Random Awesomeness

You know what doesn't get nearly enough attention on The Common Man's site? Awesome stuff. Here's a bunch of awesome stuff The Common Man thinks (nay, knows) you need to be aware of:

1) This Is Why You're Fat, a website full of terrifying and awesome food monstrosities that are at once tantalizing and off-putting. Thusfar, The Common Man's favorite (as in, the thing he would most like to eat) is The Giant Breakfast Burrito:


Described as "A seven pound breakfast burrito stuffed with potatoes, eggs, onions, and ham bits, lots of cheese on top and smothered in red chile," it elicits but two questions 1) can The Common Man get jalapenos in that? and 2) Do you mind bringing some Tobasco or Tapatio with you when you come back? Of course, The Common Man couldn't eat all of it in one meal. However, as long as you keep getting coffee or soda or what have you, most diners will let you hang around until they close, giving The Common Man ample time to make it three (or four) full meals.

And for dessert? Clearly the mega double-stuff.

2) Change Blindness. In this article on Cracked.com, Brian Watson explores five ways that your brain is messing with you. First and foremost on his list is change blindness, which "is usually related to something called inattention blindness. If you tried to process everything in your visual spectrum you would go insane, so your mind picks and chooses what to focus on." This means that, as long as you do not see a change occuring in front of you, you are not likely to notice it. Watson describes it thusly:

"It's like your brain is sitting in class, staring out the window at a cloud that sort of looks like a boob. When you call on your brain it does the same thing you do when a teacher calls on you in those circumstances: Start bullshitting. It doesn't really know what [whatever you were looking at] looked like a second ago, but it's not going to tell you that. Since it has no visual memory of the image, it just tells you it's always looked the same. Even when that's a lie."

Watson backs up his description with a couple of really impressive videos, neither of which The Common Man can embed here. Also mindblowing is Watson's description of saccadic masking, in which The Common Man learned that he is effectively blind for approximately 40 minutes a day.

3) Batman is inherently awesome. He has no superpowers, but has crafted himself into a one-man anti-crime task force through a freakish dedication to martial arts, a keen mind (Batman doesn't suffer from change blindness, The Common Man bets), and really wonderful toys. But perhaps the most wonderful toy of all is this Batman squirt gun The Common Man found on the Daily Scans Journal:

That's right, you fill Batman's bum with water and squeeze his naughty bits to get him to shoot water (God, let's hope that's water). Insert your own Robin joke here.

4) The Common Man has given Ron Rollins at Baseball Over Here his due. Ron's site focuses on baseball from an international perspective (and such was his dedication, Ron picked up and moved to England. America's loss...). Anyway, Ron's got a couple killer posts up right now, first and foremost picking winners from all four brackets of the WBC (The Common Man isn't ready to let go, yet). He also profiles the top European prospects in the minor leagues. Ron counts four players from Curacao, and The Common Man thinks that's probably cheating, given that Google Earth tells The Common Man Curacao is just 45 miles north of Venezuela (speaking of which, Google Earth is pretty freaking awesome too). Then again, if he didn't include the four players, it'd undoubtedly be a disappointing list, and The Common Man vows not to complain about the methods of a man willing to do far more leg work than himself.