Saturday, January 15, 2011

The world’s smallest book must be read using an electron microscope.

This first-ever nanoscale book was published as a work of art in April 2007. This book, called Teeny Ted from Turnip Town, measures 0.07 mm by 0.10 mm!! Each letter was carved on a polished piece of single crystalline silicon by a focused-gallium-ion beam. The beam had a minimum diameter of about 7 nanometers, or only 70 ATOMS!! The story is written on 30 microtablets, each measuring at about 11 by 15 microns.


Source: Nanowerk

Rupert Grint’s first car was an ice cream truck.

At age 18 he bought a fully functional ice cream truck, complete with a freezer, a kitchen with sinks, and musical bell. As you could have probably guessed, Grint is a BIT more well off financially than his onscreen persona Ron Weasley. (On the other hand, this car doesn’t fly). The young film star said that he has been interested in the ice cream industry ever since he was a child. If his movie career doesn’t pan out after the Harry Potter franchise comes to an end, at least he’ll have something to fall back on? He may need the job security too, seeing that he dropped out of school at age 16!



Source: Monsters and Critics

Friday, January 14, 2011

Facebook’s oldest user is 103...and she updates from an iPad.

Online OAP: Lillian Lowe, pictured here with her 10-year-old great granddaughter Kaylee Lowe, is thought to be the world's oldest Facebooker at 103
Lillian Lowe, 103, posts her Facebook messages from her grandson's iPad
Great-grandmother Lillian Lowe has taken the title of oldest Facebooker from 104-year-old Ivy Bean, who died in her sleep this past July. Lillian checks her wall about twice a week and is friends with 34 different people, including 7 grandchildren and 13 great-grandchildren!


Born in 1907, Lillian has seen all kinds of changes during her lifetime - the sinking of the Titanic, two World Wars, the first computer, and now the advent of social networking and tablet computers!

Thanks to the publicity that comes with being dubbed the oldest person on Facebook, she has recently received over 900 Facebook friend requests. She says she has also heard of Twitter, but does not know what it is.



Source: BBC UK

Thursday, January 13, 2011

The movie Avatar takes up over one petabyte of storage space.

A petabyte is the equivalent of 500 hard drives, each with a capacity of 2 terrabytes (a terrabyte to 1,000 gigabytes!). That’s the size of a 32 YEAR long mp3 file!!


The movie was shot in 3-D and rendered in one of the most powerful data centers in the world. Its computing core adds up to 40,000 processors and 104 terabytes of RAM. It would be realistic to assume that a significant portion of the film's $300 million budget went to storage space.

Friday, January 7, 2011

A complex series of tunnels runs beneath Walt Disney World.

Walt Disney was concerned when seeing a Frontierland cowboy walking through Tomorrowland. Unimpressed by this breaking of the 4th wall, Disney recognized there needs to be a way to keep certain things out of sight from the general public. Thus, underground tunnels were added to Disney World. That way trash and utilities can be hidden and costumed performers can move around outside of public view when they are not on duty. 

This massive tunnel system contains corridors that are 15 feet high and wide enough for delivery trucks to drive through. There are also locker rooms, maintenance rooms, cafeterias, and a fire prevention center. There are 28 hidden stairwells to get to the tunnel system. Children under 16 are not allowed in, so as not to spoil the magic of their Disney World experience. 

Read all about the Disney Tunnel System, including where the entrances are!

Monday, January 3, 2011

“Hey There Delilah” by Plain White T’s was written about a professional athlete.

The group’s lead singer, Tom Higgenson, became infatuated with Olympic track hopeful Delilah DeCrescenzo when he was introduced to her by a friend back in 2002. Higgenson thought she was the most beautiful girl he had ever seen, and told her that he had already written a song about her (...he wrote the song a year later)! The pair kept in touch by email, but DeCrescenzo ignored all of Higgenson’s advances until late 2004, when he actually brought her a disc with the song on it! 

DeCrescenzo was flattered but still was not interested in the musician, saying, “It was so beautifully written. There was pressure to live up to this ideal - I didn’t know how to be polite but, you know...ditch him.” Less than a year later, the tune became a smash summer hit and topped the Billboard charts! The real Delilah says she hears it all the time - “When I’m at the gym, it’s playing; when I’m at the pool, it’s playing. Part of me wants to scream at the top of my lungs that it’s about me...another part of me wants to cower and say it’s not.” 

Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube have all been blocked in China.

Google is available in China, but the Chinese government ordered Google to censor search results. This, and an alleged attempt by the government to hack Google’s source code led to Google shutting down its Chinese servers. Google searches can still be performed in China, but they are routed to the company’s Hong Kong servers. Google’s revenues in China have gone down in China since the move. 

YouTube has been blocked in China since March of 2009. China also blocked Twitter, but Chinese activists still access it and use it to communicate to each other through foreign servers. Facebook has been blocked since July 2009, after ethnic riots in Xinjiang. Since then, Facebook clone websites have been popping up in China, making it much more difficult for Facebook to catch on in China if it is ever allowed back in. 

New laws in China could make Skype illegal too. 

Sunday, January 2, 2011

The Harry Potter books all take place in the 1990s. Harry was born in 1980.

If Harry Potter was a real person, he would be 30 right now. Though the books all came out from the late 1990s through the 2000s, and the movies have come out from 2001-2011, the actual series is set in the early 90s. Harry actually starts going to Hogwarts in 1991! 

That these books are set in the 90s may explain why no one relies on cell phones or email for communication in the books. Instead, they all use owls! Also, if you remember, they use magic to be able to pause, rewind, and fast forward the Quidditch World Cup, something that would be a lot less fascinating if they already had TiVo.

You can’t scroll through a Microsoft Excel spreadsheet forever.

Yes, folks, there is a limit to even what Excel can do. In the old version of Excel, you can only scroll over as far as column IV and you can only scroll down as far as row 65536. As of the 2007 version you can go as far as column XFD and row 1048576. If you need to fill up any more cells after that, you'll have to use "Sheet 2".

Saturday, January 1, 2011

In Albania, nodding your head means ‘no’ and shaking your head means ‘yes.’

Even more confusing is the way head nodding has evolved over time. The left-right nod means "yes" but also implies confusion and disagreement, so it can also mean "no". Nodding up and down means "no", but it also implies agreement and understanding. 

Albanians are also very nice to strangers. Hospitality is considered to be very important. Albania is supposed to be the most hospitable country in Europe. 
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