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 the screen so that it doesn't go faster than you can read. The really advanced ones also emulate the sound of a dot-matrix printer.
• All computer panels have thousands of volts and flash pots just underneath the surface. Malfunctions are indicated by a bright flash, a puff of smoke, a shower of sparks, and an explosion that forces you backwards.
• People typing away on a computer will turn it off without saving the data.
• A hacker can get into the most sensitive computer in the world before intermission and guess the secret password in two tries.
• Any PERMISSION DENIED has an OVERRIDE function.
• Complex calculations and loading of huge amounts of data will be accomplished in under three seconds. Movie modems usually appear to transmit data at the speed of two gigabytes per second.
• When the power plant/missile site/whatever overheats, all the control panels will explode, as will the entire building.
• The more high-tech the equipment, the more buttons it has. However, everyone must have been highly trained, because the buttons aren't labelled.
• Most computers, no matter how small, have reality-defying three-dimensional, active-animation, photo-realistic graphics capability.
• Laptops, for some strange reason, always seem to have amazing real-time video phone capabilities and the performance of a CRAY Supercomputer.

For many clichés regarding cars, bombs, clothes, aliens and food, visit this site.