WikiMatrix is a site that allows you to setup side-by-side comparisons between any number of over 100 Wiki platforms. You can figure out which one is best for you based on feature sets, price, etc.
There also ForumMatrix for those in the market for a forum.
This article calls Google Books a plagiarist's nightmare. Interesting article, worth the read.
Cool Flash-based game. You draw a line and the little man rides it on his sled. Here's an example:
An index of hundreds of different predictions of when the apocalypse would (or will) occur.
Black Friday is not the busiest shopping day of the year - it ranks sixth. Cyber Monday is the ninth busiest online shopping day of the year.
Source article
"European traffic planners are dreaming of streets free of rules and directives. They want drivers and pedestrians to interact in a free and humane way, as brethren -- by means of friendly gestures, nods of the head and eye contact, without the harassment of prohibitions, restrictions and warning signs."
"The new traffic model's advocates believe the only way out of this vicious circle is to give drivers more liberty and encourage them to take responsibility for themselves. They demand streets like those during the Middle Ages, when horse-drawn chariots, handcarts and people scurried about in a completely unregulated fashion. The new model's proponents envision today's drivers and pedestrians blending into a colorful and peaceful traffic stream."
I am not going to comment on this. Make of it what you will. I will say, though, that the article contains the interesting tidbit that Germany has 648 valid traffic symbols.
HonestArgument.com allows users to create an argument, i.e., a topic for debate, and then debate them back and forth. The assertions or refutations are mapped out in a visual tree with nodes and sub-nodes. It is an interesting concept, but, in my opinion, needs a lot of help, particularly with the UI.
Orsinal is a large collection of Flash games created by Ferry Halim. I've only tried one, Milk the Cow, which is . . . . . interesting.
Enjoy :-)
A publication of the DOE. There are some pretty cool charts.
As a general rule, I like solar energy and wish it were actually energy efficient (i.e., I wish it didn't take more energy to create the things than they will produce in their lifetime before they break down).
Anyway! A company called Infinia is building a new type of solar energy . . . . capturing device (as opposed to panel). It's a solar electric dish that focuses solar radiation on a motor suspended in front of it (where the receiver would be on a normal satellite dish). The motor is a "free-piston" Stirling engine that uses changes in air pressure to drive a motor, generating electricity.
The company claims that the system is (a) cheaper than traditional photovoltaic (PV) solar energy systems - which, in theory, means that it takes less resources (energy as well as materials) to produce, which means that it may be (1) economical and, (2) therefore, energy efficient (the theory being that being non-economical is a symptom of being non energy efficient - if you don't get it, ask me or Alex), (b) manufactured without producing any harmful pollutants (which means it doesn't do one part of the environment a favor at the expense of another), (c) is recyclable ('nuff said), (d) 24% efficient, which is about twice the going rate, (e) aesthetically pleasing (you can decide for yourself), (f) capable of producing 9 megawatt-hours per year, and (g) available in 2008. For more details, see the website.
To point (f), this figure is probably assuming optimal conditions, do, for the sake of the following, let's say that a typical residential install would probably produce 66% of optimal, i.e., 6 megawatts. Why 66%? Well, I was going to figure out the average amount of energy produced each month (using the earth rotation, etc.), how many clear, partly cloudy, and cloudy days there are per year on average for my neck of the woods, etc., but I got tired of it because there are a lot of variables, so I just went for 66% because it seems not-too-optimistic and not-too-pessimistic.
Anyway! The average price of residential electricity in the US is $.08/kW-h (as of 2003 according to the DOE). Thus, if the system produced 6 MW-h per year, it would be producing $480/year worth of electricity (I'm glossing over the issues of whether a single residence would be able to consume all of the energy being produced at any time and whether or not it would be able to feed back into the utility grid using a net metering system). Now, lets say that the system lasts for 20 years. Why 10? Well, ...... no, don't worry, I'm not going to do that again. GE says that its residential solar panel system will last for "many" years, though the batteries will probably need to be replaced every 5-10 years. Thus, I guess that the system could last for, say, 30 years. Again, taking the idea that 66% is neither overly-optimistic, nor overly-pessimistic, I settle on 20.
