Posts Tagged ‘things that are genius’

Free iPad Story

Tuesday, March 22nd, 2011

I don’t know if I buy that this is true, but it makes a great story: “iPad 2: Wife Says No, but Apple Says Yes“.

Apple is paying close attention to all iPad 2 returns during the first few weeks to make sure there are no major production defects. This policy has led to an amusing story that we thought was entertaining enough to share.

The story comes by way of an individual close to Apple:

[Apple's] focus this week has been to troubleshoot all the iPad 2s that customers are returning to the stores. One iPad came back with a post it note on it that said “Wife said no.” It was escalated as something funny, and two of the VPs got wind of it. They sent the guy an iPad 2 with a note on it that said “Apple said yes.”

We’re guessing a free iPad satisfied any objection the customer’s wife might have had.

Awesome!

Apple Magic Glove

Thursday, January 27th, 2011

Not that it’s set in stone, by any means, but Apple was just granted patent for a new glove system, as reported by Apple patent watchdog patentlyapple: “Apple Wins Patent for a High Tactility (Magic) Glove System“.

I know with my new iPhone the “tactile feedback” through even light gloves “impedes proper operation”.

I’ll be psyched if this becomes reality.

Snow in 49 States

Wednesday, January 12th, 2011

I love factoids like this:

With the arrival of snow in New York and the unusually severe storm in the South – which dumped more than a foot of snow in some areas – the National Weather Service said an unusual nationwide occurrence had taken place. There was now snow on the ground in every single one of the 50 states – including Hawaii, which had snowfall on one of its volcanoes – except for Florida.

That’s from yesterday’s New York Times: “Snowfall Blankets Region and Snarls Flights.”

American Indians in Iceland

Friday, November 26th, 2010

Fascinating article in Time Magazine (or at the least on their website) today about how Leif Ericsson and pals probably took an Native American (or a Canadian First People) to Iceland: “More Proof That Vikings Were First to America.”

Key quotes:

Ten years ago, Agnar Helgason, a scientist at Iceland’s deCODE Genetics, began investigating the origin of the Icelandic population. Most of the people he tested carried genetic links to either Scandinavians or people from the British Isles. But a small group of Icelanders — roughly 350 in total — carried a lineage known as C1, usually seen only in Asians and Native Americans.

… all the people who carry the C1 lineage are descendants of one of four women alive around the year 1700. In all likelihood, those four descended from a single woman. And because archeological remains in what is Canada today suggest that the Vikings were in the Americas around the year 1000 before retreating into a period of global isolation, the best explanation for that errant lineage lies with an American Indian woman: one who was taken back to Iceland some 500 years before Columbus set sail for the New World in 1492.

I love this kind of stuff.

Fringe Finale

Monday, May 17th, 2010

I’m going to let my geek flag wave here today – over the weekend I watched the first part of the Fringe season finale. Sorry it’s so closely on the heels of a similar post just last month (see Back to the Alternative Future).

So this week we’re back in the Fringe alternate universe, but it’s the present day this time. First off they started out with an alternate red tinted credit sequence:

Hey, waitaminute, “First People”? In the normal credits it’s “Parallel Universes”:

Interesting …

Alternate New York City still has the World Trade Center and airships up the yin-yang (likely they didn’t have a Hindenburg disaster) but they also have a fairly esoteric early 20th century architecture reference – Antoni Gaudí’s proposed Grand Hotel:

The hotel was designed in the early 1900s but (obviously) never built. It actually looks quite a bit like a super-sized version of London’s Swiss Re Building:

Apparently there’s an architecture geek on the writing or production staff.

This New York still has a Statue of Liberty, although somehow theirs has retained its original copper-bronze hue:

Also, as you can see from the title, it appears that Fort Wood is the home of the alternate universe Department of Defense.

I’m still taken aback by the lack of Verdigris on the Statue; we can either assume that the science behind corrosion works differently in the alternate universe (which is unlikely), that the Statue has been rebuilt (perhaps their September 11th attacks had different targets) or a third, unknown reason.

Moving on, my favorite jokes of the episode are the numismatically inclined. The defense forces in the alternate world find a dead human from our world and go through his wallet. They’re particularly confused by our money:

“Who’s ‘Jackson’?”

Wow, so either the guy doesn’t know who his seventh President was, or someone else was their seventh President. Naturally this, in conjunction with the “First People” bit above, leads me to wonder about that universe’s Creek War and Seminole Wars – with no Andrew Jackson were Native Americans treated more humanely in this universe?

