Swans on Tea

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Date: May 14th, 2008

Arg! Double Arg!

14 May, 2008 (18:15) | Politics, Rants | No comments

mustventmustventmustventmustventmustventmustvent
There seem to be a lot of bureaucratic jobs out there. People shuffling papers around and about, sending them to and fro, ostensibly with a goal in mind of accomplishing some task. Sometimes that task is helping someone else get something done. Somehow, though, there are cases in which the metric by [...]

I, For One, Welcome Our New Insane Ant Overlords

14 May, 2008 (15:35) | Other science | No comments

Ants swarm over Houston area, fouling electronics
Maybe it’s in protest for being called “crazy”
The hairy, reddish-brown creatures are known as “crazy rasberry ants” - crazy, because they wander erratically instead of marching in regimented lines, and “rasberry” after Tom Rasberry, an exterminator who did battle against them early on
[...]
[T]heir cousins, commonly called crazy ants, are [...]

Sweet, Sweet Sampling Error

14 May, 2008 (03:46) | Math, Science-general | No comments

The candy weighing demonstration, or, the unwisdom of crowds
Get some candies of different sizes and shapes and put them in a bag. Have students estimate the mass of the ensemble by choosing 5 candies, finding their average mass, and multiplying by the number of candies. Their estimate will be too large because their [...]

This Doesn’t Suck

14 May, 2008 (03:45) | Silly, Tech | No comments

Technically everything outside of it blows. How to turn your vacuum cleaner into a bazooka
Vacuum cleaner reduces pressure in tube, and pressure differential accelerates projectile. Effective range up to 30-40 feet.

 

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