So! Let's say that the system works as outlined above - oh, and let's throw in that it maintains its efficiency throughout its life cycle and, for the sake of argument, let's just hold the price of electricity static. Let's also say that the interest rates (savings rates, not mortgage rates) in this country average 4% over the foreseeable future. (Let's not even get into how I came up with that). I don't have any information on how much the system will cost, but, it seems that the system would pay for itself in whatever year corresponds to its cost below:
| Year 1 | 499.2 |
| Year 2 | 999.168 |
| Year 3 | 1499.167 |
| Year 4 | 1999.167 |
| Year 5 | 2499.167 |
| Year 6 | 2999.167 |
| Year 7 | 3499.167 |
| Year 8 | 3999.167 |
| Year 9 | 4499.167 |
| Year 10 | 4999.167 |
Look at this map. If you don't see anything, make sure the marker is centered, go to satellite view, and zoom in the the second to closest setting. Enjoy :-)
News at Seven is a computer system still being developed that automatically compiles a nightly news cast from various sources, which is then presented by an animated news anchor.
Mariners in the South Pacific have reported the emergence from the sea of a new volcanic island near Tonga. According to the ship's blog, the mariners saw "streaks of light, porous pumice stone floating in the water -- then 'sailed into a vast, many-miles-wide belt of densely packed pumice.'"
It seems that audiophiles have realized that old Sony Play Station 1s make great audio equipment - especially those marked with the model number SCPH-1001 because it has separate audio and video output jacks.
The discoveries were made during an expedition to French Frigate Shoals, northwest of Hawaii.
Here is a handy list of resources (mostly free) that are good alternatives to Google when doing serious research.
I apologize to everyone who is checking my blog and not seeing anything new each day. I've been crazy busy with work and other things lately. Hopefully I will be able to keep up from now on.
Cheers!
Welcome to the visitor who arrived here after searching for:
"a backhoe weighing 8 tons is on top of a flatbed trailer and heading east on interstate 70 near hays"
Dark Room is an old school word processor (complete with the green text on black background) for those who don't want a word processor for the features but for the typewriter abilities.
I haven't tried it yet. Dane, you'll probably like it ;-)
I received this via email and had to post it:
Engineering Word Problem
A Backhoe weighing 8 tons is on top of a flat-bed trailer and heading east on Interstate 70 near Hays, Kansas. The extended shovel arm is made of hardened refined steel and the approaching overpass is made of commercial-grade concrete, reinforced with 1 1/2 inch steel rebar spaced at 6 inch intervals in a crisscross pattern layered at 1 foot vertical spacing.
Solve: When the shovel arm hits the overpass, how fast do you have to be going to slice the bridge in half? (Assume no effect for headwind and no braking by the driver...)
Extra Credit: Solve for the time and distance required for the entire rig to come to a complete stop after hitting the overpass at the speed calculated above.
Dliveo is a free web-based file delivery tool. Think of it as FedEx for files. Check it out, it's pretty cool, although it does have some limitations, e.g., you have to register a different account for each computer on which you want to use it, rather than being able to tie them all to an individual email address.
An Irish company, Steorn, is claiming that it has stumbled upon a method of creating energy from nothing. According to this article, the company was working on another project several years ago when it discovered a method of creating energy using magnetic fields. It claims that it has thoroughly tested the technology in house and has had outside laboratories test it as well. It is now challenging 12 physicists to test the technology in order to make it commercially credible. Many are skeptical of the claim because, according to the laws of physics, energy can neither be created nor destroyed - it can only change form.
The International Astronomical Union has proposed a new definition of the word "Planet". Under the new definition, which is basically "round and orbity", as this article puts it, there would be as many as 53 bodies in our solar system that would be classified as planets.
What do you get when you take Oregon, Washington, and British Columbia, succeed from their respective unions, and form a new country? Yep, you guessed it, the Republic of Cascadia. I highly recommend looking over the website as well as the Wikipedia article.
In the past, visitors to this blog were about evenly split between Firefox and IE. Firefox was edging out IE by a few percentage points. There were also a few users arriving using Safari and other browsers. Lately, though, the Safari crowd has increased and the Firefox crowd has decreased. A knee-jerk guess is the Firefox users are switching to Safari.
Comments?
They were found 5,000 miles from where they started and reportedly survived on rain water, fish, and sea birds.
Apparently, there is a chance that the original recordings of the First Moon Landing have been lost. These recordings were of a much high quality than what the public saw on TV that night, as explained in this article. This may make you think of the situation with the Saturn V plans which were "lost". It turns out that that particular story is untrue.
