A very selfish post

All right! All right! I admit it! This is a very very selfish post. This blog has never been about me, but . . . I have finally succumbed to the evil empire of Youtube and have made my first (and most likely last) Youtube video. If you ===>CLICK HERE <===then you can finally be assured that this blog is not written by a seven foot tall bald vampire who has a minor stutter and an major nose hair problem. I would also really appreciate it. Be sure to comment here and there. Thank you.

To keep this post from becoming entirely narcissistic, here is a somewhat short list of things not related to me.

• In the UK, the GCSE (General Certificate of Secondary Education) is typically taken around age 16. One GCSE is taken per subject. In response to the English question, "Describe the room you’re sitting in," one student wrote, "f- off." Chief Examiner Peter Buckroyd decided to stick to the scoring guidelines and awarded the student 2 marks out of a possible 27. He commented: "It would be wicked to give it zero, because it does show some very basic skills we are looking for – like conveying some meaning and some spelling. . . . If it had had an exclamation mark it would have got a little bit more because it would have been showing a little bit of skill.” Source.
  
• Japan now has three singing roads. Built by the Hokkaido Industrial Research Institute and designed by Shizuo Shinoda, grooves are cut into the road at specific intervals which produce melodies when vehicles drive over them. "It works like the head of a record player on a vinyl album." Here is an English video explaining the roads, and here is a Japanese video with clips of the roads. The recommended speed is 28 mph (aprx. 45kph). One Japanese blogger advised, "Driving too fast will sound like playing fast forward, while driving around 12mph has a slow-motion effect, making you almost car sick." Source.
• Here are two visual illusions to puzzle over: In the first illusion, both A and B are the same size. In the second illusion, are the two outer prongs rectangles or cylinders?