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Category Archives: Interesting
How Times Have Changed, 2000 to 2010
Here's a link to an interesting graphic that highlights how things have changed in the last decade. A sample:
Cell phone subscriptions per 100 people: 8 in 2000, 76.2 in 2010
Fixed broadband subscriptions per 100 people: 0 in 2000, 8 in 2010
Mobile broadband subscriptions per 100 people: 0 in 2000, 13.6 in 2010
Chinese power consumption (in trillion kw/h): 1.25 in 2000, 4.17 in 2010
US power consumption (in quadrillion BTU): 98.97 in 2000, 97.72 in 2010
Average price of crude oil (per barrel): $28.23 in 2000, $64.97 in 2010
45 Degrees
Ask any gym rat and he'll tell you that the key to a good basketball shot is the arc on the ball, and he'll also tell you that achieving a good arc is often easier said than done. Well, as with many other things these days, there's an app for that.
Foreclosure Map of Forsyth County
I'm going to warn you ahead of time that this is potentially a very depressing post. Have you ever wondered how many houses in your area are in foreclosure? No need to wonder. Just go to Google Maps and do the following (found via Fec's blog):
Google Maps Foreclosure Listings
1. Punch in any US address into Google Maps.
2. Your options are Earth, Satellite, Map, Traffic and . . . More. (Select “More”)
3. The drop down menu gives you a check box option for “Real Estate.”
4. The left column will give you several options (You may have to select “Show Options”)
5. Check the box marked “Foreclosure.”
Below is a screen shot of a Google Map after I plugged in a Forsyth County, NC address and zoomed out. Those aren't measles you're looking at.
Becoming a DJ of Thought
You ever wake up and realize that you're the dim bulb in a chandelier of very bright lights? Well, that's me. I consider it one of the great gifts in my life that I'm surrounded by people who are far brighter, funnier, talented, etc. than I am. It's not false modesty; it's truly a blessing that I'm very grateful for, because it's fantastic to constantly be challenged and stimulated by those around me. A perfect case in point is this Ignite presentation by my cousin Adam Good where he talks about applying the remixing practices of DJs to knowledge. If you're like me you'll think, "Man that's a cool concept, but I'll be damned if I can explain it." That's okay, because Adam does a great job explaining it himself. Enjoy.
Time Lapse Child Rearing
The video below is pretty cool; it's a time-lapse video of photos taken of a girl every day (almost) from her birth to her 10th year. My first thought upon seeing this is that in a couple of years the parents are going to wish they could time-lapse the teenage years for real. Just sayin', the two bid 'D's (dating and driving) will drive you to the brink.
In God We Trust
Pop quiz:
In what year did Congress declare "In God we trust" the national motto?
a. 1776
b. 1865
d. 1917
e. 1956
f. 1984
Here's a hint: it happened two years after the words "under God" were added to the Pledge of Allegiance.
Answer here.
Forget Atkins, Go for the Hostess Diet
This is my kind of diet:
For 10 weeks, Mark Haub, a professor of human nutrition at Kansas State University, ate one of these sugary cakelets every three hours, instead of meals. To add variety in his steady stream of Hostess and Little Debbie snacks, Haub munched on Doritos chips, sugary cereals and Oreos, too.
His premise: That in weight loss, pure calorie counting is what matters most — not the nutritional value of the food…
For a class project, Haub limited himself to less than 1,800 calories a day. A man of Haub's pre-dieting size usually consumes about 2,600 calories daily. So he followed a basic principle of weight loss: He consumed significantly fewer calories than he burned.
His body mass index went from 28.8, considered overweight, to 24.9, which is normal. He now weighs 174 pounds.
But you might expect other indicators of health would have suffered. Not so.
Haub's "bad" cholesterol, or LDL, dropped 20 percent and his "good" cholesterol, or HDL, increased by 20 percent. He reduced the level of triglycerides, which are a form of fat, by 39 percent.
SSA Gets Punk’d; Average Wages Worse Than Originally Thought
The Social Security Administration got punk'd by two people who filed wildly inflated W-2s, maybe as some kind of joke. The result of the SSA finding is that they had to revise their latest wage numbers:
Removing the phony W-2s reduced total compensation by $32.3 billion or 0.55 percent of all the wages, salaries and bonuses earned by Americans. The total number of people with any work was reduced by two to 150,917,733.
As a result of the revisions, the data show that the average wage in 2009 dollars declined by $457 (not $243), a 1.2 percent decline from 2008. The revision shows that since 2000 the average wage, in 2009 dollars, barely changed in real terms, increasing only $347 or 0.9 percent after nine years.
The median wage – half make more, half less — was unchanged at $26,261. The median is $37 lower than in 2000 and $253 lower than in 2008.
So our country's median wage has declined over the last 10 years?! Add that little tidbit of info to the fact that a good chunk of us are living in houses, our single biggest asset, that are worth significantly less than they were two years ago and I think you begin to see why so many folks are ticked off right now.
Ikea Heights
This is a trip: using an Ikea store as the set for an online soap opera.
IKEA Heights from DaveAOK on Vimeo.
Befuddled 