Or maybe I’m overthinking this.

The next one blew me out of the water, though; in wanting to compare their $20 to ours, they asked for “a Junior”.

Boom:

Brilliant.

So either Martin Luther King, Jr was a President, or they’re keeping in line with the Hamiltons and Franklins and put influential non-Presidents on money.

Either way, bad-ass.

They also use dollar coins over there:

Shocking, I know. The front was even moreso:

So Reverend King and Richard Nixon made it onto the money in this world?!

Weird.

Honestly I took this more as a homage to Watchmen, where Nixon was still President in 1985 (after the repeal the 22nd Amendment and the suspicious murders of Washington Post reporters Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein).

This next thing, it’s just weird and funny:

Yup, The West Wing season eleven. Why the The West Wing? Maybe because both it and Fringe are produced by Warner Brothers Television?

Maybe they’re just fans?

The last one was startling, check out the map in the background:

Time to turn to the internets for help. I found an article at SciFiWire: “Secrets of the alternate U.S.A. from Fox’s Fringe.” They saw the map in-person on set and say this:

California has clearly suffered a major catastrophe; half of it is gone, presumably underwater.

The state of Washington is called “Southern British Columbia.” (A wink to the crew of Fringe, which is shot in Canada’s British Columbia?)

Nevada is called “Independent Nevada.”

Texas is divided into two states: North Texas and South Texas.

Oklahoma and Kansas are combined into a large state called “Midland.”

North and South Carolina are combined into a single state called simply “Carolina.”

Louisiana is called “Louisiana Territory.”

The area around Washington, D.C., is called “District of Virginia” instead.

The upper peninsula of Michigan doesn’t exist.

The map designates red “quarantine areas” and blue “incident areas,” presumably either places that have been cleared of all life or areas of unusual “Pattern”-related activity. The biggest red quarantine areas are in Delaware, eastern New York and southern Maine.

I’d say it’s more Eastern Maine, say Hancock County?

Yep.

Sorry Bar Harbor, MDI. You lose. Better luck next alternate universe …

French Press To Go

Tuesday, May 11th, 2010

Wow, I just saw this article at the New York TimesCoffee to Go That Brews While You Carry It.”

It’s a fully-recyclable single-use French Press cup called the “XPress cup” made by California’s SmartCup, available at NYC’s BKoffie.

Genius.

Bar Harbor Subway

Tuesday, April 13th, 2010

I don’t know where I saw this the other day, but it’s awesome and odd at the same time.

What if Bar Harbor had a subway?

Genius.

Back to the Alternative Future

Wednesday, April 7th, 2010

Last week the show Fringe had a plot that took place in an alternate reality 1985.

Of course, the guys who write and produce the show are genius, so they threw in a little time travel joke that only a geek could love:

Back to the Future, as we all know, was released in 1985, but many non-geeks out there might not realize that Eric Stoltz was Marty McFly for the first month of filming, until he was replaced by Family Ties’ Michael J. Fox.

Don’t believe me? Here’s a photo of Stoltz as McFly:

Damn are those Fringe guys clever …

Inernational Politics … and Zombies

Friday, March 19th, 2010

Apparently international politics must be quiet at the moment; Foreign Policy had a lengthy piece on zombies this week: “Dawn of the Theories of International Politics and Zombies.”

Lots of research (facetiously, I hope) has gone into how society would react to a as-of-yet theoretical attack.

Key quote:

If bureaucratic conflicts and organizational pathologies hamper effective counter-terrorism policies, imagine the effect they would have on anti-zombie policies. The bureaucratic turf wars would be significant. Quelling the rise of the undead would require significant interagency coordination. In the United States, one could easily envisage major roles for the Departments of State, Defense, Justice, Homeland Security, Transportation, and Health and Human Services. This does not include autonomous or semi-autonomous agencies like the Federal Emergency Management Agency, Environmental Protection Agency, Food and Drug Administration, Center for Disease Control, and the myriad intelligence agencies.

So the ability of organizations to adapt to an army of the undead is an open question. Clearly, further research in this area is desperately needed.

USB Outlet

Wednesday, February 17th, 2010

This is the most genius invention I’ve seen in 2010 so far: Power Outlet with Dual USB.


If I owned my own house (and if I had $20 to spend) I’d totally buy one of these.