If you stepped into a hole drilled straight through the Earth from the north pole to the south pole, you would fall all the way from one pole to the other. When you got to the other side, you would start to fall back to where you started. You are always pulled towards the center of the Earth but by less and less as you get closer to it.
Using math and physics, you can calculate how long it would take to fall from one pole to the other. It takes 42.028 minutes—or 42 minutes for short.
This is why Douglas Adams chose 42 as the answer to Life, The Universe, and Everything.
When comparing two people with equal qualifications of the same gender, age, and race, one is more likely to get a certain job or promotion, based on of their name. A Terrence would be more likely to receive a job than, say, a Demarrious. Or a Jasmine versus a LaTisha. Employers expect certain people to be less educated based on their names.
At some point in their life everyone has or will have an idea that, properly executed, would make them millions of dollars. Most people, however, lack the experience, skill or motivation to either recognize the quality of the idea or do what it takes to follow through on it and turn idea into reality, so nothing ever happens and they maintain their mundane life.
A lot of people complain about modern music, saying it’s all trash, and that the music from their generation was so much better. However, there is a lot of good music in the present, mixed in among the rest, and that was most likely the case back then, too. The bad music has been forgotten and the good stuff is all anyone remembers, so it seems like their generation had better music because time has erased all the rest.
They say that those who can do, do, and those who can’t, teach. I say, those who can do, do, and those who can’t, write laws about what others can do.
With the exception of a few politicians who did spend much of their life working in the real world before running for public office, the vast majority are bred for or groomed for the role from a young age, or they enter public office after failed attempts at business.
Compared to an honest, productive job, politicians operate through lies and deceit, and spend much of their time sitting around and voting about how to regulate things they don’t understand in industries most of them would be unable to survive in if they were dependent on it as their sole source of income.
Every time anyone makes a decision, a number of alternate universes are created where every other possible decision is made instead, and where events play out differently as a result. Normally, everyone in each universe is completely unaware of the existence of other universes, but at night, when people are asleep, they can receive a slight transfer of consciousness from their other-universe selves, and these transferred experiences are what we think of as dreams.
In this age where nearly everyone in the United States has access to the internet and to a decent education, it is very bizarre to see most people still struggling tremendously with basic English writing. Poor grammar, spelling and punctuation is rampant, both on and off the internet. While not always the case, those who read well-written books as children tend to have a better intuitive understanding of basic things like comma placement and when something doesn’t quite seem to fit into a sentence. As a result, they have a better all-around writing ability than those who did and do not read much.
There are a lot of conspiracy theories out there, and most of them are made up by assorted nutjobs, but now and then, there are a few that were intentionally crafted by the government to distract from what they were really doing. Better people believe something easily dismissible—that they’re secretly dealing with aliens, for example—than their enemies find out about the classified aircraft project they’re working on before they’re ready to release it to the public.
I think dogs—and perhaps other common house pets, like cats—are aliens or some other sort of intelligent creature and they pretend to be dumb and carefree just to get close to us and spy on us.
Often, they just sit or lie down somewhere, watching people. It’s very creepy when you consider it, but most people don’t pay any attention and so they can get away with it. Also, many times I’ve come into a room to find my dog actively engaged in behaviors that suggest intelligence, only to have him immediately stop upon seeing me and look sheepish. He also acts embarrassed when he has to go to the bathroom with people around—something an intelligent creature might do, but one would not expect from a wild animal.
Sure, they make your teeth straight, but don’t you find it odd that almost everyone has to get the full set? I’m sure there’s something that the orthodontists aren’t telling us about that can make your teeth straight in a matter of weeks. Plus orthodontists don’t even work during appointments, they come in for one second and say “everything seems to be in order” and then they leave. And now they have all of society thinking that they need to spend a ridiculously large amount of money to make their babies’ teeth perfect.
All matter is made up of little bugs. When they know I’m looking a certain direction, they gather themselves together to form what should be there. Everything behind me, though, has devolved into masses of crawling bugs. Only when I turn around (and they know when I will) do they form into the things behind me.
In my mind’s eye, though, I know they are crawling around behind me and that everything I see is really made of minute bugs.
