I was at the park the other day throwing pinecones at my kids when a horrified mother asked, “How can you hit your kids with pinecones!” I said it was pretty easy: you just don’t lead them as much. First, this is important because my brain is almost completely incapable of accessing the proper pop-culture comeback (in this case, Full Metal Jacket) until the middle of the night after it was needed.
Don't be embarrassed, it happens to everyone: One day you wake up to find you've been apped. Remember: it's not your fault. You're still the same person, capable of independent thought and even mild-to-modest calculations. This, despite the fact that calculations are no longer necessary. See? The app does it for you.
No more sifting through unsanitary goat knuckles, searching for abstractions in tealeaves, shaking the Mattel magic eight ball, listening to Yellow Submarine backwards, or trudging India’s highlands in search of infamously reclusive gurus—instead, look no further for answers than Les Propheties, the 1555 work of Michel de Nostradame.
In 1989, the Russian chess champion Garry Kasparov easily defeated the computer Deep Thought (name drawn from the Douglas Adams book). In 1997 Deep Blue kicked his ass, spawning accusations of cheating (which IBM denied). In a million-dollar rematch in 2003, Kasparov fought Deep Junior to a draw. If, as Marcel Duchamp said, chess has “all the beauty of art and more,” do Kasparov’s break-even results mean that computers have drawn abreast of human creation, soon to overtake our brain’s ability to interpret, create and learn?Researchers and developers of Artificial Intelligence say yes—yes, it does. Soon, they say, humans will be at best slaves and more likely relegated to distant, digitally archived memory (for better or for worse).
If you're reading this, your blood pressure is likely already that of a kid's pump rocket (blasts 30 feet in the air!!!). Never fear. You will survive Turkey Day. Gobble-fricking-gobble. Now to the list. 1. Turkey: Buy a cook-in-the-bag turkey breast roast. Turn on the oven. Throw it in. If your guests or house pets don’t see you carve it, they will never know your dinner never gobbled (or, more precisely, that it is the unholy conglomeration of many separate gobblers). 2. Mashed Potatoes: Buy instant. Just add boiling water and enough butter and cream cheese to mask the slightly musty taste.3. Gravy: In the can.4. Cranberry Sauce: In the can. Be sure to actually place in dish and mash until the dog-food-esque shape is unrecognizable.
While your co-geeks may out this as a simple math trick, most people unable to recite pi past the decimal point will be amazed. It also has the advantage of requiring almost no physical, sleight-of-hand expertise.1. Set the deck—from the top down, it should read 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, A, A, A, A (the numbers in any suit and all four aces).2. Shuffle, being sure not to affect the top 12 cards (yes, this is a cheap trick).3. Ask an audience member to pick and state a number between 10 and 20 (not 20!).4. Taking one at a time from the top of the deck, count that many cards into a face-down pile on the table.5. Ask your dupe to add the two digits of his/her number and state the sum.
The metric system rocks, right? And that's because it's an organic system of measure, derived directly from the circumference of the earth, right? And hasn't been subject to any malingering, gerrymandering, finagling or other debased punking by dirty human hands, right? Um, not exactly.
There are many mediums in which evil spirits may reside (most notably dwellings, persons and computers), each requiring its own specific rite of exorcism. The steps enumerated below deal specifically with human exorcism, or ridding the body of an undesired spirit/demon possession, in the Roman Catholic tradition. Note: before performing an exorcism, evaluate the subject’s potential for violence (with the strength and malignity of the possession in mind), and restrain accordingly, usually with ropes, straps or duct tape. Note II: The following ritual may or may not work with computers, depending on operating system and waterproofing. Still, it may be worth a try.1. Priest is dressed in cassock, surplice and purple stole.
Many geeks adhere to Stiff Paper Theory (SPT), holding that frogs made of expensive company letterhead will jump higher than those made of flimsy copy paper. However, while SPT adds giddy-up to any origami amphibian, it also adds weight. The trick is to find a paper that offers the happy combination of high spring at low weight.In this regard, linen papers tend to under perform; so too do cardboard mailers, as they lead to bulky, bullfrog-esque hoppers.
In addition to shark attacks and boredom-related deaths due to mid-season baseball, the summer months are the time of food poisoning. If you live in Florida or California, you should be especially vigilant, as you are susceptible to all three (the most baseball teams, the most shark-infested beaches, and—according to the CDC—the most restaurant outbreaks of food poisoning, with a combined 143 in 2007).In all, the CDC estimates that food-borne diseases every year cause approximately 76 million illnesses, 325,000 hospitalizations and 5,000 deaths (salmonella alone costs the United States upwards of $5 billion annually in medical care and lost productivity). One can only imagine the sheer volume of liquid effluvium generated by these 76 million people.
CalypsoThe lonely nymph who waylays Odysseus for eight years on her island of Ogygia. Though the beautiful Calypso offers ease and even immortality, she is in fact selfish, caring only to alleviate her own loneliness. Watch out for self-serving kindness.CyclopsPolyphemus, the Cyclops, traps Odysseus and his crew in his cave and eats six men before Odysseus gets him drunk, blinds him with a wooden stake, and escapes with his remaining crew by hiding under sheep. Polyphemus, with his one eye, represents a person with only one point of view. Beware: If you are monofocused and that monofocus fails, you are SOL, just like Polyphemus.
Even though you're already the mathematical Wizard of Oz, you can still benefit from the Wow factor of hoisting a new curtain of number tricks to impress your friends and intimidate your enemies.Here, dear geek, are three nifty mind widgets to make mates want you and peers want to be you.Multiply up to 20x20 1. For example, take 17x132. Place the larger number on top, in your head3. Imagine a box, encompassing the 17 and the 34. Add these to make 205. Add a zero to this, to make it 2006. Multiply the 7 and the 3 to get 217. Add this to 200 to get the answer: 221Multiply any two-digit number by 111. For example, take 79
House of StrawUse six straws to create the classic house shape (a rectangular body with two straws forming the roof, all laying flat on the table). Bet that you can make four equal triangles by moving only three straws. Try it! To all but the most creatively freethinking, this is impossible. The trick is to go 3D—pick up the three straws that make the bottom and sides of the rectangle and replace them so that one end of each straw is rooted in a corner of the triangle with all three moved straws touching above the center of the original triangle, like a tent or teepee—four, equal triangles, each the size of the original roof.Paper Match
