One of the things that has made me fall in love with Philadelphia since moving here is all of the festivals. There are festivals celebrating holidays, seasons, neighborhoods – there’s even a festival dedicated to bacon. If you have a fondness for festivals like I do, then you need to know about The Big Draw. […]
By now you’re probably familiar with the mass panic caused by the reported fragility of the iPhone 6. While the folks at OtterBox must be dancing a jig right about now, owners of the iPhone 6 and 6 Plus are clearly struggling to deal with the fact that the piece of shiny new technology they […]
Carlos Mencia has a joke about the U.S. spending billions of dollars to develop a pen capable of writing in space, while the Russians just used pencils. The truth is more of a middle ground – both Russia and the U.S. used pencils in space originally, and then a private contractor developed a pen that […]
Researchers at King’s College London have found a correlation between childhood drawings at the age of 4 and intelligence. Using what they called the “Draw-a-Child Test,” researchers studied 7,752 pairs of identical and non-identical twins. At the age of 4, subjects were given verbal and non-verbal intelligence tests. Children were asked to draw a picture […]
One of my favorite things to do as a child was to go to the stationery store with my dad when he bought new pens. He was a lawyer clinging to the stone-age practice of writing every single thing by hand, and so was very particular about pens. Today he is still a lawyer, but […]
Pencils.com has a challenge for you! Grab a pencil, sharpen the tip to a perfect point, and try to balance it on a surface – your finger, a table, your morning bagel (if you need help achieving a perfect tip, check out this book by David Rees for some tips). In fact, give it a […]
When you hear the word graphite, pencils inevitably come to mind. The pencil is of course the most common and well-known use for graphite, but there are some unique properties of graphite that make it useful for a number of different applications. It’s a lubricant If you’ve ever had a pencil tip break and roll away, […]
Job interviews are always pretty stressful situations, no matter how much time you spend preparing beforehand. Google is just one of many companies that have been known to ask, “What are ten non-traditional uses for pencils?” Here is how I would respond (in this scenario I’m interviewing for a job as a secret agent. If […]
Do you remember the rare joy of having class outside? My tenth-grade Biology class cherished our nature walks, which we were allowed to take every so often as long as we took copious notes while our teacher lectured on the local flora and fauna. It was then that I learned the importance of thorough and […]
Pencils get the creative juices flowing for many artists. Some create beautiful works of art with pencils but, for others, the pencils themselves are the objects of art. I hope you enjoy this list of ten very creative and very unique pencil designs! 1. Gavel Pencil – My dad is a lawyer and he brought some […]
