Saturday, January 21, 2012

Don't wait for the last judgement...

Good morning, friends. Wake up to this bacon sunrise. source
What do you get when you combine Stephen Hawking, Philip Glass, and Errol Morris? A film adaptation of Hawking's book A Brief History of Time. (The video's over an hour long so plan ahead.)

I have no idea how I managed to find this list of strange facts. The longest 1-syllable word in the English language is "screeched." The word "therein" contains 10 other words that can be made without rearranging any of its letters. "Stewardesses" is the longest word that is typed with only the left hand. And more.

People looking at Rothko in 1961. "I got visually drunk."
The simplest employee appraisal method ever: ask yourself whether you'd hire them again. For the ones you would rehire, consider this idea for giving them unlimited vacation time. And for those of you who've actually taken a vacation, please verify for me that it really does take 21 hours and 31 minutes before you start enjoying it. Finally, offering unlimited vacation may get you on the list of the 100 best companies to work for which includes software notables Google (#1), SAS (#3), Intuit (#19), Salesforce.com (#27), Adobe (#41), Intel (#46), Autodesk (#52), Microsoft (#76), and Cisco (#90).

Ever wonder where the trees are?
Still trying to understand Cubify. It has aspects of GrabCAD (an online community for sharing 3D CAD models), social and mobile media, and a 3D printing bureau. Design and print your own toys?

The average age of a car in the U.S. is now 11.1 years making my 2001 wheels just about average.

I once won a prize (long since forgotten) at an amusement park by sinking a basketball shot at one of those games where the hoop is an impossibly odd height and distance away. How my son won a four foot tall stuffed Hulk doll remains a mystery. If your manliness is wrapped up in winning your date a prize at one of these state fair games here are some tips on success. Unfortunately, they don't provide advice on picking the correct rubber ducky from the hundreds floating by.

At CES, Qualcomm announced a new X Prize competition to build a Tricorder. You know, that thing that Dr. Bones McCoy on Star Trek used as a diagnostic aid. Build one and maybe win $10 million.

Science once again to the rescue. Small confined space, flammable gas, safety hazard. It's all about farting astronauts.

Would you use the e-Urinal, health monitoring/touch screen liquid waste device, in public? The real question is whether I can get it or any urinal for my home. (I do not recommend the "Look Ma, no hands!" technique as illustrated above. And thank you for the dashed line. I doubt I could've figured that out on my own. "How's my urine?" "On the floor!")
The best on this list of not boring coins is the 1943 steel cent and the fact that its unpopularity led to the 1944 and 1945 cents being made from recycled World War 2 shell casings.

Bacon soda, from the geniuses at Bacon Freak.

Ignore the infographic but use the calculator at the bottom to find your worth in gold. Here's where being portly pays off to the tune of $5,115,777.

Behold the iPoo. I expect the iPoo, like the e-Urinal, comes with a Siri-like health-monitoring assistant called Tipi. "How was that, Tipi?" "Lay off the hot wings, John."
Kaggle, making data science a sport. Companies, governments and organizations provide problems and folks compete to solve them with awards at the end. For example, measure the small distortion in images of galaxies caused by dark matter.

Airplane nerds: check out these airplane wallpapers.

To be in the top 1% your income has to be above around $340,000. Here's a graphic that shows the occupations that earn them so much money. (No big surprises - doctors, lawyers, and "managers.")
If I write "conjunction junction, what's your function?" and you immediately think Schoolhouse Rock you'll love this site with Schoolhouse Rock lyrics.

You might want to print this time travel cheat sheet and keep it in your wallet in case you ever get sent back in time. Otherwise, how will you remember how to pasteurize milk and make penicillin?

Check out Song Map, an imaginary streetmap populated with song titles and embedded streaming links to the music.

The penis fish looks like neither a penis nor a fish. Discuss.
...it happens every day. ~Albert Camus

1 comment:

John said...

Yes, it's jerky to be the first to comment on your own post, but here's supporting data from Fast Company about rehiring your own employees. According to one study, bosses would never have hired 17% of their current employees.

http://www.fastcompany.com/magazine/162/employees-your-boss-wishes-he-never-hired