Tuesday, August 31, 2010

Cephalopods buy stuff and play Farmville

- Most popular U.S. consumer products. Very enlightening:
http://finance.yahoo.com/family-home/article/110348/the-popularity-issue


Why do strands of spaghetti so rarely snap into only two pieces?
http://io9.com/5613155/when-spaghetti-snaps


- Six ways Farmville gets you hooked:
http://www.cracked.com/article_18709_6-devious-ways-farmville-gets-people-hooked_p1.html


- Simple animations of complicated mechanisms.  Even more enlightening than the first link:
http://mytechnologyworld9.blogspot.com/2010/08/complicated-mechanisms-explained-in.html


- Last week, Nepture finished an orbit around the sun.  Not a big deal?  Think again.  Nepture orbits the sun once every 165 years:
http://www.space.com/spacewatch/neptune-first-orbit-around-sun-since-discovery-100818.html


- 25 science-fiction movies you must watch. I don't make these lists, I just provide links to them:
http://io9.com/5619137/25-classic-science-fiction-movies-that-everybody-must-watch


- 24 things you might be saying wrong. I violate most of these on a daily basis:
http://shine.yahoo.com/channel/life/24-things-you-might-be-saying-wrong-2338028/#poll-C926B9A6965B11DF88C4EE5DB10B4572


- How to make Monopoly more fun.  I like some of these suggestions:
http://videogames.yahoo.com/events/plugged-in/how-to-make-monopoly-fun/1408875


- Last year I watched a program on the Discovery channel about what would happen to life on earth, over a very long period of time, if human-beings suddenly vanished.  One of the theories put forth during the TV show was that certain cephalopods (squid and octopi) would emerge as the next intelligent creature.  The reasoning is rather sound.  Cephalopods, with their eight completely independent limbs, have very complex brains.  It wouldn't be much of a evolutionary leap for their brains to develop enough to create self-consciousness and creative thought.  The following article kind of backs-up that idea by claiming cephalopods have consciousness:
http://io9.com/5626679/three-arguments-for-the-consciousness-of-cephalopods

1 comment:

Randal said...

I'm glad Moon is on the list - I thought it was pretty amazing.

I'm not happy that Eternal Sunshine is on the list. Pretentious drivel.