Thursday, April 20, 2006

- Take the following test to learn how evil you are. Actually, the quiz monitors how closely you believe in the ideas of Machiavelli. Gee, among the people who read this site, I wonder who will score the highest? I scored 62 out of 100:
http://www.salon.com/books/it/1999/09/13/machtest/index.html

- Has there ever been a time-capsule which was opened when it was suppose to be opened? I have always felt that time-capsules are a rather pompous idea. Here is a list of the nine most wanted time-capsules. Apparently these time-capsules were either lost, or forgotten about:
http://www.oglethorpe.edu/about_us/crypt_of_civilization/most_wanted_time_capsules.asp

- A unique way of looking at each country's population, population density, and comparing those results to other countries:
http://www.hivegroup.com/world.html

- We cant use rocket fuel to travel to the stars, because it isnt efficient enough to meet our needs. We cant use fusion or fission, because it's too messy and too difficult to accomplish. How about anti-matter? I always thought anti-matter was merely a sci-fi term, but apparently it does exist, and scientists have made small amounts of it. The following article explains how it might fuel a trip to Mars:
http://www.nasa.gov/centers/goddard/news/topstory/2006/antimatter_spaceship.html

- 100 science facts. #49 is a load of bunk:
http://www.ibzi.net/d100facts.htm

- A few months ago I wrote about how your computer will eventually no longer need a hard-drive. All your data and programs will be stored off-site. Rumor has it that Google is working on a website which will give users free, unlimited file storage via the internet. Now Microsoft is working on the same thing:
http://www.microsoft-watch.com/article2/0,2180,1951172,00.asp

- Remember the terrifying tylenol poisonings of 1982? Some maniac in the Chicago area killed seven people by filling tylenol capsules with cyanide. It's the single reason why almost every product in the U.S. is now wrapped in plastic and sealed in glued containers.
Back in 1982, you could grab a box of Tylenol off the shelf, open it like a normal box (the ends weren't glued shut), pop the top off (you had a choice of child-proof or non-childproof), and the pills were right there without any plastic shrink-wrap around the bottle or any thick seal under the cap. If you went to grab a bottle of ketchup, you could just pop the lid and start pouring. How times have changed. They never did catch the psycho who committed those crimes:
http://www.crimelibrary.com/terrorists_spies/terrorists/tylenol_murders/index.html

Tuesday, April 11, 2006

- Expiration dates for common house-hold items, foods and beauty products. If this list is accurate, then according to my approximations, I have endangered myself 58 times in the past two years:
http://www.realsimple.com/realsimple/content/print/0,22304,676079,00.html

- The Top 87 bad predictions about the future. My favorite quote is from Charles H. Duell, in
1899, "Everything that can be invented, has been invented." Mr. Edison should have smacked this guy up-side his head.
http://www.2spare.com/item_50221.aspx

- If you put the 20 tallest skyscrapers in the world, all in the same city, what would the skyline look like? Well, here is what it would look like. Note: the scale of some of these buildings is clearly incorrect. For example, the Empire State Building definitely is not the tallest building in the world, but it looks slightly taller than the other buildings in this picture:
http://www.skyscrapernews.com/wtb1.jpg

- You have until 2029 to finish that book you are reading, or finally watch those shows you Tivo'ed the other night. There is a 1 in 6250 chance a giant asteroid will smack into the earth in 2029:
http://www.paramuspost.com/article.php/20060316230330846

- We are one step closer to creating an actual Steve Austin and Jamie Summers. Scientists have given a man robotic arms, which he can control with his mind. They have also given a blind woman the gift of limited sight:
http://rdu.news14.com/content/top_stories/default.asp?ArID=82612

Steve Austin

- When you ask for a carbonated beverage, do you say "soda", "pop", "coke", or something else entirely? I have always asked for a soda or pop, but my parents only use the word pop. The following map shows how people from different regions of the U.S. have a different way of referring to a carbonated beverage:
http://www.popvssoda.com/images/smalldrawn.gif