Stanley and Pooh
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).
A statue called The Motherland Calls, (Родина-мать зовёт) stands atop a large hill overlooking Volgograd, Russia. Thing is, at 279 feet (that’s over 20 stories), it’s absolutely enormous.
Look at the person next to it in the picture! Of all the really tall statues in the world, this looks to be the only one endowed with such a sense of sweeping motion befitting its grand scale. (The YouTube video is pretty interesting).
Wow, Apple is going through the roof bonkers crazy never seen it before sales with the college crowd. Writes Ars Technica:
University of Virginia figures show that 25 percent of this year’s freshman class are toting an Apple laptop. This is up from about 20 percent last year. In 2003, only 4 percent of the freshman class admitted to owning a Mac.
So, in 4 years, Apple has grown to over five times the sales in subsets of the collegiate demographic. Guess when you form your strongest opinions about brands, (music, philosophy, etc.) — that would be college! Let me tell you this much: after I get rid of this current Windows machine (in about 4 years)… that will be the last Windows box I ever buy ever ever ever ever. Never ever again. No thank you. No more Windows. Blech.
M.I.A.: Back in Action with ‘Kala’ at NPR Music writes:
M.I.A. rhymes with the swaggering bravado of a street rapper, only she favors bandoliers over bling. Parse the songwriting though, and the sensibility awkwardly falls somewhere between party girl and guerrilla fighter. The message lacks cogency, but her hooks do pack potency, even when they sound nursery rhyme-inspired.
“Hands up (a nee nee nee nee) represent the world town!” And yes, “World Town,” a track from her newest release Kala is recommended listening.
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