Random Acts of Blogging
Farmers – A Dying Breed. Finally.
Wednesday, September 5th, 2007Via Instapundit, this sounds like pretty big news:
For the first time in 10,000 years, farming is not the dominating industry on a global basis:
Worldwide, in 1996 agriculture employed 42%, industry 21%, and services 37%. In 2006, the numbers are 36%, 22% and 42%. So in the period, services has overtaken farming on a global scale.
And thus passes a tremendous milestone in the history of our species. Farming, invented around 8000 BC, quickly dominated human activity and has so continued to for the following 10,000 years (give or take a few). And we even find that the tradition agriculture->industry->services transition doesn’t hold up globally. The industry segment simply isn’t big enough, so many workers skip to services.
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Air Force Bloopers…
Wednesday, September 5th, 2007This can’t be good:
A B-52 bomber was mistakenly armed with six nuclear warheads and flown for more than three hours across several states last week, prompting an Air Force investigation and the firing of one commander, Pentagon officials said Wednesday.
The plane was carrying Advanced Cruise Missiles from Minot Air Force Base, N.D, to Barksdale Air Force Base, La., on Aug. 30, said the officials, who spoke on condition of anonymity because of a Defense Department policy not to confirm information on nuclear weapons.
The missiles, which are being decommissioned, were mounted onto pylons on the bomber’s wings and it is unclear why the warheads had not been removed beforehand.
So basically what we have here is, “You mean those things are armed?!?”
President Bush and Defense Secretary Gates were informed of the incident and provided daily briefings, the munitions squad commander is now unemployed, and the crews involved have been “temporarily decertified for handling munitions.”
But here’s my favorite quote:
“Nothing like this has ever been reported before and we have been assured for decades that it was impossible,” said Rep. Edward J. Markey, D-Mass., co-chair of the House task force on nonproliferation.
So it seems that the people who screwed up last week have also been wrong for decades about whether such a thing could occur in the first place. Makes you wonder what else they claim it’s impossible to do with a nuclear weapon…
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Welcome, Class of 2011
Friday, August 24th, 2007Beloit College has released it’s Class of 2011 Mindset list. This is a list of 70 things the incoming college freshmen have always believed to be true. The link has the whole list, of course, but here are my Top Ten:
4. They’ve never
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For those keeping score at home…
Friday, August 24th, 2007
Paris Hilton: 3 weeks in jail for violating probation due to DUI.
Lindsay Lohan: 1 day in jail for cocaine posession and DUI.
Nicole Richie: 1 hour in jail for driving while on drugs.
Quite the impressive bunch, huh?
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JibJab gets personal
Monday, August 13th, 2007Hey – remember JibJab? They’re the folks that made that hilarious This Land is Your Land parody back around the 2004 election? Also, they’re the kids who grew up two doors down from me in central New Jersey. I’m happy to report that they’re much better at web video than they ever were at kickball on Barklay Street.
Anyway, they’ve got a new service available now, where you can upload your own faces & star in your own JibJab video. Too cool to resist, so…
Ladies & Gentelmen, Brian & Sherry dance the Charleston (with some help from the JibJab boys…):
Check them out at jibjab.com!
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Winnie Cooper Sets ‘Em Straight
Monday, July 30th, 2007Danica McKellar, who played Winnie Cooper on The Wonder Years, has had enough:
When girls see the antics of Paris Hilton and Lindsay Lohan, they think that being fun and glamorous also means being dumb and irresponsible. But I want to show them that being smart is cool. Being good at math is cool. And not only that, it can help them get what they want out of life. I want to tell girls that cute and dumb isn’t as good as cute and smart.
Ms. McKellar has written a book entitled, “Math Doesn’t Suck,” in which she offers “tips to avoid mistakes on homework, ways to overcome test-day anxiety and profiles of three beautiful mathematicians.”
What a fantastic message at a time where the opposite message is so, so prevalent.
Go, Winnie, Go!
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How Walkable are you?
Friday, July 27th, 2007Check out Walkscore.com. You put in a street address and zipcode, and it tells you how “walkable” the address is, based on its proximity to grocery stores, restaurants, coffee shops, bars, movie theaters, schools, parks, libraries, bookstores, fitness centers, drug stores, hardware stores and clothing/music stores.
Even more interestingly, it shows you a Google Map with the eight closest establishments in each category marked, and a clickable list that will find each for you on the map & tell you its walking distance. Who knew, for instance, that there were four Dunkin’ Donuts and two Starbucks within 3 miles of my home, and also something called the “Illusions Go-Go Lounge” just 1.89 miles away?
My suburban, New Jersey home scored just a 6 out of 100 (“Driving Only”), whereas my Rockefeller Center office location scored a 98 (“Walker’s Paradise”). What do you have to do to get a 100 on this thing?
Anyway, I know that at least one of my loyal readers will instantly consider this his favorite site on the web, so I thought I’d post it for his benefit, at least.
So, how about it? What’s your walkscore? Leave a comment & let me know…
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Checking More than Just the Keywords…
Wednesday, July 18th, 2007Hat tip to Scalzi for the link to these unfortunately placed advertisements. He likes this one:
Here’s my favorite (took me a few times to see it properly – hint: the jokes on the wall, not behind it):
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Out of Touch…
Tuesday, July 10th, 2007I just put my $6 in an envelope to send it to Este Pizza and realized that, with all the e-mail and online banking, I haven’t mailed anything in a very, very long time. How long? I had to go here and find out how much postage to put on the envelope.
