Archive for the ‘Interesting’ Category
A Sunken Town Rises
This combination photograph shows the ruins of a church in the Andean town of Potosi in 2008 (L) and its current state on February 21, 2010. The 25-meter-tall church and ruins of a Potosi town flooded in the early 1980s have emerged from the Uribante-Caparo water reservoir after a drought reduced water levels.
If the day starts to feel shorter, here’s why
The earthquake that killed more than 700 people in Chile on Feb. 27 probably shifted the Earth’s axis and shortened the day, a National Aeronautics and Space Administration scientist said.
Earthquakes can involve shifting hundreds of kilometers of rock by several meters, changing the distribution of mass on the planet. This affects the Earth’s rotation, said Richard Gross, a geophysicist at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California, who uses a computer model to calculate the effects.
“The length of the day should have gotten shorter by 1.26 microseconds (millionths of a second),” Gross, said today in an e-mailed reply to questions. “The axis about which the Earth’s mass is balanced should have moved by 2.7 milliarcseconds (about 8 centimeters or 3 inches).”
Brigham Young University Beard Exception
What is the process for obtaining a beard exception?
A student who wishes to obtain a beard exception must visit a BYU Student Health Center doctor by appointment (422.5156). The doctor will fax his recommendation. The student then needs to come to the Honor Code Office to fill out some paperwork and receive the letter allowing the growth of the beard, if approved. If a yearly beard exception is granted, a new Student ID will be issued after the beard has been fully grown, and must be renewed every year by repeating the process.
If a request is granted for a temporary or more permanent beard exception the student will be notified by the Honor Code Office; at which time the student will come into the office to complete the necessary paperwork. After completion of this process the student may then grow a full beard according the guidelines given.
Wall of Sound
The worlds most powerful iPod speaker is available for just under $5,000 and weighs over 200 lbs.
Question: Should “worlds” in that sentence have an apostrophe? I think it should, but per their website they didn’t include one.
Emergency shipment of condoms headed to Olympic athletes
Rowdy curling crowds; spontaneous street parties; public drunkeness. You don’t have to look far for evidence that the crowds at Winter Games in Vancouver know how to have a good time.
And, as if anymore proof is needed that a wild Olympic atmosphere permeates B.C.’s largest city, now there’s an apparent condom shortage.
That’s right. As you read this, an emergency shipment of condoms is desperately making its way across Canada to the West Coast city.
Health officials in Vancouver have already provided 100,000 free condoms to the roughly 7,000 ahtletes and officials at the Games. That’s about 14 condoms per person. But as of Wednesday, those supplies started running dangerously low.
So naturally, the Canadian Foundation for AIDS research decided to step and make sure there were no hitches in Olympic action.
“When we heard about the condom shortage in Vancouver, we felt it important to respond immediately,” said Kerry Whiteside, CANFAR’s Executive Director. The organization assembled three large boxes of about 8,500 condoms, much to the relief of libidos at the Olympic Village. They’re expected to arrive on Thursday.
Free condoms first started to be distributed at the Olympics in Barcelona at the 1992 Games. This appears to be the first time that a shortage has struck the Games.
The Headline Made Me Think . . .
So I’m checking out the local news on the Dallas Morning News website, trying to navigate my way through all the flash advertisements (that deserves its own post) and run across this article: Dallas businessman arrested, barred from SMU over student complaints
At the end of the article, it states that this guy was a staffer for both the Reagan and George H.W. Bush administrations and is the chairman of the Texas Commission on the Arts.
So I wonder why they didn’t go for a catchier headline, like : Former White House staffer, chairman of the Texas Commission on the Arts, arrested, barred from SMU over student complains. That headline might be a little long, but not sure why with those credentials the decided to use the generic “Dallas businessman” moniker.
