Nimrod, Minnesota

http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Image:BoringORSign_fxwb.jpg
Image: Wikimedia Commons)

Unfortunate place names:

  • Accident, Maryland
  • Big Ugly Wilderness Area, West Virginia
  • Difficult, Tennessee
  • Effort, Pennsylvania
  • Foulness, Essex, England
  • Hell For Certain, Kentucky
  • Hole in the Ground, Oregon
  • Nothing, Arizona
  • Pity Me, County Durham, England
  • Toadsuck, Texas

Niemyje-Zabki, Poland, means “He is not cleaning his teeth.”

Red Alert

Next time you visit the circus, if the band starts playing “Stars and Stripes Forever” — run. The hymn is known as the “disaster march”; it’s played during a life-threatening emergency to organize aid and evacuate the audience without panic.

Circus bands never play it under any other circumstances.

Commuting Times

Average travel time to work:

  • New York: 39.0 minutes
  • Los Angeles: 28.1 minutes
  • Chicago: 33.1 minutes
  • Houston: 25.9 minutes
  • Philadelphia: 29.2 minutes
  • Phoenix: 24.7 minutes
  • San Diego: 22.6 minutes
  • Dallas: 25.2 minutes
  • San Antonio: 21.5 minutes
  • Detroit: 24.2 minutes

The average U.S. commute is 24.3 minutes.

Woof

http://sxc.hu/browse.phtml?f=view&id=28706

Dog barks around the world:

  • English: woof, woof
  • Albanian: ham, ham
  • Arabic: haw, haw
  • Bulgarian: bau, bau
  • Danish: vov, vov
  • Estonian: auh, auh
  • Farsi: vogh, vogh
  • Finnish: hau, hau
  • French: ouaf, ouaf
  • German: wau, wau
  • Greek: gav, gav
  • Hindi: bho, bho
  • Icelandic: voff, voff
  • Italian: bau, bau
  • Japanese: wan, wan
  • Korean: mung, mung
  • Latvian: vau, vau
  • Mandarin Chinese: wang, wang
  • Norwegian: voff, voff
  • Polish: hau, hau
  • Romanian: ham, ham
  • Russian: gav, gav
  • Spanish: guau, guau
  • Swedish: voff, voff
  • Thai: hoang, hoang

Robert Benchley wrote, “A boy can learn a lot from a dog: obedience, loyalty, and the importance of turning around three times before lying down.”

Busy Airports

http://sxc.hu/browse.phtml?f=view&id=94013

World’s busiest airports:

  1. Atlanta
  2. Chicago
  3. London
  4. Tokyo
  5. Los Angeles
  6. Dallas
  7. Frankfurt
  8. Paris
  9. Amsterdam
  10. Denver

Actually, it depends on how you measure busyness. Atlanta serves the most passengers each year, but Chicago has the most arrivals and departures. Frankfurt serves the most international destinations, but Heathrow handles the most international passengers. And Memphis, home of FedEx, handles the most cargo traffic.

They fight over this, but I don’t see why. Who would prefer a busy airport?

Earnings

Occupations with highest median earnings:

  1. Physicians and surgeons
  2. Dentists
  3. Chief executives
  4. Podiatrists
  5. Lawyers
  6. Engineering managers
  7. Optometrists
  8. Petroleum engineers
  9. Natural sciences managers
  10. Actuaries

Lowest median earnings:

  1. Dishwashers
  2. Counter attendants, food concession
  3. Child-care workers
  4. Maids and housekeeping cleaners
  5. Dining room, cafeteria attendants, bartender helpers
  6. Food preparation workers
  7. Teacher assistants
  8. Restaurant hosts, hostesses
  9. Food prep and serving workers
  10. Waiters and waitresses

Vegetarian Actors

Vegetarian actors:

  • Pamela Anderson
  • Christian Bale
  • John Cleese
  • Richard Gere
  • Darryl Hannah
  • Woody Harrelson
  • Josh Hartnett
  • Dustin Hoffman
  • Samuel L. Jackson
  • Tobey Maguire
  • Ian McKellen
  • Gwyneth Paltrow
  • Natalie Portman
  • Hilary Swank

“I’m not a vegetarian because I love animals,” says A. Whitney Brown. “I’m a vegetarian because I hate plants.”

Famous Atheists

Famous atheists:

  • Ingmar Bergman
  • Ambrose Bierce
  • George Carlin
  • Denis Diderot
  • Sigmund Freud
  • David Hume
  • John Stuart Mill
  • Bertrand Russell
  • Jean-Paul Sartre
  • Percy Shelley
  • B.F. Skinner

“One of the proofs of the immortality of the soul is that myriads have believed in it,” wrote Mark Twain. “They have also believed the world was flat.”

Why Is a Manhole Cover Round?

Actual questions asked in Microsoft job interviews:

  • How are M&Ms made?
  • Suppose you had eight billiard balls, and one of them was slightly heavier, but the only way to tell was by putting it on a scale against another. What’s the fewest number of times you’d have to use the scale to find the heavier ball?
  • Why do you want to work at Microsoft?
  • One train leaves Los Angeles at 15 mph heading for New York. Another train leaves from New York at 20 mph heading for Los Angeles on the same track. If a bird, flying at 25 mph, leaves from Los Angeles at the same time as the train and flies back and forth between the two trains until they collide, how far will the bird have traveled?
  • How many gas stations are there in the USA?
  • You’ve got someone working for you for seven days and a gold bar to pay them. The gold bar is segmented into seven connected pieces. You must give them a piece of gold at the end of every day. If you are only allowed to make two breaks in the gold bar, how do you pay your worker?
  • The interviewer hands you a black pen and says nothing but “This pen is red.”
  • Pairs of primes separated by a single number are called prime pairs. Examples are 17 and 19. Prove that the number between a prime pair is always divisible by 6 (assuming both numbers in the pair are greater than 6). Now prove that there are no “prime triples.”

At the end they ask, “What was the hardest question asked of you today?” My answer: “Why do you want to work at Microsoft?”