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Loneliest Human

The xkcd “What if?” blog has a great analysis of the people most eligible for the title of Loneliest Human. Not that I ever thought I had even come close, but it makes my whole “6 miles from the nearest light bulb” (at Philmont Scout Ranch) thing seem way less impressive.

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Heavy Memory

This is just odd.

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You know, there are times, ya just gotta rip that RAM right out of the computer, drop it in your pocket, and GO. You just, you know, gotta move. And you might need 4 gigs of RAM when you get… wherever you’re going. Somebody might need RAM! Think of the children!!!

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Dog on a Ham Slicer

Jeremy Clarkson is one of the geniuses featured on the BBC series Top Gear. He is also author of possibly the most amazing review of a new car I have ever read.

Money quote:

It feels like the clutch is slipping. It feels horrid.

And the sound is worse. The Honda’s petrol engine is a much-shaved, built-for-economy, low-friction 1.3 that, at full chat, makes a noise worse than someone else’s crying baby on an airliner. It’s worse than the sound of your parachute failing to open. Really, to get an idea of how awful it is, you’d have to sit a dog on a ham slicer.

So you’re sitting there with the engine screaming its head off, and your ears bleeding, and you’re doing only 23mph because that’s about the top speed, and you’re thinking things can’t get any worse, and then they do because you run over a small piece of grit.

Genius.

(h/t Arts & Letters Daily)

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Another what coming?

After my last post, Sarah pointed out to me that she has only ever heard the phrase “another thing coming.” In fact, she thought I must have made a typo. I, on the other hand, had only ever heard “another think coming,” until about a year ago. My take was that it was a play on words; hers, that it was to be taken less literally, as “something else is coming to change your mind.”

So, Google to the rescue, right? Wrong! The “thing” version has 253,000 hits (and a hit Judas Priest song), while the “think” version has only 50,300 hits. But wait, there’s more! Many of the non-song hits for “thing” are criticizing that version as a mistake for “think.” But… the earliest recorded form may be “thing.”Wiktionary claims that “think” is correct in British usage, while “thing” is the “only common form in US.” This last bit is patently false, as it’s a very common saying in the South, and, like I said, I had never heard “thing” until a year or so ago. This has inspired some impassioned debate over at wordreference, with Americans, Brits, and Aussies all offering different opinions.

So, which is it? Chime in in the comments!

P.S. Personally, I just like “think,” so proper usage be damned, that’s what I’m going with!

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Public Service Announcement: Tested Advertising Methods

After watching a truly horrifying self-produced commercial, I felt compelled to recommend again a book which everyone in business should read. It’s a classic, called Tested Advertising Methods, and it basically tells you all you need to know about advertising (what works and what doesn’t, why, etc.). Do yourself or the business geek(s) in your life a favor, and pick up a copy. It’s actually very entertaining and informative reading, even if you never put together an ad in your life.

An example of what does not work, when advertising a local Internet access provider, is video of strangely dressed people in an echoing room looking at TVs showing your old ads (which, by the way, consisted almost entirely of your logo) and saying things like, “We’re looking at 10 years of [COMPANY] ads!” Seriously, that was the entire commercial. Geeks, in a room, with TVs, saying stupid things do not make me want broadband any more than I did before, much less provided by said geeks…