The Copyright proves it's Legit!

This is an e-mail I received.  I have not modified the formatting at all.  I'll never have to work again!


"Good Day, This letter is from GoodFunds Inc. invented by the World Financial Service Authority United States Of America/United Kingdom. This body was set up to discover an outstanding unpaid fund being owned to Governments or Individuals all over the world through Contract Payment, Accumulated pension funds, Inheritance and Lottery Winning Prize Awards. It will interest you to know that we have discovered an outstanding unpaid/unclaimed sum worth the sum of Five hundred thousand Euros in favor of your name and a mandate has been given to this body to ensure that this fund gets to you through diplomatic check delivery without any delay. NB.. you shall be liable for the delivery fees of the courier company. Send your name,delivery address and phone immediately for your cheque delivery. Send your reply only to goodfunds.inc@live.com Regards, Dr. Malone fray Head of Operations GOODFUNDS ECB/02354 Email: goodfunds.inc@live.com ----- © 2009 Goodfunds Inc. All rights reserved."

Crows are Smart

There's a lot of evidence that crows are smart, and I'm not shedding light on anything nearly as cool as some of the things they do, but I still thought I'd share.

I have managed to open my 6th story office window.  Right next door is a fire escape, and crows like to hang out on it.  So I tossed some bread that was going to get thrown out on the fire escape.  A little later I poked my head through the window and scared off a crow that just had the courage to go for the food, and I watched as it flew off to a nearby parking structure.

It waited about 15 minutes, sitting with another crow at the parking structure.  Then it took off, but I couldn't follow exactly where to.  Then I heard crow sounds, so I slowly looked out my window.  There was a crow on the 5th floor fire escape landing, and another one hopping up the stairs to exactly where the bread was located.  It grabbed the bread and flew off.  Freaking genius bird!

A Picture says... Wha?

This online "calculator" from CNN Money wasn't very helpful...  Are you kidding me?  Median net worth for 25-34 is $8,525?  Tell me how that's possible.

Consumer Reports on Fuel Economy

A Consumer Reports Article took a look at fuel efficiency of several cars at 55, 65, and 75 miles per hour.  The first thing I was impressed with was the reality that going 55 was clearly a more efficient speed to drive at.  It makes you wonder if they should roll back all the speed limit signs in California back from 65.

Beyond that, the results were all relatively predictable, but even so it's nice to see Consumer Reports back them up.  Driving a hybrid at freeway speeds does effectively eliminate the advantage of having a hybrid.  Cars are more efficient than SUV's (even if the engine is the same size, unless you're driving in a vacuum I suppose).

After busy season I'll have to put together a spreadsheet to really analyze the time vs. money question they bring up, because I wonder if I'd be willing to make the trade-off of driving somewhere slower knowing that it was saving me cold hard cash (and CO2 emissions).

Sweating Like a Pig

The phrase "Sweating Like a Pig" popped into my head this morning as I was walking to work (no, I hadn't broken a sweat since it was still cool in the morning).  So like all people in this information age, I went to the internet once my computer booted up.  It turns out there was no clear answer on the origin of this phrase.  Most people are well aware of the fact that pigs don't really sweat, but many of the possible answers didn't satisfy me either.  Until this one:


"Maybe it came from the fact that pigs 'sweat' when they are roasted over a fire. It's not really sweat of course; I think it's just the fat dripping off."  


Now, I couldn't take them for their word and haven't seen a pig roast so I had to verify that, but there does appear to be a fair amount of dripping according to a Wikipedia article on pig roasting, so I'm satisfied.


So next time you see someone sweating, and the phrase "Sweating like a pig" pops into your head, just remember that's fat dripping from their slowly cooking meat.  Yummy!