Friday Four

1. The great thing about Cthulhu-themed beer glasses, according to their creator (HT: Snedcat), was that they looked like ordinary beer glasses to the uninitiated. Chessex Manufacturing also made tee-shirts:

Years later, at an ArmadilloCon, a friend of a friend was introduced to me, and he was wearing a Dunwich Dark T-shirt. I hadn't seen one since I was in California, and when I told him that I had designed that, he practically fell to his knees to thank me. The shirt, he informed me, was responsible for a lot of his geek cred. In fact, he confided, he also had the Arkham Pale Ale shirt, but he'd stored it in his garage and some rats got ahold of it...which, if you know your Lovecraft, makes the shirt one hundred times cooler. He still wore that one on special occasions. I didn't ask what those were.

The glasses were produced for only a limited time and now sell for hundreds of dollars.

2. A private company is ready to attempt the first commercial flight to the moon as it competes for Google's Lunar X Prize. Moon Express has until the end of next year to win.

3. How far does a dollar go in your state? The Tax Foundation provides the answer in map form, along with numbers. Mississippi is number one, and DC is dead last.

4. Did you know that the ubiquitous audio jack, rumored to be omitted from the next iPhone, is a smaller version of a nineteenth-century jack?

-- CAV