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Submitted by Larry on Thu, June 5th, 2008 at 02:35:17 PM EDT
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Submitted by Larry on Wed, May 14th, 2008 at 10:17:26 AM EDT
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 If you ever opened a Mad magazine, you're probably familiar with the Fold-Ins. NY Times has an article about Al Jaffee, the artist who has been drawing it since 1964.
There are also various web-interactive fold-ins that you can enjoy!
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Submitted by Larry on Thu, March 27th, 2008 at 11:22:18 AM EDT
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 Food never looks quite the same as they do in the ads. Check here for a long comparison. Yes, if you can photograph food, you can photograph anything, but most of these aren't even close.. let's demand our money back!
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Submitted by Larry on Mon, February 25th, 2008 at 10:45:23 PM EST
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| Never too late to start smoking |
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Submitted by Larry on Fri, February 22nd, 2008 at 10:49:08 AM EST
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 Most smokers remember their first time smoking, but while most of us started in high school with the usual peer pressure schdeal, one man tries to smoke for the first time.. at the age of 46. It's an interestingly (mostly) rational take from someone that claims to know better.
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Submitted by Larry on Fri, November 30th, 2007 at 05:01:20 PM EST
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Here's a simple yet addictive game - trap the cat.. every turn you can put up a barrier, and then the cat will move one step in one direction. Can you trap the cat?
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Submitted by Larry on Fri, November 2nd, 2007 at 12:04:03 PM EDT
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 Shameless plug here - if you ever heard of the social game Werewolves, check out my version on Facebook.
For those not in the know, Werewolves also goes by other names - Mafia, Assassin, and possibly others. The point of the game is that there are some minority that wants to fool the majority to vote off the majority until they are the majority. Some variations apply.
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Submitted by Larry on Tue, October 16th, 2007 at 10:31:34 AM EDT
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This is without a doubt the best five differences game I've ever played. A self-proclaimed pro, even I had trouble with some of the subtleness! (While being obvious when you spot it - not a pixel or two off..)
That said, there is a level where there are stars in the sky.. and you have to find the differences. That one was hard because of the dust and dead pixels on my monitor..
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Submitted by Larry on Wed, September 19th, 2007 at 05:54:34 PM EDT
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There are fewer things harder in life than tackling death. The only mercy is that we are usually apathetic as to when.
Randy Pausch, a computer scientist at Carnegie Mellon gave his Last Lesson.
"We all run the risk of getting hit by the cancer dart."
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Submitted by Larry on Tue, August 21st, 2007 at 02:17:18 PM EDT
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Check out this comic about a guy who lost his memory and is trying to figure out his purpose.
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| What's a recent grad got to do |
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Submitted by Larry on Wed, July 18th, 2007 at 12:06:54 PM EDT
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Though I'm not a recent grad anymore, I've been asking these kind of question for awhile. Even though this article is from a few months ago, it's sound financial advice for adults in their early 20s. Read it up! All in all, it's a lot easier to save money if you adopt a lifestyle a few notches below your earnings capacity. If you try it the other way around - spending all you make (or more) right out of the gate - then saving will require painful cutbacks from the lifestyle you've gotten used to. And the sad truth is, many people never make that adjustment.
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Submitted by Larry on Thu, June 28th, 2007 at 06:34:13 PM EDT
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Stumbled upon this nifty website - Seat Guru - which basically shows you a colour coded map of the plane you'll be taking. All seats are not created equally, so beware and do your research!
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| Repeat a lie enough times |
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Submitted by Larry on Tue, May 22nd, 2007 at 09:44:56 AM EDT
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Or how propaganda works.. repeat something enough times, and people will value it as much as many people voicing the same opinion: The studies found that an opinion is more likely to be assumed to be the majority opinion when multiple group members express their opinion. However, the study also showed that hearing one person express the same opinion multiple times had nearly the same effect on listener's perception of the opinion being popular as hearing multiple people state his/her opinion.
Ah, so advertising wins again!
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| The difference between =) and ^_^ |
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Submitted by Larry on Thu, May 10th, 2007 at 12:46:07 PM EDT
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When I first reached the internets, I was confused by the =), and then later, the ^_^. It kind of confused me a little bit until someone told me they were emoticons. Apparently, culture is why we have different happy faces: Intrigued, Yuki decided to study this phenomenon. First, he and his colleagues asked groups of American and Japanese students to rate how happy or sad various computer-generated emoticons seemed to them. As Yuki predicted, the Japanese gave more weight to the emoticons' eyes when gauging emotions, whereas Americans gave more weight to the mouth. For example, the American subjects rated smiling emoticons with sad-looking eyes as happier than the Japanese subjects did.
Not surprisingly, our expressions online mirror how we want to be interpreted. Also interestingly, the Japanese might be thus better at perceiving people's true feelings, since it's harder to fake eye signals.. =)
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| Dogs Shouldn't Be Playing Poker |
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Submitted by Larry on Wed, May 2nd, 2007 at 12:14:53 PM EDT
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 Dogs have a bias that's easily read (probably because they aren't actively suppressing it). So if you want to know if a dog likes you, just look at its tails: When the dogs saw their owners, their tails all wagged vigorously with a bias to the right side of their bodies, Dr. Vallortigara said. Their tails wagged moderately, again more to the right, when faced with an unfamiliar human. Looking at the cat, a four-year-old male whose owners volunteered him for the experiment, the dogs' tails again wagged more to the right but in a lower amplitude.
Apparently, humans do the same thing, sort of. Maybe that's why there are more righties..
