexorably to this video, which was taken, not at Bucky's, but at Brennans Pub in Marina Del Rey, CA, nigh onto my former Redondo Beach stomping grounds (I sigh for the stomps of yesteryear). An illustrative, and preternaturally exciting video, nonetheless.

from Bernie DeKoven, funsmith

Some children's games from China

Our new collection of some children's games from China.

One of my favorites:


Nestle a Person

Players are divided into groups of two, which are scattered on the playground. Make sure there is a distance between the groups. Players in each group stand in a line. One group volunteers to be the runner and the chaser. The game begins with the chaser trying to catch the runner. Both the runner and the chaser must run along outside of the play groups. The runner can join one of the groups at any time, either in the front or at the back. Once the runner has joined one of the groups, the person at the other end of the group must start to run as the new runner, and the chaser continues to try to catch the runner. Once the runner is caught before joining one of the groups, the runner and the chaser switch roles.


Courtesy of Dr. Tong Liu , PhD, Professor of Early Childhood Education, Hebei University, China; Post doctoral fellow of Yale Child Study Center, U.S.A

from Bernie DeKoven, funsmith

Mini Weapons of Mass Destruction - a new resource for cubicle warfare

If I could travel back in time and give my early adolescent self a gift of potentiation and portends of power, it would be a copy of John Austin's Mini Weapons of Mass Destruction. If I were my father, on the other hand, I'd take that book away from me in a most timely and uncompromising manner, hide it in a place where only I could find it, and read it from cover to cover.

On yet another hand, my going on 8-, going on 21-year old granddaughter loves this book.

Mini Weapons of Mass Destruction contains 241 pages of detailed, painstakingly illustrated instructions for making (and here I read from the table of contents) launchers and bows, slingshots, darts, catapults, combustion shooters (combustion shooters!), minibombs and claymore mines, and, finally, concealing books and targets.

Did I mention combustion shooters? Like the famous match rocket which you can make out of paper or wooden matches, with nothing more than aluminum foil, a needle or pin, a medium binder clip (Austin loves those binder clips), a toothpick and a large paper clip? O, there are warnings. "Eye protection and a safe firing range are musts" declares the ever-pragmatic Austin. "Match rocketry is not an exact science," he cautions, "misfires and modifications will be needed to find the perfect balance." Match rockets! How inexorably cool is that?

There are two things that make Mini Weapons of Mass Destruction such a fun read: 1) every "weapon" is made out of common household objects, and 2) the instructions are exceptionally clear and well-illustrated. OK. There are three things: 3) the sheer ingenuity of the designs. It's the very kind of book MacGuyver might have read during his training course. For fun. Of course.

Want more? Visit John's site. Learn a little about him. Print out a few targets. Get instructions for building more. Meditate on the nuances of "implements of spitball warfare."

from Bernie DeKoven, funsmith

Kites in the rubble

Lawrence Downs of the New York Times describes how children in Haiti make out of sticks and scrap plastic:

"The Haitian boy’s kite starts with thin sticks — woody reeds or straight twigs scraped smooth with a razor blade and cut to equal length, about eight inches. These are lashed in the middle to make stars of six or eight points, sometimes more. Thin plastic, ideally the wispy kind from dry-cleaning bags, is stretched over the frame and secured with thread. Rag strips are knotted for the tail, then tied with thread to two of the star’s lower points: a Y with a long, long stem. More thread is tied to the kite’s taut chest, the rest spooled on a can or bottle."

Downs notes the extreme hardships of survival, and then drifts, like the kites he describes, into poetry:

"One way to resist is to fly. The kite makers dance through the camps with rubbery exuberance, trailed by younger children, all lost in the moment, the most important in the world. Kites battle kites, their makers yanking their lines to cut each other’s, as the kites whirl and spin. When one kite wins, the jubilation is explosive. It’s one of the few signs of joy you see in Haiti, entirely handmade."

photo by Lawrence Downes

via Boing Boing


from Bernie DeKoven, funsmith