I'm going to wrap things up here for the next little while. I'm setting out tomorrow for a 6 month trip around the world, so rather than write about trivia and interesting-yet-not-terribly-useful things, I'll be writing about travel. If you are interested in reading about odd foods and misadventures in cross-cultural communications, feel free to check out the travel blog which has been created expressly for this purpose.
Now, since I'm leaving for six months, I figured my last post before departure should contain some truly weighty material to consider, analyze and ponder for the next half year. With that in mind, here is a video of some puppies and a cat.
Tuesday, September 9, 2008
Monday, September 8, 2008
The Average Day
I've got a weird obsession with eccentric watches. It's totally irrational, and I usually try to avoid having things like "collections" that mostly gather dust, but a cool watch circumvents that part of my brain and directly activates the "neat-o" region of the prefrontal cortex, resulting in a new watch purchase more often than I'd care to admit.
Here's just such a watch. It's by a small British company called Mr. Jones Watches that produces all their designs in runs of 100. This one is called "The Average Day", and omits hour markings in favour of "units of median daily routine". It's a witty idea, and the design itself looks pretty slick. The outer ring represents AM activities, and the inner ring represents PM.
If an extra $200 falls out of the sky on my way home tonight, I will definitely pick one up.
Here's just such a watch. It's by a small British company called Mr. Jones Watches that produces all their designs in runs of 100. This one is called "The Average Day", and omits hour markings in favour of "units of median daily routine". It's a witty idea, and the design itself looks pretty slick. The outer ring represents AM activities, and the inner ring represents PM.
If an extra $200 falls out of the sky on my way home tonight, I will definitely pick one up.
Sunday, August 31, 2008
The Slightly-less Leaning Tower of Pisa
I've long said that world records in the field of structures are slightly (ridiculously) specific. I mean, sure, there are legitimate technical differences between tall structures (which can be any old pile of materials) and tall buildings (which need to have occupiable space, and are therefore tougher to build really tall), for example. But there are some obscure ones out there.
Take the Confederation Bridge, for example. It's long. 12.9km long, to be precise. But it's not the world's longest bridge from land mass to land mass. Nor does it have the world's longest span length, a measure of the distance between two supports. Rather, it's the world's longest bridge over ice covered waters.
And now Reuters is reporting on a structure in the Netherlands that is gunning for another world record with world-class nit-pickyness. You see, they have a church that leans a bit.
Not qutie as much as the leaning tower of Pisa, you might say, and you'd be right. BUT! The guy in the following video would like you to consider that if you take the total lean of the church, and divide it by the structure's height, the resulting ratio is larger for the church than it is for the leaning tower! Said differently, if you could resize the two structures to be the same size but preserve their tilt angle, the church would have the bigger total tilt. This is all an incredibly complicated way of saying that the church has a greater angle of tilt. Congratulations, Netherlands, you are now the proud owners of the world record holder for "greatest height-to-lean ratio", or "greatest tilt in a hypothetical world where all structures can be resized to be the same size, but preserving tilt angles".
Take the Confederation Bridge, for example. It's long. 12.9km long, to be precise. But it's not the world's longest bridge from land mass to land mass. Nor does it have the world's longest span length, a measure of the distance between two supports. Rather, it's the world's longest bridge over ice covered waters.
And now Reuters is reporting on a structure in the Netherlands that is gunning for another world record with world-class nit-pickyness. You see, they have a church that leans a bit.
Not qutie as much as the leaning tower of Pisa, you might say, and you'd be right. BUT! The guy in the following video would like you to consider that if you take the total lean of the church, and divide it by the structure's height, the resulting ratio is larger for the church than it is for the leaning tower! Said differently, if you could resize the two structures to be the same size but preserve their tilt angle, the church would have the bigger total tilt. This is all an incredibly complicated way of saying that the church has a greater angle of tilt. Congratulations, Netherlands, you are now the proud owners of the world record holder for "greatest height-to-lean ratio", or "greatest tilt in a hypothetical world where all structures can be resized to be the same size, but preserving tilt angles".
