Idiot World

Secret of being Happy?

2008-12-05T12:04:12-04:00

Surround yourself with other people who are happy!

No longer just a saying, science demonstrated this:

Psychologists have long known that feelings can be contagious over short time frames or that people reflexively return smiles. But the new social network analysis showed that that contagious effect extends three "degrees" - as far as a friend of a friend of a friend - and drops off with time and distance.

So, a smile goes a long way!
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Halloween Codes

2008-10-31T13:23:59-04:00

Want to make an efficient Trick o' Treat run? Now you can with Halloween codes! Signs drawn with chalk are written on the driveway educating kids (and "old kids") about the contents of the houses. No more wasting time getting back veggies!
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Gutter As Art

2008-08-26T10:55:41-04:00

Just more proof that anything can be spiced up a bit, if we tried. In Brazil, they have these beautiful gutter art that should bring a smile to passerbys!
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5.12

2008-06-05T14:35:17-04:00

I don't know the words to describe this set of "comics". Take a look, when you find a place you're comfortable.
(There's more to this story!)
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The Art of Fold-Ins

2008-05-14T10:17:26-04:00

If you ever opened a Mad magazine, you're probably familiar with the Fold-Ins. NY Times has an article about Al Jaffee, the artist who has been drawing it since 1964.

There are also various web-interactive fold-ins that you can enjoy!
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Ads vs Real Food

2008-03-27T11:22:18-04:00

Food never looks quite the same as they do in the ads. Check here for a long comparison. Yes, if you can photograph food, you can photograph anything, but most of these aren't even close.. let's demand our money back!
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The Last Lesson

2008-02-25T22:45:23-04:00

This link of the Last Lesson was sent my way. You might remember I linked to it a few months ago.
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Never too late to start smoking

2008-02-22T10:49:08-04:00

Most smokers remember their first time smoking, but while most of us started in high school with the usual peer pressure schdeal, one man tries to smoke for the first time.. at the age of 46. It's an interestingly (mostly) rational take from someone that claims to know better.
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Trap The Cat

2007-11-30T17:01:20-04:00

Here's a simple yet addictive game - trap the cat.. every turn you can put up a barrier, and then the cat will move one step in one direction. Can you trap the cat?
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Larry's Werewolves

2007-11-02T12:04:03-04:00

Shameless plug here - if you ever heard of the social game Werewolves, check out my version on Facebook.

For those not in the know, Werewolves also goes by other names - Mafia, Assassin, and possibly others. The point of the game is that there are some minority that wants to fool the majority to vote off the majority until they are the majority. Some variations apply.
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Five Differences

2007-10-16T10:31:34-04:00

This is without a doubt the best five differences game I've ever played. A self-proclaimed pro, even I had trouble with some of the subtleness! (While being obvious when you spot it - not a pixel or two off..)

That said, there is a level where there are stars in the sky.. and you have to find the differences. That one was hard because of the dust and dead pixels on my monitor..
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The Last Lesson

2007-09-19T17:54:34-04:00

There are fewer things harder in life than tackling death. The only mercy is that we are usually apathetic as to when.

Randy Pausch, a computer scientist at Carnegie Mellon gave his Last Lesson.

"We all run the risk of getting hit by the cancer dart."
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Fleep

2007-08-21T14:17:18-04:00

Check out this comic about a guy who lost his memory and is trying to figure out his purpose.
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What's a recent grad got to do

2007-07-18T12:06:54-04:00

Though I'm not a recent grad anymore, I've been asking these kind of question for awhile. Even though this article is from a few months ago, it's sound financial advice for adults in their early 20s. Read it up!

All in all, it's a lot easier to save money if you adopt a lifestyle a few notches below your earnings capacity. If you try it the other way around - spending all you make (or more) right out of the gate - then saving will require painful cutbacks from the lifestyle you've gotten used to. And the sad truth is, many people never make that adjustment.

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Finding the best seat

2007-06-28T18:34:13-04:00

Stumbled upon this nifty website - Seat Guru - which basically shows you a colour coded map of the plane you'll be taking. All seats are not created equally, so beware and do your research!
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Repeat a lie enough times

2007-05-22T09:44:56-04:00

Or how propaganda works.. repeat something enough times, and people will value it as much as many people voicing the same opinion:

The studies found that an opinion is more likely to be assumed to be the majority opinion when multiple group members express their opinion. However, the study also showed that hearing one person express the same opinion multiple times had nearly the same effect on listener's perception of the opinion being popular as hearing multiple people state his/her opinion.

