Why Do Sandwiches Taste Better When Someone Else Makes Them?

By Daniel Kahneman

More than a thousand furious rail passengers stormed a station office after they noticed the train they were on had gone 980km in the WRONG direction.

As the packed service pulled into the Indian city of Warangal people on board went berserk as they realised they were five hours away from where they should have been and no staff on board had noticed….

It was when it arrived at an interchange at Vijayawada it went wrong, as it was due to swing north to its eventual destination of Varanasi, one of India’s holiest cities.

India’s signalling system is run on codes but instead of entering the three-letters for its next intended stop Bhubaneswar (BBS) staff put in the code for Bilaspur (BSP) sending the train in completely the wrong direction.

Via: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2039667/Indian-train-travels-980km-wrong-direction-rail-staff-noticing.html#ixzz1YzFZi0gH

More wonderfully bad analogies:

The hailstones leaped from the pavement, just like maggots when you fry
them in hot grease.

Long separated by cruel fate, the star-crossed lovers raced across the
grassy field toward each other like two freight trains, one having left
Cleveland at 6:36 p.m. traveling at 55 mph, the other from Topeka at
4:19 p.m. at a speed of 35 mph.

John and Mary had never met. They were like two hummingbirds who had
also never met.

He fell for her like his heart was a mob informant, and she was the East
River.

Her vocabulary was as bad as, like, whatever.  –  M.C. Escher Recursive Analogy Award

He was as tall as a six-foot, three-inch tree. — Zen Analogy Award

The little boat gently drifted across the pond exactly the way a bowling
ball wouldn’t.  – Quantum Metaphor Memorial Award

She had a deep, throaty, genuine laugh, like that sound a dog makes just
before it throws up.   — Award for Best Canine Disphony (“ABCD Award”)

More at https://plus.google.com/100612175927429294541/posts/c6MWreA6TB6

As the current regime draws nearer to the day when we cannot afford to drive cars, it’s good to know that people are working on alternatives: like the bike repair vending machine.

The Fixtation is really just a vending machine, but with bike parts instead of snacks (though there are some snacks in case you’re getting hungry on your ride). What makes it most convenient is the bike mount and tools–attached with aircraft cables to prevent theft–alongside the vending machine. You can replace that flat or adjust your brakes yourself without dealing with the characters who usually are employed at bike shops. Of course, you may not know how to replace a popped tube yourself; now is certainly the time to learn, so you can take full advantage of the Fixtation when it moves into your city.

Via: http://www.fastcompany.com/1768512/bike-repair-vending-machine-for-bikers-on-the-go

In his 34 years with the New York Fire Department, Capt. James Melvin has seen his share of stuck elevators. But he had never witnessed anything quite like what happened Sunday on Staten Island.

Two construction workers were stuck in an elevator that was filling with water, Captain Melvin explained, with a hint of amazement in his voice. By the time firefighters arrived, the water level had risen as high as the two trapped men’s necks.

“We’ve had plenty of elevator emergencies, but never one that’s down sinking in water,” said Captain Melvin, of Ladder Company 86 on Richmond Avenue. As for the two men, he added, “They were happy to see us.”

The men were working in the former Staten Island Hotel in Graniteville, which is being renovated into an assisted-living residence for older people.

About 9 a.m., the two workers were riding in the elevator and discovered that the door did not open. The men, identified as Edward Tyler and Wendell Amaker, began to hit the buttons for various floors in the hope that the doors on one of them would work.

“They figured they’d try the basement level,” Captain Melvin said.

On another day, that would probably have been fine, but the rainfall on Sunday had led to severe flooding in the basement. And when the elevator neared the basement level, “it hit water and started sinking slowly, until it sank to the bottom of the shaft,” Captain Melvin said.

The two men were alone in the building, he added. There was no one inside to hear their shouts, and a security guard outside was unaware of the disaster unfolding inside, Captain Melvin said.

With a cellphone the men reached the Fire Department. While neither knew the precise address of the building, they said it was near the intersection of Richmond Avenue and Christopher Lane.

