“It costs too much to manufacture in the USA.” That’s what you year over and over again, it is why everyone from Apple to specialty clothing manufacturers may design their wares in the US but ultimately decide to do the actual manufacturing outside the USA (often in China). It is also why FedEx is apparently “unavailable” to many companies as their planes fly some sort of Apple product into the US in record number.
I was a teenager during the Clinton administration, so I didn’t pay a great deal of attention to the news, but I do remember hearing about the President’s habit of running a few times a week. From what I understood, it wasn’t uncommon for Presidents to run to stay in shape and deal with stress, but it never occurred to me what a Secret Service issue it was! According to former Agent Dan Emmett, they had a hard time finding agents who could protect the President while he was out running: Clinton jogged about three days a week, for no…
Last Friday as I was working at my desk I got a message over Microsoft Lync asking me to join in a conference call. That happens on occasion, but when I opened Lync to reply, I realized I didn’t know a single person mentioned. My name isn’t exactly unique particularly with the way our company assigns email addresses, so I replied simply with my name, organization and the project I am on … and within a few seconds he said ‘oops wrong person’. This morning I loved seeing Dan’s PSA on how to avoid being an online idiot, so I…
Much to my family’s chagrin, I majored in Philosophy in college. I chose philosophy because I loved everything about it, especially the thought experiments. Basically, we’d look at a situation or an example, and debate the underlying moral/metaphysical/ethical/political themes until we either came to a conclusion or talked ourselves in circles. Philosophy taught me the importance of standing behind my beliefs, of expressing myself in a clear fashion, and of making sure any argument I laid out could be defended (often in front of the rest of my class, and while my professor tore into me until I gave in or…
This morning I grabbed a free ebook I found on the ‘Free Fridays’ Nook blog called Red to Black, which sounded pretty good. After completing the ‘purchase’, I was prompted to take a survey. I will usually take surveys for tech magazines or sites I like, so I said ‘yes’ and went ahead. I made it half-way down the first page before I was halted by the image above. Can you see what is wrong?
I got an email a while ago pointing me to an article from late last year about a new way to watch the Star Wars movies … and was reminded of it when I saw a post at Neatorama. It is quite intriguing and a new way to look at things – though not without flaws of its own. Here is the core premise: Next time you want to introduce someone to Star Wars for the first time, watch the films with them in this order: IV, V, II, III, VI Notice something? Yeah, Episode I is gone. Episodes II…
There are a number things that really sum up the evening, some that require a bit of explanation and others we can list out. Oh, and I am not going to a full award-winner run-down … you can get that here. Let’s do the bullet points first: They could have subtitled the show ‘We give out more awards in the first half-hour than the Grammys do all night!’. And it would be accurate. The Grammys are about showing you why you should buy the crap the labels are pushing … the Oscars are about rewarding accomplishments. The awards were pretty…
I make my living as a statistician and also have a background in optical physics, so I have been on both sides of the experimental design and analysis table. I have also been on both sides of debates about the quality and reliability of data from an experiment. So where am I going with this? Do you remember last fall when we heard about the discovery and subsequent ‘proof’ of faster-than-light neutrinos? Here are some details: New high-precision tests carried out by the OPERA collaboration in Italy broadly confirm its claim, made in September, to have detected neutrinos travelling at…
The NIH estimates that as many as 15 – 20% of Americans have some degree of dyslexia, which can make reading and comprehension difficult. It often results in sufferers transposing or rotating letters or numbers, as well as having difficulty differentiating similar looking letters such as i and j. They might also see the letters and numbers floating and moving as they try to read … which can cause issues with reading speed and comprehension. When I was young kids with these sorts of issues were simply labeled ‘slow’ (or worse), but now the condition can be recognized and diagnosed,…
I was a vegetarian for 7 years, so I have eaten my fair share of veggie burgers and fake bacon (actually, fake bacon is why I stopped being a vegetarian, but that’s a whole other story). So the idea of “fake” meat doesn’t bother me most of the time, but this latest news is truly creepy-scientists are working on making “meat” using stem cells and Petri dishes. According to the BBC: Scientists in the Netherlands hoping to create a more efficient alternative to rearing animals have grown small pieces of beef muscle in a laboratory. These strips will be mixed…
… or, at least that is how it seems. Paris Hilton had a amazingly dreadful album a few years ago that made people realize that no amount of money can buy you talent, and apparently it also can’t buy good enough taste in producers or songwriters to put together something reasonable. Welcome to 2012 and the new release from Paris Hilton just a couple weeks after the one year anniversary of Rebecca Black’s Friday. And while many call that song the worst ever … this one makes Friday look like genius. The song is bad enough, but the video is…
Across the last two companies I have worked for the past 20 years, I have taken about 10 email etiquette courses and refreshers. There are loads of rules about whether or not to send, who to include, what to say and how to say it, and when to just step away from the computer and make human contact. Now we have a flow chart that will help any home or business user make that decision. And not surprisingly for anyone who has taken one of these corporate email classes … in most cases the answer is ‘NO’! Here is the…
This week on Facebook there are loads of those ‘what I do, what friends think I do, what my parents think I do …’ picture collages going around. Some are funny, some simply try too hard. There are always a bunch of comments which I can summarize to save you time: “haha … so true”. (you’re welcome) I caught this one on a guitar-centric site this week, and what was amazing was not so much the image, which is just another mildly amusing stereotype at play, but the discussion. If you look at the core of the image, there are…
Musical education is a critically important part of the cultural upbringing of every child, and this video shows how to introduce your child at an early age to the seminal ‘gangsta’ rap group N.W.A without potentially compromising OTHER messages you are trying to teach them … … oh just watch and enjoy!
