Category: Useless knowledge

(via Modern Mechanix)
Printed originally in Mechanix Illustrated in 1962, this is a brief account of one man’s exposure, so to speak, to an environment of solitude, weightlessness, darkness and silence.

EXPERIMENT IN LONELINESS

IN an underground “sensory deprivation chamber” at the VA Hospital in Oklahoma City sits an eight-foot-deep tank of water. It is part of a project designed to examine the mental stresses—especially hallucinations— that may afflict persons in environments of solitude, weightlessness, darkness and silence.

When Sid Ross, a free-lance writer, heard about the tank he contacted project director Dr. Jay T. Shurley and offered his services as a “tank volunteer.” The next thing Ross knew he was donning a pair of shorts as an assistant fitted a soundproof, lightproof mask to his face. Ross entered the water and floated face down. Weightless, deprived of his senses, his fantasies began . . .

Soon a giant frog loomed up.

[tags]Loneliness, solitude, Mechanix, Isolation experiment[/tags]

According to Snopes, it is true that more collect calls are placed on Father’s day than any other day. So it might cost you, but you probably have a better chance of hearing from your kids…

According to Hallmark, “Father’s Day is the fourth-largest card-sending occasion with nearly 95 million Father’s Day cards expected to be given this year [2006] in the United States.”

Yet it is another statistic related to the day that is more impressive: While Mother’s Day is the biggest holiday for phone calls, Father’s Day is the busiest for collect calls. (The overall busiest day of the year for phone calls is the Monday after Thanksgiving.)

In 1998, Dave Johnson, a spokesman for AT&T’s corporate headquarters in New Jersey, said, “Father’s Day is our biggest day for collect calls, not just the biggest holiday, but the biggest day of the year.” These calls are inclined to be longer than the average, too. “The difference between Father’s Day and Mother’s Day and a typical Sunday is that calls on the holidays tend to be three to four minutes longer,” said Johnson. “A typical long distance call is eight minutes long. Mother’s Day and Father’s Day calls average elevenminutes.”

More information can be found in the full story.

[tags]Father’s day, Snopes, Urban legends[/tags]

Sometimes, I even surprise myself with the tidbits of information I see that pique my interest. For some reason, I just couldn’t skip this article at LiveScience.com after seeing the title – “DNA Tests Confirm Bear Was a Hybrid.”

Now really, how could you skip a story like that?

IQALUIT, Nunavut (AP) – Northern hunters, scientists and people with vivid imaginations have discussed the possibility for years.

But Roger Kuptana, an Inuvialuit guide from Sachs Harbour, Northwest Territories, was the first to suspect it had actually happened when he proposed that a strange-looking bear shot last month by an American sports hunter might be half polar bear, half grizzly.

So since I felt the need to post it here, you can probably guess that this bear actually *IS* a hybrid. But head over the the LiveScience article to find out more details about the bear. It’s pretty cool (no pun intended).

[tags]Hybrid bear[/tags]

(via OSNews)

If you’ve ever wondered where your preferred browser falls on the performance curve, this article at howtocreate.co.uk has lots of details.  The short result is if you just want the fastest browser, you are almost certain to be best served by Opera.  The gecko-based browsers (Mozilla, Konqueror, Galeon) do OK, but don’t beat Opera on anything but start time.

Ok, ok. Firefox and Mozilla are clearly optimised for Linux, and Opera is clearly optimised for Windows. These optimisations are mostly obvious with the loading times, although there is also a little difference in the cache handling on the different operating systems. However, Opera seems to perform admirably well on most tasks, on any platform. When it comes to page rendering (tables, CSS or images), most of the major browsers perform very fast, with very little to distinguish between them. When it comes to scripts, Opera clearly holds its head above the others, nearly twice as fast as the others. The only one that comes close is Safari 2.0, but that is tied to the Tiger release of Mac OS (currently in preview).

Opera also is a clear winner using history. In fact, on Linux it is faster than Mozilla and Firefox for all except starting time. On Mac and Windows, Opera is faster than Mozilla and Firefox for all tasks. Surprisingly, Mozilla is now faster at most tasks than Firefox (please don’t send me any more emails about this line, I am well aware of why it is faster). Internet Explorer on Windows was either as fast as – or faster than Mozilla and Firefox for most tasks, with the exception of scripts, where it took over twice as long.

There is a lot more to the article than this snippet.  Please head over and read the full article for all the details.

[tags]Browser test, browser speed[/tags]