Chad's News

The linked article has ten extreme locations in the United States. (Actually a couple of them are the exact opposite of “extreme,” but it’s still a neat list.)

Link: http://www.mentalfloss.com/…

In Indonesia, an active volcano emits vapors with high sulfur content. The fumaroles are capped, causing the sulfur to condense into the familiar yellow rock. Once a laborer has collected enough raw sulfur (up to 200 pounds), he carries it in baskets for several kilometers—up the side of the crater and down to a weighing station. The daily pay for this is about $5.00.

Link: http://www.boston.com/…
(via The Presurfer)

By one measure, the English language recently broke the one million words mark. And which word, you may be asking yourself, was the lucky number 1,000,000? Why “Web 2.0” of course.

Link: http://arstechnica.com/…

Need some extra time to write that term paper? At the linked site, you can purchase a corrupted file to email to your professor. By the time he/she notices, you’ll have finished writing the -real- paper and can “re-send” it. This is so bizarre—I wonder if it’s actually worked for anyone.

Link: http://www.corrupted-files.com/
(via The Presurfer)

From the article:

With King shot just the day before in Memphis, Elliott encouraged her third-graders to discuss how something so horrible could happen.

“I finally said, ‘Do you kids have any idea how it feels to be something other than white in this country?’”

The children shook their heads and said they wanted to learn, so Elliott set the rules. Blue-eyed children must use a cup to drink from the fountain. Blue-eyed children must leave late to lunch and to recess. Blue-eyed children were not to speak to brown-eyed children. Blue-eyed children were troublemakers and slow learners.

Within 15 minutes, Elliott says, she observed her brown-eyed students morph into youthful supremacists and blue-eyed children become uncertain and intimidated.

Brown-eyed children “became domineering and arrogant and judgmental and cool,” she says. “And smart! Smart! All of a sudden, disabled readers were reading. I thought, ‘This is not possible, this is my imagination.’ And I watched bright, blue-eyed kids become stupid and frightened and frustrated and angry and resentful and distrustful. It was absolutely the strangest thing I’d ever experienced.”

Link: http://www.latimes.com/…
(via Neatorama)

The Houston Chronicle allows you to build a custom page from the comics it publishes, updated daily. Similarly, comics.com is now free of charge, and will serve up comics and editorial cartoons to your email inbox or RSS feed. This is great stuff!

Turns out that American cheese is the sausage of cheese making—you don’t want to know how it’s made. And there’s the fact that it’s legally named “a homogeneous plastic mass.” Despite this, American cheese is still my favorite.

Link: http://www.mentalfloss.com/…

I’ve read about organized copper theft in third-world countries, but now it’s made it’s way to the United States. Fortunately there is some amount of natural selection going on.

Link: http://www.networkworld.com/…
(via Slashdot)

We’ve all seen it, that iconic picture of a migrant worker and her children facing the reality of the Great Depression. The linked article has an interview with one of the children, who is still alive today.

Link: http://www.cnn.com/…
(via digg)

From the article: “No matter what, if someone asks you to deposit a check and send them a smaller amount of money — you are about to get screwed.” This applies to money orders as well. Way too many people fall for this type of scam, even those who should know better.

Link: http://consumerist.com/…

Register before 6:00pm EST today to get a coupon for a free Dr. Pepper. Click here for information on why they’re doing this.

Link: http://www.drpepper.com/…

Daylight saving time ends in the US this weekend—turn your clocks back one hour. Also, researchers have determined that the extra hour of sleep reduces the number of heart attacks on the Monday following the switch.

Link: http://www.bloomberg.com/…
(via digg)