My sister would love this just a little too much. People have begun keeping miniature breeds of cows as pets. This article is specifically about the Australian Lowline variety. Apparently, there are many more miniature breeds. Go figure.
A 4-foot long sturgeon jumped out of the water and knocked a passing Jetskier of his craft and left him unconscious.
The Palm Islands are a group of three artificial islands being constructed in Dubai. They will be the largest artificial islands in the world and are being constructed as part of an effort to diversify Dubai's economy (in this case, by promoting tourism) before it's oil reserves run out (an event estimated to be due sometime in the second decade of this century). Each island is shaped like a Palm tree (each one is slightly different). Each island will hold multiple 5-star hotels, thousands of resort homes, theme parks, marinas, apartment buildings, and monorails.
Check out this article for more information.
Kobayashi is at it again, this time in Sheboygan, Wisconsin, at the Johnsonville World Brat Eating Championship. The previous record of 34.5 brats held by reigning champion, Sonya “The Black Widow” Thomas, was smashed by Kobayashi who ate 58 brats in ten minutes. Joey Chestnut came in second with 45.
Source article
The World's Longest Yard Sale happens again this weekend. It's found on US-127 and is 450 miles long, by the way and stretches across three states.
Source article
A state in India has ordered that Coke and Pepsi not be served until their ingredients lists are made known. This is due to concerns that 11 products of both companies contain harful ingredients.
Source article
Welcome to the first visitors from Peru, Finland, Japan, Singapore, the Phillipines, and Australia!
Q: What do you do when you see a bank robbery in progress?
A: Steal the getaway car. Duh.
Remember that hairy lobster I blogged a while back? And that fact about blue lobsters? Well, now there are yellow lobsters popping up. Apparently, there are also blue lobsters. The odds of finding a yellow lobster: 1 in 30,000,000. The odds of finding a blue lobster: 1 in 1,000,000.
Source article
Here are ten myths about passwords. Some of them are rather techie, some of them are very simple. Interesting reading.
Apparently, carvings in tree bark made by Basque shepherds in Idaho in the 19th century are valuable to historians. Who knew?
Source article
Fabian Escalante, who was for a time responsible for keeping Fidel Castro alive, has calculated that there have been 683 attempts on the Communist dictator's life.
Source article
Scientisits have determined that the 9.1-magnitude December 2004 Sumatra-Andaman earthquake changed the Earth's gravity by altering the geometry of the region for thousands of square miles.
Source article
While participating in a fishing tournament near Bermuda, a man was speared through the chest by the three foot long, razor sharp bill of a 14-foot marlin. He lived, amazingly.
Source article
As you can see, I am experimenting (out of curiosity) with placing ads on this blog. Please let me know what you think. I can always move, resize, recolor, fully remove, etc. the ads, so I would like to know what you think.
Ken
Bet you didn't know there is a real strip poker tournament scheduled for next month in Ireland. Explanation: April Fool's Joke that took on a life of its own.
Source Article
In this edition, Kiwis are registering their cars as "non-commercial hearses" in order to pay less in registration fees. Justification? They use them to transport dead chickens from the grocery store. No, I'm not kidding.
In this edition, Belgians are buying used parking tickets, which, as far as I can tell from the article, would be more recognizable to the American mind as parking vouchers, in order to get out of fines imposed for illegal parking. Kicker: the site which facilitates this scam, Continental Computer Company, maintains that they are doing nothing wrong. After all, all they are doing is catering to that segment of the population that collects used parking tickets - just like all those people who collect stamps. :-)
Bars in New Zealand have borrowed the Yellow Card, Red Card system from soccer and bent it to their own purposes. Patrons who have had a bit too much are shown a Yellow Card which precludes them being served more alcohol without first sobering up a bit. A Red Card is shown to a patron who must leave the premises. Kicker: the Red Cards can be redeemed on a future visit for a free drink.
Source article
While I generally appreciate attempts to preserve cultural heritage, reason does have its limits sometimes: Iran has decided that some 2,000 foreign words are no longer to be used. Among them, "pizza", which will now be referred to as "elastic loaf".
Source article
About 2 months after selling its stores in South Korea, Wal-mart has pulled out of Germany, losing $1 billion in the process.
