The more you know…

Did you know that the yarmulke is the closest living relative of the headphone?

Fossil evidence has been found for 5 intermediate lifeforms (b-f) between the most recent common ancestor (a) and the modern headphone (g).*



* This figure is actually from Pruppacher & Klett, 2004. Microphysics of Clouds and Precipitation, Kluwer Academic Publishers. It shows how large raindrops can break up as they are subjected to drag forces while falling. Apparently in low-turbulence falls, drops can get up to about 4.5mm before this breakup mechanism kicks in.

Mmm… Bananas…

Say what?

Here's a tip: when a little voice in your head says, "you're probably too tired to ride your motorcycle," just listen to it. Fortunately, I wasn't going all that fast, I was wearing all my gear, and no other vehicles were involved. Broke my arm and leg. In a bit of pain but mostly wounded my pride.  Also, being very well cared for.

Guess I'm going to be reading and watching the immernets a lot for the next little while. Found this on TED.  Enjoy!

Draw Something Crass

Raj Patel on the World Bank

This clip is from the CBC Ideas episode Feeding Ten Billion. Well worth listening to.

Correction

Fast Ford Nation

Inspired by top user comment on this Toronto Star article. Thanks to everyone in the lab who helped, especially Andrew.

Ford Nation Passport Cover by CJ Lee is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 3.0 Unported License.

Worship This

According to Wikipedia, most municipal leaders in Canada are called "mayor". Some small areas villages and rural areas still use the term "reeve". There is one exception to this. Niagara-on-the-Lake gets a "lord mayor" instead or a mayor or reeve. This is apparently in recognition of the fact that Niagara-on-the-Lake was once the capital of Upper Canada.

Mayors in Canada are styled "Worship", as in when talking directly to a mayor you say "Your Worship" and when talking about a mayor you say "Her Worship" or "His Worship". What I would like is for Toronto to get an exception to this rule, the way Niagara-on-the-Lake gets an exception to the "mayor" thing. I think that present and future mayors of Toronto should be henceforth styled "Corpulence". As in "Your Corpulence, Mayor of Toronto, I am writing you to ask that you use the considerable weight of your office..." and so on.

I can't find out where these stylings come from, so if you have any information about that, please leave it in the comments. I asked a librarian friend and she didn't know either but she said she suspected that it's a matter of tradition and that the way to "officially" change it would be to simply get people using the term. So, I beseech you to use the considerable weight of your conversation to make my (admittedly petty) dream come true.

Mmm... Georgia...

As discovered on This American Life's Georgia Rambler episode.

I think I have a bacon problem...

I know U R, but what am I?

Canada has two seasons: winter and construction. Well, it's not winter right now. This made me chuckle yesterday as my mind completely misread the company name on the shipping container on Kings College Rd.

Related link.

You Learn Something New Every Day

This is the best frequently asked question (and response) I have ever come upon (from the groupon FAQ):

One of your write-ups stated that "hummingbirds come from cocoons"... I'm not sure that's correct.

Thank you for your suggestion, but it is correct.

And if you don't know, Groupon is a neat service which uses "collective buying power" to get rippin' good deals. The trick is that they offer businesses a minimum number of customers to secure the deal, so if not enough people show interest (by buying the deal), no deal. Definitely worth looking into if you haven't already. Plus, really, what's one more piece of spam in your inbox each day?