Wednesday, March 31, 2010
Tuesday, March 30, 2010
Sunday, March 28, 2010
John Kador - Freelance Author, Speech Writer, Business Communications
Dear ......,
Thank you for your letter rejecting my application for employment with your firm.
I have received rejections from an unusually large number of well qualified organizations. With such a varied and promising spectrum of rejections from which to select, it is impossible for me to consider them all. After careful deliberation, then, and because a number of firms have found me more unsuitable, I regret to inform you that I am unable to accept your rejection.
Despite your company’s outstanding qualifications and previous experience in rejecting applicants, I find that your rejection does not meet with my requirements at this time. As a result, I will be starting employment with your firm on the first of the month.
Circumstances change and one can never know when new demands for rejection arise. Accordingly, I will keep your letter on file in case my requirements for rejection change.
Please do not regard this letter as a criticism of your qualifications in attempting to refuse me employment. I wish you the best of luck in rejecting future candidates.
Sincerely,
John Kador
John Kador, Author
402 Franklin Street
POB 552
Geneva, IL 60134
(630) 208-1792
fax (630) 208-1795
This is very clever but sad. They should hire him on the merits of this letter alone...
Sorry About The Mess
The filthiest mess ever! How could she live this way? How could she smoke that many cigarettes?
Untitled
20 Historic Photos of New York City | 1776
I once lived in the building on the right. It still looks the same. Gramercy Park has changed very little fortunately.
Saturday, March 27, 2010
Sprint to promote video calling with '4G' phone
: "Sprint to promote video calling with '4G' phone "
Sprint Nextel Corp. is aiming to make video calls a selling point of
the new, faster data network that it's spending billions with co-
investors to build. (null) To view this story, click the link above or paste it into your browser.
Sent from my iPhone
Digg Story: $205 Million Found In 1 Guy's House.... (pics)
Friday, March 26, 2010
Thursday, March 25, 2010
Wednesday, March 24, 2010
Tuesday, March 23, 2010
Computers One Step Closer To Reading Your Mind
I found the following story on the NPR iPhone App:
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=124581153&sc=17&f=1007
by Jon Hamilton
- March 11, 2010
Machines that decode your thoughts aren't limited to the realm of science fiction anymore.
A computer program that analyzes brain scans was able to tell which of three short films people were thinking about, according to a study in the journal Current Biology.
"We were able to predict just from their brain activity which of those memories they were recalling," says Eleanor A. Maguire, one of the study's authors and a professor of cognitive neuroscience at University College London.
This is a major step forward, Maguire says. But it falls short of what most people would call mind reading. "We can't put somebody in a brain scanner and immediately know what thoughts they are having," she says.
Unlocking Our Memories
The experiment was designed to learn more about a part of the brain called the hippocampus, which seems to act as a sort of index for memories of events in our lives, Maguire says.
She and her colleagues wanted to know whether traces of these so-called episodic memories could be detected in brain scans.
So they found 10 volunteers who agreed to watch several very short films. One showed a woman taking a letter out of her handbag and putting it in a mailbox. In another clip, a woman finishes a cup of coffee and throws the cup in a trash can.
The volunteers watched the films over and over, until they had formed a strong memory of each episode. "Then we popped the people in the scanner and had them recall these movies," Maguire says.
Data from these scans of activity in the hippocampus was analyzed by a computer program that looked for distinct patterns of activity associated with each film. And Maguire says the program found them. "In every single case it was able to predict with high accuracy which of the memories those 10 participants were recalling," she says
That was what the scientists expected to find. What surprised them, though, was how similar the patterns were across all 10 brains. The brain activity associated with each film clip "was incredibly consistent," Maguire says.
'Surprising Consistency' Of Our Minds
Other scientists doing similar work have also found surprising consistency from brain to brain. And they say that's the case for lots of thoughts, not just episodic memories.
"We all have very similar patterns for a given concept," says Marcel Just, director of the Center for Cognitive Brain Imaging at Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh.
Most brains react in pretty much the same way when they see a face, for example, Just says. And by studying a particular brain in detail, it's often possible to get much more specific information, he says. He pointed to the work of researchers at Carnegie Mellon, who have been asking people to think about the faces of various family members. In many cases, "we can decode which one they're thinking about," Just says.
Volunteers From The Audience No Longer Needed?
So far, mind-reading experiments have relied on the cooperation of the people whose minds are being probed, Just says. Volunteers need to make a concerted effort to think about something over and over so the computer program can detect a pattern.
