Category Archives: Culture Jammin’
The killer asteroid–the one that we might never even see coming–could end life on this planet and there would be nothing humans could do about it. It creates a kind of helplessness that’s difficult to even think about, and it’s Robert Weaver’s job to think about it all the time.
Weaver, a scientist at Los Alamos National Laboratory (LANL), doesn’t hunt for killer asteroids, but he does study the ways humans might use their vast nuclear arsenals–designed to wipe each other off the face of the planet–to save the whole of humanity from a catastrophic asteroid impact. Weaver has been running simulations on LANL’s Cielo supercomputer to determine humanity’s capacity to mitigate an impending asteroid threat using a one-megaton nuclear energy source–one roughly 50 times more powerful than the blasts inflicted upon Hiroshima and Nagasaki at the close of World War II….
Weaver’s simulations have shown something that should boost humanity’s confidence in this endeavor: for an asteroid of the oblong shape and size of Itokawa–roughly 1,640 feet across–there’s no need to drill down into the center of the asteroid to mitigate the threat. “I varied the location of the explosion from the center of the asteroid to the surface of the asteroid both along the long side and the short side,” Weaver says. “The center was by far the most effective because it just blew the whole thing apart. But effective enough was an explosion at the surface of the asteroid, both on the short side and the long side, with the short side being most effective. Once I discovered that, my study focused on surface explosions because it’s just a much simpler mission.”
Well yeah, I guess that is simpler, but then you just send boring-ass astronauts and military dudes up there to save humanity and not a ragtag gang of super-drillers, at least one of whom is romantically involved with the daughter of the other one and oh no I just remembered that song.
In an effort to cut costs, the Canadian government released its 2012 budget Thursday without any money designated to fund the Canadian penny. The penny’s costs have finally grown so high that the government has realized it just doesn’t make sense to keep the 1-cent coin going. Does any of this sound familiar?…
The U.S. penny costs an incredible 2.4 cents to make (and the nickel, by the way, costs 11.2 cents). That’s why a couple months back the Obama White House included a proposal in their latest budget to make pennies and nickels cheaper to produce in order to pare down the federal deficit.
There are numerous private citizens and legislators who have proposed getting rid of the U.S. penny altogether. (There are some who even think we should retire the U.S. dollar.) A couple bills have been introduced but of course neither has passed.
Did you read that? We mint coins that cost twice as much as they’re worth. And we’re never going to do anything about it, you know why? Because we hate making minor mathematical adjustments. Why do you think happened with the metric system? Eliminating nickels and pennies would mean every cash-register exchange would require some tiny modicum of math: rounding and some very simple subtraction, at least until all businesses have new registers. No way is anyone signing up for that.
Here is the most beautiful thing I have ever seen in my life:
Did you catch the big reveal? It comes at about 2:13 in the video. Thanks to the self-driving car, this man can now eat a crunchy taco while driving!
I cried a little.
Hat tip to @dianagram.
As I mentioned Tuesday, I’ll be at Move On, MS this evening, a benefit concert for the MS Association of America at American Trash on 1st Ave. between 76th and 77th on the Upper East Side. There are a bunch of bands playing, drink specials, and raffles. It’s $10 to get in. Look for the ridiculously handsome guy and come say what’s up.
AIBTM is the leading global exhibition for the U.S. meetings and events industry. Each June we bring together the world’s entire meetings and events industry in Baltimore for three days of focused business.
Oh wow, is it already time to start planning my trip to AIBTM? It’s the leading global exhibition for the U.S. meetings and events industry, but everyone I know just calls it the “Convention Convention. ”
And this year’s Convention Convention is going to be straight-up ridiculous. We’re talking hundreds of hosted buyers and thousands of exhibitors from the meetings industry, meeting to network, exchange information, share strategies, partner and associate.
.jpg "Here's what AIBTM looks like.")
Since AIBTM falls under the venerable IBTM umbrella, you know from its Wikipedia page that was definitely not written by an IBTM employee that the destination will be stunning. So no one should be surprised that the Convention Convention will be in Baltimore, easily one of the United States’ most stunning cities.
Plus, this year’s AIBTM is tricked out with new strategic partnerships with PCMA, SITE and ACTE. And they’ve ramped up their existing partnerships with ICCA and CSPI (formerly ACME)!
To top it off, this year’s Convention Convention heard the demands of last year’s Convention conventioneers and added an exciting new Business Travel sector. And you know who’s going to be there? We’re talking CEOs, senior directors, management, corporate travel managers, procurement managers, finance HR managers, personal assistants and travel agents. And there will be suppliers of various business-travel technologies, including self-booking tools!
