The CannibalRabbit bites back
Links to other sites worth sharing
Do you want something that will make you stop and think?
The interactive scale of the universe [^] should give you something to ponder on. The starting point is a human scale view and the page goes up to the size of the universe to down to the size of the strings in string theory. This should help put things in perspective!
Scale of the Universe
Tales of scams seem to be a recurring theme around here. Way back in the early days of this blog, 2006, I had a post about a group of people that were going out of their way to scam the Nigerian Scammers [^]. At the time I said that I wasn’t sure how this would sit with the Golden Rule [^]; which is do unto others as you would have them do unto you.
Sarah Lacy at TechCrunch has posted a story about the lives and motivations of the Nigerian scammers [^], and the environment that they live in. After reading that it seems that my initial reaction was the right one. This isn’t something that they do gratuitously or for kicks. These people are doing this to survive, to feed their families, and to try to get ahead.
The interesting thing is that despite legal and technical crackdowns the scams continue, but they’ve evolved: “It’s not the glamorous, quick-money world it used to be. Today being a scammer takes smarts and stamina.” Gone is the quick hit replaced by long cons around online dating.
For the past thirteen years or so I have spent just about every hour of every working day in Excel. I guess that you could call that an occupational hazard for an accountant.
Occasionally I manage to learn a new trick. Just recently I found out that you can use wildcards in vlookup formulas [^]. Wildcards are “*” and “?”, where ? replace any one character, and * replaces any number of characters.
All of a sudden you wonder how you managed to get by without it. You do need to be careful about where you use this, but it does save some gymnastics where there are slight differences in the two values.
This is just the thing for anyone that wants to hang around and keep an eye on their nearest and dearest. Anna Marineko has designed a very stylish ghost urn [^] – perfect for a Halloween freak-out
Lost Shipping Containers
Have you seen pictures of cargo ships with containers stacked high above the deck? And have you wondered what happens when the ship is in a storm? Yes, containers get swept overboard, floating just below the surface for a while, then slowly sinking to the sea-floor. But what happens to them once they hit the bottom?
Out of the estimated 10,000 shipping containers that are lost every year only one has been found on the sea-floor. And that one was an accident, this container landed in an area being surveyed by the Monterey Bay Aquarium Research Institute (MBARI).
“Under the sea: Life on a lost shipping container” [^] is an interview BoingBoing’s Maggie Koerth-Baker had with MBARI’s research coordinator, Andrew DeVogelaere. In the interview they discuss some of environmental impacts of these steel boxes, such as corrosion and their possible use as a habitat for deep sea creatures. If nothing else it makes you realise how little we know about this strange, hostile environment.