Sunday, March 23, 2014

Things I learned lately - 23 March


  • An 18 year old (Morgan Baskin) is seriously running for Mayor in Toronto and she has some interesting ideas for how a city should be run.
  • A Fox TV affiliate in Oklahoma edited out a brief segment in the new show 'Cosmos' with Neil deGrasse Tyson. The segment had to do with evolution. Fox says it was a mistake.
  • The $26.7 billion of bonuses Wall Street banks paid out last year are enough to more than double the pay of every one of America's 1,085,000 full-time minimum wage workers.
  • $9.99 per month now gets you 1TB of online file storage (Google Drive). That used to cost $49.99.
  • 2 teaspoons of buckwheat honey outperforms cough suppressants with DM.
  • There may be a reservoir of water 400-600km below the surface of Earth that has as much water than all of the surface oceans combined.
  • While in Google Maps, type OK Maps and it will cache the map you're looking at for offline viewing.
  • In the US, it is illegal in many states (and more are making it illegal now) for a car company to sell its product directly to consumers. An independent dealer must be involved. This completely goes against the Tesla sales model. At least 86% of people polled said they were in favour of Tesla's direct sales model, yet dealership associations have convinced politicians not to allow direct sales.
  • A Tesla Model S owner figures that after a year of ownership, even factoring in the 85% efficiency, and vampire power (what the car uses while shut down), only used 7100kWh. That got him 2.1 miles /kWh. That gave him a 'fuel' cost of $820 or 5.3 cents per mile, which is still a quarter of what a comparable luxury gasoline sedan would cost.
  • “If I do not keep that F-22 fleet viable, the F-35 fleet frankly will be irrelevant. The F-35 is not built as an air superiority platform. It needs the F-22.” ~Chief of the U.S. Air Force, Air Command Command Gen. Michael Hostage
  • HP's PC sales are so bad, they've abandoned Windows 8 and are selling new PCs with Windows 7 instead.
  • According to details published in the Daily News, on the TV show The Voice, NBC has the right to portray a contestant in a false light, replace them as a participant in the series for any reason whatsoever, at their sole discretion, and depict contestants in a way that may be disparaging, defamatory, embarrassing and may expose them to public ridicule, humiliation or condemnation. The contract also allows NBC to broadcast the results of network-mandated medical or psychological testing. This is standard in reality TV world. But when it comes to The Voice, the format of the show can be compromised at a producer's whim, as the contract allows production to ignore the show's voting system if they so choose. Such was the case when thousands of text and social media votes were tossed out last May, based on "some inconsistencies" with the show's independent vote monitors. 
  • CNN actually speculated if a black hole swallowed the missing Malaysia flight.

1 comment:

Retro Blog said...

An entire network devoted to hyperbole cannot go more than two weeks regarding coverage of one missing airplane without edging into fantasy. Maybe they should get Mr. Tyson to 'splain it to them.