Reproduction
Room
November 30, 2011
You know those museum rooms that you can only look into from a doorway
that are set up as historical reproductions of famous rooms? Sort of --
"this is what Ben Franklin's bedroom would've looked like, if he wasted
time keeping it neat."
Well, I've been peering into my memories lately... historical
reproductions, complete with the actual characters playing their roles,
but only visible from one vantage point.
And after playing scenes a few times in all these reproduction rooms,
I've come to a general conclusion: I need to poke people more.
Not hard or anything, just -poke- like that. Just a way of saying "hey
you exist" and are not just a memory, not just a reproduction in a
reproduction room. And it's a way of saying "you people take yourselves
too seriously."
Poke.
Music Association: Paul Simon -
Call Me Al "Don't want to end up a cartoon in a cartoon
graveyard."
To the
Adventurers
November 29, 2011
Here's to the scholar-doctors and adventurers who leave no stone
unturned
because under stones is where all the good stuff is at
Here's to the ponderers
who dream and think and figure stuff out
And here's to the stubble
that helps the thought process.
Music Association: John Williams
- Indiana Jones Theme
Ways of Seeing
November 28, 2011
"[My father] taught me to notice things. One day when I was playing
with what we called an express wagon, which is a little wagon which has
a railing around it for children to play with that they can pull
around. It had a ball in it -- I remember this -- it had a ball in it,
and I pulled the wagon, and I noticed something about the way the ball
moved.
"So I went to my father and I said, 'Say, Pop, I noticed something:
When I pull the wagon the ball rolls to the back of the wagon, and when
I'm pulling it along and I suddenly stop, the ball rolls to the front
of the wagon,' and I says, 'why is that?'
"And he said, 'That nobody knows. The general principle is that things
that are moving try to keep on moving and things that are standing
still tend to stand still unless you push on them hard.' And he says,
'This tendency is called inertia but nobody knows why it's true.' Now
that's a deep understanding -- he doesn't give me a name, he knew the
difference between knowing the name of something and knowing something,
which I learned very early.
"He went on to say, 'If you look close you'll find the ball does not
rush to the back of the wagon, but it's the back of the wagon that
you're pulling against the ball; that the ball stands still, or as a
matter of fact, from the friction starts to move forward really and
doesn't move back.'
"So I ran back to the little wagon and set the ball up again and pulled
the wagon from under it and looking sideways and seeing indeed he was
right -- the ball never moved backwards in the wagon when I pulled the
wagon forward. It moved backward relative to the wagon, but relative to
the sidewalk it was moved forward a little bit, it's just [that] the
wagon caught up with it. So that's the way I was educated by my father,
with those kinds of examples and discussions, no pressure, just lovely
interesting discussions."
- Richard
Feynman, The Pleasure
Of Finding Things Out
Music Association: Coldplay -
How You See The World
Similar Stars
November 26, 2011
The Priscilla Lane and Betty Grable look alike contest begins today.
Music Association: ABC - Look of
Love
November 25, 2011
A California
shopper used pepper spray to get ahead in the Walmart line.
(She got her Xbox.)
Where would she have gotten that idea, Lt. John Pike?
Music Association: Van Morrison
- Friday's Child
"And I watched you knock 'em down,
Knock 'em down, each
and every one."
Thanksgiving Hint #1124: Pass The Pepper Spray
November 24, 2011
This Thanksgiving say Please
when asking someone to pass the pepper spray. You'll be glad you did.
Music Association: The Beatles -
Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band (Reprise)
Counting the Moments
November 23, 2011
Take any cube of spinning spheres and identify the number of spinning
spheres without counting or calculating.
Ready... go.
Music Association: Three Dog
Night - One
Airport
Security Queue Meets Retail
November 22, 2011
I haven't been to the Target at Lake & Hiawatha in Minneapolis,
but I've got
to go there.
Target believes shoppers are too stupid to pick the best checkout lane,
so they are field
testing the airport security queue on the shoppers.
The shoppers are herded through one line to multiple
mini-checkouts.
Some customer-corralling executive let go from Best Buy (Richfield, MN
based) must have been picked up by Target (Minneapolis,
MN based)
to solve the problem
of
picking the fastest checkout lane. So they said, "Years ago, Best Buy
had the problem, which we solved with cattle gates and microwave-sized
checkouts. The alternative was the iPass Tollway method of customer
checkout."
The
iPass Tollway Customer Checkout System (iPTCCS)
The customer pushes the transparent cart through the iPTCCS laser
archway. Bar code reading lasers from all directions price
the
merchandise in the cart. Customer stumbles through temporary* blindness
to the credit card scanner to swipe the credit card. Customer stumbles
out of the store.
The iPTCCS system saves:
$
time
$
checkout
staff
$
bags
$
customer
training
Best Buy (and Target?) made the right decision to go with the airport
security queue instead of the tollway method of customer checkout.
* The iPTCCS laser archway marketing people think the
blindness is only temporary.
Music Associations: Thomas Dolby
- Blinded Me With Science & Manfred Mann - Blinded By The Light
Sleep In On Friday
November 21, 2011
I'm looking at all the Black
Friday 2011 ads, and I have to tell you, I'm not impressed.
Where are the big sales on HDTVs?
Where's the peace
on Earth?
There are never any good deals on peace on Earth, but I'll keep working
on it.
Google
has identified top product searches:
*
Striped dress
* Ugg boots
Kohl's is offering 20% off an entire pre-Black Friday purchase using
coupon code FANSNOV20.
NHK World reports Japanese HDTV manufacturers are losing money selling
HDTVs through lower than expected demand and high competition with
Chinese and South Korean manufacturers. Sony is forecasting a $2.2
billion loss from its TV division this fiscal year, the
eighth straight year of losses.
Music Association: Smokey
Robinson - Shop Around
