Saturday, August 1^st is global World Wide Web Day. It will probably look like any other day-in-the-life. We’ll read, share, post, communicate, chase links and watch television and movies. And a lot of us will do all of those Things on devices that fit right in our pockets!

But just over 25 years ago, Things were different.

There was no YouTube for watching cute animals doing cute Things. No Facebook for posting pictures of your dinner. No Reddit for so effortlessly wasting massive amounts of your life.

If you had a home computer, you were either a scientist or a geek (or both).

When the phone rang, you had to go and pick it up. Then you had to sit right there while you talked because you were tied to a wall by the corded monstrosity.

And if you wanted to waste time, you really had to work at it.

Then the Web changed everyThing.

So, to honor this very special day, I thought I’d share a few little-known Things about the web:

• Though we use the words interchangeably, the Internet and the web are not the same thing. The Internet is a network of networks. The web is a service (like e-mail) that operates over the network.
• The first webcam was invented in 1991 — so people could monitor a coffee pot in the other room to see when it was freshly brewed.
• Way back in 1994, the first online purchase was made: a pepperoni pizza from Pizza Hut.
• Kanye West’s interruption of the VMAs sparked one of the web’s first viral memes.
• The very first YouTube video was pretty boring.

Shopping sites, social networks, videos, communities and blogs have changed the way we get information, how we read and how we shop.

Most importantly, we now have cute puppy videos to watch for hours on end, Reddit trolls to play with and a place to share all Things great and small in our lives.

Thank you, World Wide Web. Life will never be the same.

See you next week,
Bobby

Just when you thought evolution couldn’t get any creepier, here comes a new discovery: snakes with legs. But those legs weren’t meant for walking. They were meant for grabbing Things. As in living Things.  As in you if you’d been unlucky enough to live in the time of Tetrapodophis amplectus, the scientific name for the leggy serpent.

Researchers say a newly discovered snake species may have used its four limbs to snag prey or grapple with mates. The new species was discovered in Brazil’s Crato Formation according to the journal Science.

T. amplectus lived during the Early Cretaceous period, between 146 and 100 million years ago. Researchers said the skeleton they discovered is “insanely complete”. University of Bath paleontologist Nicholas Longrich said they found “every bone from the nose to the tail”.

But if it has legs, it must be a lizard, not a snake, right? Wrong. Turns out snakes and lizards have different skull shapes and other features. For example, snakes don’t have eyelids, but lizards do. And lizards have external ears; snake ears are internal.

“If the limbs were useless vestiges, we would expect them to be a reduced and simplified version of a lizard’s limbs,” Longrich says. “If they were for burrowing, they should be stout and powerful like a mole’s. Instead, they have very long, skinny fingers with the last bone in the finger being extremely elongate. That’s typical of animals that use their digits for grasping.”

I don’t know about you, but I think this is one Thing I’m glad went extinct a long time ago. It’s bad enough living with the legless variety!

See you next week,
Bobby

I know, I know. People have been saying the Zombie Apocalypse is coming for years. And not one Thing has happened. But I know why. It takes a long time to make a zombie army. They move so slow. But don’t be fooled. They move ever forward.

And so must you.

1. Get in shape.
   It’s true you have to be strong to kill a zombie, but what you need to do first is learn to run. And run fast. So focus on sprinting, not on marathons. Zombies are notoriously slow so a good sprint will take you out of range in a hurry. And they don’t have the attention span to follow you when somebody slower wanders into their path.
2. Keep moving.
   A lot of people will tell you to stay close to home. That’s the worst Thing to do. Especially when you live in Florida, where cases of people eating other people’s faces off are not that rare. Don’t ignore the signs in your state. Your best bet is to bug out and find a place where zombies won’t follow.
3. Get out of the city.
   Not counting the fact that they’re dead, zombies are exactly like other predator animals. They go where the food is. And where’s the biggest concentration of food? Cities. So when you bug out, go far and go deep. And stay away from other people. Even if they’re not zombies yet, one of them always runs into their zombie-fied brother, mother, sister or lover and inevitably screws the whole survival Thing up.

Remember: you don’t have to outrun the zombies, you just have to outrun everyone else! So get in shape and get prepared because the Zombie Apocalypse is coming.

See you next week (I hope),
Bobby

You know I like to make fun of incompetent criminals. It’s kind of my Thing. Well, one of my Things.

Which is great because social media has made it easier for criminals to be stupid, like the robber I told you about who posted his location on Snapchat while the cops were looking for him in his own house. But this pair even outdid the Snapchatting thief.

Everyone has heard that marijuana can make you paranoid, but these two pot dealers proved it. In Rexburg, Idaho, Leland Ayala-Doliente and Craig Holland were reported to police when they were seen pacing along Golden Beauty Drive. Whenever a car approached, both men would throw their hands in the air until the car passed.

Not surprisingly, concerned passersby called the police. What is surprising, is the two had already called 911 on themselves! When the cops got there, one of the dealers shouted, “We give up. We know we’re surrounded!” And then they told police where to find their stash — 20 pounds of marijuana.

According to the Idaho Falls Post Register, they were not surrounded, nor had they been followed by undercover officers. So I guess pot does make people paranoid. And maybe a little bit stupid, too.

Keep your cool. I’ll see you next week,
Bobby

About 120 eyewitnesses were treated to quite a light show in the Southeast Monday morning. It was also filmed by all six of NASA’s meteor-observing cameras.

But NASA says that was no meteor. And UFO buffs aren’t buying the official explanation. As usual.

Have a look at the video and see what you think.

The American Meteor Society theorizes that the Thing was Russia’s SL-6 Rocket Body (launched back in 1992 as part of their missile early warning system) re-entering the earth’s atmosphere.

So it was space junk. I find that pretty easy to believe since NASA is currently tracking over 22,000 pieces of garbage in Earth’s orbit. And that’s only the bigger stuff. Tiny Things don’t get tracked at all.

It makes you wonder. What if an alien species did come to Earth…only to find that our planet’s orbit is pretty much a dump? Do you think they’d stick around? Or would they find a place where the inhabitants know how to pick up after themselves?

SomeThing to think about next time you see an object — identified or not — streaking across the evening sky.

I think I’ll go clean up my office. See you next week,
Bobby