http://xkcd.com/radiation/
A lot of people follow XKCD, but not too many follow his blog as well, which has some very excellent articles. He published that after the Fukushima disaster in order to give a rough visual idea of exactly how much radiation is dangerous. The best apart about it is that he tries hard to differentiate between meaningless numbers representing amounts of radiation exposure by separating orders of scale out.
It's probably easier to explain that with one of his other comics where he complains about this:
http://xkcd.com/558/
Saturday, October 8, 2011
Tuesday, October 4, 2011
A WW2 German U-boat with a very odd distinction
German submarine U-427 had a very odd achievement. It managed to survive 678 depth charge attempts to destroy it.
Saturday, October 1, 2011
The Education of Bill Belichick
Bill Belichick is one of my favorite people in sports, and not just for his success, but for his attitude towards the game, the players, the fans, and his support staff. A friend of mine worked IT support for Gillette Stadium and once was called in to fix Belichick's printer when he was supposed to be out. He fixed the printer, but ran into Bill when he was leaving. The famous coach shook his hand, asked him what college he went to, and was generally polite and pleasant, seeming to know that these five ordinary minutes out of his day would mean the world for a college student who idolizes the three-time Super Bowl winning coach.
Anyway, knowing how Bill became the person he is is just as interesting as knowing who he is now. This article in the Washington Post in December 2005 talks with the man who sat down with Belichick and recorded a lot of his upbringing and wrote a book about him. There are some great tidbits in the interview:
Body "types" for men
Men aren't nearly as objectified as women in society as sex symbols, and as a result it can be typical to talk about generalized body types for them (which is probably a good thing).
Nonetheless, a friend sent me this chart, which I think is very effective at portraying typical male physiques:
Aiming for ottermode myself :-)
NFL referees play it fair
I hate it when people blame refs without any real proof, just because an important call doesn't go their way.
Recently, Michael Vick claimed that he didn't get as many roughing the passer calls as other QBs (say, Brady + Manning). The VP of NFL officiating responded back with this excellent article:
Is that an Oreo? Nope, Hydrox!
Found out this interesting tidbit: Oreos may be a rip off of an older cookie, Hydrox. Look at a Hydrox and tell for yourself:
Calvin and Hobbes
Only the snowmen strips:
It's a pretty fantastic collection. I really wish I had read Calvin and Hobbes when I was younger, though reading the entire collection at once increased my appreciation for its brilliance.
First post!
I created this blog to store all the random interesting stuff I run into. I've made a bad habit of keeping tabs open on my browsers for forever, hoping that one day I'd post about them, and it's gotten to the point that my computer either slows down or doesn't even respond anymore (my work laptop literally crashes from how many tabs are open).
Let the spring cleaning of tabs begin! :-)
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