*** HB Misc Topic bullsh#t Thread ***

[Mavric]

[No message]

 

[GSG]

This explains a long standing mystery for me. As a kid I always remember saran wrap being amazing, but at some point it just stopped sticking to stuff! I always figured they just got cheap, so it became crap. I had no idea it was actually for a good reason. Sometime corporations do care about more than making a buck.

http://host.madison.com/business/ceo-explains-why-sc-johnson-made-saran-wrap-less-sticky/article_8987a920-fec9-5567-8b47-3067b3f83ff6.html

The key to Johnsons decision to change Saran Wraps components was a chemical it once contained, polyvinylidene chloride. PVDC was even contained in the packaging.

But, in a bold decision to favor public health and the environment over profits, Johnson chose to eliminate PVDC from Saran Wrap even knowing it would hurt both performance and sales. The reformulated wrap appeared in the market in 2004 and both predictions came true.

Still works on cars, right?

 

[ZRod]

This explains a long standing mystery for me. As a kid I always remember saran wrap being amazing, but at some point it just stopped sticking to stuff! I always figured they just got cheap, so it became crap. I had no idea it was actually for a good reason. Sometime corporations do care about more than making a buck.http://host.madison.com/business/ceo-explains-why-sc-johnson-made-saran-wrap-less-sticky/article_8987a920-fec9-5567-8b47-3067b3f83ff6.html

The key to Johnsons decision to change Saran Wraps components was a chemical it once contained, polyvinylidene chloride. PVDC was even contained in the packaging.

But, in a bold decision to favor public health and the environment over profits, Johnson chose to eliminate PVDC from Saran Wrap even knowing it would hurt both performance and sales. The reformulated wrap appeared in the market in 2004 and both predictions came true.

Still works on cars, right?

It did in 2006. Allegedly...

 

[Mavric]

Had been the the Twitter Archives for awhile apparently....

 

[NUance]

Construction Worker Finds Incredible 600-Year-Old Sword in Bog
Popular Mechanics 11 hours ago

Last month, an excavator operator was working in a peat bog in southeast Poland when he stumbled on a unique find: a rusted longsword from the 14th century.
LINK

I wonder if it's Valyrian steel?

 

[huKSer]

Am I crazy?

Before you answer yes right away - my story

Aquaintance (I knew of her 10 years ago, didn't socialize at all - didn't stay in contact) struck up a facebook convo last week, nothing much just some banter. She popped over to my house Sat evening and we talked. We have a lot in common. Tomorrow she and I are going to St Louis for the week end. Less than a week after first face to face.

Oh, and since meeting her I found out she was a manager of a swinger's club. And she is 26. I'm 59. She was a student of mine.

If I wake up dead on Sunday, I will let you know

 

[Danny Bateman]

Am I crazy?

Before you answer yes right away - my story

Aquaintance (I knew of her 10 years ago, didn't socialize at all - didn't stay in contact) struck up a facebook convo last week, nothing much just some banter. She popped over to my house Sat evening and we talked. We have a lot in common. Tomorrow she and I are going to St Louis for the week end. Less than a week after first face to face.

Oh, and since meeting her I found out she was a manager of a swinger's club. And she is 26. I'm 59. She was a student of mine.

If I wake up dead on Sunday, I will let you know

Take protection.

 

[Mavric]

[No message]

 

[NUance]

 

[knapplc]

The amount of work that once bought an hour of light now buys 51 years of it
Our early ancestors conquered the darkness roughly half a million years ago, give or take, when they learned how to control fire. The light was flickering and dim, yes, but the taming of fire meant that the night was finally less dark, less full of terrors.

It wasn't easy. The eternally optimistic data nerds at the libertarian Cato Institute's HumanProgress project recently highlighted a fun solstice factoid: Back in the prehistoric era a person would have to gather, chop and burn wood for roughly 10 hours a day for six days straight in order to produce the equivalent light of a modern lightbulb shining for about an hour.

Today, the same amount of labor could light a room for over 50 years.

Those figures are courtesy of a fascinating 1994 paper by Yale economist William Nordhaus. He was trying to construct a measure that could compare standards of living across radically different time periods — say, the Neolithic era and today.

He settled on lighting as a way to do that. The archaeological and historic records paint a fairly complete picture of lighting technologies over the millennia. Pick a standard quantity of light output, calculate how much labor it would take to create that much light given the technology of the era and voila -- you've got a fairly robust and comparable metric of quality of life going back millennia.

 

[huKSer]

The amount of work that once bought an hour of light now buys 51 years of it
Our early ancestors conquered the darkness roughly half a million years ago, give or take, when they learned how to control fire. The light was flickering and dim, yes, but the taming of fire meant that the night was finally less dark, less full of terrors.

It wasn't easy. The eternally optimistic data nerds at the libertarian Cato Institute's HumanProgress project recently highlighted a fun solstice factoid: Back in the prehistoric era a person would have to gather, chop and burn wood for roughly 10 hours a day for six days straight in order to produce the equivalent light of a modern lightbulb shining for about an hour.

Today, the same amount of labor could light a room for over 50 years.

Those figures are courtesy of a fascinating 1994 paper by Yale economist William Nordhaus. He was trying to construct a measure that could compare standards of living across radically different time periods — say, the Neolithic era and today.

He settled on lighting as a way to do that. The archaeological and historic records paint a fairly complete picture of lighting technologies over the millennia. Pick a standard quantity of light output, calculate how much labor it would take to create that much light given the technology of the era and voila -- you've got a fairly robust and comparable metric of quality of life going back millennia.

And LEDs are even more efficient (a quick search said 5x but that is just hours of use)

 

[NUance]

Shots fired near New York Apple store

 

[knapplc]

A map of the Eisenhower Interstate System.

The same system drawn as a subway map.

 

[huKSer]

What is the only state not to have a north-south interstate (ie odd numbered)?

Spoiler

Nebraska

Every interstate is required to have 1 continuous mile out of five that is straight, level and free of over head obstructions. Why?

Spoiler

Emergency runways for planes - especially after nuclear war

 

[knapplc]

The second one is so it can be used as an emergency runway in time of war.

Not sure what the first one is. Maybe Rhode Island? Hawaii?