Slideshow of famous people’s final statements.

Via trp.

I will likely never have a finite Erdős–Bacon number which is found by adding one’s Bacon number, with one’s Erdős number. The Bacon number is based on the number of degrees one is separated from Kevin Bacon in terms of film appearances, while the Erdős number is based on the number of degrees one is separated from mathematician Paul Erdős based on mathematical scholarly article authorship.

While my Bacon number is 3 (I appeared in Snakes on a Blog with Kenan Thompson who appeared in Snakes on a Plane with Rachel Blanchard who appeared in Where the Truth Lies with Kevin Bacon), it seems unlikely that I will ever achieve an Erdős number. This will leave my combined Erdős–Bacon number somewhere in the infinity-plus-three range.

For comparison, Danica McKellar (Winny Cooper) has an Erdős-Bacon number of 6, which I find very impressive.

A few years ago I saw this visual cognition experiment at a science museum and it’s been in the back of my memory ever since. I’m not sure how well it’s going to work online at YouTube quality but try to pay attention and we’ll see if it works.

Instructions - Part One: When viewing the video, try to count the total number of times that the people wearing white pass the basketball. Do not count the passes made by the people wearing black.

The remainder of the instructions are after the jump. If you’re viewing this on one page, don’t read the text below until after you’ve watched the video once.

Read more »

Interrobang‽

I’ve posted my solution to the afore mentioned Ctrl+C Problem in the original post.

From CNN:

“We wanted this redesigned bill to scream, ‘I am a five. I am a five,”‘ Larry Felix, director of the Bureau of Engraving and Printing said in an interview with The Associated Press.

Mission accomplished:

Via Kottke.

Last night while half asleep I came up with (dreamed?) the idea for a wonderful and revolutionary new business — NetSox, it’s NetFlix for socks!

Instead of doing laundry, you’d select the style of socks you’d like to wear next week from a well designed and easily navigable website (NetSox.com). The website would provide pictures and user-generated reviews of every known brand, style and color of sock known to man for the user to choose from. The most popular sock designs might require some diligent queuing!

And in just a few days, your selected socks would show up in the mail in a handy red mailer, clean and ready to wear.

After a day’s use, you’d put the now dirty socks back into the return mailer and send them off to NetSox, at no charge, to clean them and then put them back into circulation. You can keep the socks for as long or as short as you’d like all for a single low monthly rate!

You’ll never need to buy another pair of socks again!

Who has venture capital?

As Alexander Graham Bell worked towards the invention of the telephone, he honed his acoustic skills on a number of projects. One of them was the extraordinarily creepy Ear Phonautograph.

Bell built an ear phonautograph in 1874 following a suggestion from Clarence Blake. It consisted of the bones of an actual human ear, mounted on a wooden frame. When one spoke into it, the bones vibrated; a bristle brush descending from the bones traced the shape of the sound waves on a piece of smoked glass, which could be rolled back and forth underneath.

Yeah, he tore the ear from a dead body and stapled up to his ghoulish contraption. Why, I ask, don’t all phones use this technology today? Can you imagine talking into a headset consisting of a disembodied ear and a pair of flapping lips?

Here’s a picture of Bell’s device:

The past is gross.

I love Soviet-era posters. They’re stark and angular and perfect. We may have won the Cold War, but we definitely lost the poster war.

BoingBoing points to my new favorite blog A Soviet Poster A Day which, unsurprisingly, posts a new Soviet poster each day with commentary. I’m excited.

Dear GameStop,

Two days ago on September 12, 2007, at around 5:30pm, I visited GameStop store number 4101 in the Fashion Center Mall in Pentagon City located at 1100 South Hayes Street, Arlington, VA 22202. I was there to buy a new Wii console along with some games and accessories. It was an unpleasant and disturbing experience marked by poor customer service and a surprisingly high level of homophobia.

When I first arrived, I was pleased to find six or seven employees inside the store. “Great,” I thought, “they’ll help me quickly.” That wasn’t in the cards. The employees were deeply enmeshed in conversation and had arranged themselves on either side of the counter so that I was unable to get anyone’s attention. I waited for a lengthy period of time. Here’s a quick visual representation of the situation:

As I waited for the employees to realize that they had blocked customers from actually buying any products, I was privy to their conversation. In reality, even if I had been standing on the walkway outside of the store I would have been privy to their conversation–it wasn’t quiet.

While I waited to be noticed, I was surprised by their loud and frequent use of the words “fuck” and “shit” in casual conversation. Eventually one of the employees indicated that the male employee behind the counter was having dreams about another male employee and that he was, hence, a “homo” and a “fag.” They went back and forth for a few minutes, debating whether the counter employee was in fact a “homo.” The guy behind the counter argued that he was merely dreaming of “running over” the other male employee with a large motor vehicle and was, therefore, not a “homo.” Again, this was not a quiet conversation.

At this point, the non-”homo” behind the counter noticed that I was waiting and took my order.