So, at the moment, it's not possible for anyone to use a brain scanner to forcibly search someone's memories, Just says. But he says the ability of machines to detect what someone is thinking is progressing with remarkable speed. "At the extreme, maybe we could decode somebody's dream while they're dreaming," Just says. "Is that possible? Not this year. Not next year. But I think that's doable."
Just says once the technology reaches that point it's likely to touch off a societal discussion about who is allowed to see what's in our brains. Copyright 2010 National Public Radio
To learn more about the NPR iPhone app, go to http://iphone.npr.org/recommendnprnews
Climate Change Presents A Burr For Coffee Growers
I found the following story on the NPR iPhone App:
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=125005431&sc=17&f=1007
by Murray Carpenter
- March 22, 2010
The effects of climate change may be coming to your coffee cup.
The plants that produce coffee beans are notoriously sensitive, and small changes in temperature and precipitation can have big impacts on coffee quality and quantity. It may cause connoisseurs to cringe, but a warmer climate will encourage more coffee farmers to plant the heartier robusta varieties, which are caffeine-rich but bitter, instead of the mild, tasty Arabica coffees that Americans prefer.
"I often call coffee a Goldilocks plant. It likes it not too hot, not too cold. It likes it not too wet, not too dry. It doesn't like too much sun, it doesn't like too much shade," says Peter Baker, who studies coffee for the nonprofit CABI Bioscience. "The conditions are really quite limiting, and farmers have a real struggle, as we've seen in Colombia this last year or so — they've had the heaviest rainfall in recorded history really."
Growers recently gathered at the World Coffee Conference in Guatemala to discuss how the possibility of a warming planet could affect growing conditions and to figure out how to prepare.
Not far away, beneath two volcanoes in Guatemala's Antigua Valley, sits San Sebastian farm. The owner, Eduardo Falla, says his coffee's award-winning flavor is a factor of the rich volcanic soils — and the climate.
"The microclimate we have is special," Falla says, using a wooden rake to turn coffee beans drying in the sun. "The temperatures rise, more or less, to 79 degrees and fall to 50 degrees at night. This is part of what gives it the quality."
So as it gets warmer, one strategy would be to move coffee production to cooler regions.
"You can move up the mountainside as it gets warmer," Baker says, "but you actually run out of space, because mountains have this unfortunate property of being pointed."
In Colombia, heavy rains cut coffee production by one-quarter last year, so the country has stepped up its weather monitoring. The national center of coffee research now has more than 200 meteorological stations to better forecast weather conditions, advise farmers and document climate trends.
The rains were associated with a strong La Nina weather pattern, which can't be blamed directly on climate change. But Baker says the record rainfalls are consistent with the generally more chaotic weather that climate models predict.
Brazil, the world's largest coffee grower, is also planning ahead for a changing climate.
Eduardo Assad of the Brazilian Agricultural Research Corp. says warm temperatures can cause coffee to flower early, reducing productivity. "The problem of coffee in Brazil is if you increase the temperature, you have problems of the flowering — this is the first problem," he says. "The second problem is the water deficits."
Assad says Brazilian researchers are trying to develop coffee hybrids better adapted to warmer and drier conditions, but that could take years. Alternatively, the coffee farms might have to move.
"We have 2 million hectares of coffee in Brazil, and with the new scenarios of climate change, maybe this production can go to the south of Brazil," he says.
Back under the volcanoes in Guatemala, Falla looks over some of his coffee plants that have flowered — but only on half of the branches.
Rain that fell two weeks earlier was insufficient, Falla says. If it doesn't rain again soon, he'll be forced to irrigate to stimulate more flowering. Growing coffee is an uncertain occupation, he says, and climate change adds yet another variable to the mix. Copyright 2010 National Public Radio
To learn more about the NPR iPhone app, go to http://iphone.npr.org/recommendnprnews
Arrested Motion » Blog Archive » Showing: Ansel Adams - Photographs of Japanese-American Internment @ Library of Congress
Legendary American photographer, Ansel Adams, currently has some unique work on display at the Prints and Photographs division at the Library of Congress. Best known for his idyllic landscapes photos, he took on a different venture in 1943 when he was asked to document the Manzanar War Relocation Center (AKA: Japanese internment camp). Using his iconic lens, we get to see how life was for Japanese-Americans at these notorious internment facilities.
This is the first time that this rare collection of portraits, landscapes and stills has been available for the public to experience. Check out some images after the jump.
Via the Library of CongressTags: Ansel Adams, Contemporary Art, Photography
This entry was posted on Tuesday, March 16th, 2010 at 4:00 pm and is filed under Art, Contemporary, Museums, Photography. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.
Ansel Adams made everything look good in his photos....
