Averages

Ever wonder about the average American salary? If so, you are not alone. According to Yahoo, it's the most common search term when people are searching for the "average" something. The Yahoo story also lists the top 20 searches that include average in the search terms. It's a pretty interesting window into what comparisons people look to the Internet for. It seems oddly heavy on test scores and strange body measurements. Here's the top 10, the rest arent that interesting either.

1. Average American Salary
2. Average Credit Score
3. Average Weight by Height
4. Average Teacher Salary by State
5. Average SAT Scores
6. Average IQ
7. Average Cost of Dental Implants
8. Average Blood Pressure
9. Average Tattoo Prices
10. Average Cost of Braces

The other day a friend and I were trying to piece together the average salary for LA. I was going with something pretty low, around $45K, while she was maintaining that it was pushed a lot higher because of all the people making crazy money in entertainment. All I could find after a quick search was this site, which lists $40K as the average for LA and Long Beach but it doesn't have a date, so reliability is out the door (side note, anesthesiologists raked in a average of $208K at the time of this report. More than surgeons - who knew?).

Pic of the Day 4.6.08

Tall enough?

Stephen Hawking speaks at TED

One of the smartest people in the history of the world answers three simple questions inside of 10 minutes.

1. How did the universe begin?
2. How did life begin?
3. Are we alone in the galaxy?

It was recorded at the TED conference in March 2008. When you watch this, give yourself some time to absorb.

Friday Fun - the Periodic Table of Elements

Call it flashback Friday, I just took a quiz to see how many of the elements on the periodic table I could name - from scratch. I pretty much exhausted my brain (and patience) after 6 minutes. I remembered more than I thought i would, but missed some major ones (high school was a long time ago). How many can you remember?

Take the periodic table challenge and find out! I posted my score in the comments.

Art and Architecture = Enternal Youth?

A story today marks one of those special occasions when the NYT profiles "different" people. In this case the subjects are two very out there artists, Arakawa and Gins, who recently completed their first house in the US - a crazy, fun house-looking structure they claim will increase your immune system and sustain longer life.

Then Ms. Gins, 66, began holding forth about the health benefits of the house, officially called Bioscleave House (Lifespan Extending Villa). Its architecture makes people use their bodies in unexpected ways to maintain equilibrium, and that, she said, will stimulate their immune systems.
“They ought to build hospitals like this,” she said.
A reporter, who thinks they should never, ever build hospitals like this, tried to go with the flow. Like the undulating floor, Arakawa and Gins, as they are known professionally, tend to throw people off balance.

...In 45 years of working together as artists, poets and architects, they have developed an arcane philosophy of life and art, a theory they call reversible destiny. Essentially, they have made it their mission — in treatises, paintings, books and now built projects like this one — to outlaw aging and its consequences.

... In addition to the floor, which threatens to send the un-sure-footed hurtling into the sunken kitchen at the center of the house, the design features walls painted, somewhat disorientingly, in about 40 colors; multiple levels meant to induce the sensation of being in two spaces at once; windows at varying heights; oddly angled light switches and outlets; and an open flow of traffic, unhindered by interior doors or their adjunct, privacy. All of it is meant to keep the occupants on guard. Comfort, the thinking goes, is a precursor to death; the house is meant to lead its users into a perpetually “tentative” relationship with their surroundings, and thereby keep them young.

The reporter starts skeptical, which in the face of the unbridled enthusiasm of Arakawa (called a 10-yr old trapped in a 60-yr old Japanese man's body) could make him seem curmudgeonly, but by the end you can tell that even he (along with the couple's numerous financial and artistic supporters) got caught up in the whirlwind of zest and passion. The full story can be found here and an audio slide show here.

thanks pops

Galactic Pizza

College rulez. I met so many awesome people in a little city in the midwest (Madison) and they continue to do amazing things. Pete, who I met through my friend Andy, started Galactic Pizza in Minneapolis with a killer one-two punch of super hero hilarity and super-conscious social responsibility. I eat there every time I'm back home. Amazingly, I saw that he was featured on CNN Money! Here's the quick breakdown: his restaurant makes really good pizza with locally grown organic ingredients (even vegan!) and donates a portion of profits to charitable causes. The tasty pizzas are available for delivery by crazy costumed super hero delivery drivers who use electric or human powered vehicles. The costumes are made by a local seamstress and delivery people are able to create and develop their own super hero identities. They also have quite a compelling Vision of the Future.

Check out CNN for more info and pics and if you're ever in Minneapolis, head to 29th and Lyndale, uptown for "pizza with a conscious."

Thanks Erin!

UPDATE: Thanks to Cara's comment, not only do they deliver pizza but they also foil robberies. This makes my day! Hilarious.

Squirrel Wrestling

I've gotten a few requests for this in the last couple of weeks. Here it is in all of its glory, Squirrel Wrestling...



Oh sundays, what would we do without you?

CGI

April first is a CGI company's christmas. Were it not for CGI, many of the april fools jokes running rampant today could not exist. Here are two CGI heavy links that caught my interest today.
CGI girl follows your cursor
Penguins that fly
Happy April Fools Day.

Best of Craigslist

Dear Hipster Record Store Clerk,

Thank you for judging me on the CD I bought yesterday. Our passive-aggressive altercation made me realize how conformist I am for buying an old Rage Against The Machine album. Your condescension was just the intellectual wake-up call I needed.

I discovered a new me yesterday, and my eyes were opened in a new way. Thanks to you, I realize now that the key to enlightenment is reading Pitchfork, watching High Fidelity, listening to Velvet Underground, having a tattoo of a star on the inside of my wrist, growing an ironic mustache, living in the Mission, and wearing a too-small sweater, multi-colored 70’s ski-vest, chunky plastic-frame glasses, a high school sports T-shirt, air-tight black jeans, and Nixon-era Chuck Taylors.

I had it all wrong, man. You showed me that a skilled job and a comfortable living is just a lie. I need to go to art school, have my parents pay my rent, join a Joy Division-influenced band, and wait for a record deal, like you.

I’m totally missing out in life. So thanks again for mocking me. I mean, at first I thought you were just a pathetic, frustrated musician trying to feel better about yourself. But now I see you’re an uncompromising visionary.

No one will ever understand you. You’re so different.

Signed,

Everyone Not Like You

original craigslist post

Latest Banksy

The latest Banksy piece in the UK has kids pledging allegiance to a plastic bag from Tesco - the major retail chain in the UK. How easy would it be to adopt this to the US, or other developed nations? What corporate entity would be the most appropriate?

• Wal-Mart
• Target
• Best Buy
• Walgreens
• Apple
• CocaCola

Any others? What about developing nations, is this still applicable?
Banksy from supertouch