Now, while I wasn’t all that happy about the “fuck”s and the “shit”s, it was GameStop so I was willing to accept a somewhat lower standard of decorum than I would from other retail establishments. I understand who your target demographic is. If that was all there was to it, I would have just written off the unpleasant attitude as simply a sign of a store with poor (or absent) local management. The slide from annoying swearing into casual and open homophobia and bigotry, however, was really surprising and disheartening. Is this how GameStop wants to portray itself to the game buying public? Is casual sexism the next thing I can expect from my local GameStop? Or racism? How far down this path is GameStop willing to travel?

Your customers are not, at present, all 13 year-old boys. If this attitude continues to be flaunted at your storefronts, however, it’s hard to imagine that anybody else is going to want to shop there.

Because of the store’s atmosphere I choose not to buy several games and accessories.

I would appreciate a response, both to the situation and to my letter. I have posted this letter online here and would be happy to post whatever response you feel is appropriate alongside the letter.

Thank you.

UPDATE: The responses:

I recently received some communication from my corporate office that you had an unacceptable shopping experience in one of my stores. I want to assure you that I take these kinds of situation extremely seriously. I was hoping you would be willing to give me a call at your convenience to discuss this matter. The easiest time to get a hold of me will be on Monday, but you can call me any time that is convenient to you. If you miss me just leave a message and I will call you back.

Thank you for your concern and I assure we will be looking into this situation with great energy.

—– ——-
District Manager
DC Southeast, D59
Cell: — — —-

and

I am writing in response to your email below regarding your recent visit and unfortunate experience at our Fashion Center Mall GameStop store.This must have been very disturbing and frustrating.

On behalf of GameStop let me start by offering my sincere apologies for the manner in which you were treated and for the poor quality of customer service we provided. Rest assured this is not the quality of interaction we strive for at GameStop. We work and train diligently to ensure every visit to one of our stores is a fun, informative and enjoyable experience. Our employees are expected to treat every customer with personalized service, in a professional and courteous manner.

We at GameStop wish to assure you we take customer service matters very seriously. We value your business and want you to feel comfortable shopping with us in the future. Rest assured we will take appropriate measures to ensure this will not happen again.

You will receive a follow-up email once our investigation is complete. If you prefer to be contacted directly by phone please provide your contact information and we will be happy to call you.

Thank you for taking the time to write to us and we would like to again offer our sincere apologies for this unfortunate incident.

Sincerely,
Steve Morgan
President

I was surprised to find that New York only ranks third in terms of annual public transportation metro ridership. I’m pretty sure that means not-buses.

Without following the above link, can you guess one and two?

UPDATE: I’ve fixed this problem, scroll down to see how.

The other day I lamented that my version of Microsoft Word has recently lost the ability to cut using Ctrl+C. Instead I get the ever popular, always useful, á symbol. Today I noticed that Word in fact confirms that Ctrl+C no longer controls the Copy function:

For no discernible reason, Copy is now controlled by the Control+Insert (or Ctrl+Insert) keyboard combination. Why did this change? How do I change it back? This is an unpleasantness.

My brief efforts to Google an answer to this problem were unproductive. The closest thing I could find is a site that explains how to use the Insert key to control the Paste command (rather than Ctrl+V). Close, but no help.

Any ideas?

UPDATE:

Here’s how to fix it. First, go to Tools and choose Customize:

Second, choose Keyboard… (at the bottom):

Finally, for category select Edit, for Commands select EditCopy (or whatever keyboard shortcut is screwed up) and then place a cursor in the “Press new shortcut key” space and then type the command you want to use for the Copy command (in my case Ctrl +C):

That should do it.

Transylvania Community Hospital, for all of your evil hospital needs.

Also, SOMEBODY, don’t ask me who, recently made a funny addition to the hospital’s wikipedia page.

CNN appears to have pretty much given up on the whole “news” thing.

Real sign, real sign, fake sign.

The Milgram Experiment, which basically showed that Americans are perfectly capable of behaving like Nazis given the right authority structure, was recorded on video and is available on YouTube. I had no idea you could watch these tapes. Check out the subject of the experiment consistently object to what he’s being asked to do but continue, over the screams of his victim, when ordered to do so in an authoritative tone:

Part I:

How great is the sign for this burger place in Indiana?

Via 28bytes.

Some enterprising individual spent $200 enticing users of Amazon’s Mechanical Turk to produce, at 2 cents a pop, images of a sheep facing left. They collected 10,000 such images and now offer them to you, the consumer, at the low low price of $20.00 per sheet of adhesive stamps featuring your preferred sheep.

Baa.

This webpage freaks me out.

It’s good to see we still have a few modern Edisons out there to do the big inventing.

Somehow I missed this, but I like turtles!

Married and want to have an affair but just can find the right mistress/mastress?  The Ashley Madison Agency can help!

A good picture.

I don’t know if this picture is real or photoshopped, but it’s fantastic.

Via the OopsList.

The first definition of primate is totally unexpected to such a lay person as myself.