An Analogy Lacking Thought

My wife watches Robin & Company on CNN-Headline News frequently in the morning, so I often receive a dose of what headlines CNN considers most important (or probably most interesting to viewers to captivate the audience). In any case, Robin was off today (a common occurrence, for some reason), and Christi covered "what's on tap" (their words, not mine) for the show. One story is about a Cadillac Escalade found stuck on a pedestrian bridge in Minneapolis. While the story itself sounds entertaining, the analogy offered by local resident Ryan Miller of Miller Towing provided even more amusement. He acknowledged the difficulty faced with the removing of the SUV from the bridge by saying its like "Trying to get 10 pounds through a 5 pound hole." I would ruin the humor in this statement by saying anything more, but fortunately the misplaced vehicle was removed from the bridge. "Trial and error, all you can do. Try, and if it fails, try again, that's what we did," said Miller.

Exposing Office Pet Peeves

An article appearing on The Ithaca Journal website referenced a blog addressing workplace pet peeves. The blog "Civility in the Workplace" seeks to disclose those rude behaviors that take place in the work environment. Even better, the blog does not restrain itself, for it remains true to its cause, identifying even those annoyances many of us refuse to acknowledge in fear of being, go figure, rude to our colleagues.

Naturally, email is a recurrent theme in the "Civility in the Workplace" blog, and there are several entries regarding email that probably should be read by email addicts (e.g. those of us who check our inbox within the first fifteen minutes of our day). Email is a convenience designed to expedite the transmission of information, intended as a surrogate to handwritten letters, yet the ease of composing, typing, and sending an email quickly led to the transmission of dilapidated information. Recipients must decrypt the meaning from poorly written messages (ah! a slip on my part--"messages" naturally replaced "letters"), which, of course, leads to incorrect interpretations. But, we do not have time to compose clear and concise emails; we must stay abreast of the "information" available in our own inbox or some pointless website (like this blog)! How many times have you struggled to understand the purpose of an email sent to you? It would be nice if people would adopt the practice of sending the email you wish to receive.

Bear Consumes Man at Beer Festival

A 23 year old Serbian man was found half-eaten in a bear cage at the Belgrade Zoo during the beer festival. The zoo director said "There's a good chance he was drunk or drugged. Only an idiot would jump into the bear cage." Check out CNN (here) for the rest of the article.

xkcd

Edison had a better solution than Westinghouse?

In the July 26, 2007 edition of The Economist is an article about alternatively fueled power plants. Wind power apparently is better suited to a DC power grid, rather than the current AC grid. In the late 19th century, the battle between Edison's direct current power lines and Westinghouse's alternating current lines. 

DC lines send electrons flying from the negative terminal to the positive terminal (thank Benjamin Franklin for this somewhat backwards intuition).  AC essentially flips the terminals back and forth, so electrons flow back and forth--this is where the 120Hz comes into play.  Westinghouse's AC lines won over Edison, because it was considered easier to transfer power over longer distances via AC.  However, the article in The Economist mentions that DC lines actually outperform AC lines in terms of how far power may be transfer.  In addition, the lines may be placed closer to the ground without power degradation.  It would interesting to see if DC lines actually replace the well-established AC lines in the coming years.