There is an interesting article regarding how quickly visual information is transferred from the eyes to the brain. It includes a hypothesis that there is a two-tiered system of nerves - the brisk and sluggish nerve pathways that both transfer information, but at different speeds. The sluggish nerves transfer standard information, while the brisk nerves transfer information regarding danger much more quickly. The explanation for the sluggish pathway is that the brisk pathways consumes much more energy, while the sluggish consumes less and doesn't need to be any faster. The study appears to lack an explanation of how the retina would "know" what information to pass down each pathway. This would appear to require that the retina be "smart" and push some cognitive ability out to it, much the way some such "decision making" is said to reside in the spinal cord.
Source article
For 31 years, a woman in Britain has had a sign hanging on her fence reading "Our dogs are fed on Jehovah's Witnesses." The police, citing a recent complaint, have asked her to remove it.
Source article
ILC Dover LP, the company that manufactures spacesuits for NASA, is working on a spacesuit that would be able to heal punctures 2mm wide and smaller, alert the astronaut of holes larger than that, kill off bacteria automatically by slowly releasing silver ions, generate its own power by means of solar cells sewn directly onto the out layer of the suit, and block radiation using a polyethylene layer containing hydrogen. The company is still experimenting with exactly which of a number of options for materials they are going to use, but, in principle, they've already got all the things mentioned above working.
Source article
They thought it would be a good idea to spin the merry-go-round using a motorcycle engine. Even though you can probably guess what happens next, you will still get a kick out of the video.
(Guess who sent me this :-))
There are more hotel rooms in Orlando than in India.
Source
(Thanks to Alex for this one)
In what sounds like another version of "This is How the 3M Post-It Note Got Invented", here is a video report on how one scientist discovered how to make waterproof paper. (By the way, 3M is a really cool company, in case you were wondering :-))
Apparently, there is an overabundance of natural gas, heating oil, and kerosene worldwide. There is so much, in fact, that companies are having to get creative with where to store it all, sending much cargo to Western Africa until it is needed.
Source article
While attempting to roll their way into the record books by "crafting" a 1.12 meter long joint, a bunch of Frenchmen have found themselves under arrest. After a few minutes of research, which including Guiness World Records, Google, Wikipedia, and, of course, the Ganjapedia, I was unable to find official documentation on the current record for the world's longest joint. Maybe you'll have more luck ;-)
Source article
Kohina.net is a website devoted to the music of old school video games. You can listen to music, post on a forum, and look up information such as the composer. C|net also has a handy video about it.
This article explains how gray squirrels apparently help limit the outbreaks of Lyme disease as well as why herders try to keep cattle herds in between mosquito breeding grounds and human settlements.
For all of you who use IM, you have to see the Availabot. I think it betrays just how much of a geek I am that I like this. I hope it becomes available for GoogleTalk and/or Live Messenger soon.
London seems to be the latest city to succumb to a massive game of Assassins. Needless to say, this doesn't make law enforcement very happy - suddenly half the city is trying to sneak around carrying things that look like real guns.
Source article
Google Maps Mobile (for cell phones) now includes traffic information similar to that found on Traffic.com. I don't know whether this functionality will eventually be ported over to the regular Google Maps tool.
Here is a brief, interesting article originally from the Denver Post but reproduced by the Tax Foundation on the issue of Soda Tax.
An unusual gemstone in one of Tutankhamun's necklaces has apparently been determined to be glass that is older than the earliest Egyptian civilization. This discovery led to the discovery of glass chunks scattered across a remote region of the Sahara desert. The glass was formed at a temperature so hot that only a meteor impact could have caused it. There were no traces of an impact site, though. Thus, scientists have come to the conclusion that there was a Tunguska Event-esque above Ancient Egypt that formed the glass. Others have found evidence of a similar, yet more powerful, airburst above southeast Asia 800,000 years ago.
Source article.
Because we all don't have enough things to distract us while we are sitting at our computers at work, there is now an online DHTML version of Lemmings, written completely in Javascript. Check it out :-)
I can't even begin to list all of the cultural woes of which this is a symptom, much less the things that we, as a society, will lose as a result. . . . . ;-)
An English mathematician has worked out an equation with which one can predict how long it will take children in a car to begin asking the question "Are we there yet?" The source article has a number of ambiguities in it that are somewhat perplexing. For more, see the comments below the article.
