Amusing: May 2007 Archive Page

For the functions that people use most often, the 1986 vintage Mac Plus beats the 2007 AMD Athlon 64 X2 4800+: 9 tests to 8! Out of the 17 tests, the antique Mac won 53% of the time! Including a jaw-dropping 52 second whipping of the AMD from the time the Power button is pushed to the time the Desktop is up and useable. --Hal Licino --86 Mac Plus Vs. 07 AMD DualCore. You Won't Believe Who Wins (Hub Pages)

--Shakespeare hates your emo poems (Threadless)

Interesting cultural phenomenon... sell a T-shirt, then create a website that lets customers upload photos of themselves wearing the T-shirt.

The result turns the rebellious and snarky T-shirt designs into the uniforms of conformist consumer zombies.

--Classic Sesame Street - Ernie (almost) repairs the TV (YouTube)

My sister sent me this clip, which was one of our favorites when we were kids. (Still is today, now that you mention it... though the production values were notably simpler back then.)

Thanks, Rosemary.

--20 Sided Fuzzy Dice Danglers (Think Geek)

Now those are my kind of fuzzy dice.

--Atari Candleholder (Wonderland | Mixko)

Wonderland credits a designer called Mixko, but I couldn't find it on that site. (And even I did find it there, I couldn't link to it, because the site uses Flash in a horribly user-hostile way.)

They came from all over the world, poles in hand, and feet ready to inch more than half a mile across a high wire strung over the Han River in a spine-tingling battle of balance, speed and high anxiety. --Bo-Mi Lim --Skywalkers in Korea cross Han solo (Yahoo! | AP (will espire))

This is a news article about a high-wire competition that involved crossing a body of water called the Han River.

A tip of the blaster-shield-fitted helmet to a very clever headline writer.

Imagine Gilligan's Island without the Howells and their paper dollars. Without money, commodities exchange directly: coconuts for fish, fish for bamboo, etc. But even with barter, some commodities are more "marketable" than others. Perhaps one of the castaways might eventually buy one of the Professor's books, but they will more often purchase Mary Ann's coconut cream pies -- or the coconuts themselves. Coconuts are more marketable than books.

Over time, the commodity that is most marketable becomes popular for indirect exchange: the Skipper trades his fish for Ginger's decorative shells, not because he wants shells, but because he knows he can trade them for Gilligan's coconuts. The price of a commodity is its exchange ratio for the most marketable good, e.g., 12 shells per coconut. The value of the shell money is based on the goods it traded for yesterday -- since we can't know what prices will be today. Right now, the Skipper is willing to trade one of his fish for two coconuts, and he knows that Gilligan was recently willing to trade his coconuts for a dozen shells each, therefore the Skipper wants to price his fish at two-dozen shells each: enough to buy two coconuts. Prices can change from day to day, but today's new prices will be based on the prices of other things yesterday. --B. K. Marcus --The Monetary Economics of Thurston Howell III  (Ludwig von Mises Institute)

Why can't anything fun ever be slouched toward? I mean, what about Slouching Towards Deliciousness, or Slouching Towards Balloon Animals? --Slouching Toward Something (Why Not Sneeze?)

--atari-and-controllers (jackrabbit.etsy.com)

Via join the dots.

--Stephen Granade
--LOL Trek (Live Granades)

I was vaguely aware of the lolcats phenomenon, which involves remediating the famous "Hang in there, baby" cat poster as if the cats themselves were writing the captions.

Never did I expect it to be unleashed on the beloved Star Trek episode "The Trouble with Tribbles" (which has earned it a spot on my blog.)

On the night of Monday, April 23, the magazine's editorial system crashed, wiping out all the work that had been done for its June issue. The backup server failed to back up. --Richard Pérez-Peña --Business magazine fails to heed its own tech advice (International Herald Tribune)

What makes this a "dog bites man" story is the fact that Business 2.0 publishes an annual "101 Dumbest Moments" feature, in which the magazine mocks other companies for making mistakes.

Oddly enough, while I was typing this entry, I accidentally pulled my computer plug out of the wall -- again.

But the last time this happened, I must have rearranged my plugs so that only printer and monitor were connected to that particular power bar. The CPU is plugged directly into the wall. (Yay, me!)

--Map of Online Communities (XKCD: A Webcomic of Romance, Sarcasm, Math, and Language)

Thanks, Josh, for the suggestion. (This is just an excerpt from the full map.)

I'm going to have to give this site some attention when grades are in... I wish the artist could draw people instead of stick figures, but the jokes are clever, sweet, and geeky.

"We believe the victim was assaulted after hours Friday by an unknown individual or individuals," a Columbia County sheriff's departmaent spokesman said. "Though autopsy results are still pending, we believe the victim suffered fatal head trauma after his face was immobilized against the glass of a photocopier and repeatedly struck with the machine's cover." --White-On-White Violence Claims Life Of Accounts Receivable Supervisor (The Onion (Satire))

I never thought the Kornfeld character was funny enough to deserve his own recurring column, but it looks like his untimely death might spark an enjoyable, long, drawn-out story.

I Think, I Want, I Know, I Feel, I Google (Jerz's Literacy Weblog)

Google Hits:

• I think (369,000,000)
  
• I want (275,000,000)
  
• I know (257,000,000)
  
• I feel (128,000,000)
  
  
• I hate (51,200,000)
  
• I love (270,000,000)