Scientists are training bees to smell certain diseases. The bees are then used to recognize whether or not someone has a particular disease by smelling their breath. This is a far cry from the little hand held scanner StarTrek predicted we'd have, but it demonstrates a valuable lesson. Don't get so caught up in looking for high tech solutions that you overlook simple, but very effective low tech opportunities. … [Read more...] about Trained Smelling Bees
Blog
A few useful links
Unclutterer has some photos of a wall mounted laptop desk from Ikea. It looks like it would be useful in homes where you are short on space. GetRichSlowly examines some of the changes people are making due to high gas prices and considers getting a scooter. LIfeClever looks at some tools to help you focus on a single window in OS X. … [Read more...] about A few useful links
Take a Nap for Memory
Studies suggest that your memories are solidified while you sleep. Your brain does a lot of work during your rest--almost like it is busy filing and making sense of everything you've discovered while you were awake. When you've learned a new concept or information that you want to retain, consider taking a nap or reviewing it right before going to bed. This will give your brain the best chance to assimilate the new information. … [Read more...] about Take a Nap for Memory
Omnifocus Review
In our lives, as tasks build up, stress tends to build proportionally with the number of them that are present in our memories. In addition to worrying about the time needed to finish these tasks and the skills required to accomplish them, many of us are stuck worrying that we will forget what we needed to do in the first place! For those of us that need a bit of a hand in writing down and categorizing our everyday to-do list, the team at Omnifocus has produced a remarkable software product that allows a person to put tasks into a system that gives them the ability to prioritize, categorize and organize their tasks in a way that seems logical to that person. The best feature of Omnifocus is … [Read more...] about Omnifocus Review
Benefits of Expensive Oil
Most people are concerned about the high cost of gasoline. The countries that produce oil are, of course, thrilled. In the Middle East, people are paying millions of dollars on car license tags with unique numbers. Evidently, having a Rolls Royce isn't enough to make you stand out over there. Saeed Khouri paid $14 million dollars to be able to put a license tag containing "1" on his car. People living in the US and other countries that are primarily consumers and not producers of oil are less fond of the current pricing trend. However, in an effort to always discover the silver lining, we are going to look at some of the potential benefits of expensive oil. Technological … [Read more...] about Benefits of Expensive Oil
Pre-Charged Batteries
Duracell sent me a few of their new pre-charged batteries to try out. The idea is that people don't purchase rechargable batteries because they need to use them right away. In the past you couldn't pre-charge Ni-Cad rechargeable batteries because they would lose their charge while sitting on the shelf. The new pre-charged batteries seem to overcome this problem which also means you can charge up the batteries and not use it for awhile without losing power. I'm still testing them out to write up a better review of their performance. Duracell seems light on stats for the batteries with most of their efforts going into marketing based on humor, however the product seems good and will … [Read more...] about Pre-Charged Batteries
Language and Learning
For my freshman English class in college, I wrote a paper looking at the correlation between language and thought. My premise was that certain thought capabilities would be impossible without having a language in order to express those thoughts. There has been some recent research looking at how language can help with learning. The experiment was designed to see if people could learn information more quickly if there was a word associated with it. They were shown a series of "aliens". These were clay sculptures some had roughly shaped heads and others had smoother heads. The subjects of the experiments were told to tell if each alien was friendly or not. The smooth head aliens … [Read more...] about Language and Learning
The Benefits of Failure
My wife and I were doing some research into how education is handled in various countries when we ran across some interesting statistics. Basically researchers took middle school age children from a bunch of different countries and tested them in mathematics. The US children did very poorly compared to the rest of the developed world. However, the researchers went a step further and asked the children to rate themselves in mathematics. The US children consistently ranked themselves higher than the children in the countries who were actually more skilled in math. So while the US wasn't the best in actual mathematics, they are the best in teaching students how to feel like they are good … [Read more...] about The Benefits of Failure
10 Articles on Creating the Perfect Resume
A Professional Resume is Essential- Carla Vaughan According to Carla Vaughan, writing an impressive resume is not as difficult as one might initially think. The important headings for the content of your resume are your contact information, education and objectives as well as a few others. Because many employers simply scan resumes, these headings are essential to the creation of a well-written resume. How to Create a Resume that Gets Results-Penny Loretto In this article, Penny Loretto describes the importance of a resume. She highlights the purpose of a resume by pointing out that it should work toward the ultimate goal of providing the interested party an interview, and perhaps, the … [Read more...] about 10 Articles on Creating the Perfect Resume
Mobile Me Email Down for a week.
My .mac (now Mobile Me) email has be non functional since last Friday. I can't believe a company with the resources of Apple can't get an email server fixed in 4 to 6 hours much less a whole week. Walt Mosberg says the other services aren't very reliable either. I had been told that they were storing all incoming emails in a queue, but when I asked them if they could print out my emails and fax them to me (I know that is insane, but they weren't offering me anything useful and being down for a whole week is even more crazy than faxing emails) I found out that their servers are simply rejecting incoming connections so after four days they will be returned as undeliverable. At this point, … [Read more...] about Mobile Me Email Down for a week.