This is an interesting comparison and discussion of Star Wars and Dune (both in terms of storylines and movies).
Scientists identify reason nicotine accelerates the spread of cancer. Apparently, the fact that nicotine accelerates the spread of cancer has been known for sometime . . . . just not to me ;-)
Source article
It weighs 97 lbs., has a wingspan of 31 meters, flew 1283 ft. in 1 minute carrying a 99 lb. pilot, and is powered by 160 AA batteries.
Source article
You really can't make this stuff up:
The headmaster of a school in China secretly (by which I mean "in a somewhat shady manner") sold a 1,000 tree arboretum surrounding the school. In an attempt to buy-off the teachers, who he feared would publicize his actions, he brought in two dogs and promised that the teachers would be treated to a dog-meat lunch. (Sidenote: notice how dog meat lunch is supposed to be a valuable bribe in China) After killing the dogs and, presumably, dressing them, the schoolmaster witnessed his brilliant plan go awry when the dog meat stopped happily baking in the oven, and presumably, stewing in its own juices, and instead burst into flames. The resulting fire destroyed 10 classrooms along with all computers, televisions, and other equipment contained therein.
Source article.
Pandora is an outgrowth of the Music Genome Project. Pandora allows you to supply information about the music you like and it then streams you a constant flow of music that is similar to your preferences based on their mapping of the "Music Genome".
News on the Internet apparently stays fresh for about 36 hours, longer than had been anticipated.
Source article.
Did you know that certain numbers are actually illegal? :-) No, seriously, read this.
itsweather.com is a mashup of the Google Maps API and local radar maps. It also allows you to overlay StormTrack dots that indicate the location and severity of independent storms. Note that the "Find Address" functionality only works if you enter a complete street address. Also, the tool has loading issues where it will not completely refresh the screen when you move from one location to another or shift from one view to another. Hopefully, they'll fix these issues soon.
Piers Sellers, a British astronaut currently in space, dropped one of six spatulas contained in his toolkit into space while working on a space walk. As a joke, the mission controllers made him count his remaining spatulas before allowing him back on board the shuttle. The stray spatula is now orbiting the earth once every 90 minutes at a speed 25x that of sound, and is being monitored by 20 sites around the world.
Another installment of BBspot's Top Eleven Lists.
Anthony found this FAQ on fire eating and fire breathing. "How?" you may ask. I don't know. I don't think I want to know.
Because steel expands when it gets hot, the Eiffel Tower is six inches taller in the summer than in the winter.
It's bad enough when I hear prices for houses that are significantly cheaper than around here. This, though, just adds insult to injury. On the other hand, it is really cool that it worked :-).
A power outage that blacked out about 2,000 customers in Las Cruces is being blamed on the combination of a snake and a bird.
Full Story.
The video is that of a news story and is thus self-explanatory.
Anthony's Root Beer Barrel has reviews and ratings of 321 different root beers. In case you're interested.
Animal Info has a list of some of the most badly endangered animals in the world, complete with figures on the remaining number of individuals in the species, as well as photographs.
It seems that the people of Scotland have chosen a national anthem: "The Flower of Scotland". Here is a fairly good article on the subject of how it was chosen. Go to the Royal Scottish National Orchestra for recordings of "The Flower of Scotland" as well as other contenders.
Extensions for Firefox are awesome. They're part of what makes Firefox great. Here are some of the best that I have found:
Despite the assertions of Monty Python's "The Funniest Joke in the World", one can safely read the World's Funniest Joke. There is an official World's Funniest Joke, you ask. Yes, as a matter of fact, someone spent the time to do the research and has declared a World's Funniest Joke.
While the last post concerning iPods was interesting, thing one goes one step further. iCarta is an iPod docking station that includes a fold-out toilet paper holder. Yep, you got it, you can now bring your iPod to the bathroom and enjoy your music collection with quality speakers and without taking up too much room (you need a toilet paper holder anyway).
There is a growing initiative to develop renewable energy sources that are essentially lunar power. The various methods would harness tidal energy to generate electricity. For example, turbines can be placed at the bottom of rivers and other bodies of water that experience periodic tides. The movement of the water would generate electricity in the same way that wind turbines do. There are also several other interesting methods under development. The nice thing about tidal power is it generates more power than wind (since water is denser than air) and it is more predictable.
