Some people think things like “but I gave him a book for Christmas last year”.
A book is a doorway to a different world. The physical, paper book is just a medium, and it’s what’s beyond that’s interesting.
Saying “I already got her a book” is like saying “I already got her something with screws”—it just doesn’t matter.
Each book is its own world, and worlds make great presents.
I would never drink six cans of Coke in an evening—It’s too fattening.
A 20oz. bottle of Coca-Cola has 240 calories, whereas a 12oz. bottle of La Cerveza Mas Fina has 148 calories.
Coke: 12.0 calories/oz.
Corona: 12.3 calories/oz.
Shit.
Crows (well, actually rooks) are smart.
“...they are ‘clearly combining some sort of understanding of the task with an understanding of the tool and are able to solve the task so quickly.’”
Here is a list of logical fallacies. It’s fascinating reading, and gives you the tools to know if someone (especially a politician) is trying to put one over on you.
I especially enjoyed the “If By Whiskey” argument.
Here’s a useful insight (and lots more good stuff if you feel like improving yourself):
There are some things that can’t be approached gradually.
I surf, badly. One of the main reasons why I have a hard time is because surfing is about waiting for the right moment and then throwing yourself in, absolutely.
I resist throwing myself under several tons of falling water. I try to drag out the transition between not surfing and surfing, but it doesn’t work that way.
This binary-type-experience paradigm is useful because it explains a point of failure that can be, otherwise, hard to diagnose.
People have spent a lot of time and energy giving me advice about how to surf (and a lot of it was helpful). But it’s more useful just to accept that I’m going to have to act, not think, when that wave arrives.
These stories are awesome and short—only a few paragraphs each.
Five months later, I chuckle out loud about once a week when I remember them.
For two of my favorites, load the page then search for:
- chinese restaurant (fly lice story)
- when my (trash can story)
Thanks, Steve.
I don’t remember where I learned it, but this is a great trick:
How to extract a cork from the inside of a wine bottle:
Needed: 1 empty wine bottle, 1 cork, 1 plastic bag (like vegetables come in)
1. push the cork into the empty wine bottle (this is by far the hardest part).
2. twist up the plastic bag and thread it into the wine bottle.
3. tip the wine bottle so that the cork is next to the plastic bag, ready to enter the neck of the bottle.
4. blow into the plastic bag just enough to inflate it a little.
5. pull the plastic bag out of the bottle, dragging the cork with it.
It’s one of those things that seems completely impossible until you do it.
Every time I call someone who has a cell phone, and they don’t answer, I hear their message followed by a message from the phone company. This second message is along the lines of:
”[Phone number] is not available right now. Please leave a detailed message after the tone. When you have finished recording, you may hang up, or press pound for more options.”
This message makes a lot of money for the cell provides. From David Pogue: “If Verizon’s 70 million customers leave or check messages twice a weekday, Verizon rakes in about $620 million a year.”
“...if you find a white person who does not like hummus then they probably just haven’t tasted it or they are the wrong kind of white person .”
“An interesting fact about white people is that they firmly believe that all of the world’s problems can be solved through ‘awareness.’ ... you get all the benefits of helping (self satisfaction, telling other people) but no need for difficult decisions or the ensuing criticism…”
This site was so funny—I just wasted an hour that I didn’t have.
If you’re not busy, you should kill ten minutes reading about one of the most successful lawyers of all time, Richard “Racehorse” Haynes:
“If you can prove [that] the victim abused a dog or a horse, you can convince the jury that the guy deserved to be killed… for some reason, cats don’t apply.”
The entire article is both fascinating and hilarious.
This has all been said before, I have the urge anyway (with the Hadopi Law looming large in the rearview mirror).
The biggest iPod music player, the “Classic” holds 120GB of files. A single song takes about 5MB, more if it’s of high quality and less if it’s of poor quality.
120GB is 120,000 megabytes. 120,000/5 = 24000 songs.
The official price for a song is one dollar. So, to legally fill a new iPod, it costs (would cost) approximately $24,000.
Where does Apple think that people get their music from? How many of their customers have spent $24K on iTunes? Might Apple subtly be encouraging filesharing via the P2P networks?
One could argue that they’re selling guns for which the ammunition is freely available online (that’s one point of view anyway).
Another thought: I’m a music lover. Before the internet, I probably spent about $50-100 every month on albums. That works out to about $1000 per year.
Basic economic theory says that productivity gains lead to windfall profits followed by low prices. Releasing music as MP3’s instead of physical CD’s is a massive productivity gain. Consequently, by artificially keeping prices high, the record companies are reaping windfall profits. Which will inevitably be followed by low prices. The battle against filesharing is really a struggle to prevent the market from becoming competitive.
Boy would I feel like a sucker if I gave my $1000 to a company making massive profits purely by artificially enforcing an anti-competitive market.
If you’re bored. If you’re not easily offended (seriously). If you used to like Lolcats, FailBlog, and PictureIsUnrelated, but you’re over them.
If you don’t know what NSFW means, DO NOT click on the link.
You won’t be interested in this article, but I just about fell off my chair when I read:
“And to be clear, I mean ‘short bus special’, not ‘shiny unicorn special’.”