Things that were not immediately obvious to me

A rough transcription of an actual conversation:

A: “The Hansel and Gretel story has never rung true for me.”
B: “What do you mean?”
A: “Well, that house had been out in the wood for years. It was probably covered in pine needles, and birds and animals had been all over it. Who would eat that?”
B: “Well, I see what you mean – but you’re ok with the concept of candy as a structural element?”

Compared with the totality of knowledge which is continually utilized in the evolution of a dynamic civilization, the difference between the knowledge that the wisest and that which the most ignorant individual can deliberately employ is comparatively insignificant.

More interesting material here.

One of the nice little features of fancier restaurants is the crumb scraper. This is a little metal bar/scoop that the waiter (or busser) uses to remove the crumbs from your tablecloth after the dishes have been cleared. I was amused to see the same (approximate) technique being employed on a demolition site the other day, but on a much larger scale. In the picture to the left, you see an excavator tidying up a debris pile with a structural I-beam.

The dexterity this fellow brought to his work was really quite amazing; the massive machinery, beam, and debris moved as gently as you could imagine. My congratulations, Mr. Inner City Demolition excavator-operator guy. (A larger original image is also available.)

What do you do if you’re in the middle of a build-out of your corporate campus, and a major recession hits? Obviously, you stop construction. What do you do if you’ve already paid for a building’s elements (foundation, structural steel, cladding, etc.)? Well, if you’re Network Appliances, you store the disassembled building. Kinda cool pictures follow.

Continue reading →

A nuclear (fission-fusion) bomb takes about 600ns to detonate. In that time, a 2Ghz Intel Core Duo can execute about 2400 instructions. (Crudely: 2 instructions per cycle x 2 billion cycles per second x .000000001 seconds per ns x 600ns = 2400 instructions.)

Worth pointing out: According to wiki, the plasma compression method cited in the above linked article’s graphic is now thought to be of only minor importance; tamper ablation is now thought to be the dominant mechanism for secondary compression. (In other words, spend a few minutes reading about the Teller-Ulam design. It’s fascinating.)

Basic Instructions is well worth your time, if you’re not reading it on a regular basis already. I particularly liked the punchline in the most recent comic:

Be prepared for the fact that setting someone straight seldom makes them like you more, or want to talk to you.

This is a point we’ll return to many times over the next few weeks, as we consider Dale Carnegie’s “How to Win Friends and Influence People” in Book Club.

As for Twilight: Anyone who spends 90 years in high school (what- he couldn’t even work his way into a community college?) must be as dumb as a bag of hammers.