Category: Miscellaneous

Apparently Google has come up with a way to use the power of “crowd wisdom” to predict market events of importance to Google within the company. Amazing stuff.

The markets were designed to forecast product launch dates, new office openings, and many other things of strategic importance to Google. So far, more than a thousand Googlers have bid on 146 events in 43 different subject areas (no payment is required to play).

I found a link at Sourceforge that appears to be a similar (or the identical?) program.

Take pictures; win awards!

I’m entering this image I took last March (on my birthday) into the People / Portraits category of the Everyman Photo Contest.

A summary of all the myths busted and confirmed by the MythBusters.

Update: That link doesn’t seem to work anymore. Try this one: http://mythbustersresults.com/

Well I feel at ease posting a link to this Not-To-Do list because I’ve spent the morning working on a project. But truth be told, I probably did more than a couple of these things that may have distracted me momentarily. At least my (now empty) garbage doesn’t smell!

If you ever have to walk the plank, you might want to use some of the swimming tips here. Many of the concepts I’ve learned over the years swimming at the University, but it’s a nice refresher to see them printed here.

Arrr Pirates Passe?

If this isn’t just sweet enough to give you a toothache… Two artists created a comic book description of their courtship and engagement.

Sorry I’m still bitter about my own situation; I actually liked the comic.

From the sound of this article from physorg.com, Dr Norman Wildberger, a University of New South Wales academic, has rewritten the arcane rules of trigonometry and eliminated sines, cosines and tangents from the trigonometric toolkit.

Does this mean schools the world over will be updating their curriculum? It makes me happy because I was one of those students that memorized the old rules for trigonometry long enough to take the tests and then promptly forget about them. I hope it’s safe to assume these new rules can be applied to computer programming and physics as well.

I’ve been listening to Science Friday via their podcast lately and I love it. It’s a great science show published by the NPR.

“Each week, we focus on science topics that are in the news and try to bring an educated, balanced discussion to bear on the scientific issues at hand. Panels of expert guests join Science Friday’s host, Ira Flatow, a veteran science journalist, to discuss science – and to take questions from listeners during the call-in portion of the program.”

Science Friday is a little like the CBC’s Quirks and Quarks but due to a labour dispute the CBC podcasts are on hold. In the meantime check out Science Friday’s feed.

I don’t think there are satanic messages in Rock music but apparently the Catholic Church officially does. Vatican’s Rome university, the Athenaeum Pontificium Regina Apostolorum is now offering exorcism training.

The 10-week course includes sessions in exorcism rites, how to talk to the Devil, the tricks he uses to fight back and signs of the occult hidden in rock music and video games.

Video games too? I need to expand my website.

Update: Plastic has an interesting writeup on this article.