Since 9/11, there have been a lot of laws added, giving the government more powers to violate individual rights. Now, some of the things they’ve done have been good, necessary, legitimate things, and I have nothing against those. But other actions, such as warrantless surveillance, authorization of an assassination of a U.S. citizen, imprisonment without charges, suspension of habeas corpus, torture, and more in that vein—including the latest, an attempt to strip suspected terrorists of U.S. citizenship, even before they’re proven to be a terrorist in a court of law, are harmful to the rest of us, even if they help stop terrorists in the process. The ends do not justify the means. The government’s role is indeed to protect us from force being used against us, but by implementing such policies, they are using force against us in the process of preventing force from being used against us. Even if those in charge have good intentions now, someone in the future will misuse them, and expand their powers. There's a reason the Constitution limited the powers of government significantly—not significantly enough, though, apparently.
Get a very, very long stick, billions of miles long. Push it from one end. The other end will move simultaneously, faster than it would take for light to get from one end to the other.
I’m sure you know the rest—the poor are getting poorer. I think the world’s economy is designed just to make these words come true. You have lots of money, invest it, and end up with much more than you started with. As this goes on—if we take real estate as an example—the more the rich invest, the higher the demand is, and the higher the price goes, and the poor can’t even find a place to live.
Designers and manufacturers intentionally leave features out of the first versions of their products so they can be introduced in the second version, leading to greater overall sales.
There is math out there that truly serves no purpose in any other field—“real world” physical applications or otherwise. It simply exists to torment poor graduate students.
If you cup your hand around the connecter end of your iPod Touch or iPhone, the sound quality improves and the volume increases. This is due to your hand acting like a reverberation chamber, allowing the speaker to work at its optimum and not just ringing out, creating tinniness. Or it could just be that the hand is magical. I haven’t decided yet. Vote “agree” if it’s not magic, vote “disagree” if it is.
A hole, technically, does not exist. A hole is the missing presence of something, therefore it is nothing. Yet this nothing has a name which makes it something. But if it has a name, it cannot be nothing. Then again, it is something which is not there. Does it exist or not? Mind-boggling.
The smarter animals at zoos know exactly what’s going on and that people want them to pose or behave a certain way for the camera, and they do so in the hope that they’ll be rewarded either by the visitors or the zookeepers. Some of the more mischievous animals, however, like monkeys, intentionally avoid such poses, just to watch people get frustrated trying to take photos of them.
Conservatives tend to be opposed to all sorts of things relating to modifying or preventing natural human reproduction—contraception, abortion, use of embryos, genetic engineering, etc. In addition to their moral oppositions, they often have claims about health risks to the mother. I posit that if, somehow, reproduction did not exist naturally and was something invented by humans in modern times, conservatives would find a way to oppose it altogether, with an assorted collection of claims: it’s dangerous to the mother, it causes great discomfort and weight gain, it affects the mother hormonally, it creates new life and people don’t have a right to do that…
There is no way to describe a color. When we look at something, our brain fills in the lines with a color. I see white, while you see blue. But we were both raised to call it yellow. So think about this: everyone’s favorite color is the same.
The whole world could’ve been just one entity. All people could’ve had one goal. You could’ve travelled continents and no one would ask to see your passport or check your color, race or religion. I think the problem started with the first guy that built a fence around a piece of land and said “This is mine. No one is allowed in and I have the right to kill any trespassers.” We need to get together again. But the problem is, even from the most creative imaginations on earth—movie writers and directors—the world unites only because of alien invasion or environmental disaster. Let’s pray we find a more peaceful and true reason to get together.
The entire universe is one big fractal and everything repeats itself. It is never-ending, with the exception of black holes, and we aren’t meant to understand them. Once we understand what they are and how they work, we will understand how the universe was created, and that is when the world as we know it will end, and the cycle will repeat itself. We will then become the Mayan mystery to the people who inherent the earth. All that will be left of us will be buildings and information that they have to try to decipher. It’s the circle of life.
Computer manufacturers are constantly releasing new and improved products, each one touted as being faster than the previous. While technically true—the newer processors can generally do more calculations per second than the previous—in the end, computers aren’t really getting that much faster anymore because it’s a race between hardware and software. As hardware gets faster, software developers add more processor-intensive features that couldn’t be done before, and so the computer runs at the same speed as before—or slower—just with new features.
If you have a busy schedule where you have no down time and only get the bare minimum of required healthy sleep, you are at risk for a caffeine feedback loop. It starts by having caffeine right before bed one time. You have trouble falling asleep and end up getting less sleep than normal. As a result, you’re tired throughout your busy day so you use caffeine to stay awake through the day and right up until you need to go to sleep. Because of the caffeine, you, again, have trouble falling asleep and must use caffeine the following day.
Our computers always stop working and we have to call tech support and spend lots of time and money to have someone fix them. As soon as we have it back, we discover something else is now broken and we must call tech support again. The truth is, IT people are secretly programming our computers to break just after we get them back so we will have to call them again. The whole thing is just a conspiracy for them to make money and stay employed.
