Category Archives: Miscellaneous

Ancient Pompeii

Forking street in ancient Pompeii, originally uploaded by gisleh. Check out the grooves worn into the roads in ancient Pompeii by the chariots. Apparently they were also subject to detours from roadwork, one-way streets and traffic jams. Darn New York … Continue reading

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Unsubstantiated statement of the day

The US will not get rid of $1 bills until $5 becomes the norm for minimum tips.

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Picasa photo tuning

This is a continuation of Part 1 of my Picasa discussion. I am continually surprised by how powerful the relatively simple photo tuning tools of Picasa are. Take for example this photo my wife snapped while flying from Seattle to … Continue reading

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Tuesdays and Google Reader

I read an interesting article linked from Hacker News to 16th Letter which discussed different productivity on different days. While both myself and Melissa are both late to the party on productivity on Tuesdays, I was interested to see that … Continue reading

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First accepted Fark.com link

Back in the day (ie as a procastinating PhD student) I used to read Fark.com every day. I submitted a few links (mostly personal articles to be honest) but none got accepted. I don’t know why it tickles me so … Continue reading

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Wikipedia article of the day – Banach-Tarski Paradox

As found from a commenter on Hacker News, the Banach-Tarski Paradox is described as thus: The Banach–Tarski paradox is a theorem in set theoretic geometry which states that a solid ball in 3-dimensional space can be split into several non-overlapping … Continue reading

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Is there anything Wikipedia doesn’t know? The Palace of the Soviets

Through Google Reader, to BoingBoing, to Modern Mechanix, I found the following Wikipedia article detailing the Palace of the Soviets, which I found fascinating. The 30s was a heady time for large scale architecture in Europe. Albert Speer rose through … Continue reading

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Sand won’t save you this time.

No, it certainly won’t. Holy crap that is some scary stuff.  Ever felt like burning a bucket of sand?  Just get yourself some chlorine trifluoride.  Asbestos contaminating your house?  This will burn it right up. There’s a report from the … Continue reading

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Wikipedia is a productivity killer

Start on a page like the Dunning-Kruger effect, and end up on something fascinating like like fact that 0.9 recurring is equal to 1. The notations “0.999…” and “1” represent the same number. The equality has long been accepted by … Continue reading

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American Idol auditions

This may be a bit late, but I was sent this explanation of the Dunning-Kruger effect by a work colleague.  It perfectly explains the reason behind the look of incredulousness on the faces of people auditioning. Kruger and Dunning noted … Continue reading

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