Category: Entertainment

Search History

mike 0 Comment Entertainment, Technology

While listening to Google’s earnings announcement today, I learned about Google’s new, searchable News Archive.  It allows you to search news articles going back 200 years!  Unfortunately, much of the really old content is paid content.  But you can go back to the early 1900’s and see a fair amount of “free” content too.  Be sure to do an advanced search and select “Return articles with the following price:  no price”.

I don’t really have a great use for this, but it is fun to have history at your fingertips.  Here are a couple of interesting news events I found:

The Assassination, Time Magazine, November 29, 1963

Earthquake in San Francisco, Guardian Unlimited, April 19, 1906

I also learned that in 1957, one Dr Joseph Belshe and a team of doctors plugged a patient into a power outlet as a makeshift defibrillator.  Sweet!

I do look forward to more content coming online through the search archives; there isn’t nearly as much as I’d like to see yet!

Putt your way to 63 Miles-Per-Gallon

mike 1 Comment Entertainment

The average MPG on my last tank was 63.0!  EPA rating on my 2006 Honda Civic Hybrid is only 50MPG.  How did I do that?

It takes a little patience, but the answer is simple.  Just drive 60 miles per hour the whole way, and you’ll keep that MPG rating up.  The car’s performance is very sensitive to small increases in throttle at those speeds.

Achieving MPG at that level yields two conclusions for me:

First, people really are governed by metrics.  They say in management school that keeping metrics for how your employees are doing is key to optimizing behaviors, and I think it’s true.  Whether you are measuring bugs/day, support calls/week, or cars washed/hour, we all have a competitive element and a desire to rank at the top of the chart.  For me, when the only metric I had in my car was the speedometer, of course I wanted to get to a maximum speed.  How many times have you heard your coworkers brag about their top speed?  Now, however, my metric is MPG.  And if getting the highest MPG means driving 60MPH instead of 90MPH, well, I can do that too.  What if cars didn’t have speedometers and only had MPG gauges?  Would everyone start to optimize for MPG?

The second thought is that we should create a website for us MPG freaks – www.MPGHiScores.com – where drivers can post their MPG accomplishments.  Rules would be that “scores” must cover at least a 100mile trip and you must take a photo of your odometer to submit.

Richard Feynman

mike 0 Comment Entertainment

I just finished reading. “Surely You’re Joking, Mr. Feynman“. Feynman was a physicist who won the Nobel Prize, but more importantly, he was a guy that just didn’t think the same way that most of us do. They say that “Great minds think alike.” But I doubt it was a great mind that said that, for the great minds are the ones that don’t think the way the rest of us do.

You won’t find much physics or science in this book, but I still liked this light reading. Sometimes we think we’re limited to being experts in just one area of study. Feynman proves that there is nothing to stop you from being successful in many fields except yourself. Don’t believe anything they teach you in school!