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Submitted by Larry on Tue, May 1st, 2007 at 04:25:24 PM EDT
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Be careful what you name your child - it might affect the "nurture" part of the equation: Part of the reason is that names provide a powerful image of a person and influence people's reactions to them. An Isabella is less likely to study maths, according to the theory, because people would not expect her to. 'There are plenty of exceptions but, on average, people treat Isabellas differently to Alexes,' commented David Figlio, professor of economics at the University of Florida and the author of the report. 'Girls with feminine names were often typecast.' Figlio pointed to the controversy that arose over the first talking Barbie's phrase, 'math is hard'. 'It is a stereotype, and girls with particularly feminine names may feel more pressure to avoid technical subjects,' he said. Not that they were any less capable. When the Isabellas, Annas and Elizabeths took on their tougher-named peers in science, they performed just as well.
Ah, it's a good thing my name isn't something obscene!
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Submitted by Larry on Thu, April 19th, 2007 at 10:29:22 AM EDT
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From the Ladies Home Journal, here's a list of what we should expect by the year 2000.. it's amusing to look back on these - I guess not everyone can predict what happen in the year 2000 as well as I can (well, at this moment anyhow)! This is from 1900, so maybe we can extrapolate what will happen in 2100! Prediction #9: Photographs will be telegraphed from any distance. If there be a battle in China a hundred years hence snapshots of its most striking events will be published in the newspapers an hour later. Even to-day photographs are being telegraphed over short distances. Photographs will reproduce all of Nature’s colors.
Prediction #10: Man will See Around the World. Persons and things of all kinds will be brought within focus of cameras connected electrically with screens at opposite ends of circuits, thousands of miles at a span. American audiences in their theatres will view upon huge curtains before them the coronations of kings in Europe or the progress of battles in the Orient. The instrument bringing these distant scenes to the very doors of people will be connected with a giant telephone apparatus transmitting each incidental sound in its appropriate place. Thus the guns of a distant battle will be heard to boom when seen to blaze, and thus the lips of a remote actor or singer will be heard to utter words or music when seen to move.
Prediction #18: Telephones Around the World. Wireless telephone and telegraph circuits will span the world. A husband in the middle of the Atlantic will be able to converse with his wife sitting in her boudoir in Chicago. We will be able to telephone to China quite as readily as we now talk from New York to Brooklyn. By an automatic signal they will connect with any circuit in their locality without the intervention of a "hello girl".
Ah, in the year 2000! Maybe we'll even eat giant strawberries. That would be sweet.
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Submitted by Larry on Thu, April 12th, 2007 at 10:52:48 AM EDT
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Kurt Vonnegut, Author, War Hero, passed away yesterday. The Greatest Living American author is no more.
Yahoo News, NY Times
He was always quotable:
"Laughter and tears are both responses to frustration and exhaustion. I myself prefer to laugh, since there is less cleaning up to do afterward."
"New knowledge is the most valuable commodity on earth. The more truth we have to work with, the richer we become."
"Maturity is a bitter disappointment for which no remedy exists, unless laughter can be said to remedy anything."
"A purpose of human life, no matter who is controlling it, is to love whoever is around to be loved."
"How nice--to feel nothing, and still get full credit for being alive."
"If I should ever die, God forbid, let this be my epitaph:
THE ONLY PROOF HE NEEDED
FOR THE EXISTENCE OF GOD
WAS MUSIC"
For more:
http://www.brainyquote.com/quotes/authors/k/kurt_vonnegut.html
http://www.quotationspage.com/quotes/Kurt_Vonnegut/
http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Kurt_Vonnegut
So it goes. Kurt's in heaven now.
( Read the rest of this story!)
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| An Appreciation for Music (and Life) |
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Submitted by Larry on Mon, April 9th, 2007 at 07:37:59 PM EDT
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Here's the setup: near a subway station, a street performer is playing some beautiful music. Do you stop and listen to the music? What if he was world-classed? A onetime child prodigy, at 39 Joshua Bell has arrived as an internationally acclaimed virtuoso. Three days before he appeared at the Metro station, Bell had filled the house at Boston's stately Symphony Hall, where merely pretty good seats went for $100. Two weeks later, at the Music Center at Strathmore, in North Bethesda, he would play to a standing-room-only audience so respectful of his artistry that they stifled their coughs until the silence between movements. But on that Friday in January, Joshua Bell was just another mendicant, competing for the attention of busy people on their way to work.
...
Bell decided to begin with "Chaconne" from Johann Sebastian Bach's Partita No. 2 in D Minor. Bell calls it "not just one of the greatest pieces of music ever written, but one of the greatest achievements of any man in history. It's a spiritually powerful piece, emotionally powerful, structurally perfect. Plus, it was written for a solo violin, so I won't be cheating with some half-assed version."
It's a long article, but it's very well written. Pearls before breakfast indeed, but only if you take the time out and listen to some music..
Edit: Here's the followup discussion.
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Submitted by Larry on Fri, March 30th, 2007 at 06:53:48 PM EDT
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As a lazy prankster (who can sometimes cruise on reputation alone) I'm probably going to be lazy again this year. (Though I'm flattered that many people complained when I said I was closing down this site a few April Fool's ago!) What pranks do you have up your sleeve? Too bad this year it falls on a Sunday, so instead of office pranks, there'll be more.. personal pranks!
If you are in need of some ideas, don't forget to check out Top 100 April Fool's Day Hoaxes of All Time, some really bad April Fool's Hoaxes, and 7 great sport pranks. Let me know how yours turn out!
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