MummyMug
The MummyMug is a stylish coffee/tea mug with a lip-openable lid. Simply fill the mug with your favorite hot beverage, secure the screw-on lid and start sipping. By lightly pressing your top lip against the top layer of the lid at any point around the rim of the mug, you release the drinking mechanism. The lid automatically closes up after every sip, ensuring that the MummyMug remains securely closed if accidentally knocked over.
‘Cuss-Free Week’ in California
Watch your mouth, California.
The nation’s most populous state is asking its 38 million residents to stop using four-letter words for an entire week beginning Monday.
On a voice vote, the Assembly passed a resolution Thursday declaring the first week of March each year as “Cuss-Free Week” and inviting, but not requiring, Californians to comply.
The resolution honors McKay Hatch, who started a no-cussing club at his South Pasadena junior high school nearly three years ago.
The 16-year-old Hatch, who has seen no-cussing clubs expand to more than 100 schools and 35,000 online members, attended Thursday’s Assembly vote.
We are happiest at 74, says new report
Fewer responsibilities, financial worries and more time to yourself leads to contentment previously unknown in earlier life.
According to the report from the teenage years until 40 happiness declines. It levels off until 46 and then starts to increase until peaking at 74.
Scientists from Germany and America regularly questioned 21,000 men and women how happy they were with their lives providing a scale from one to seven – seven indicated complete contentment.
Teenagers in their late teens marked themselves at around 5.5 which fell to around 5 by age 40.
At 74 happiness averaged at 5.9.
The report, published in the journal Social Indicators Research, said this could be due to older people being more appreciative.
Just 40 years to go . . .
Orca pulls SeaWorld trainer to her death
ORLANDO – A SeaWorld trainer was killed Wednesday when an orca pulled her into the water as she was talking to visitors.
Orange County Fire Rescue spokesman John Mulhall said paramedics were called to the Shamu Stadium at the theme park resort where they found a worker who could not be revived.
Here are the parts that got my attention:
“The trainer was explaining different things about the whale … and then the trainer that was down there walked away from the window … and then Telly (the whale) took off really fast in the tank and he came back, shot up in the air, grabbed the trainer by the waist and started thrashing (her) around,” Biniak said.
It turns out this killer whale has a track record:
WKMG reported Biniak as saying that the killer whale — a 30-year-old, 12,300-pound male orca that also is called Tillikum — does not typically have a trainer in its tank because it is too large.
The same orca was cited in two earlier deaths, according the Humane Society of the United States, which has campaigned to keep marine mammals out of theme parks.
Stereo Mood
Behind every song there’s always an emotion. We don’t know why but maybe that’s why we love music.
So we’ve created a way to suggest songs that follow your feelings: stereomood is the emotional internet radio, providing music that best suits your mood and your activities. How do i feel? What am i doing now?
Basically you just click on a tag and then you got music. Here’s just a sample of some of the tags.
Top 10 most trusted brands in the U.S.
- Amazon.com
- FedEx
- Downy
- Huggies
- Tide
- Tylenol
- Toyota
- WebMD
- Pampers
- UPS (United Parcel Service)
The survey was taken last quarter, which may explain why Toyota made the list.
Watch this movie and win $10,000 — if you can
NEW DELHI (Reuters Life!) – A Bollywood filmmaker has issued a lucrative challenge to horror movie fans: a $10,000 reward for anyone who can watch his latest supernatural thriller, alone, in a cinema until the closing credits.
Ram Gopal Varma’s “Phoonk 2,” a sequel to his 2008 film of the same name, is about an evil spirit that traumatizes a family. “Anyone who says the movie cannot scare him is going to be put in a theater by himself,” Varma told reporters in Mumbai at an event to promote the movie.
Varma said the film fan who steps up to the challenge will be wired up to a heart monitoring machine as well as a camera that ensures they keep their eyes open during the whole movie.
Readings from the machines will be shown live on a screen outside the cinema, Varma said, and if the contestant succeeds, they will win 500,000 rupees (approximately $10,850).
