World’s Most Expensive PDF File

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World’s Most Expensive PDF File: Apple Brings Out the Next iPod [DOWNLOAD: PDF]

List Price: $500.00 @ $250/page
Price: $500.00
Availability: Available for download now

Amazon actually suggested to me that I might like to buy this!!!

Here’s some of the comments/reviews:

“So you don’t even get a concrete piece of paper if you buy this. It is a PDF download. I am sure these are White House prices. I think that plans for the Death Star are cheaper than this one. I am sure it is a typo. ” -powerflux

“To be honest with you, I actually bought this product and downloaded. And the only thing it changed was my life. I know have super powers! Bow down before the lord and master of PDF files!!!!!!!!!!!!! ” -Richard

“This pdf is 4 pages long making it a bargain at $250 a page. :|” -a reader from Milwaukee, WI

“For only $500 for this downloadable book, this book is an absolute steal. This book will change your life and help you lose 50 pounds. It also cooks meals and prepares your taxes. $500?? What a steal!! ” -a reader

“This book costs too little money. ” -dissatified [sic] billionaire

It must be a typo but it almost makes you want to see what it is, doesn’t it?

I searched on Amazon for apple and idc and came across a couple more uber expensive PDFs:

Apple Opens the iTunes Music Store [DOWNLOAD: PDF] $1500 @ $1500/page

Making Sweet Music: The iPod Goes Mini and HP Hops on the Apple Bandwagon [DOWNLOAD: PDF] $500 @ $100/page (a relative bargain!!)

I’m back!

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Hey! Long time no see. I’ve been really busy with school stuff, but also just really, really lazy. It really doesn’t take that long to update a blog.

Anyway, here’s a cool site that I found: MusicPlasma. You can search for your favorite musical artist and then it returns a flash page with the artists albums on the left and how that artist is associated with other artists on the right. The end result is that a web linking tons of artists appears. The closer they are together, the more they are related. Also, the larger the “bubble,” the more popular that artist is. As an example, below you can see my results from searching for The Beatles.

Synesthesia

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In synesthesia, sights can have sounds, sounds can have tastes and, more commonly, black-and-white numbers and letters can appear colored

Read this MSNBC article on synesthetes. A synesthete is a person with the rare ability to be able to see sound in varying colors or taste music. The article entitled, “Real Rhapsody in Blue” written by Anne Underwood of Newsweek, describes the experiences of Julian Asher. “In Asher’s ever-shifting vision, violins appear as a rich burgundy, pianos a deep royal purple and cellos ‘the mellow gold of liquid honey.'” Different black and white numbers can even have a color. For Asher, five plus two equals the color green. Only recently have scientists proved that these experiences are not the result of an overly active imagination. Shown above on the left part of the picture is a type of test that was used to prove that a synesthete’s ability is real. The average person would be hard pressed to quickly identify all the number twos in the picture, but for a synesthete, the task is easy as the numbers take on different colors. When scientists noted that synesthetes completed the task significantly faster than others, they new that this remarkable conceptual ability did exist. Brain scans are verifying these results.

The interesting thing is that: “A new survey by Grossenbacher found that out of 84 synesthetes, 26 were professional artists, writers or musicians, and 44, serious amateurs.”

Even more intriguing is that a synesthete who has been blind for 10 years says that he sees colors when he hears certain words. And, brain scans confirm that key color-processing areas of the brain are being activated.

Discovery.com has a story entitled “The Truth About Color-Seers,” talks about synesthetes also. They describe an experiment in which a large mess of numbers with the number two forming a picture was shown to synesthetes and non-synesthetes. Synesthetes immediately recognized the picture because it stuck out as a different color.

Russian dies after winning vodka-drinking contest

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Russian dies after winning vodka-drinking contest

A vodka-drinking competition in a Russian town ended with the winner dead and the runners-up at the hospital! “The competition lasted 30, perhaps 40 minutes and the winner downed three half-litre bottles. He was taken home by taxi but died within 20 minutes,” said Roman Popov, a prosecutor pursuing the case in the town of Volgodonsk. The owner of the organizing shop was charged with manslaughter. I wonder if if the prize, 10 litres of vodka, will go to the runners-up now? I thought the United States drank a lot, but: “Russians drink the equivalent of 15 litres of pure alcohol per head annually, one of the highest rates in the world. Some experts estimate one in seven Russians is an alcoholic.”

Creatine and ‘brain power’???

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Creatine and ‘brain power’???

Creatine has long been associated with muscle growth, but recently, the Royal Society journal Proceedings B had a publication that showed that “Creatine supplementation gave a significant measurable boost to brain power.” “The researchers found that subjects’ ability to remember long numbers improved from a number length of approximately seven digits, to an average of 8.5. Dr Rae believes that the creatine increases the amount of energy available to the brain for computational tasks, improving general mental ability.” However, there is no evidence that the mental performance boosts are long-lasting. “Dr Rae said: ‘Creatine supplementation may be of use to those requiring boosted mental performance in the short term – for example university students.'”

Creatine is a natural supplement that is found in muscle tissue. I’m not sure of the exact numbers, but to get the equivalent of 5g of creatine, you would need to eat over 10lbs of steak or take a couple of pills.

If I was conducting this test, I would round up a bunch of weight lifters and compare their IQ to that of the general public. They should be smarter, right? 😉

Simpsons Fan Creates Real Tomacco Plant

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Simpsons Fan Creates Real Tomacco Plant

Simpons' tombacco plant

What do you get when you graft a tomato plant and a tobacco plant? That’s right, tomacco! Scientists think (but have not tested it yet) that the tomato would contain nicotine. Would this finally be a way to cause people to eat their vegetables? I’m not so sure. From some research Google Search, it appears that nicotine does occur naturally in certain vegetables. Why then isn’t everyone addicted? The New England Journal of Medicine published this article: More on the Nicotine Content of Vegetables and the Arthritis Nightshades Research Foundation released this report entitled Nicotine in Vegetables by Dr. Norman F. Childers.