Have you ever taken a ride on Star Tours at Disney? The first time we went as a family in 2001 was on a Star Wars Weekend, and taking the Star Tours ride was a major part of the fun for all of us. We rode it again the other two trips we made, and it possesses great memories, although it is clear that it is time for a revamp. This year the ride gets that revamp – but an independent film maker has recreated the entire ride in a 2D and 3D video experience! Here are some details: In…
Patchen Barss’ book The Erotic Engine has the subtitle “How Pornography Has Powered Mass Communication from Gutenberg to Google”. An article on it highlights ten technologies that “secretly owe debts to the pornography business” Among them, E-commerce, Streaming video, Webcams and Bandwidth; you can read the fascinating post here. But if the Pornography industry drove forward electronic communication, it was an entirely different arena that drove the print world it is replacing. What was it? Religion.
This week I had to visit a company making equipment for a project I’m working on, and due to the locations of both of our companies, it was simply easier to do the 350 mile drive each way over the last couple of days. As a result – and also the result of the rental car not having any sort of MP3 player input jack, and me not bringing any CDs – I listened to a lot of radio. I heard angering stories about Fannie Mae & Freddie Mac, Komen, and the state of financial literacy in our nation. I…
Judie posted on these über-cool JumpFromPaper bags the other day. As she wrote, I loved the way “Who Framed Roger Rabbit” (1988) and “Cool World” (1992) mixed cartoon elements into a real-world backdrop. I enjoyed the same effect as a kid, watching older Disney movies such as Mary Poppins, Bedknobs and Broomsticks, and Song of the South. There’s just something quirky and irresistible about imagining a world where cartoons can come to life; anything can happen! The bags are the creation of design duo, Chay Su and Rika Lin. They have produced a line of travel, camera, laptop and general gear…
Despite loads of other successes through the years, Matthew Broderick will forever be tied to the iconic role of Ferris Bueller. And unlike some actors with hits from that same era (John Cusack in Better Off Dead, Val Kilmer in Real Genius), Broderick has never backed away from the enduring love of all things Bueller. So when I saw the teaser late last week that he would be appearing in a Super Bowl ad based around Ferris Bueller, I was intrigued. Now that the full commercial has been release … I just HAD to share!
Pulp Fiction One of the things I most love about certain movies are the iconic quotes they contain; phrases like, “Bring out the Gimp!” from Pulp Fiction, “May the Force be with you.” from Star Wars, and “I’m not even supposed to be here today!” from Clerks. Say those words, and anyone whose seen the movie will immediately know which one you are talking about. So how could I not be intrigued by the text art created by Jerod Gibson?
Time for another cool mashup video! The folks at Ultimate Guitar have put together a bunch of mashups of pop and heavy metal music, all of which are pretty fun … but this one was my favorite! It takes Ke$ha’s Tik Tok opening and beat track and overlays Lamb of God’s Redneck. Enjoy! And … if you like that you can hit the link above to see Eminem, Jay-Z, Lady Gaga, Katy Perry, as well as Iron Maiden, Korn, Slipknot, Rage Against the Machine and more!