Thursday, August 28, 2008
Canadian Media Priorities
I'm not sure the monstrous difference in scale between Canadian and American news and politics can be any better illustrated than through tonight's CTV news broadcast. Sure, they ran some footage of Obama's speech in front of what appeared to be most of the state of Colorado (side note: that part about ending foreign oil dependence in 10 years was both gutsy and kickass), but they ran it immediately AFTER a hard-hitting investigative piece on, uh... Toronto's new diagonal crosswalk at Yonge and Dundas.
In their defence, it is a pretty cool crosswalk.
In their defence, it is a pretty cool crosswalk.
Tuesday, August 19, 2008
Mark Zuckerberg Says "Too many new Facebook members"
I know spam chain letter things are nothing new, but I found this one waiting in my Facebook inbox today, and I think it's pretty entertaining:
Let's deconstruct this a little. First off, Mark Zuckerberg, the 24 year old prodigy who runs a company with an implied $15 billion market capitalization, doesn't understand the proper use of "your" versus "you're" (I really hope this is not the case, because I know the difference, and if he doesn't, it means that he is younger than me, and also has worse grammatical skills, and is still a billionaire).
Second, Mark (being the friendly guy that he is) has taken time out of his duties as CEO of Facebook to tell all his good friends that facebook is overpopulated. Too many people. He wants there to be fewer people using his company's product. Makes sense.
Finally, he wants to personally hear back from everyone on Facebook to make sure they're active! He must be planning to come in for a few hours on Saturday to go through all those responses.
If ever there were a compelling case for increasing our efforts at teaching critical thinking skills in school, the existence of this message in my inbox is it.
Reply Attention all Facebook members.
Facebook is recently becoming very overpopulated,
There have been many members complaining that Facebook
is becoming very slow.Record shows that the reason is
that there are too many non-active Facebook members
And on the other side too many new Facebook members.
We will be sending this messages around to see if the
Members are active or not,If you're active please send
to 15 other users using Copy+Paste to show that you are active
Those who do not send this message within 2 weeks,
The user will be deleted without hesitation to create more space,
If Facebook is still overpopulated we kindly ask for donations but until then send this message to all your friends and make sure you send
this message to show me that your active and not deleted.
Founder of Facebook
Mark Zuckerber
Let's deconstruct this a little. First off, Mark Zuckerberg, the 24 year old prodigy who runs a company with an implied $15 billion market capitalization, doesn't understand the proper use of "your" versus "you're" (I really hope this is not the case, because I know the difference, and if he doesn't, it means that he is younger than me, and also has worse grammatical skills, and is still a billionaire).
Second, Mark (being the friendly guy that he is) has taken time out of his duties as CEO of Facebook to tell all his good friends that facebook is overpopulated. Too many people. He wants there to be fewer people using his company's product. Makes sense.
Finally, he wants to personally hear back from everyone on Facebook to make sure they're active! He must be planning to come in for a few hours on Saturday to go through all those responses.
If ever there were a compelling case for increasing our efforts at teaching critical thinking skills in school, the existence of this message in my inbox is it.
Deans to Students: Stop drinking illegally, start drinking legally
A bunch of college presidents in the US have put together a statement calling for lawmakers to lower the drinking age from 21 to 18. Their rationale is that if it's not illegal, students will feel less compelled to drink a ton of booze at once (i.e. the "predrink"), opting instead to drink a ton of booze spaced out over a whole night (i.e. the "Thursday").
A drinking age of 21 is pretty ridiculous when you look at it in the context of other global drinking ages. But hey, at least the United States has some powerful, influential allies in the "no alcohol until 21" club: Paraguay, Indonesia, Pakistan, India (but even then only in certain states), Oman, the UAE, the Ukraine, the Northern Marianas, Fiji and Kiribati.
A drinking age of 21 is pretty ridiculous when you look at it in the context of other global drinking ages. But hey, at least the United States has some powerful, influential allies in the "no alcohol until 21" club: Paraguay, Indonesia, Pakistan, India (but even then only in certain states), Oman, the UAE, the Ukraine, the Northern Marianas, Fiji and Kiribati.
Sunday, August 17, 2008
Superfluism - A semi-annual review
I just took a look at my blogging output for the last few months, and I think some definite conclusions can be drawn concerning my procrastination habits.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)