Categories
Ideas

Bless my phone

Pope Francis blesses a photo of a child displayed on a mobile phone at the end of a special audience

Here’re some ironic and some strange recent headlines and sentences I’ve noted:

– A 19-year-old anti-violence volunteer was fatally shot in Chicago.

-There Are Bowhead Whales Alive Today Who Were Born Before Moby Dick Was Written.

-Even the most effective police departments solve only about three-quarters of homicides. Each year, about five thousand people kill someone and don’t get caught, and a percentage of these are repeat killers.

-Coastal Labs Studying Increased Flooding Consider Moving Because Of Increased Flooding

-As housing prices rise in an area, dog breeds tend to skew smaller and more expensive.

-Beneath Yellowstone National Park lies a supervolcano far more powerful than your average volcano. It could expel more than 1,000 cubic kilometers of material at once – 2,500 times more than Mount St. Helens expelled in 1980, which killed 57 people. That could blanket most of the United States in a thick layer of ash and even plunge the Earth into a volcanic winter.

-Most prodigies grow up to be thoroughly unremarkable on paper. They don’t, by and large, sustain their genius into adulthood.

-When men see a doctor about fertility problems, they often provide semen samples collected while masturbating to porn. Since it features novel women, “the ejaculates produced in fertility clinics may be of higher quality than usual, which may conceal any potential fertility problems experienced in the bedroom.”

-In the course of a lifetime, sixty tons of food pass through the gastrointestinal tract, an exposure to the world that is fraught with risk .

-Supposedly, three and a half feet of debris will keep a person warm above thirty degrees Fahrenheit. Four and a half feet is good to zero degrees. And six feet of dry, dead debris will keep someone alive at forty below zero.

 

Categories
Ideas

Bringing astronomy home

I don’t know how many kids check these out, but these videos really give you an appreciation of objects in space. They’re great for adults too.

Here’s a cool NYT video about a kilonova.

If the Moon was replaced with other planets in our solar system shows how the other planets in our solar system would look to us if they were as close as our moon normally is.

If the Space Station was replaced by the Moon video shows what the moon would look like up close – when it’s only the distance of a satellite from the earth.

Categories
Ideas

Threes

Supposedly, people tend to only take away three ideas from talks. For some reason I’ve noticed some groups of three ideas that are useful and interlocking. Here’re four groups of three things.

Good, true, or helpful. If what you’re about to say or email to someone doesn’t meet two out of those three criteria, reword it or don’t say it at all.

When you’re communicating try to remember ABC, which stands for accurate, brief, and clear.

By taking these 3 steps  you’ll go a long way in helping your exposed skin as you age: in the morning apply vitamin C serum and sunscreen, later before bed apply a low strength retinol.

There are lots of smart, interesting normal people out there, and from them you learn that the best thing in life is following the straight and narrow, observing social conventions, and working a steady job.