When firefighters finally found them, about an hour after their initial call, the two men were standing atop the plastic cart they had been using to transport supplies between floors. Even with the cart’s added height, the water was up to their necks, and about three feet from the elevator’s ceiling, Captain Melvin said.

Via http://www.nytimes.com/2011/08/15/nyregion/two-saved-from-drowning-in-stuck-elevator-on-si.html

Throughout history, poverty is the normal condition of man. Advances which permit this norm to be exceeded–here and there, now and then–are the work of an extremely small minority, frequently despised, often condemned, and almost always opposed by all right-thinking people. Whenever this tiny minority is kept from creating, or (as sometimes happens) is driven out of a society, the people then slip back into abject poverty.

This is known as “bad luck.”

–  Robert Heinlein, in “Time Enough for Love,” 1973

http://boingboing.net/2011/08/09/video-of-a-river-rock-balancer.html

For my friend, Beth Massey:

QUICK! What keeps pre-packaged shredded cheese from clumping, low-fat ice cream creamy, and pre-made milk shakes smooth? You guessed it! WOOD PULP. They call it “cellulose,” but it’s just powdered wood pulp. The industry loves this stuff. It’s cheap. It helps stabilize food, lowers fat content, increases fiber. Did I say it’s cheap?

Via http://www.foodrenegade.com/would-like-some-wood-pulp-your-shredded-cheese/

This is very cool (even if one is not a Steeler’s fan):

Pittsburgh Steelers cafeteria worker Maurice Matthews received the gift of a 1999 Mercedes-Benz SL500. The gift was given by Steelers secondary coach Ray Horton to Matthews for $20 on the coach’s last day of work.

Horton dropped the news on Matthews by asking the food service employee, who would repeatedly ask to take his Benz for a ride, if he could borrow all the money he had. Since the two were reportedly close, Matthews gave Horton his only $20, which became the asking price for the droptop. Not too shabby, especially considering the book value on the 64,000 mile Benz is somewhere around $18k.

In the academic world, you think now and decide never; and in the government, it’s just exactly the other way around.

 

G. Warren Nutter,  economist and former Assistant Secretary of Defense

I cannot omit a rather childish story which Vasari tells about the David. After it had been placed upon its pedestal before the palace, and while the scaffolding was still there, Piero Soderini, who loved and admired Michelangelo, told him that he thought the nose too large. The sculptor immediately ran up the ladder till he reached a point upon the level of the giant’s shoulder. He then took his hammer and chisel, and, having concealed some dust of marble in the hollow of his hand, pretended to work off a portion from the surface of the nose. In reality he left it as he found it; but Soderini, seeing the marble dust fall scattering through the air, thought that his hint had been taken. When, therefore, Michelangelo called down to him, ‘Look at it now!’ Soderini shouted up in reply, ‘I am far more pleased with it; you have given life to the statue.’

– John Addington Symonds, The Life of Michelangelo Buonarroti, 1893

That’s too good not to be true.

This practice vexed the poet-preacher Henry Van Dyke nearly a century ago, and he came up with an interesting explanation.

English is the only major language to capitalize its first-person singular pronoun.

“How monumentally imposing is that upper case ‘I’!” wrote Henry Van Dyke in 1920. “If a writer is egoistic the capitals stretch across his page like a colonnade. When he writes ‘we,’ he descends to the lower case.

“But this orthographic solipsism, mark you, is shared by Americans, Canadians, Australians, New Zealanders,–all who use the English tongue. It is therefore not to be set down to insularity, but to individualism,–a stark, ineradicable, valuable quality of these various folks whose thoughts and feelings have been nourished by the same language.”

and move your cursor around.

Then let it sit and watch the changes.

 

Card catalogues were once vital components of libraries; most were beautifully crafted of durable materials.  Now some enterprising librarians are finding ways to repurpose card catalogues as storage sites and charging stations for e-book readers.

 

 

 

It turns out that the drawers were just the right size for most of the common eReaders. All the case needed was a few holes drilled in the back, and then running some power cables.

 

 

 

The Bloomington Junior High School Media Center offers a brief how-to photoessay