Sunday, March 21, 2010
Origin of Famous Company Names [DYK?] - did you know, dyk, how apple got its name, how google got its name, origin of company names, what's in a name - Technically Personal!
Hello there! If you are new here, you might want to subscribe to the RSS feed for updates on this topic.
I came across an old mail containing some interesting details on how some of the famous companies got their names. I cannot vouch for the authenticity of these details, but they do look very much believable.
I already hear someone saying “What’s in a name?”!
Origin of Famous Company Names
1. APPLE COMPUTERS
It was the favorite fruit of founder Steve Jobs. He was three months late in filing a name for the business, and he threatened to call his company Apple Computers if the other colleagues didn’t suggest a better name by 5 O’clock! Good that his favorite fruit wasn’t a WATERMELON!
2. CISCO
It is not an acronym as popularly believed. It is short for San Francisco.
3. COMPAQ
This name was formed by using COMP, for computer, and PAQ to denote a small integral object.
4. COREL
The name was derived from the founder’s name Dr. Michael Cowpland. It stands for COwpland Research Laboratory.
5. GOOGLE
The name started as a joke boasting about the amount of information the search-engine would be able to search. It was originally named ‘Googol’, a word for the number represented by 1 followed by 100 zeros. After founders- Stanford graduate students Sergey Brin and Larry Page presented their project to an angel investor, they received a cheque made out to ‘Google’
6. HOTMAIL
Founder Jack Smith got the idea of accessing e-mail via the web from a computer anywhere in the world. When Sabeer Bhatia came up with the business plan for the mail service, he tried all kinds of names ending in ‘mail’ and finally settled for hotmail as it included the letters “html” – the programming language used to write web pages. It was initially referred to as HoTMaiL with selective uppercasing.
7. HEWLETT PACKARD
Bill Hewlett and Dave Packard tossed a coin to decide whether the company they founded would be called Hewlett-Packard or Packard-Hewlett.
8. INTEL
Bob Noyce and Gordon Moore wanted to name their new company ‘Moore Noyce’but that was already trademarked by a hotel chain so they had to settle for an acronym of INTegrated ELectronics.
9. LOTUS (NOTES)
Mitch Kapoor got the name for his company from ‘The Lotus Position’ or ‘Padmasana’. Kapoor used to be a teacher of Transcendental Meditation of Maharishi Mahesh Yogi.
10. MICROSOFT
Coined by Bill Gates to represent the company that was devoted to MICROcomputer SOFTware. Originally christened Micro-Soft, the ‘-’ was removed later on.
11. MOTOROLA
Founder Paul Galvin came up with this name when his company started manufacturing radios for cars. The popular radio company at the time was called Victrola.
12. ORACLE
Larry Ellison and Bob Oats were working on a consulting project for the CIA (Central Intelligence Agency). The code name for the project was called Oracle (the CIA saw this as the system to give answers to all questions or something such). The project was designed to help use the newly written SQL code by IBM. The project eventually was terminated but Larry and Bob decided to finish what they started and bring it to the world. They kept the name Oracle and created the RDBMS engine. Later they kept the same name for the company.
13. SONY
It originated from the Latin word ’sonus’ meaning sound, and ’sonny’ a slang used by Americans to refer to a bright youngster.
14. SUN
Founded by 4 Stanford University buddies, SUN is the acronym for Stanford University Network. Andreas Bechtolsheim built a microcomputer; Vinod Khosla recruited him and Scott McNealy to manufacture computers based on it, and Bill Joy to develop a UNIX-based OS for the computer.
15. YAHOO!
The word was invented by Jonathan Swift and used in his book ‘Gulliver’s Travels’. It represents a person who is repulsive in appearance and action and is barely human. Yahoo! Founders Jerry Yang and David Filo selected the name because they considered themselves yahoos.
16. MERCEDES
This was actually the financier’s daughter’s name.
17. ADOBE
This came from name of the river Adobe Creek that ran behind the house of founder John Warnock.
18. TECHPP
This name came after hours of research by founder Raju PP, “PP” being his nickname, quiet weird name for a technology blog. If you are still reading this, I am sure you are free enough to share this post on Twitter or Facebook or any other social networking/bookmarking site, isn’t it?!
Related Posts:
- Google is No More the Best Company to Work For !!
- How the Domain Names are Hijacked?
- TechPP Mega Christmas Giveaway : Rising Internet Security 2009
- [How to] Turn Your Old PC Into a Media Server
- 10 Ways to Watch Project Runway Season 6 Online for Free!
I always wondered about "Hotmail" because I never liked it. Now I understand...
