Dear JetBlue,
Since the fundamental purpose of the service you provide is to transport people to a particular location, shouldn’t you at least know which state each of your destination cities is in?
Where is Hartford?
Hartford, Massachusetts?
Author: Ben
Roll Down the Windows
Driving without air conditioning can definitely be uncomfortable. Fortunately, there’s an easy solution requiring only a spare air conditioner and some plywood!
Air Conditioner Repair
I was so obsessed with the air conditioner assembly when I pulled up behind this vehicle at a stop sign next to Wal-Mart that I didn’t even notice the spare tire attached to the roof with what looks suspiciously like duct tape.
Chernobyl vs. A Banana
In the ongoing wake of the Fukushima Daiichi crisis, news outlets have been saying “Three Mile Island” and “Chernobyl” a lot. To help alleviate the ensuing confusion and help us all understand radiation doses a little better, Randall Munroe of xkcd fame has prepared a chart of radiation doses on the xkcd blag.
We can see at the 1µSv scale the effect of eating a banana, at the 1mSv scale the dose one gets during a mammogram, and at the 1Sv scale the doses that are likely to kill you. The dose for “Ten minutes next to the Chernobyl reactor core after explosion and meltdown” is pretty astonishing.
Reinventing the… Encyclopedia?
For today’s lesson, let’s turn to Wikipedia for some information on the wheel:
The wheel is a device that enables efficient movement of an object across a surface where there is a force pressing the object to the surface. Common examples are a cart pulled by a horse, and the rollers on an aircraft flap mechanism.
I feel newly enlightened! But could we suppose for just a moment that if I’m researching the wheel on Wikipedia I am not already intimately familiar with an aircraft flap mechanism’s roller assembly?
Shuttles on a Plane
During the final launch of the space shuttle Discovery a passenger on a passing commercial airliner recorded video of what the launch looked like from the air. Even after watching the launch live in spectacularly high definition video from NASA, this is somehow even more amazing.
Probably the best part is the pilot’s announcement near the beginning:
Folks, the space shuttle’s going off the right side of the aircraft right now. Those of you on the right side of the aircraft can see the space shuttle. Those of you on the left side of the aircraft can probably see the people on the right side of the aircraft looking at the space shuttle.
Then and Now Again
The Toronto 1977 – 2007 photo series showed how Toronto changed over three decades. Photographer Irina Wering’s Back to the Future project shows how people have changed in the same period of time.
Mechi in 1990 & 2010
Each pair takes an original image, usually of a child but occasionally with a teenager or younger adult, and recreates the scene with the same person in the present day.
Some of the pictures look like classic school portraits, while others show a variety of everyday activities that one would expect to see photographed — playing at home or at the beach, or posing at a landmark while on vacation.
Werning has taken care to duplicate not just the location but also the clothes and even the posture and facial expression of each original.
Lali in 1978 & 2010
(via bumbumbum)
Open Two Instances of Mac OS X Applications
Whitson Gordon at Lifehacker just revealed the most exciting thing I’ve ever learned about Mac OS X: the secret to opening two instances of the same application simultaneously.
Unlike Windows, Mac OS X normally only opens each application one time. Then as you try to open new files the application just creates a new window for each one. This is ordinarily no problem at all — you can still have as many PDFs open in Preview as you want; there will just be only one Preview icon in the dock or in the ⌘→ switcher.
But what if you want to open the same file twice? That’s not possible! And what about applications like VLC that only open one window at a time? There, each new video you start playing replaces the previous one.
Opening a file with open -n changes all that. And my life is now happier for it.
The Best Egyptian Protest Signs
Astute observers of current events may recall some sort of hullabaloo in Egypt a little while back having something to do with freedom and democracy.
The Cheezburger Network has showcased some of the best protest signs.
Egypt Protest Sign
They’re all quite clever, such as this programming-themed protest:
try {
Free and Fair Elections;
} catch (DemocracyNotFoundException ) {
“Time for Mubarak to leave”; }
Return of the Browncoats
The Science Channel now has the rights to Firefly and will be re-airing the series, but unfortunately won’t be producing any new content. Nathan Fillion gave a brief interview to Entertainment Weekly in honor of the occasion. In it, he said, almost offhand:
If I got $300 million from the California Lottery, the first thing I would do is buy the rights to Firefly, make it on my own, and distribute it on the Internet.
And that’s the story of how HelpNathanBuyFirefly.com was born.
The current theory is that enough Firefly fans exist that we can just raise $300 million. And since $300 million is a figure Fillion pulled from thin air, it probably wouldn’t take that much. And while nobody wants to donate money to a random website with the vague hope that it will somehow result in new Firefly episodes, who wouldn’t willingly give their savings over to Malcolm Reynolds himself?
The Internet is pretty awesome.
No Grooms Allowed
Wedding planning involves shopping for a lot of big items — a venue, a caterer, a professional photographer, and myriad other services. All are unique in their offerings, but almost every vendor we’ve encountered has shared a fundamental assumption about weddings: the groom is just dead weight.
One venue toured us through the luxurious bridal suite with four-poster bed and adjoining private bathroom, and then through the groom’s room with some chairs and a poker table. At our actual venue the bride is promised chilled champagne and a plate of fruit, while the groom should expect a twelve-pack of domestic beer. (It’s the “domestic” that really sells it.)
Conclusion: I will be so bored at my own wedding I’ll want to bring a deck of cards and get drunk with my friends while my bride carries out the celebration on her own.
At dress shops (catering legitimately only to women) brides-to-be can bring their friends to solicit advice as they try on sample gowns and evaluate the elegance of various designs. At Men’s Wearhouse, I was handed a book with ten glossy photographs of models in tuxedos and asked to point to one like a kid ordering off a children’s menu. The clerk took measurements and ushered me out the door, without so much as a peek at a physical tuxedo. (We canceled our order there and went to Al’s Formalwear where we were able to see real products and choose the best style shirt, tie, vest, jacket, and pants — and even try on a sample tuxedo. And with the total $70 less, the moral is: never go to Men’s Wearhouse.)
One department store recently invited us to a “Sip & Scan” party in order to create a wedding registry. They’d be serving drinks and hors d’oeuvres, and promised consultants in each department to help us choose the items we’d most like to guilt our friends and family into buying for us. And in each e-mail urging us to come, the bride is reminded to “bring your fiancé (he’ll love the scan gun).” I won’t care what dishes we have or what color our sheets are, as long as I can scan some barcodes!
With the gender stereotypes this overpowering, the wedding industry should be enthusiastically supporting same-sex marriages everywhere. While male couples would unfortunately never set foot in a wedding venue, female couples would be free to spend billions of dollars on their weddings without the restrictive dead weight of a groom.