December 2008
23 posts
All the Gold in the World
The estimated total amount of gold mined by humans would fill a cube that’s only 25 meters on a side. Platinum is even more rare…all of the mined platinum in the world would fit inside an average home.
(HT: Kottke)
A Tough Dog to Train
A Chinese man found out the hard way why his Pomeranian dog was impossible to train:
[Zhang] found the dog hard to tame, it would often bite him and had several unusual traits, he told the Wuhan Evening Post.
“It can’t bark but instead makes little ‘em em’ noises, and its tail has been growing longer and longer,” he said.
“The most annoying thing is that...
Why are text messages limited to 160 characters?
From the NYT:
[…] text messages are not just tiny; they are also free riders, tucked into what’s called a control channel, space reserved for operation of the wireless network.
That’s why a message is so limited in length: it must not exceed the length of the message used for internal communication between tower and handset to set up a call. The channel uses space whether or not a text message...
“People need to be reminded more often than they need to be instructed.”
– Samuel Johnson
How to a Build Supercomputer from a Sony... →
Girls Taste Better Than Boys
A recent study has shown that girls have a better sense of taste than boys. Boys require about 10% more sourness and 20% more sweetness to recognize flavors than girls require to taste the same flavor. (HT: Neatorama)
Constitutional Law: The Five-Minute Crash Course →
more animals
Why Do We Yawn? To Cool Our Brains.
Andrew Gallup, a researcher at Bingham University, says that we yawn to prevent our brains from overheating:
If your head is overheated, there’s a good chance you’ll yawn soon, according to a new study that found the primary purpose of yawning is to control brain temperature.
The finding solves several mysteries about yawning, such as why it’s most commonly done just before and after sleeping,...
The Message of Art: "Pay Attention!"
From Frederick Buechner’s Listening to Your Life
From the simplest lyric to the most complex novel and densest drama, literature is asking us to pay attention. Pay attention to the frog. Pay attention to the west wind. Pay attention to the boy on the raft, the lady in the tower, the old man on the train. In sum, pay attention to the world and all that dwells therein and thereby learn at...
Coolest piece of man jewlry ever. The only bracelet that would actually make me feel more manly for wearing it: http://bit.ly/9xj0
Need some inspiration? Here are 40 inspirational movie speeches in 2 minutes, including Willliam Wallace and Fozzie Bear http://bit.ly/zCv8
Jane Austen and Baboon Metaphysics
From Baboon Metaphysics: The Evolution of a Social Mind, by Dorothy L. Cheney and Robert M. Seyfarth
In sum, monkey society is governed by the same two general rules that governed the behavior of women in so many 19th-century novels: stay loyal to your relatives (though perhaps at a distance, if they are a social impediment) but also try to ingratiate yourself with the members of high-ranking...
“The truth does not change according to our ability to stomach it.”
– Flannery O’Connor
A Social Worker’s Perspective of Disney...
Social worker and blogger Jae Ran Kim applied a “social worker’s perspective to the wholesome characters in popular Disney movies” and asked, “How many of these beloved characters live in a married, two-parent (hetero) household?”
Aladdin (Aladdin) – orphaned and homeless; petty crimes for food and shelter
Annie (Annie) – orphan adopted by rich single dad
Ariel (The...
The Beatles in 2108
Psychology professor Daniel J. Levitin on the music of the Beatles:
A hundred years from now, musicologists say, Beatles songs will be so well known that every child will learn them as nursery rhymes, and most people won’t know who wrote them. They will have become sufficiently entrenched in popular culture that it will seem as if they’ve always existed, like “Oh!...
A Brief History of Economic Time
Steven Landsburg: “One hundred years ago the average American workweek was over 60 hours; today it’s under 35. One hundred years ago 6% of manufacturing workers took vacations; today it’s over 90%. One hundred years ago the average housekeeper spent 12 hours a day on laundry, cooking, cleaning and sewing; today it’s about three hours.”
How many omnipotent beings can there be? →
“At this point, the so-called government does little more than provide content...”
– Scott Adams
WatchFlight of the Conchords sing about one of the most important issues of the day: why people should stop touching monkeys.
What is a “religious belief” anyway? http://tinyurl.com/5tmq2r
What's a commonplace?
Commonplace books (or commonplaces) emerged in the 15th century with the availability of cheap paper for writing, mainly in England. They were a way to compile knowledge, usually by writing information into books. Commonplaces were essentially scrapbooks filled with items of every kind: medical recipes, quotes, letters, poems, tables of weights and measures, proverbs, prayers, legal formulas,...