Saturday, March 20, 2010
Friday, March 19, 2010
Airbus A380: 5-star hotel on wings
Too big and too separatist. Looks like a flying hospital inside. Steerage below is nasty.
Tuesday, March 16, 2010
BloomFrame Window & Balcony by Hofman Dujardin Architects | Apartment Therapy New York - jhagedon's posterous
Begin forwarded message:
From: David Landis <dldinyc@aol.com>
Date: March 16, 2010 6:13:21 AM EDT
To: Jeffrey Hagedon <jhagedon@gmail.com>
Subject: Re: BloomFrame Window & Balcony by Hofman Dujardin Architects | Apartment Therapy New York - jhagedon's posterous
there is one with a glass floor....On Mar 16, 2010, at 2:06 AM, Jeffrey Hagedon wrote:It would be better with a glass "floor"!http://jhagedon.posterous.com/bloomframe-window-and-balcony-by-hofman-dujar\nshared vid http://addthis.com
One man, many beans, and the perfect cup of coffee
Very informative. I want a cup of coffee now!
BloomFrame Window & Balcony by Hofman Dujardin Architects | Apartment Therapy New York
BloomFrame Window & Balcony by Hofman Dujardin Architects
The Bloomframe is now in production! The concept for a window that transforms into a balcony space spread across the internet — Apartment Therapy first posted it in November of 2005! — and it is now available from Hurks.
Comments -->Amsterdam-based designers Hofman Dujardin Architects have arranged for the Bloomframe to be manufactured and sold through Hurks — a large window and door manufacturer in The Netherlands.
The technology used in Bloomframe is unique and all orders are customized for specific projects.
Via: notcot.com
Comments
Comments (19)
It is an awesome concept, however, sitting/standing on the glass that becomes the floor of the balcony would make me aprehensive.
What an amazing view you'll have of the pavement 26 stories below you'll be splattering against when the unit pulls away from the wall after a shoddy mounting job and hurls itself, a lounger and you to the ground at 120 miles an hour
This reminds me of the Velux Cabrio balcony roof window which becomes a sort of pseudo-balcony where a dormer ordinarily might be:
http://www.veluxusa.com/products/residentialSkylights/roofWindows/balcony/
"...however, sitting/standing on the glass that becomes the floor of the balcony would make me apprehensive."
If you notice from the pic - the section that becomes the balcony floor can be steel rather than glass.
"i wonder about leaks and drafts."
Do you wonder about leaks and drafts from the doors and windows in your home? What would be the difference?
I can't help but notice that our lovely model seems to be wearing a miniskirt while hanging out on the glass-bottom balcony.
So, a very appealing product for society's exhibitionist niche?
There should be an option where the bottom is not glass.
It seems just a bit messy when you leave it open like that, it starts raining, you close it up and end up having a dirty wall in your living room.
Still a quite decent idea. It will be nice to see it in actual use and to hear how it's working out.Umm she's not sitting on the glass...she is sitting on the metal (I am guessing Steel) wall (that is under the glass when the window is shut) that becomes the floor of the balcony...when opened.
I Love it! Instant upgrades!!!
Ooops you are right I just clicked on the pics and see there is another version, where it IS all glass. Yikes. I'd go with the metal, especiaally since I like to drink my morning coffee in my micro-mini! ;-)
Ditto to mildred. And no way to close the door while you're out on the 3-4 ft wide "balcony." Better live in a perfect climate with no bugs or pollution or noise and no need of heat or AC.
Some buildings weren't made with balconies. Some condo's in the US do not let you alter the buliding...but when I was in Europe on any giving condo building the individual apts, had different setups...eg on a balcony buliding some people enclosed it with screening some enclosed it with glass.
All I am saying is the condo commandos do not seem to rule as much in Europe. Possibly people in buildings that do not have balconies at all, can upgrade their condo's with this goodie.
it seems like a very cool clever idea. And maybe I'm seeing it differently, but it looks like you're standing on the solid part when it's extended. since it wouldn't be out in the elements all the time, I imagine that it wouldn't have to be as durable and therefore cheaper.
I think this is a great concept, but I would still prefer a permanent balcony, then you could leave things out on it... like furniture.
I know I should be logical and accept this as a design achievement... but I'm imagining unlikely engineering failures and freaking out a bit.
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Brilliant! Better if it also had a glass "floor"!
Monday, March 15, 2010
Sunday, March 14, 2010
Who needs Photoshop
Who needs Photoshop Posted on Saturday, September 20 2008 Before Photoshop, there was photography at the perfect angle.
Tags: perfect angle, not photoshopped, amazing, good photography, optical illusions
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Some of these are really great....