Casa de Rupert
My sketch of my Chris’s future. It has since been revised, but this is the general outline.
My sketch of my Chris’s future. It has since been revised, but this is the general outline.
Hugh Laurie of House talking to TV Guide — it’s actually a rather good interview considering it’s published in TV Guide, which to the best of my knowledge, isn’t exactly known for insightful journalism (does anyone know otherwise?). Anyhow, Laurie, when asked if he hangs out with celebrities:
I have such a strong aversion to the ubiquitous digital camera that I can’t really bear to go anywhere. It’s pathetic. Not that I am ideal paparazzi fodder—I’m definitely not— but these days you don’t have to be to have your soul chopped up and laid out on the butcher’s slab. So instead I just sit at home and stare at the wall. Which luckily has a huge plasma TV on it.
When asked about exercise:
I run 6-8 miles a day, plus weights and aerobics in the lunch hour. I also lie a lot, which keeps me thin.
Ah… to have the gift of comedy.
This fresh bread made the most amazing peanut butter and jelly sandwiches ever!
Common sense and a little physics seem to show that the radio waves from Wi-Fi internet connections (non-ionising as they are) are nothing to be concerned about:
A typical UK resident receives far more radiation from analogue radio broadcasts than they do from Wi-Fi. Radio broadcasts have operated in the UK for almost 85 years, so if we’ve not heard of any long term negative health effects caused by radio waves so far, it’s unlikely that we will do in the future.
I have a hard time thinking cell phone waves are anything other than harmless, as well. Remember, not all radiation is created equal — so don’t let people try to confuse you by conflating radiation from one source with something like radiation from the sun, or a microwave.
I don’t know if this is true or not, but a farmer in the UK who directed his sheepdogs for three hours to spell out the word ‘spring’ on the side of a hill, is a difficult story to make up. Anyhow, the pictures look amazing. Collies sure are neat dogs.
Recently, I’ve begun sending Katy emails entitled “Math News Today (MNT)” since I always seem to send her anything mathematical (mathemagical?) that I run across. This one, though, was too good to keep in private email. First off, the news: Tomas Rokicki has brought the moves required to solve a Rubik’s Cube down to just 25.
But what’s more important than the news is one of the comments attached to the Slashdot article:
I consider a Rubik’s Cube to be “solved” regardless of its starting position. I subscribe to the Fred Rogers solution: it’s fine just the way it is.
Four years ago, Fast Company wrote about Wal-Mart — and the article is still pretty interesting:
Wal-Mart is not just the world’s largest retailer. It’s the world’s largest company—bigger than ExxonMobil, General Motors, and General Electric. The scale can be hard to absorb. Wal-Mart sold $244.5 billion worth of goods last year. It sells in three months what number-two retailer Home Depot sells in a year. And in its own category of general merchandise and groceries, Wal-Mart no longer has any real rivals. It does more business than Target, Sears, Kmart, J.C. Penney, Safeway, and Kroger combined.
A pickle jar example in the article is particularly intriguing — the gallon pickle jar “cannibalized” Vlasic’s sales at other retail locations because Wal-Mart sold it at such a ridiculously low price.
Originally, I thought that if I was making any product with any sort of brand, I would never ever sell at Wal-Mart. But Wal-Mart sells iPods… at the same price you see them everywhere else. And that’s because Apple has it’s own (quite healthy, thank you very much) supply chain.
So while the meeting between Wal-Mart and just about any supplier goes like this…
Wal-Mart: You’ll supply to us at $X per unit.
Supplier: That reduces our profits to essentially nothing.
Wal-Mart: Then we’ll find a supplier with comparable brand recognition at our price.
Supplier: Fine, we’ll do it.
…a meeting between Wal-Mart and Apple goes like this:
Wal-Mart: We want to take $20 off the price of an iPod.
Apple: Categorically: “no.”
Wal-Mart: Then we’ll find a supplier with comparable brand recognition at that price.
Apple: No you won’t.
While Wal-Mart frequently says “put up or shut up,” suppliers can occasionally do the same to them. Regardless of scenarios like this, I think the problem that the article points out — that Americans can’t consume if we don’t have a healthy base of employed workers — is undeniably correct.
The Guardian comes to us with a little article called “From hell,” which explores the worst movies ever made. It was written in part to discuss a recent movie made by a certain socialite who will remain nameless — it contains an absolutely fabulous sentence:
But to make a movie that destroys a studio, wrecks careers, bankrupts investors, and turns everyone connected with it into a laughing stock requires a level of moxie, self-involvement, lack of taste, obliviousness to reality and general contempt for mankind that the average director, producer and movie star can only dream of attaining.
The best part is when you get to read about what the author considers the worst movie of all time:
This is a movie that stars Isabelle Huppert as a shotgun-toting cowgirl. This is a movie in which Jeff Bridges pukes while mounted on roller skates. This is a movie that has five minutes of uninterrupted fiddle-playing by a fiddler who is also mounted on roller skates. This is a movie that defies belief.
Read the rest here. (via kottke).
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