Sigh…
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In which I prove how pathetic I am at memes
Tuesday, July 10th, 2007I’ve always found blog memes mildly interesting, kind of like that infomercial with the guy in the really awful sweater that you just can’t shut off at 2AM. I never wind up buying the Ultra-Slicer (whatever…), though, and similarly, I hardly ever wind up participating in the meme.
But this one’s different. Jason Bennion, of Simple Tricks and Nonsense, has thrown down the gauntlet, and named me as one of the (four) blogs who must complete the Meme of Five.
So, my instructions are as follows:
A list of the last five blogs that have done this, removing the top blog and putting myself at the bottom:
- No Smoking in the Skull Cave
- Electronic Cerebrectomy
- Byzantium’s Shores: The Occasional Meditations of an Overalls-clad Hippie
- Simple Tricks and Nonsense
- I Should Be Sleeping
Next, select five people to tag (hence the name, Meme of Five). Jason was only able to come up with four. I think it’s safe to say I have more than five loyal readers, but only two of them have a blog (well, four, but I can’t very well tag Jason or Chenopup, since Jason tagged us both to start this). And so, I present my list of five, which currently has a pathetic two members. I’m counting on Jeff and Ilya to resurrect the chain:
And, finally, a set of random questions (italicized for your pleasure):
What were you doing ten years ago?
Let’s see – July 9, 1997. Looking back through the data image of my (then) employer’s laptop, I see that I was working in Andersen Consulting’s (now known as Accenture’s) Florham Park, NJ office, building a kick-ass suite of Project Management tools that were going to revolutionize the way large, client/server applications were going to built for years to come. Unfortunately, the World Wide Web had been released 3 years earlier, and the large, client/server application was in its death throes. Also, we built the suite of tools on Lotus Notes, a tool that IBM eventually bought and ran into the ground.
Also, I had just moved into my new house (five weeks earlier), and was learning all sorts of things about home ownership, such as: when the toilet stuffs up, you have to go buy a plunger quickly, because there’s no building maintenance guy to call. Also, when a flock of geese lands in your backyard and starts pooping everywhere, there is not only no one to call, but very few people who know what to do about it.
Ah, to be so young & innocent again…
What were you doing one year ago?
Well, that’s easier, since we’re now within the realm of the current blackberry. One year ago, July 9, 2006, was a Sunday and I had no plans. I hung around the house and played with my kids.
Five snacks you enjoy
1) Peanut M&M’s
2) York Peppermint Patties (sometimes, I get the sensation…)
3) Grapes (if left unchecked, I will finish the bowl, regardless of how many grapes are in said bowl)
4) Ice Cream (sorry, summer on the brain…)
5) Just about anything with chocolate in it.
Five songs to which you know all the lyrics
Man, you’ve got to be kidding me. I have a playlist on my iPod which contains songs I know all the lyrics to. There are 894 songs on the list. I will now reach into my magic hat, and (have Excel) randomly draw out five numbers between 1 and 894. The winners are:
664. Streetlife Serenader – Billy Joel
504. New York, New York – Kanter & Ebb
671. Sunny Side to Every Situation – Harry Warren (42nd Street Soundtrack)
5. (‘Til) I Kissed You – The Everly Brothers
295. Help! – The Beatles
Five things you would do if you were a billionaire
1) Setup college funds for every single child in the family (nieces, nephews, cousins, etc.) that is under the age of 18.
2) Build the nicest house I can think of, then build my parents, in-laws, and siblings the nicest house they can think of.
3) Buy first class plane tickets to everywhere I ever wanted to go (sequentially), and reserve the best accommodations in each location. Anyone I know who wants to come along for all or part of the trip is welcome. Can’t make the whole trip? I’ll fly you in & back on the day you wish, no charge.
4) Put the remaining ~$900+M in T-bills. At the current rate of 5%, I’d get $45 million per year, Tax Free.
5) See if I can find a way to spend $45 million every year. Huge charitable donations would most certainly be involved…
Five bad habits
1) I stay up too late.
2) I watch too much TV.
3) I let little things bother me enough to lessen the awesome-ness that is my daily life.
4) I write cheesy things like #3
5) I don’t eat right & exercise like I should.
Five things you like doing
1-99) Hanging out with the kids.
100) Blogging (duh!)
101) Watching TV (OK, I’m not going to re-list my bad habits here, but you get the idea)
102) Making music – almost any kind (marching band, rock band, solo piano, you name it)
103) A good game of baseball, although I’m not in the shape I once was, so this happens less frequently than it used to.
Five things you would never wear again
1) Diapers (hey – I didn’t make up these questions, OK?)
2) White shoes at work (a very long story, please don’t ask…)
3) A navy blue tuxedo with light blue ruffles (1982 – my Bar Mitzvah – all the men in the family had them…)
4) A silver tuxedo with a mauve bow-tie and cummerbund (my junior prom date’s cousin worked for the tuxedo rental place and matched her dress exactly. Lucky me…)
5) High heels (I made the mistake of laughing at my sister when my mom was teaching her, and they made me try it – I twisted both ankles in the space of 10 seconds).
OK, I’m done. Jeff/Ilya – ball’s in your court. Please accept my humble apologies…
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