A clever clock
A friend sent over this link, pretty clever stuff:
http://www.asriran.com/files/fa/news/1389/8/16/155486_922.swf… -->
continue reading →Tag Archives: Society
Olympics 2012
I wonder, is it only my personal impression or Olympics 2012 is really quite a bit understated and under-promoted? I have a feeling that all previous Olympics were going up the curve in terms of publicity, advertisements and public expectations.
This time… it feels like if the world has a lot on its mind and could not care much for a yet another Olympics. Weird.
Kinda related :)
- Hottest Female Athletes in the Olympics 2012
- The naughty 2012 Olympics logo
Murders, rapes and walking in the dark
Bumped into some statistics today and found it interesting enough to share:
- Murders (per capita) by country
- Rapes (per capita) by country
- Walking in the dark by country
Not obvious a priori, say?
I picked out some for you:
Country Safety Perception Murder rank Rape rank Sweden 85% #16 Canada 82% United States 82% Denmark 81% #14 Finland 81% #12 #7 Netherlands 81% #25 Japan 78% #45 Austria 78% #28 Switzerland 77% #20 France 77% #27 Belgium 77% #17 #3 United Kingdom 70% Italy 65% #21 Australia 64% #18 New Zealand 62% #29 #2… --> continue reading →Some farmers they are
Historically, farmers tended to try and defend their crops, sometimes with weapons, sometimes with the tools of trade. But this is still amazing, as Reuters reports that:
Farmers armed with assault rifles, rocket-propelled grenades and mortars forced Lebanese government troops to abandon an operation to destroy their illegal cannabis crop in Lebanon’s Bekaa Valley on Monday
Farmers? With mortars and rocket-propelled grenades? Those are some farmers, I tell you.… -->
continue reading →Татуировки – это надолго
В новостях: Никитину пришлось отказаться от участия в Bayreuth Festival в Германии из-за татуировки со свастикой. Он говорит, что это было ошибкой бурной молодости, но теперь это уже никак ему не поможет. Представляете, да? Теперь, когда немецкие газеты об этом узнали – всё, человеку доступ к немецкой сцене просто закрыт навсегда.
А я вам больше скажу. Во многих странах востока татуировки используются в том же смысле, что у нас – клеймение (ракаленным железом). И обычно используется для “записи” того, кому человек принадлежит. Ну, конечно, самое распространенное – принадлежность клану мафии. Поэтому кое-где вас просто не пустят, к примеру, в баню, если у вас есть татуировки.
Так что думать надо. Любые перманентные изменения своего тела – это надолго, и, может, оно того не стоит?… -->
continue reading →Portugal: don’t jump to conclusions but…
I just noticed an interesting article over at Forbes about the “Owners of Portugal” documentary. The article pointed to a couple of extremely interesting charts. And, although it asks not to jump to conclusions I find that, not jumping to conclusions, extremely hard to do.
The charts in question are: the big family and 30 years, 115 members of the government.
Check for yourself, I bet you’ll start jumping to conclusions!… -->
continue reading →McDonald’s sucks ever more
Well, that’s a good thing I do not go to McDonald’s to eat, it seems you are opening yourself to physical abuse by stepping over their threshold. Dr. Steve Mann, inventor and engineer of the Glass Eye technology that helps partially blind people to see gets thrown out of McDonald’s for wearing his own invention. I do hope you will heed the warning and stay away from that evil, evil place!… -->
continue reading →Why Do Nigerian Scammers Say They are From Nigeria?
A very interesting paper was published at Microsoft Research by Cormac Herley. It looks at the question “Why Do Nigerian Scammers Say They are From Nigeria?” and comes out with an unavoidable conclusion that that is by design.
Far-fetched tales ofWest African riches
strike most as comical. Our analysis suggests that is an
advantage to the attacker, not a disadvantage. Since
his attack has a low density of victims the Nigerian
scammer has an over-riding need to reduce false positives.
By sending an email that repels all but the most
gullible the scammer gets the most promising marks to
self-select, and tilts the true to false positive ratio in his
favor.
An interesting consequence of which is that even if only few people take the trouble to answer those scam letters but never actually go through with the money transfer, the Nigerian Scam would become prohibitively expensive to run.… -->
continue reading →Quote of the day
… --> continue reading →But always remember, life is not the amount of breaths you take. It’s the moments that take your breath away.
— Alex “Hitch“.
Дума жжот
Вот, наткнулся на сборник речей депутатов от Лента.ру. Они с легкостью составляют конкуренцию Башу. Ну очень рекомендую.
Парочка особенно понравившихся:
… --> continue reading →Депутат от КПРФ Анатолий Локоть: “Кстати, вы не заметили, что у нас в стране все реформы плохо заканчиваются: реформа образования, реформа пенсионной системы?.. Реформа правоохранительных органов – казанским инцидентом… Вообще все реформы у нас заканчиваются вот этой казанской, извините, бутылкой”. (2012 год)
Депутат от ЛДПР Максим Рохмистров: “Наши граждане при словах ‘суд справедливый’ пока улыбаются. Очень не хотелось бы, чтобы вместо улыбок полетели камни, бутылки либо еще что-нибудь”. (2012 год)
Депутат от “Справедливой России” Геннадий Гудков: “Думаю, что сегодня, Владимир Николаевич, многие коррупционеры по стопарику вечером нальют и вздохнут с большим облегчением, поскольку Дума в очередной раз свой запал выпустила в свисток”. (2008 год)