Cute but not sweaty.
Pigs don’t sweat much, so they wallow in the mud to cool off their bodies. So how did the English language expression “sweating like a pig” develop? It’s actually a reference to pig iron, which is form of iron smelting…
Continue reading… “The expression “Sweating Like a Pig” has nothing to do with pigs”
Marketing can make you or break you.
We’ve all heard a marketing campaign at some point and thought, “that is just stupid,” but most bad advertising strategies just result in a few less sales than a successful campaign would have brought in. Sometimes though, a company will run a campaign that’s so idiotic that the company ends up losing thousands, if not millions of dollars. Take, for example, the Silo marketing campaign that said customers could get a new stereo for only “299 bananas.” When customers started actually showing up with bundles of bananas, the store had no choice but to give them stereos in exchange for fruit…
Continue reading… “5 idiotic marketing disasters”
Cohabitation plays a different role in the lives of adults with and without college degrees.
In the United States cohabitation is an increasingly prevalent lifestyle. The number of 30- to 44-year-olds living as unmarried couples has more than doubled since the mid-1990s. Adults with lower levels of education — without college degrees — are twice as likely to cohabit as those with college degrees.
Continue reading… “The economics of living together without getting married”
Hi there. Wanna chat? I’m hip, scruffy and funny.
Over the years, there’s been a radical change in the way we interact with our networks of friends online. It used to be that we had a few of our friends (online or offline friends) on a service, allowing us to connect to friends through the Internet and see what their activities were. Where the Internet used to be a somewhat scary world full of strangers, we suddenly had friendly anchors to explore that world with. Sure, most of our friends weren’t online, or at least not using the same services, but the familiarity was comforting and the ability to see what a few of our friends were doing allowed us to find new content and new friends.
We fell in love with sites that made us feel like there are people out there who are similar to us, who we are talking to and having common experiences with. But then, some of these networks — Facebook and Twitter in particular — began to grow explosively…
Continue reading… “The Social Network paradox”
Scan that code for a shortcut to information.
If you raise the subject of QR codes among tech early adopters, you are likely to elicit a passionate response. Some people think QR codes, those scanable black and white squares on everything from billboards to product packaging, are on an unstoppable growth trajectory, while skeptics are quick to dismiss them as a fad.
This reaction is common whenever new technology formats or standards are being decided upon. Pundits want to exhibit their knack for predicting the future and stakeholders (of which I am undeniably one) want to make sure their format wins out. The general public, meanwhile, tends to lay in wait for a particular format to show dominance…
Continue reading… “Why QR Codes are here to stay”
Star Wars as an educational tool.
Each letter of the alphabet is represented by a character from the Star Wars universe here. Can you name them all? You might notice some of the main characters are missing in action, because a puzzle should never be too easy. The answers are at Gamma Squad…
(The complete game after the jump)
Continue reading… “The Star Wars alphabet guessing game”
Are you ready to show off your artistic prowess?
The DaVinci Institute is pleased to announce a “call for artists” for the Inventor Art Competition.
The theme of this competition is inventors and their great inventions. Inventors chosen may be contemporary or from any time in the past. They just have to show the mark of being a great inventor.
When you think of a great inventor, who do you think of? What invention did they create?
Continue reading… “DaVinci Institute announces Inventor Art Competition”
Most Americans (64%) say that parents are not putting enough pressure on their children to do well in school as U.S. students are underperforming on international tests. By contrast, 68% of the Chinese public take the opposite position and say that parents in their country are putting too much pressure on their children to succeed academically.
Continue reading… “64% of Americans say parents do not put enough pressure on students”
Once they are gone, they are gone.
This is one of those cool-yet-terribly-sad-it-exists apps. The Center for Biological Diversity has created an app for Android users that will tell you exactly which endangered species are living in the area you’re standing in. On the one hand, it’s amazing to know at any point in time which species are living in the area you’re walking though, and especially interesting to know which endangered species are struggling to survive. It could be a way to stay aware of local ecology and how you can help with conservation efforts. However, it’s of course a bummer that there’s an app that will tell you all the species that are thiiiiis close to being found only in history books.
The free “Species Finder” Android app has over 1,000 plants and animals from the endangered species list in its database. Using your smartphone’s GPS, the app generates a list of all the threatened and endangered species living in whichever county you’re currently located in.
Continue reading… “Android app locates endangered species wherever you are”
Fifty percent of all women who have graduated from a four-year college give the U.S. higher education system excellent or good marks for the value it provides given the money spent by students and their families but only 37% of male graduates agree. Also, women who have graduated from college are more likely than men to say their education helped them to grow both personally and intellectually. These results of a nationwide Pew Research Center survey come at a time when women surpass men by record numbers in college enrollment and completion.
Continue reading… “50% of female graduates see value and benefits of college”
Since 1999 outstanding student loan debt has grown by more than 511 percent.
“I still have student loans,” David Guard, a graduate of Gettysburg College and American University, told Fox News recently, as lawmakers and the White House bickered over the debt ceiling. “I could see an increase in those interest rates.”
Continue reading… “Will student loan debt be America’s next big bubble?”
Did you know about using Control-F?
Dan Russell, one of Google’s anthropologists, conducted a largeish survey of user behavior and discovered that 90 percent of American Internet users don’t know that crtl-F will let them search documents including Web pages. I recently discovered that a smart and technologically literate friend had never heard of alt-tab for application switching; alt-tab being my single most used key combo!
It strikes me that we could probable come up with a list of ten (or even three) things you could teach to the people around you the next time you sit down to help them with a technology problem, “three things every technology user should know.”
Continue reading… “90 percent of US net users don’t know about ‘crtl-F’”
By delving into the futuring techniques of Futurist Thomas Frey, you’ll embark on an enlightening journey.
Learn More about this exciting program.