perverse incentives

appeal to authority

 

this year’s best one liners from the edinburgh fringe

well… it’s been a disappointing week. on tuesday, a colleague dropped by and asked, since english is my first language, to explain the difference between “acoustic” and “acoustical”. i gave him the answer i thought was correct, but had doubts, and so we did some digging.

it turns out that something that makes a sound or is a characteristic of the sound itself is “acoustic” – as in “acoustic guitar”, “acoustic impedance”, “acoustic load”, “acoustic energy”

however, something that relates or pertains to acoustics, then you use “acoustical” – for example “acoustical engineer”, “acoustical society”, “acoustical measurement”

of course, given some thought, this makes sense. it’s an “electrical engineer” not an “electric engineer” – since it doesn’t require batteries.

seems i’ve been mis-using the terms for a while. sigh…

 

a bee lives for 60 days and makes 1 gram of honey in its lifetime

(according to a bee keeper on a jamie oliver in athens tv show)

how to turn addition into multiplication

link

“Never waste your time trying to explain who you are to people who are committed to misunderstanding you.”

– Dream Hampton

this is good

this is dumb

wind-blown landmine clearance

annual advertising budget of the coca-cola company: $2,980,000,000

cost to buy every human on the planet a coke: $2,240,000,000

so, they could, indeed “buy the world a coke”

however, in order to buy every individual four half-hour voice lessons, they would have to spend $840,000,000,000

so they can’t teach the world to sing…

link #1

link #2