I guess some people are willing to work for their 15 minutes of fame. These two gentlemen in Norway apparently knew a Google streetview car would be going by, so they camped out nearby in folding chairs wearing scuba gear. As soon as the car passed, they jumped up and chased after it for about half a block while waving spears. Certainly a prank worthy of MIT.

I’ve always had an interest in my family’s history and geneology, and a few years ago I went around to all my grandparents and wrote down everything they could tell me about the family history. I initially misplaced the notebook I used, and although it turned up a few months later by then I had lost momentum and never got around to getting all my notes, diagrams and pictures all consolidated into one (digital of course) location. A few recent events have compelled me to finally move forward, so I dug up all my old notes, found a good open-source family tree program that runs on PHP and mySQL, and have started compiling data.

Now there are two sides to my family – the German side, and the sephardi side. The difference between the two is like night and day. On the German side I have specific dates for nearly every birth, death, and marriage since the mid-1800s. Both my grandparents, then in their 80s, could give me exact birthdays for every one of their parents, siblings, aunt’s, and uncles, most of whom had long since perished. On the sephardi side (Spanish descent hailing from Kastoria if you were curious), I had 3 living relatives who don’t even know their own birthdays. It’s not due to age related issue either – my grandfather essentially made up his birthday at Ellis island. My great-grandmother and her twin brother always argued about when they were born. (His response was that she was vain and lying about her age. Her response was that he came out first, so of course he was older). My grandmother appears to have different birthdates on her driver’s license and passport, and she claims to have been born on a third date.