Minwoo’s Right Brain Archive

I’ve never listened to Christian radio, but on the way back from Monterey over the weekend, I was flipping thru the stations because I could not get the usual station that I listen to. So I decided to tune in… the following is the story I heard…

Pacific Golden Plover is a relatively small bird, only weighing about 100g (that is about the weight of 5 nickels). One of the fascinating fact about Golden Plover is its annual migration from Hawaii to Alaska (and other parts of the world) some 3000 miles away. For the long journey over the Pacific, that takes more than 2 days of non-stop flights, it prepares by eating more than 60% of its body-weight! What’s more amazing is that, it’s been calculated (don’t ask how) that the amount of energy generated by the food reserve falls well below the required amount to flap its wing some 1/2 million times to make the whole trip. So, how does it make it across the Pacific? It conserves energy by flying in formations! (Sort of like drafting in cycling). Obviously, not every bird in the flock makes it all the way safely :( Many will end up making the ultimate sacrafice (willingly or not) for the continuation of the species. What a selfless act! I think we can all learn from this simple, but amazing creature… Actually, the speaker was making the point that we need each other to get through ourlives, just as Golden Plover needs each other to safely get across the Pacific.. but I think there’s more than one lessons to be learned from the story.
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I swear I was toying around with this idea since couple of months ago, darn :(

An IBM employee lost in Asia sparked the idea for their product InfoScope. The idea: If you’re in a country and you don’t speak the language, point your digital-camera equipped PDA or cell phone at the sign you want to read. The image is sent back to a server, translated, and sent back to your handheld device. The technology is being developed to process Chinese, Italian, French, German, Spanish, and English.

Read the original article here
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What is a “mullet”?
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This is VERY fascinating. Ulam’s Spiral “provides us with striking visual evidence that there is some order in the distribution of prime numbers” Here’s more about prime spiral from Math World.

That reminds me, Stephen Wolfram, former child-genius and the founder of Wolfram Research (who makes the amzingly useful Mathematica), published A New Kind of Science. Many considered this to be a ground-breaking book.. but it seems to getting luke-warm reviews. It’s probably not easily approachable, being 1000+ pages… very unfortunate, if this book, indeed contais fresh ideas that could revolutionize the whole science.
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28 Interesting Facts:

1. Butterflies taste with their feet.
2. A duck’s quack doesn’t echo, and no one knows why.
3. In 10 minutes, a hurricane releases more energy than all of the world’s nuclear weapons combined.
4. On average, 100 people choke to death on ball-point pens every year.
5. On average people fear spiders more than they do death.
6. Ninety percent of New York City cabbies are recently arrived immigrants.
7. Thirty-five percent of the people who use personal ads for dating are already married
8. Elephants are the only animals that can’t jump.
9. Only one person in two billion will live to be 116 or older.
10. It’s possible to lead a cow upstairs … but not downstairs.
11. Women blink nearly twice as much as men.
12. It’s physically impossible for you to lick your elbow.
13. The Main Library at Indiana University sinks over an inch every year because when it was built, engineers failed to take into account the weight of all the books that would occupy the building.
14. A snail can sleep for three years..
15. No word in the English language rhymes with “MONTH.”
16. Average life span of a major league baseball: 7 pitches.
17. Our eyes are always the same size from birth, but our nose and ears never stop growing. SCARY!!!
18. The electric chair was invented by a dentist.
19. All polar bears are left-handed.
20. In ancient Egypt, priests plucked EVERY hair from their bodies, including their eyebrows and eyelashes.
21. An ostrich’s eye is bigger than its brain.
22. TYPEWRITER is the longest word that can be made using the letters only on one row of the keyboard.
23. “Go,” is the shortest complete sentence in the English language.
24. If Barbie were life-size, her measurements would be 39-23-33. She would stand seven feet, two inches tall.
25. A crocodile cannot stick its tongue out.
26. The cigarette lighter was invented before the match.
27. Americans on average eat 18 acres of pizza every day.
28. Almost everyone who reads this email will try to lick their elbow.

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