Article
60% of Japanese computer games are designed in Northern England.
The Nike-iPod project is just more evidence of the advance of ubicomp.
First Thing: Welcome to my first visitor from Denmark.
Second Thing: I will not be posting for a while due to being out of town for 4 weeks. bbl, as they say :-)
Beans on Toast pop tarts, of course! Brought to you by your friends at Heinz - because they were never satisfied with just 57 varieties.
It's bad enough when one's doctor informs one that one is overweight or in some way diseased. The British have decided to add insult to injury by passing that job off to one's toilet. The toilet can then take the liberty of informing your supermarket what foods they should sell to you to correct the problem(s). You think I'm joking, don't you? I'm not. I'm totally serious. The Twyford VIP not only analyzes waste to determine a person's health, but it can be adjusted (much like a car seat) using either push buttons or voice recognition. Again, you think I'm joking, don't you? I'm not.
As one commentator put it: "Physical output becomes digital input in this transformation of waste into metadata. Sensors are coming to a loo near you. And this strange business of sensory cyberspace imports has just begun. We can hardly imagine all the weird and wonderful possibilities." Morville, Peter. Ambient Functionality (Sebastopol, CA: O'Rielly, 2005), 90.
Using about $4,000, man invents car capable of getting 8,000 miles to the gallon, thereby breaking his earlier, measly record of 6,603 miles per gallon.
"People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals?" . . . No
"People who like Eating Tasty Animals"? . . . No
"Prince who likes Eating Tasty Animals?" . . . YES!
In an interview with the Danish magazine Ud&Se, the 72-year-old Prince Consort of Denmark, Prince Henrik, a Frenchman by birth, who happens also to be the Honorary President of the Danish Dachshund Club, has stated that he has enjoyed eating dog meat since the time he spent growing up and studying in Vietnam. He invited Danes to try eating dog meat themselves. "I do not mind eating dog meat at all," he said.
"The dogs I eat have been bred to be eaten anyway, just like chickens. . . Dog meat tastes like rabbit. Like dried baby goat. Or perhaps - I know! - like veal. Like the veal of a baby suckling calf, only drier. He said the meat tasted best when it was sauteed or grilled and cut into thin slices.
As if this weren't enough, the Prince owns several dachshunds and, despite publishing a cookery book called Ikke Altid Gaselever (Not Always Goose Liver), has even published eulogies to them.
A book of Prince Henrik's poems, in which he praised his dogs, was published last year. A poem to his dachshund Evita compares her paws to 'wings.' "I love to stroke your coat and to see how it shines/ You dear, you special dog..../ You receive me with papal pride."
Since the prince's admission in the magazine Ud&Se, Danish newspapers have reopened their files on a royal dachshund that disappeared from Amalienborg palace, Copenhagen, in the early 1990s. Despite a countrywide search, it never reappeared.
By the way, the Prince also recommends that parents raise their children using techniques of dog training.
One ton of recycled paper saves:
This one includes nifty extras such as price trending charts, price map (broken down by county), etc.
See also, this previous post.
'Underground' is the only word in the English language that begins and ends with the letters "und."
"The sixth sick sheik's sixth sheep's sick" is said to be the toughest tongue twister in English.
"An amphibious wormlike creature has been found in Kenya whose young feed on their mother's skin. . . Nursing mothers of Boulengerula taitanus,– part of a group of tropical, legless terrestrial amphibians called the caecilians,– transform the top layer of their skin from its usual flat, dead cells to a thicker layer of large cells rich in protein and fats in order to nurture their young. The nutrient content of this skin layer is similar to that of milk. . . The infants . . . are born with modified teeth that allow them to scrape off the top layer of their mother'’s skin."
Click here to read the full story. The really interested among you may want to watch the video :-)
"What are we going to do tonight, Brain?"
"What we do every night, Pinky . . . . . . . try to create a Call Center for every business model known to man!"
I love the fact that the woman in question agreed to be interviewed in regard to this matter.
It's been a while since I last come across an interesting animal picture. This one also comes with a story :-)
KittenAuth - the next generation weapon in the good vs. evil internet war. Heehee.
(This post is via Alex)
The Crucian Carp, a fish closely related to the goldfish, can hold its breath for months, apparently.
I got these via Mike. I don't know what the show is about, but they're still funny in their own right. The top link is to the index and those following are to my favorites (in no particular order). By the way, some of the clips are preceded by a short ad.
