Learn Something New Every Day, By Email by Dan Lewis
Hi! I did something on Tuesday I’ve never done before — I sent the same email twice. Well, that’s not 100% true — it wasn’t exactly the same email. The first one sent was missing a sentence and a half, which kind of messed up the entire story, so I fixed it and resent an hour or so later. It’s not the first time I’ve made a mistake like this, but it’s the first time I did the double send, and I’d…
We’ve all seen our fair share of bad movies — the original live-action Super Mario Bros., Sex and the City 2, the movie with the midi-chlorians and pod racing… those all top (or bottom?) my list. In many cases, those movies were good ideas that just didn’t come out all that well, or low-risk franchises where the actors were already aligned with the roles they’d perform (or both). But there are…
Drone cameras are pretty cool, giving us perspectives that we’d normally not have access to. They hover over concerts, zip around airports, and are used by marketing teams and filmmakers to tell stories that we’d otherwise miss. But they’re hardly perfect. They occasionally crash into places they shouldn t be, make noise in areas that don’t want them, and — if used nefariously — can spy on people…
In 1994, Major League Baseball went to war. On one side was the league and the team owners; the other, the players and their union. At issue was, ultimately, how to divvy up the spoils of their collective venture. The two sides regularly entered into Collective Bargaining Agreements (CBAs), but the CBA that outlined the relationship at the time ended in 1993. Unable to reach a new agreement, the…
Hi! Last Friday, I sent you a list of 25 fun facts about myself, three of which were not true. Many of you sent in your guesses as to the lies. Here’s the reality. Lie #1: I’ve never seen a Batman movie. I’ve probably seen all the Batman movies (other than the second Joker movie, which may not actually be a Batman movie for all I know). Yes, including the 1966 one starring Adam West and Mask of…
“Why did the chicken cross the road?” is a set-up to an age old joke that really isn’t very funny, but it’s become a trope (or meme, if you’re of a younger generation) that’s withstood the test of time. It’s also not a particularly interesting question (although apparently, how they navigate such treks is). If you’re driving down the road and you see some chickens crossing, you’re best served by…
Every day, throughout the United States and elsewhere, police officers pull over drivers for all sorts of infractions — blowing through a stop sign, running a red light, speeding, having a broken tail light, suspicion of DUI, and more. And by and large, those happen without much controversy. There’s an understanding that drivers are supposed to follow the rules and officers are supposed to enforce…
From Survivor to Love Island, reality TV shows have become a staple genre of primetime programming for decades. The term “reality” is typically loosely defined — couples who meet on The Bachelorette rarely remain together and even “roommates” on The Real World knew that their living arraignment was designed for conflict, not community. But the general idea behind these shows includes a meaningful…
Hi! I recently redid my personal site in an effort to drum up consultancy work, but before that, I had a list of fun facts about me. All of them were true, and — inspired by yesterday’s story about Ken Jennings’ inability to come up with 74 fun facts about himself — I wondered how many interesting facts I have about myself I could credibly make without cracking. Once you get to the…
The hit gameshow Jeopardy! is a game of facts. l. Three contestants stand behind their podiums, Alex Trebek (or now Ken Jennings) reads clues, and the players try to phrase their responses in the form of a question. If you know the facts, you get the points. If you make up your own facts, you lose points. That’s the key rule of Jeopoardy! — don’t make stuff up. But there s another part of the show…