On the morning of May 26, 1992, Charles Geschke [co-founder of Adobe] was kidnapped at gunpoint from the Adobe parking lot in Mountain View, California by two men as he arrived for work.

Yikes.

shitphotojournalistslike:

This is what lecture halls in university look like these days. Do they have too much money? Too Ivy League? None of that matters more than:

Apple’s back, and this time around they’ve brought more than just mindshare.

For the second year in a row, the U.S. military has lost more troops to suicide than it has to combat in Iraq and Afghanistan.

I say it often, but maybe not often enough: the system is broken.

It’s IBM’s centennial. Wow.

The Microplane grater was originally conceived as a woodworking tool. It’s use in the kitchen came as a total surprise to its creators. The woodworking tool was conceived because the company was making printer parts before the emergence of the dot matrix printer, and they didn’t want to be obsoleted along with their customers’ products. Luckily, their proprietary masking and etching procees resulted in parts with extremely sharp edges, which made sense for woodworking tools.

(via kottke.org)

Apple PR:

So in the [first] quarter we saw no signs of weakening. We’re up 18% over last year’s [first]-quarter gross, and that, needless to say, is a new record.

Our competition continues to flag and we continue to take up the slack. Market shares in most divisions is increasing, and we have opened seven new regional offices.

Our international division is also showing vigorous signs of upward movement for the last six months and we’re looking at some exciting things in R&D.

Sub-franchising. Don’t talk to me about sub-franchising. We’re making so much money in sub-franchising, it isn’t even funny. Our nominees and assigns continue to multiply and expand, extending our influence nationally and abroad. Our owned and operateds are performing far beyond our expectations both here and abroad.

And the Federal Tax Act of [2010] is giving us a swell write-off on our plant and heavies. And our last debenture issue was this year’s fastest seller.

So, third quarter and year-to-date we have set a new record in sales, a new record in gross, a new record in pre-tax earnings, a new record in after-tax profits, and our stock has split twice in the past year.

In short: we’re loaded.

kudos to whoever was Mickey Mouse that day, that’s some PostSecret shit right there.

(via DJ Capelis)

I was on the side of the road for close to 4 hours. Big jeep, blown rear tire, had a spare but no jack. I had signs in the windows of the car, big signs that said NEED A JACK and offered money. No dice. Right as I am about to give up and just hitch out there a van pulls over and dude bounds out. He sizes the situation up and calls for his youngest daughter who speaks english. He conveys through her that he has a jack but it is too small for the Jeep so we will need to brace it. He produces a saw from the van and cuts a log out of a downed tree on the side of the road. We rolled it over, put his jack on top, and bam, in business. I start taking the wheel off and, if you can believe it, I broke his tire iron. It was one of those collapsible ones and I wasn’t careful and I snapped the head I needed clean off. Fuck.

No worries, he runs to the van, gives it to his wife and she is gone in a flash, down the road to buy a tire iron. She is back in 15 minutes, we finish the job with a little sweat and cussing (stupid log was starting to give), and I am a very happy man. We are both filthy and sweaty. The wife produces a large water jug for us to wash our hands in. I tried to put a 20 in the man’s hand but he wouldn’t take it so I instead gave it to his wife as quietly as I could. I thanked them up one side and down the other. I asked the little girl where they lived, thinking maybe I could send them a gift for being so awesome. She says they live in Mexico. They are here so mommy and daddy can pick peaches for the next few weeks. After that they are going to pick cherries then go back home. She asks if I have had lunch and when I told her no she gave me a tamale from their cooler, the best fucking tamale I have ever had.

So, to clarify, a family that is undoubtedly poorer than you, me, and just about everyone else on that stretch of road, working on a seasonal basis where time is money, took an hour or two out of their day to help some strange dude on the side of the road when people in tow trucks were just passing me by. Wow…

But we aren’t done yet. I thank them again and walk back to my car and open the foil on the tamale cause I am starving at this point and what do I find inside? My fucking $20 bill! I whirl around and run up to the van and the guy rolls his window down. He sees the $20 in my hand and just shaking his head no like he won’t take it. All I can think to say is “Por Favor, Por Favor, Por Favor” with my hands out. Dude just smiles, shakes his head and, with what looked like great concentration, tried his hardest to speak to me in English:

“Today you…. tomorrow me.”

Jaywalking is the unsurprising portmanteau of jay and walking. Jay (archaic colloquial) itself means:

Applied to humans in sense of “impertinent chatterer, flashy dresser” from 1620s. […] Jay was slang for “fourth-rate, worthless” (1888) e.g. a jay town.

a fourth-rate, worthless walker.

(inspired by the jay bicyclists we almost mowed down this morning. source: Online Etymology Dictionary)

Recently I learned that horseshoe crab blood is blue, not red, due to their use of hemocyanin in place of hemoglobin to transport oxygen (copper vs iron). It turns out I should have investigated further, because their blood is more than just different, it’s actually useful.

Their blood also contains amebocytes, which are similar in function to white blood cells, but differ in their response to pathogens: in the presence of endotoxin, the blood clots vigorously. Endotoxin is a toxic bacterial component that sticks around after all the pathogens in a solution have been sterilized. It causes a fever, and it’s pretty hard to detect. Rabbits were injected to test batches of drugs, since they react to endotoxin similarly to humans, and if they got sick, that lot was rejected.

But horseshoe crab blood can help, and we don’t have to get them sick as part of testing! The link I got most of my information from starts reading like a brochure at this point, but the gist is that every year a whole lot of horseshoe crabs get collected, 30% of their blood is drawn, and they’re returned to the wild, and they are generally not harmed in any way unless collection goes badly. Back in the water, blood volume rebounds in about a week, and cell count returns back to normal in about 3 months.

(via reddit)

The blood isn’t used as-is in the lab these days, it’s processed into limulus amebocyte lysate, reconstituted with water, part is tested against control samples, and the rest used to test injectable drugs and related medical things that you don’t want getting you sick.

There exist law school scam blogs focused on the topic of how a law degree is not worth the money. Important variables include a low percentage of graduates getting jobs in the industry, expensive tuition, and oppressive loans. A friend of ours (who was a lawyer, now in medicine) tells us that law salaries follow a bimodal distribution with peaks around $40k and $100k, the former of which commonly leaves students with a debt-to-income ratio of three.

This is especially problematic for students because bankruptcy doesn’t clear student loan debt.

(via New York Times, student loan infographic found via tmbo)

An unusual but insightful answer to a question usually asked in insult.

If your car can’t go faster than 55, you’re not angry and impatient with the people you want to pass (all none of them). I tested this theory by driving on 101 with the cruise set to 65 and, even in traffic, I didn’t have to do anything. Other than being boring (because our car *can* go faster), it was very relaxing.

Several sources claim that pigs can run a 7-minute mile.

(via SmartyPig)

Shepard Tone

A tone composed of multiple sine waves at the right frequencies and alignments which, depending on the disposition of the base pitch, creates the auditory illusion of a tone whose pitch is constantly ascending or descending.

“It has been described as a ‘sonic barber’s pole’.”

Click the link, have a listen. Reminds me of Deep Note (mp3), but with no resolution.

(via Hoefler+Frere-Jones)