NBC's "The Office" April Fool's Day Public Service Announcements
Wedding Invitations
Wedding Cake
Meteor
Expensive Beer
Bears
Office Relationships
Saltines
So, let me get this straight, you are more willing to do potentially dangerous things because, if you get hurt, the government will pay to have you hospitalized, rehabilitated, and returned to the work force? Gee, that's a great way to show concern for the common good of your country - do stupid things because literally everyone else in the country will pay the penalty for it so you don't have to. It sounds like something a 5 year old would come up with.
Oh yeah, the whole Zorbing thing makes this article worth reading also ;-)
The article isn't that long. I particularly like the list of well known hoaxes towards the end.
Video of Boeing 747 & 777 Crosswinds Landing Test <-- The last one is the best
The Leaning Tower of Pisa in Jenga blocks
Russian Drivers <-- Where does the second truck come from!!!!??? Alex, Anthony, and I still can't figure that out.
Parking Trick (side view)
Parking Trick (top view)
Two-thirds of the world's eggplant is grown in New Jersey.
When the University of Nebraska Cornhuskers play football at home, the stadium becomes the state's third largest city. (I know, I know - but I'm not even going to argue about it. All I'm going to say is "you know what they mean.")
This is too cool. Granted, it's a very small map and was done more for the heck of it than anything, but still - it's cool.
I also liked the headline: "Google claims its next planet with defeat of House of Atreides."
It's so sad that not all of you get that reference . . . . . . . . . . . .
There are a couple of sites that offer free, legal downloads of old, public domain movies. These movies are public domain because either they were never protected in the first place or their copyrights have expired.
Veoh was originally intended to be a place where people could post their own home videos (and they have - 10,000 of them), but it has also become the platform for old cult movies.
Public Domain Torrents, on the other hand, is devoted to Classic and B-rate movies.
This looks like it could be quite cool: the site requests that you input a subject in which you are interested and your five favorite news articles, blogs, images, etc. concerning that topic, and it automatically generates a personalized start page that includes RSS feeds, links to news articles, etc. The site, Boxxet, is currently a by-invitation-only, preview site. It should be up by the end of April. You can read more about it here.
Oh wait, everyone with half a brain already knew that. My bad.
The American Legislative Exchange Council (which, I admit, I don't know very much about) has released a series of statistics that show that, over the last 22 years, the states that have poured the most money into their public school systems have not even come close to producing the best students. Moreover, the states that did the best at reducing the student to teacher ratio likewise did not end up at the top of the list of best-student producing schools.
Last year, a team of divers, diving in 7500 deep waters 900 miles south of Easter Island, discovered what can be described as a 6 inch long, hairy lobster. The creature, which is so distinct from other known crustaceans, merited a new family and genus. Kiwa Hirsuta is the first member of the family Kiwaida, named after Kiwa, the Polynesian goddess of crustaceans.
An interesting take on the recent flurry of anti-Ave Maria activity.
On a slightly different note, I love how it took the rest of the world so many years to even hear about it - but when they did, boy did they jump on the mass-media-story-of-the-week-to-blow-out-of-proportion bandwagon :-)
"Statistics suggest that, when customers complain, business owners and managers ought to get excited about it. The complaining customer represents a huge opportunity for more business." - Zig Ziglar, U.S. author and speaker
Banging your head against a wall burns 150 calories an hour.
(Please don't try this at home . . . . . or anywhere else. No matter how tempting it may be. T'would be better to go jogging up the hill in shorts in the middle of winter at 1:00am. Maybe. Well, they're both not advisable. Don't try either of those at home. Or anywhere else.)
There are a number of different websites, which all take a number of different approaches, that track gas prices and can tell you where the cheapest gas is in your area. The two that stand out to me are (in no particular order):
MSN Autos - Local Gas Prices, the upside of this site is that their pricing data is provided by OPIS (Oil Price Information Service) - which makes it accurate. The downside is that OPIS data, even though it is updated nightly, might not be truly up to date. It may be up to 7 days due to the electronic processes by which they collect their data (e.g., through credit card transaction records). As well, the mapping element is provided by MSN MapPoint - which means that you can't scroll a map the way you can with a GoogleMaps mashup (in fact, you can't scroll this map at all). You can zoom, though, within the specified zip code without requiring an annoying page refresh.
