Thursday, July 19, 2007

- Can you name the 43 presidents in ten minutes? I named 40 of the 43. I forgot the 8th president, the 14th president and the 21st president:
http://www.sporcle.com/games/presidents.php

- The 30 wealthiest Americans of all-time, adjusted for inflation. Most of these guys were around during the reign of the 21st president:
http://www.nytimes.com/ref/business/20070715_GILDED_GRAPHIC.html#

- I gave up on the The Onion a few years ago. It's just too left-wing for me, but a contributor at NRO (National Review Online) posted a link to the following article on The Onion. It is hilarious!!!
http://www.theonion.com/content/news/john_edwards_vows_to_end_all_bad

- According to the following scientist, humanity has to get off this rock and onto Mars in 46 years or we are all doomed! I have always felt that we need to leave the earth eventually if humans want to keep on thriving, but we have more than 46 years. We have plenty of time. No rush. Perhaps what you will gain most of all from this article is a discussion of the Copernican Principle, which I had never heard of until I read this piece:
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/07/17/science/17tier.html?_r=1&ref=science&oref=slogin

- Computers can no longer lose at checkers: http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20070719/ap_on_hi_te/solving_checkers

- Which Desperate Housewife are you? My girlfriend forced me to take this quiz! (I am joking. I was happy to try it.) Apparently I am Bree. I have only seen the show a few times, so I have no idea if this is a good thing or a bad thing. I have a gut feeling it's not something to brag about:
http://abc.go.com/primetime/desperate/quiz/index.html

Tuesday, July 03, 2007

- The seven most annoying things about the immediate future:
http://valleywag.com/tech/modern-and-awkward/the-seven-most-annoying-things-about-the-future-270430.php

- That Jack Bauer guy sure has friends in high places. Apparently Justice Antonin Scalia is a big fan of the show 24, and recently used moments from the show to justify pieces of his judicial philosophy:
http://www.theglobeandmail.com/servlet/story/LAC.20070616.BAUER16/TPStory/TPNational/Television/

- How many bytes are in a megabyte? How many meters are in a kilometer? You probably know those answers by heart, but do you know how many bits are in a terabit? Muahaha! The following chart shows all of the prefixes for units. Get use to the prefixes tera, peta, and exo. They will become relevant in the next ten years:
http://www.unc.edu/~rowlett/units/prefixes.html

- Speaking of petabytes, IBM created a new super-computer that can do over 1 petaflop (1 quadrillon or 1,000,000,000,000,000) operations in a second. It's articles like this that motivate me to finish my computer science degree:
http://www.engadget.com/2007/06/26/ibm-unveils-one-petaflop-blue-gene-p-supercomputer/#comments

- Why do certain colors represent certain items or ideas? For example, why is the Master's jacket always green? Why are republican states red and democratic voting states blue? The next two links explains these color-related questions, and many more:
http://www.colourlovers.com/blog/2007/05/01/11-great-color-legends/
http://www.colourlovers.com/blog/2007/07/03/13-more-great-color-legends/