Pay attention the next time you buy a new computer. I bet you all the bad problems start happening just after the warranty expires.
The large number of gossip and entertainment news magazines and websites seem to indicate that a large percentage of the population is obsessed with the lives of actors. This is due to America’s lack of a monarchy. Traditionally, in many countries, people who were not happy with their own lives often fantasized about being a prince or princess or some other noble, so they could have fame and fortune and glory. But in this country, that urge is replaced with fantasies about life as a Hollywood star, leading to people following Hollywood news as much as they can.
If you go to bed considerably earlier than your normal sleep time, you are more likely to wake up considerably later than your normal wake time. This is because you’re prone to first wake up too early in the morning, go back to sleep, and then overshoot your mark and wake up late.
Most people, whether or not they think of themselves as being principled, are actually pragmatists, doing what they think will give the best results in the present rather than guiding their lives by principles, even if those principles may cause them suffering in the short term.
Obviously the primary reason for TV cancellation is that the show just doesn’t have high enough ratings and, therefore, is not making the network enough money. However, at times, new executives come into the company with pet projects they want to push into production, but in order to do that they have to cut existing shows, so they sometimes cancel a good show that’s underperforming but not so much that it couldn’t yet turn around, just so they can replace it with a show they want on the air.
The U.S. and other countries with a broad cultural mix tend to have the full spectrum of drink flavors, but in certain cultures, there is a significant lack of certain flavors. Japan, for example, lacks root beer. Cherry flavored drinks in other countries, despite their availability, are less popular than others. This is due to the fact that the flavors are used for medicinal flavoring in those countries, and people associate medicine with a bad taste.
Religion as a whole will never stop or cease to exist. And to think that Man can live without God is also not possible. Consider this: Religion, in theory, is based on the human need to rationalize daily events. To make sense from nothing. We could not explain thunder so we said Zeus. We could not explain the afterlife so we said Hades. But that lack of knowledge gave us reason to find answers. The questions Religion could not answer, Science did. The Church said God created the Modern Man but it was Darwin’s curiosity that created the Theory of Evolution. That said, is it truly possible to rid the world of Religion? No. Because without Faith, Reason has no purpose. A child may leave his toys as he grows older, but that imagination he had drives him to become a successful person.
There are those who loudly proclaim that copyrights are evil, and that all copyrighted works should belong to the public upon their creation, with the creator retaining no rights. They often back it up with all sorts of philosophical explanations as to why they’re right, but in the end, they just don’t want to pay for people’s work and want the government to force content creators to give it up for free.
There is a growing anti-technology movement in some circles, where people suggest we need to return to a pre-industrial way of life and co-exist with nature and stop using technology. The people who propose this are just bad at using technology and it frustrates them, especially since it’s a major requirement for most jobs, so they want everyone to stop using it so they don’t have to learn.
Like so many other movies (I’m looking at you, The Matrix), Inception was made to create plausible deniability for those that invented and use the technology in reality.
Of the various forms of passive entertainment, music is comprehended differently, in such a way that the listener does not get tired of it nearly as easily. Most movies or books can be watched or read several times before you’ve mostly memorized them and they’re no longer particularly interesting, but music can be played hundreds of times, and as long as you don’t play a song or album too many times all in a row without listening to anything else in between, you can still keep listening to it. This is because movies and books are longer and more intricate, and use storytelling devices that often rely on suspense and lack of knowledge of what's to come, whereas music’s value comes from cleverly crafted lyrics and the sound itself, which can remain enjoyable.
When one looks toward the sun, dust and particles floating in the air are backlit and easily visible. Therefore, you are consciously aware of the dustiness of the air, which triggers your sneezing response.
So frequently when you order a small item, it shows up at your door in a giant box, floating in the middle of a large quantity of packing material. This is because these companies hire the shipping companies to pack their products as well as ship them, and the shipping companies pack them in larger boxes so they can make more money.
Think about it. If only people who don’t sin go to heaven, it must be really boring. No one has fun or anything. Just like Mark Twain said, you go to heaven for the climate and hell for the company.
The iPhone 4 drops calls when held in such a way that the lower left corner is covered by your palm. This is actually a feature so you can effectively hang up on someone without seeming rude.
We, and all other “living” things, have never existed, we are just supposed to think we do. Life is meaningless. As far as we know, we could all be pixels on a computer or artificial intelligences programmed to think we are alive and able to make our own choices.