Five Curious Experiments at Spooky Action Labs

Yesterday I posted five original must-read articles from this blog in response to a challenge from Liz Strauss. In the comments to her post I joked that it might be fun to create a list of the five most regrettable posts on a blog. She suggested some more creative list topics, and so here are five curiosities that never caught on as I hoped. But they were all fun experiments and contributed to the posts that folks do come here to read.

Narcissistic Public Service Announcement Okay, so it's not Conjunction Junction, but the abuse of the pronoun myself is reaching pandemic proportions! Where else can you find Ron Popiel, Billy Idol, James Taylor, and Cowboy Curtis in one post?

Four Jokes to Live By My first foray into the era of 'talkies'. I got the basic idea for this podcast several years ago, and finally got around to pulling it together at the start of this year. Response was underwhelming, but I learned a lot from doing it.

Top 5 Faces NOT to Make During an Audit I am a wordsmith. Can I do a top five list just by mugging for the camera?

Mini Confectioner's Haggis A real-live experiment in experience design. Can I concoct an ethnically-themed dessert for a pot luck for less than $5 and less than 5 minutes prep time? I suppose my success should serve as evidence for the power of the Law of Attraction...

Crash Course in Learning from Harry Potter I can't read music; I don't play an instrument, but this is a symphony of words, pictures, and ideas! Okay, maybe not a symphony; more like "Variations on a Theme by Kathy Sierra and John Salt".


Are you wondering about those M&Ms at the top of the post? Apparently Mars is experimenting with custom M&Ms sporting logos and slogans. Will it be wildly popular? Who knows, but they'll never know unless they run a few experiments!