Jan
31
Someone showed me this nonsensical Dutch poem/story.
De pikkel en de wop.
Een wop mufte zijn frinse fruin.
Een pikkel beunde snerp in de fruin van de wop.
Groes mijn bale fruin! Loeg de wop biest.
Mijn fruin is frins.
“Proest gedaan!” makkelde de pikkel.
“Mart jij benedal geen lijpjes?”
“Ik mart geen rotse pikkels,” slokte de wop biester.
It is used for language education, but apparently that’s not a very good idea. I like it anyway 
Jan
30
Jan
29
A brilliant Dutch parody of a key scene in Der Untergang. It portrays Hitler and his staff discussing where to go on their next company trip.
Jan
27
Jan
21
Use these 12 standard screen patterns for inspiration when designing web interfaces.
Jan
18
Lars Jensen made these beautiful pictures of Michigan.
More at his blog.
Jan
18
Change one button and earn another $300 million in revenue? Here’s how to do it.
An eye-opener and great business argument that shows the real value of usability.
Jan
18
Jan
9
(…) Joyce and his graduate student Tracey Lincoln, added the enzymes into a soup of building blocks, strings of nucleic bases that can be assembled into RNA, DNA or larger strings, and tweaked them to find pairs of enzymes that would reproduce. One day, some of the enzymes “went critical” and produced more RNA enzymes than the researchers had put in.
It was an important day, but Joyce and Lincoln wanted more. They wanted to create an entire population of enzymes that could replicate, compete and evolve, which is exactly what they did.
Jan
9
Hans Rosling debunks myths about third world countries with the best stats you’ve ever seen:
Jan
9
Jan
9
Porsche gamed the financial system and made a fortune:
Porsche’s move took three years of careful maneuvering. It was darkly brilliant, a wealth transfer ingeniously conceived like few we’ve ever seen. Betting the right way, Porsche roiled the financial markets and took the hedge funds for a fortune.
Jan
8
notalwaysright.com contains “a collection of quotes from these particularly memorable customers”… like this one:
Me: “Thank you for calling [costume store], how may I help you?”
Customer: “Hi, do you guys have costumes?”
Me: *sarcastically* “No, I’m afraid we’re a tax accounting service.”
Customer: “Oh. Can I write off a costume rental on my taxes?”
or this gem
Me: “Welcome to Tech Support, you’re talking to ****”
Customer: “Hi, my name is ****, and I work at **** bank. You’ve really gotta help me! I’ve got this message on my computer, and I don’t know what to do!”
Me: “Okay, if you could start by reading the message to me, I’ll see what we can do.”
Customer: “Oh, okay.. It says: ‘Your computer has been automatically adjusted for daylight savings time.’ What do i do?!”
Me: “Er…is there a button that says ‘OK’?”
Customer: “Yes.”
Me: “Can you tell me what happens when you click the ‘OK’ button?”
Customer: “Oh, thank you very much! You’re a life saver! Thank you, thank you; now I can finally get these reports done!!” *hangs up*
Me: “…you’re welcome?”
Mentor: *after listening in* “You know what the scary part is? That is my contact at the bank… the same person I entrust my life savings to.”
Ok, just one more
Customer: “What time do you guys close?”
Me: “Nine.”
Customer: “… o’clock?”
Me: ”No… feet. Nine feet.”
Jan
7
When you blow soap bubbles at minus 20°C, they will freeze before they hit the ground. In the following picture, only the top half of the bubble is frozen.
Full set of pictures, including pictures of a frozen soap bubble hitting the ground…
Jan
6
Jan
4
Eirik Solheim made a picture of his garden every day of the year, and used those pictures to create this stunning video:
Jan
4
Jan
3
Jan
3
I really like these illustrations by Chinese artist Yang Liu, who was born in China but schooled in Germany. They illustrate the differences between East and West.
“opinion”:
The complete set:
Jan
3
Dmirty Orlov has some mighty interesting slides (back from 2006) on similarities between the Russian collapse and the current state of affairs in the United States.
