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Showing posts from October, 2009

how much is one trillion dollar

Here’s a really interesting page from Plain Truth Ministries (PTM), about how much one trillion dollar actually is. It provides an illustrative comparison of the size of an adult human being against one trillion dollars stacked in rows and columns. Starting from a single hundred dollar bill, it portrays the mass of the magic trillion we hear about now and then.

lab for laughter

LaughLab was a year long project set out to discover the world's funniest joke. It was created by Professor Richard Wiseman and The British Association for the Advancement of Science, and involved people sending in their favourite jokes, and rating how funny they found the jokes submitted by others. The project was reported across the globe, accumulating over 40,000 jokes and 1.5 million ratings. LaughLab has now finished, but you can read all about it on this site. The winning joke from their site: Two hunters are out in the woods when one of them collapses. He doesn't seem to be breathing and his eyes are glazed. The other guy whips out his phone and calls the emergency services. He gasps, "My friend is dead! What can I do?". The operator says "Calm down. I can help. First, let's make sure he's dead." There is a silence, then a shot is heard. Back on the phone, the guy says "OK, now what?"

excellent movie clichés

Word processors never display a cursor. You never have to use the space-bar when typing long sentences. Movie character never make typing mistakes; and all monitors display inch-high letters. High-tech computers, such as those used by NASA, the CIA, or some such governmental institution, will have easy to understand graphical interfaces. Those that don't, have incredibly powerful text-bases command shells that can correctly understand and execute commands typed in plain English. Corollary : you can gain access to any information you want by simply typing "ACCESS ALL OF THE SECRET FILES" on any keyboard. You can infect a computer with a destructive virus by simply typing "UPLOAD VIRUS". All computers are connected. You can access the information on the villain's desktop computer, even if it's turned off. Powerful computers beep whenever you press a key or whenever the screen changes. Some computers also slow down the output on t