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This picture was sent to us by Karen Nelson, formerly of Anchorage, Alaska. Some neighborhood kids and their dads built this wonderful snowman in somebody’s yard in Anchorage.

Check out the Anchorage Daily News coverage here.

Sounds like the kids didn’t set out to build a sixteen-foot snowman. The project just kept getting bigger and bigger. They ran out of snow and had to bring in more with wheelbarrows and buckets.

This is fantastic. I wonder what the head weighs. One of the dads said (of the torso), “it’s solid ice . . . I put the arms in with my power drill.” Well, pure ice weighs just over sixty pounds per cubic foot. Even though it feels like ice, the snowman is certainly less dense than the stuff you ice skate on. Let’s make a wild (hopefully conservative?) guess and say that the snow/ice is half as dense: thirty pounds per cubic foot.

The head is about three and a half feet in diameter. That would make the volume about 22.4 cubic feet. Applying my thirty pounds/cubic foot estimate would suggest that the head alone weighs at least 670 pounds.

That would crush you, but you’d die happy.

If you don’t know what boingboing is, go check it out. It’s fantastic reading. For example, they just pointed out to me what I now want for Christmas. Check out these superstrong magnets at United Nuclear. The best part about this site is the warning, reproduced here:

If you really need unbelievably powerful magnets, here they are. Uses include magnetic steering of nuclear particles in homemade accelerators, levitation devices, magnetic beam amplifiers, scrap iron separators, etc. Beware – you must think ahead when moving these magnets. If carrying one into another room, carefully plan the route you will be taking. Computers & monitors will be affected in an entire room. Loose metallic objects and other magnets may become airborne and fly considerable distances – and at great speed – to attach themselves to this magnet. If you get caught in between the two, you can get injured. Two of these magnets close together can create an almost unbelievable magnetic field that can be very dangerous. Of all the unique items we offer for sale, we consider these two items the most dangerous of all. Our normal packing & shipping personnel refuse to package these magnets – our engineers have to do it. This is no joke and we cannot stress it strongly enough – that you must be extremely careful – and know what you’re doing with these magnets. Take Note:

Two of the 3″ x 1″ disc magnets can very easily break your arm if they get out of control. Axially Magnetized (the top & bottom flat faces are the north & south poles). We can only ship these magnets by ground UPS – they cannot be shipped via air as it will interfere with the aircraft’s navigational equipment.

This weekend, a fan of the Philadelphia Eagles jumped out of the stands and ran onto the field. That’s nothing new. Remember Morganna “the Kissing Bandit” Roberts, who used to run onto the field and kiss players? How about those guys at the White Sox game a couple years ago who ran out to beat up the Royals’ first-base coach?

Here’s a new twist: this Eagles fan, Christopher Noteboom, slipped onto the field to spread his dead mother’s ashes during the Eagles-Packers game. Apparently, she was a big Eagles fan herself, and her son wanted to pay her – and her favorite team – one final homage.

So this guy knelt on the thirty yard line, dropped the last handful of his mother’s ashes, made the sign of the cross, and then lay on his stomach awaiting apprehension.

I don’t really have a problem with this. Granted, you don’t want people running all over the field spreading who-knows-what in the turf. But why not reward lifelong devotion to a team with eternal rest on the field of play? It could be a problem with artificial turf, but teams with natural grass could turn it into a profit center. For five hundred bucks, you could have your ashes mixed with the fertilizer that feeds the grass.

One drawback to this scheme is the relentless sale of stadium naming rights. I would think that Mrs. Noteboom would rather be resting in “Veteran’s Stadium” rather than on “Lincoln Financial Field.” Yes, I do recognize that the Vet was demolished last year. I just mean that if I had my ashes scattered on a field, I would prefer that it not share the name of a corporation.