Thursday, August 18, 2005
Really cool Discovery launch photos
STS-114 Discovery RTF – July 26, 2005 10:38 am EST
see a collection of launch photos here.
Why women live longer than men
There’s a group of photos that show you why women live longer than men.
Here’s just one.
via new links
A good hockey player but not a camera lover
TOKYO - Yutaka Fukufuji is ready to ride the buses in hockey's backwaters a few more years if that's what it takes to make the NHL. The Japanese goaltender signed a two-year contract with the Los Angeles Kings this month and will attend a rookie camp next month.
via new links
Wednesday, August 17, 2005
The tomato garden
An old Italian man lived alone in the country.
He wanted to dig his tomato garden, but it was very hard work as the ground was hard.
His only son, Vincent, who used to help him, was in prison. The old man wrote a letter to his son and described his predicament.
Dear Vincent,
I am feeling pretty bad because it looks like I won't be able to plant my tomato garden this year. I'm just getting too old to be digging up a garden plot. If you were here my troubles would be over. I know you would dig the plot for me.
Love Dad
A few days later he received a letter from his son.
Dear Dad,
Not for nothing, but don't dig up that garden. That's where I buried the BODIES.Love Vinnie
At 4 a.m. the next morning, FBI agents and local police arrived and dug up the entire area without finding any bodies. They apologized to the old man and left.
That same day the old man received another letter from his son.
Dear Dad,
Go ahead and plant the tomatoes now. That's the best I could do under the circumstances.
Love Vinnie
Thanks Mary
A man staggered home late after another evening with his drinking buddies....
… S hoes in left hand to avoid waking his wife, he tiptoed as quietly as he could toward the stairs leading to their upstairs bedroom, but misjudged the bottom step in the darkened entryway.
As he caught himself by grabbing the banister, his body swung around and he landed heavily on his rump.
A whiskey bottle in each back pocket broke and made the landing especially painful. Managing to suppress a yelp, the man sprung up, He pulled down his pants, and examined his lacerated and bleeding cheeks in the mirror of the nearby darkened hallway.
He managed to find a large full box of Band-Aids and proceeded to place a patch as best he could on each place he saw blood. After hiding the now empty box, he managed to shuffle and stumble his way to bed.
In the morning, the man awoke with searing pain in his head and butt and his wife staring at him from across the room.
She said, "You were drunk again last night."
Forcing himself to ignore his agony, he looked meekly at her and replied, "Now, hon, why would you say such a mean thing?"
"Well," she said, " it could be the open front door, it could be the glass and whiskey at the bottom of the stairs, it could be the drops of blood trailing through the house, it could be your bloodshot eyes,but, mostly.... it's all those Band-Aids stuck on the downstairs mirror!"
Take a whiz or make a call... heck, do both at the same time
Urine powered batteries developed for your cell phone
Physicists in Singapore have succeeded in creating the first paper battery that generates electricity from urine. This new battery will be the perfect power source for cheap, disposable healthcare test-kits for diseases such as diabetes, and could even be used in emergency situations to power a cell phone.
via hackaday
Tuesday, August 16, 2005
A very unusual obituary
The News and Observer of Raleigh North Carolina ran this obituary recently.
Here are a few lines from the obit:
On June 3, 2005 at 10:45 p.m. in Memphis, Tennessee, Dorothy Gibson Cully, 86, died peacefully, while in the loving care of her two favorite children, Barbara and David. All of her breath leaked out.
….. he ultimately stuck his head in a heated gas oven with a golden delicious apple propped in his mouth. Miraculously, the apple was saved for the evening dessert. Calvin was not.
At the time of her death, Dot was visiting her daughter, Carol in Memphis. Carol and her husband, Ron, away from home attending a "very important conference" at a posh Florida resort, rushed home 10 days later after learning of the death.
Dot graduated from Eastern High School at 15, worked in Baltimore full time from 1934 to 1979, beginning as a factory worker at Cross & Blackwell and retiring after 30 years as property manager and controller for a Baltimore conglomerate, Housing Engineering Company, all while raising four children, two of who are fairly normal.
Opinions about the details of this obit are not, since Mom would have liked it this way.
It’s worth reading in it’s entirity.
Where company names originated
SAP: "Systems, Applications, Products in Data Processing", formed by four ex-IBM employees who used to work in the 'Systems/Applications/Projects' group of IBM.
SONY: From the Latin word 'sonus' meaning sound, and 'sonny' a slang used by Americans to refer to a bright youngster.
Yahoo!: The word was invented by Jonathan Swift and used in his book Gulliver's Travels. It represents a person who is repulsive in appearance and action and is barely human. Yahoo! founders Jerry Yang and David Filo selected the name because they considered themselves yahoos.
Motorola: Founder Paul Galvin came up with this name when his company started manufacturing radios for cars. The popular radio company at the time was called Victrola.
Microsoft: It was coined by Bill Gates to represent the company that was devoted to MICROcomputer SOFTware. Originally christened Micro-Soft, the '-' was removed later on.
Hewlwtt-Packard: Bill Hewlett and Dave Packard tossed a coin to decide whether the company they founded would be called Hewlett-Packard or Packard-Hewlett.
Google: The name started as a jockey boast about the amount of information the search-engine would be able to search. It was originally named 'Googol', a word for the number represented by 1 followed by 100 zeros. After founders - Stanford graduate students Sergey Brin and Larry Page presented their project to an angel investor, they received a cheque made out to 'Google.
Apple Computers: Favourite fruit of founder Steve Jobs. He was three months late in filing a name for the business, and he threatened to call his company Apple Computers if the other colleagues didn't suggest a better name by 5 o'clock.
Adobe: The name came from the river Adobe Creek that ran behind the house of founder John Warnock.
A few more can be found here.
via The Presurfer
Monday, August 15, 2005
Useless skills
You can learn a lot of time wasting skills here. For instance:
- How to twirl a pen
- Easy air guitar – Volume I
- One handed card shuffling
- Guide to balloons and ballooning
Plus much, much more. Click here to get edjumakated.
The Gross-Out Quiz
Afew questions from the quiz:
In a single year, how many descendents can a pair of rats produce?
Approximately how much dung does an adult elephant produce each day?
The regal horned lizard isn't too big, but it repels predators in short order with what gross behavior?
Take the quiz here.
via The Presurfer
Mom was right, you can go blind
Researchers have finally found evidence for what good Catholic boys have known all along – erotic images make you go blind. The effect is temporary and lasts just a moment, but the research has added to road-safety campaigners’ calls to ban sexy billboard-advertising near busy roads, in the hope of preventing accidents.
The new study by US psychologists found that people shown erotic or gory images frequently fail to process images they see immediately afterwards. And the researchers say some personality types appear to be affected more than others by the phenomenon, known as “emotion-induced blindness”.
via The Presurfer
Dictionary of Prison slang
Here are a few examples of prison slang:
CHALK: A crude wine made from yeast, sugar, rice or fruit and water.
FALL: A> (from); The county the inmate was convicted in "Where did you fall from."
FAT BACK: Meaning that a person has a big butt.
KILL SHIELD: A garment worn by female officers, usually a long vest or jacket.
PISTOLS: Leather work gloves with all of the fingers cut off of them.
More can be found here.
via J-Walk blog
For sale on eBay
This table was for sale on eBay. How can you tell that this table was put up for bid by a man?
Look closely before you look at the answer below.
Look at the mirror in the picture.
Thanks Paul
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