Things I did not learn in school

Picture by Sigfried Rhinehart

This morning, I began thinking of some information that had recently come my way. Some of it was interesting, some informative and some was funny. So I'm making a little list:

- The company Arrhythmia Research Technology pays irregular dividends.

- A popular (not with me) method of consuming alcohol is by using an enema. The booze is absorbed more quickly than it is when drunk. One caution, a man gave himself a massive vodka enema and passed out during the course of absorption. Of course, the enema continued to work, eventually killing the @ssh0le by alcohol poisoning. (source: "The Darwin Awards" by Wendy Northcutt)

- The Marines are adding a minigun in a pod (called all quadrant gun) underneath the fusilage of their V22 Osprey for use in Afghanistan. The weapon can fire 360 degrees around the ship. It is fired by a crew member using what looks like a Play Station controller. Deadly video game! (source: Aviation Week 11JAN2010)

- Average alcohol consumption for an American was about 11 gallons per year (GPY) (average for all alcoholic beverages sold divided by persons alive over the age of 15). This compares to 8 (GPY) for WWII, 4.5 during prohibition and 29 GPY at the end of the American revolutionary war. (source: American History vol.43, No.5, DEC 08)

- You make a lemon "vinagrette" by whisking two tablespoons of lemon juice with four to six tablespoons of olive oil.

- Last year, a concerted cyber attack on the offices of the Dalai Lama, some embassies and foreign ministries. Canadians discovered that the operation, called Ghost Net collected information from computers and turned on cameras, allowing the operators to see and hear what was going on in the room where the computer was. The Canadians traced Ghost Net as far as servers in the People's Republic of China. (source: The Dispatch, vol.31, no.12, December 2009)

Don't you just love random information?