Saturday, March 16, 2013

Opportunity is missed by most people...

I'm often disappointed during job interviews when the candidate doesn't have any questions to ask beyond the standard "When can I expect to hear from you?" Here's a list of five good questions to ask during the interview. #5 Why would I not be a good fit for this job?

Beethoven might be shocked to find out how slowly his music is played today.

Never heard this story before, but apparently a pilot rolled a 707 during a test flight.

What do Jerry Jones and Chuck Jones have in common besides a last name? On April 13th the Dallas Opera will host a showing of Chuck Jones' What's Opera, Doc? on the 72 ft by 160 ft. HD video screen in Jerry Jones' Dallas Cowboys Stadium (aka Jerry World). The Bugs Bunny classic will be followed by a simulcast of the Dallas Opera's performance of Puccini's Turandot (my personal favorite). Better still, tickets are free.

You'll never guess what this is a video of. Hint: Have you ever played a musical instrument?
With spring upon us (or nearly so depending on your latitude), spend a few moments with looking at something .com.

Virginia Woolf has a few tips for us on how to read. First, don't let anyone tell you how to read. And then on poetry, "The impact of poetry is so hard and direct that for the moment there is no other sensation except that of the poem itself."

What's funnier than sketches from the Carol Burnett show? Outtakes!

Is everything we thought Wright about the birth of aviation actually wrong? Did Whitehead really fly in 1901?

I've always said that anyone who believes the human animal to be inherently good has never watched children play. Now science backs me up. It seems that infants are mean little SOBs.

Google Reader is being euthanized on July 1st. Anyone have suggestions for an RSS reader replacement? (No iOS or Android apps, please.)

For the truly hardcore animation fan comes this Tumblr of smears, a single cel with motion blur.
When dining out in a restaurant with a group you have 45 seconds to decide where to sit. Here's an infographic that will help you optimize your seat selection based on table shape and configuration.

A boat sank in 1840 with bottled beer in its cargo hold. The wreck was discovered and its cargo raised in 2010. Now, Finland's Stallhagen brewers will reproduce that old brew and release shipwreck brew in 2014.

CERN is now "pretty sure" that what they found was a Higgs boson.

Tom Peters goes off on a rant about "the best educated nation wins" and how we as a nation must attract the best and brightest to elementary education. What scored points with me is about halfway into the article where he contrasts the current call for STEM (science, technology, engineering, math) education with STEAM (science, technology, engineering, the arts, and math). This jives with Verne Harnish's (I think I'm remembering this correctly) mandate for businesses to "outlearn" your competition which might also be better stated as "out-teach" your competition (i.e. your goal should be to share all your knowledge about your field of endeavor with your customers).

Sweet connector/cable goodness at the online adapter museum. (DMS-59 to dual VGA? They got that.)

This photo from 1903 of Alexander Graham Bell kissing a woman holding a tetrahedral kite comes from National Geographics' must-see photo blog, Found.
Sometimes science gets it wrong. This early report of an unclassified life form found in a pristine lake beneath 2.2 miles of ice was wrong. Turns out it was contamination from the surface.

Look at all the new microbreweries coming to the Fort Worth area. 

This bit of work demonstrates the futility of statistics - the average color of the MoMA's art is #a79f94 (gray).

Lots of people died during the 20th century. Here's how.

I like progressive rock, but not enough to spend too much time on Prog Butts, a photo blog of prog rockers' derrieres. (Might the blogger be making a statement about the shyness of prog rockers - that they face away from the audience?)

Iron Maiden, on the other hand, aren't shrinking violets. So here comes their new beer, Trooper ("malt flavor and citric notes").

Haven't seen a font like this in a while - Men of Letters
On the difficulties associated with staging Lolita in Soviet and Putin's Russia.

From the legal corner comes this ruling that Homeland Security can't search your laptop at the border (or anywhere else) without probable cause.

Google Maps shows us the 10 biggest asteroid impacts. (Didn't know about the Chesapeake Bay crater, made about 35 million years ago.)

Photo essay: a day in the life of a bacon lover.

Hawt lobster on lobster action.
Is that a twelve foot long penis in your mouth or did we just discover a whale's brain radiator?

...because it comes dressed in overalls and disguised as work. ~Thomas Edison


Anonymous said...

Is my math correct? Did I see three craft beer related items this week?

Sam Calgione might have something to say about those Fins and the Shipwreck beer (though it isn't nearly as old as the reengineered recipes he uses to brew the line of DH Ancient Ales.

More to come...

John said...

Counting isn't my strong suit.

Jim said...

The RadioLab segment on Beethoven was pretty cool.

Feedly and Newsblur seem to be getting the most buzz. (Newsblur is just starting to recover from the onslaught of disavowed Google Reader users.)

Jim said...

Also I'm wondering how long Google will keep blogger around. :-(

John said...

I have those two on my list. I'm hoping to hear first hand experiences.

John said...

Hand't thought about blogger. Good thing I know Wordpress.

Francis Shivone said...

Very glad to see FW is attracting the microbrewers and distillers even if I can't enjoy.

John said...

I agree, Fran. The timing stinks, esp. regarding the microbrewery in Grapevine.

Francis Shivone said...

By the way, I read the other day that there is a world record for number of Easter marshmallow peeps eaten in a minute. I think it was 160 and I was wondering how many the young lady had as an undergarment in the previous post.

John said...

I suppose that would be a great motivator to eat them quickly, assuming one didn't get sidetracked along the way.