Clay Bavor at Google placed an order for an eighth of a ton of Silly Putty for himself and colleagues: Naturally, we were all curious to see what 250 pounds of Silly Putty would look like, so before distributing the … Continue reading
This week’s British Medical Journal has tackled the thorny problem of disappearing teaspoons in the office environment. Their experiments show the average half-life of a teaspoon is 81 days, which means that you would need 250 teaspoons per year to … Continue reading
Difficult to believe, but the BBC reports that a group of black squirrels in some trees in eastern Russia being barked at by a large dog suddenly descended from the branches and attacked and gutted the dog.
November 3rd is World Usability Day, with events going on all round the world. “Usability” typically conjures up pictures of users struggling with software which just doesn’t want to behave as the user wants, but it is a much wider … Continue reading
What does a chainsaw manufacturer do, to demonstrate the power of his product? He builds a bike powered by 24 of them.
The BBC reports: Akira Haraguchi, 59, managed to recite the number’s first 83,431 decimal places, almost doubling the previous record held by another Japanese. He had to stop three hours into his recital after losing his place, and had to … Continue reading
If you live outside the UK, your mental picture of the country is likely to include the view that it rains a lot and it’s not exactly the place to go for a hot dry summer. Actually, that view seems … Continue reading
The British museum has been unknowingly exhibiting work by Banksy, better known as a graffiti artist. The “prehistoric cave-painting” was described as follows: “This finely preserved example of primitive art dates from the Post-Catatonic era.The artist responsible is known to … Continue reading
At home we sort our rubbish into the recyclables (go into a yellow sack for collection every other week), paper (into a green bin, collected every two weeks) and the rest (grey bin, every two weeks). We also store our … Continue reading
Sometimes it pays not to be on the cutting edge of technology. According to several reports, large numbers of vehicles in the USA having Bluetooth phone kits connected to their navigation systems have had their onboard electronic systems infected by … Continue reading