Ah, so advertising wins again!
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The difference between =) and ^_^

2007-05-10T12:46:07-04:00

When I first reached the internets, I was confused by the =), and then later, the ^_^. It kind of confused me a little bit until someone told me they were emoticons. Apparently, culture is why we have different happy faces:

Intrigued, Yuki decided to study this phenomenon. First, he and his colleagues asked groups of American and Japanese students to rate how happy or sad various computer-generated emoticons seemed to them. As Yuki predicted, the Japanese gave more weight to the emoticons' eyes when gauging emotions, whereas Americans gave more weight to the mouth. For example, the American subjects rated smiling emoticons with sad-looking eyes as happier than the Japanese subjects did.

Not surprisingly, our expressions online mirror how we want to be interpreted. Also interestingly, the Japanese might be thus better at perceiving people's true feelings, since it's harder to fake eye signals.. =)
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Dogs Shouldn't Be Playing Poker

2007-05-02T12:14:53-04:00

Dogs have a bias that's easily read (probably because they aren't actively suppressing it). So if you want to know if a dog likes you, just look at its tails:

When the dogs saw their owners, their tails all wagged vigorously with a bias to the right side of their bodies, Dr. Vallortigara said. Their tails wagged moderately, again more to the right, when faced with an unfamiliar human. Looking at the cat, a four-year-old male whose owners volunteered him for the experiment, the dogs' tails again wagged more to the right but in a lower amplitude.

Apparently, humans do the same thing, sort of. Maybe that's why there are more righties..
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Rose by any other name

2007-05-01T16:25:24-04:00

Be careful what you name your child - it might affect the "nurture" part of the equation:

Part of the reason is that names provide a powerful image of a person and influence people's reactions to them. An Isabella is less likely to study maths, according to the theory, because people would not expect her to. 'There are plenty of exceptions but, on average, people treat Isabellas differently to Alexes,' commented David Figlio, professor of economics at the University of Florida and the author of the report. 'Girls with feminine names were often typecast.' Figlio pointed to the controversy that arose over the first talking Barbie's phrase, 'math is hard'. 'It is a stereotype, and girls with particularly feminine names may feel more pressure to avoid technical subjects,' he said. Not that they were any less capable. When the Isabellas, Annas and Elizabeths took on their tougher-named peers in science, they performed just as well.

Ah, it's a good thing my name isn't something obscene!
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In the Year 2000

2007-04-19T10:29:22-04:00

From the Ladies Home Journal, here's a list of what we should expect by the year 2000.. it's amusing to look back on these - I guess not everyone can predict what happen in the year 2000 as well as I can (well, at this moment anyhow)! This is from 1900, so maybe we can extrapolate what will happen in 2100!

Prediction #9: Photographs will be telegraphed from any distance. If there be a battle in China a hundred years hence snapshots of its most striking events will be published in the newspapers an hour later. Even to-day photographs are being telegraphed over short distances. Photographs will reproduce all of Nature’s colors.

Prediction #10: Man will See Around the World. Persons and things of all kinds will be brought within focus of cameras connected electrically with screens at opposite ends of circuits, thousands of miles at a span. American audiences in their theatres will view upon huge curtains before them the coronations of kings in Europe or the progress of battles in the Orient. The instrument bringing these distant scenes to the very doors of people will be connected with a giant telephone apparatus transmitting each incidental sound in its appropriate place. Thus the guns of a distant battle will be heard to boom when seen to blaze, and thus the lips of a remote actor or singer will be heard to utter words or music when seen to move.

Prediction #18: Telephones Around the World. Wireless telephone and telegraph circuits will span the world. A husband in the middle of the Atlantic will be able to converse with his wife sitting in her boudoir in Chicago. We will be able to telephone to China quite as readily as we now talk from New York to Brooklyn. By an automatic signal they will connect with any circuit in their locality without the intervention of a "hello girl".

Ah, in the year 2000! Maybe we'll even eat giant strawberries. That would be sweet.
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