Report was originally found on Slashdot, but the source article for that was found on The Simpons Channel.

2003 College Football midseason awards

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I found this article in the Daily Cardinal (a local UW Madison student newspaper). It’s written by Michael Jones. I typed it out here because it is so funny.

Midseason Awards

Because I’m both hungover and lazy, here are my College Football midseason awards. Enjoy:

“Yeah, the kids won’t miss ‘Jump Around'” Award for Biggest Moron: Any fan, sportswriter or pundit who keeps placing Texas in their top 10. Can we just quit it folks and realize that they’re not that great? I’m serious, every February some Mel Kiper-Lite predicts that Texas is fielding the strongest team in terms of recruitment. And every year, they get punked in mid-October. Why mid-October? Because that’s when they stop playing prep schools that Johnny Moxon could whup and play Oklahoma.

“Why play the fourth quarter?” Award: To the Minnesota “We deserve to be ranked because we beat Troy State” Gophers, who had all the makings of a sweet victory over Michigan last week. Unfortunately, their defense went all Green Bay Packers on them and they allowed that insipid fight song to permeate through the Dome. Shame on them!

“Obviously, we are not engineering majors” Award: To any Badger fan who tried to tear down the goalposts last Saturday. Come on everyone, if we all shift to one side of the posts, that sucker would have gone down quicker than a drunk sorority girl at a football-player party. People, Missouri fans could do it and we’re twice as smart with half the genetic problems as them.

“Our quota for felons on the team was slipping” Award: To Nebraska CB Kellen Huston who cold-cocked a Missouri fan after the fan decided to become a one-man field-rushing crew. The fan has reportedly gone on to distinguish himself by demanding that full charges be pressed against Huston, even though he was pointing and running toward Huston like he was going to fight him. Classy all the way around.

“We like running cliché terms into the ground by mid-season” Award: To Northern Illinois and the rest of the woe-is-me Cinderella” MAC Conference for beating overrated teams from larger conferences (Kansas State, Alabama, etc.) and then have the gall to demand a stake in the BCS. So what if it is just because they’re able to slip in students who don’t have the grades to even get into academic powerhouses like Miami. I hope they’ll enjoy this year’s Motor City Bowl … where they all belong.

“I never really did take that vow of chastity” Award: To the President of Boston College Father William Leahy, who is screwing the Big East and defecting to the ACC. Apparently, BC is still able to use Doug Flutie as a viable excuse for promoting themselves as a “good” football team. And while they redefined mediocrity in the weaker Big East, they’ll be gladly welcomed as the new Northwestern-type pushover by the likes of fellow traitors Miami and Virginia Tech.

“Honey, we just did it five minutes ago, I’m not ready yet” Award: Potentially, to the Badgers if they don’t get over finishing of Ohio State and are not prepared for a just-as-dangerous Purdue team.

Here’s to an interesting second half.

(If this material is copyrighted or whatever and you don’t want it on here, leave a comment and I’ll remove it. Thanks!)

Badgers end Buckeyes’ 19-game win streak

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SI.com – NCAA Football – Badgers end Buckeyes’ 19-game win streak

Badgers win 17-10!!!!! We move up to #12 (ESPN/USA Today) and #14 (AP) in the country!

On this page, it is noted that “Stanley became the first player to top 100 yards against the Buckeyes since Davis gained 144 yards in a 19-14 loss to Ohio State last season. Stanley and Davis are the only players to rush for more than 100 yards against the Buckeyes in Ohio State’s last 23 games.”

It poured on us during the first half, but we were jumping around so much that no one seemed to mind the cold and rain enough to leave early. In the second half the rain ended and the game got really exciting. The Badgers made some errors and Ohio State almost won the game on our errors (just like they did last year!! We were up the entire game and threw an interception at the last second to lose 19-14.). But we soldified the win on a very nice pass to Lee Evans (a 70+ yard touchdown and his only reception on the day since Ohio States’ Gamble was playing tight man-to-man).

I’ll post a picture of the fans rushing the field and trying to tear down the goal post (which they couldn’t do because it’s steel reinforced in anticipation of our victory — no just kidding) in a little bit. And I know everyone wants a picture of that streaker who ran across the field in front of a sold-out crowd of 79,793 fans. 😉

From CBS Sportsline: Weekend in Review: Loss was inevitable for Buckeyes

Merhan Karimi Nasseri has the Longest Layover ever

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Merhan Karimi Nasseri at Charles de Gaulle airport, France, since 1988
The Longest Layover ever! Not an urban legend!

Also known as “Sir Alfred,” Nasseri has been stranded for 15 years at the Charles de Gaulle airport in France. Back in 1988, he couldn’t board his flight because he didn’t have the necessary papers. Just recently the papers were filed, but he still wants to live at the airport. Sir Alfred said that he feels safe at the airport and is wary of the outside world. So, while he could now leave, he doesn’t want to.

Alfred has no family, so that would not be an issue. He spends his day reading newspapers and donated books and eating airport food. He is well educated; he has a B.A. in Psychology. And, Steven Spielberg just recently bought the rights to his story for a six-figure sum. The film is tentatively entitled “Terminal.” Sir Alfred now has the distinction of being the world’s richest homeless man!