And since Baltimore is a memorable destination with several cultural attractions and excitement around every corner, maybe after the networking event ends Monday evening you can head out for some electrifying nightlife and catch the area’s hottest new alt-rock band, The Self Booking Tools.
The Convention Convention is the biggest event in events this year, with something for everyone from corporate planners to junior planners. Just don’t plan anything for Tuesday from 1-2 p.m., because you’re not going to want to miss the vibrant panel on “Delivering Meetings that Meet Your Organization’s Strategic Plan.”
No one can throw a convention like the people whose jobs it is to throw conventions. Why waste your time at some other, more narrowly focused trade convention, like one more pertinent to your occupation? Convention Convention transcends those convention conventions, allowing you to trade the trade thrust for a concentration on convening.
A Tim Tebow joke I made on Twitter got quoted in the Metropolitan section of Sunday’s New York Times. Check it out. They even copy-edited me, adding a comma where I omitted one.
The Gray Lady, reduced to fishing for pageviews from area sandwich blogs?
Thanks to @CoreyNYC for pointing it out.
We guess a delivery car or bicyclist was too pedestrian for tech folks; over in San Francisco, something called TacoCopter has popped up, delivering online orders of tacos via helicopter — an unmaned, robotic one, to be exact.
According to the bare bones web site, all you have to do is place your order on your iPhone, tap away, and await the TacoCopter
- Jessica Chou, the Daily Meal.
My wife is oddly vigilant about making sure people actually make wishes at appropriate moments: Before breaking a wishbone, while blowing out birthday candles, when the clock strikes 11:11. I love her so I usually indulge her, though she’d never know if I didn’t since the wishes are never spoken.
Anyway, unless all those banked wishes from the two and half years I’ve been married (and all the time we dated before that) suddenly came true, I’m going to go ahead and assume that the Tacocopter is not a real thing.
I mean… no way, right? An unmanned, robotic quadrotor helicopter that delivers tacos? That’s what you call “too good to be true” my friends. This has to be some sort of publicity stunt. Maybe guerrilla marketing for some movie about a utopian future, or a scam to trick honest, taco-craving Americans into divulging their locations and credit card information.
The Tacocopter “co-founder,” Dustin Boyer, said on quora that it’s “definitely real” but that “there are a number of technical and legal hurdles that our team is working through.”
Straight up: I will believe this when I’m eating a taco that was delivered to me by an unmanned robot helicopter and not a second before.
Via Paul Vargas.
A comment on the recent ski-gate-to-the-groin video reminded me of something I’ve been meaning to address. On the Jan. 23, 2012 episode of Family Feud, this happened:
“His schlong.” They asked 100 people to name something an airline pilot might be holding during a long flight, and three of them said his schlong.
When someone sent me the link, I figured that response was an incorrect answer from a contestant, a blooper worthy of a few giggles and raised eyebrows to be filed away with the thousands of other silly things that have been said by anxious Americans under the pressure of hot lights and enthusiastic studio audiences.
But no. This was a correct answer, something premeditated and legitimized with a graphic, something neither the Thompsons nor the Browns were quite crude enough to conjure up: “His schlong.”
So either: 1) Three Family Feud-surveyed people said that an airline pilot might be holding his reproductive organ during a long flight, and the Family Feud producers met and discussed it and had an actual conversation to determine that the best choice of words to summarize those responses would be “his schlong” or, better yet, 2) three Family Feud-surveyed people, when asked to name something an airline pilot might be holding during a long flight, answered, explicitly, “his schlong.”
And of course the well-trained audience underscores and elevates the absurdity, shouting it out like oblivious participants in some massive Pavlovian prank: The bell rings, the sign flips, you read.
Bing! “HIS SCHLONG!”
Steve Harvey makes a silly face and grabs the opportunity to toss out a few punchlines, another day at the office for the host of Family Feud. The Thompsons seem a little disappointed that they did not think of the airline pilot’s schlong.
The only person involved who appears to truly grasp the gravity of the moment is Ms. Marion Brown, who looks crushed — so absolutely scandalized by the answer that she would happily turn the points back over to the Thompsons and forfeit the game altogether just to be able to go back to living in a world where “his schlong” had never been a correct answer on Family Feud.
But alas, we power forward. You, me, Marion Brown, the Thompsons, Steve Harvey, we carry on now, embarrassed or liberated or disgusted or rejuvenated but undoubtedly forever altered in some way by the revelation. We’re here now, about to enter our third month of life after “his schlong” was a correct answer on Family Feud.
What hath Richard Dawson wrought?
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