Map Gas Prices, the upside of this site is that their mapping element is provided by GoogleMaps, so you can scroll without requiring a page refresh. Also, users can enter pricing data directly - which means that this site may be more up to date, but it also may be inaccurate due to the possibility of human error. It is unclear whether all of the pricing data on this site is obtained merely through user input (which I doubt, since 110,000 price points is an awful lot of user input), or if user input simply supplements data acquired through other means, e.g., OPIS. Another nice feature of this site is that you can sign up for automatic alerts via email for the lowest price point near you.
Map Gas Prices is produced by a company called Orbizon, Inc., which also produces a site called Map Sex Offenders, which (yes, you guessed it) displays the registered street addresses of registered sex offenders on a GoogleMaps map - this data is compiled from the web-based databases of various states.
"Barbra Streisand has launched a new spelling error-ridden dispatch on the Internet -- a dispatch that mocks President Bush for being a 'C student!'" (This is, by the way, the second time she's done this).
News Brief
Actual Barbara Streisand dispatch (as captured by a webcrawler)
Outsourcing customer-facing business processes, such as tech support, is a bad idea. I'm glad that Einstein was reincarnated so that the world could be thus enlightened.
Pfizer rules mouthwash market for more than a century with Listerine.
Proctor & Gamble gets jealous and develops Crest Pro Health mouthwash.
Not bothering to poll actual dentists, P&G advertises product as "4 out of 5 dentists would recommend it."
Pfizer sues to prevent "irreparable harm and damage to Pfizer, as well as to consumers."
Don't believe me? Go here.
I know I've already told some of you about this, but, for those of you who haven't heard about it yet:
1-800-free-411 is a service that gives you free 411 directory assistance any time. The catch is that you have to listen to a 15 second ad. But hey, it saves for a buck or two.
A "large and aggressive" hare has reportedly attacked a dogsled team in Norway.
Wenche Offerdal, who was driving the dogsled team, said she'd never seen anything like it.
She told newspaper Nordlys that she and her team of huskies met the "aggressive" hare in Troms County.
"It was sitting 10 metres from the trail and I figured it would run off, and even that the dogs would go after it," Offerdal said. "I was wrong."
Instead, the hare came running towards the dogsled team, and jumped right into the middle of the dogs.
"It was an absurd situation," Offerdal told Nordlys. "The dogs were completely perplexed. The hare stared at them and they stared back, like they were all frozen."
Suddenly the hare leaped out of the ring, hitting a few of the dogs on their noses with its paws on its way.
"It was an enormous leap, the hare landed outside the ring of dogs and ran off into the woods," Offerdal said.
I know, I know . . . . . this happened much farther south, in a different part of the state. On the other hand, it seems like we already have more snow than this, so that's a compensating factor ;-).
Men are six times more likely than women to be struck by lightning. You may interpret this any way you want. (If you want to know the scientific explanation for why this is the case, look it up, it's not that amazing).
Mystery black goo eating LA. . . . . . . . . . . . . It's about time ;-)
I just learned of an online tool, ExpressPDF, that allows you to convert HTML, Word, and Excel documents to PDF for free - without Adobe Acrobat Pro.
For any of you who haven't heard about this yet, there is a search engine that runs off of the Google API (meaning you get the exact same results you would if you were using Google.com), but, rather than keeping the advertising money it generates, donates it to pro-life organizations - ProLifeSearch.com.
So, for any of you that use Google, start using this - it's just the same, except that money goes to pro-life organizations when you do. Also, for you Firefox fans, you can add this search engine to the search bar in your browser just as you can with any other browser. To do this, go here, and click on the prolifesearch.com link.
A study finds that children who are taught verbally with reinforcing gestures learn better; those who are taught verbally with complimentary gestures learn better still. Repetition is the key to learning and it seems that complementarity is the "open sesame".
I figured that, instead of continuing to clog everyone's email inboxes with annoying little tidbits that I pick up in the course of my travels through cyberspace, I would just start posting them to a blog and allow everyone to consume them at their leisure (those more technically inclined among you will notice the reference to the site feed (http://kens-tidbits.blogspot.com/atom.xml)). If anyone would like to contribute to this blog, which I hope will be a good place to communicate about various news articles, internet resources, and the like, please let me know!