Numbers in Perspective

Visual concepts

"This new series looks at contemporary American culture through the austere lens of statistics. Each image portrays a specific quantity of something: fifteen million sheets of office paper (five minutes of paper use); 106,000 aluminum cans (thirty seconds of can consumption) and so on.

This project visually examines these vast and bizarre measures of our society, in large intricately detailed prints assembled from thousands of smaller photographs.

As with any large artwork, their scale carries a vital part of their substance which is lost in these little web images. Hopefully the JPEGs displayed here might be enough to arouse your curiosity to attend an exhibition, or to arrange one if you are in a position to do so.

The series is a work in progress, and new images will be posted as they are completed, so please stay tuned.

Building Blocks, 2007
16 feet tall x 32 feet wide in eighteen square panels, each sized 62x62".

Depicts nine million wooden ABC blocks, equal to the number of American children with no health insurance coverage in 2007.

chris jordan, Seattle, 2007




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Scrub DVD Scratches

Methods tested

Which is better toothpaste of Brasso when it comes to cleaning that DVD?

Or



Paul Michael has done the testing for you and provides videos of the results.


Removing scratches



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Noodling for Flatheads

By Burkhard Bilger

ISBN 0-684-85010-9
Scribner 2000



About the Author

Has written for all the usual suspects: The New Yorker, The Atlantic Monthly, Harper's, and the New York Times.



Book Description

"Bilger kicks off the tour from his hometown in Oklahoma, where he 'noodles'--thrashes a limb around in catfish-thick waters--hoping to land a fabled 80-pound monster with his bare hands. In Louisiana, he challenges the misgivings any nonenthusiast might have about cockfighting.

Even though it's illegal in most of the country, the bloodsport is thriving in the Bayou State, replete with trade magazines, well-produced venues, and American Kennel Club-worthy breeding strategies. The same passion for efficiency goes into the moonshining business, where Bilger is taken under the wing of one of the few shiners willing to lead him through his sourmash operation. A few nights later, however, Bilger is on the other side, on a raid with the local sheriff.

Squirrel-brain consumption is still popular in hamlets throughout Kentucky, even after a report published in the New England Journal of Medicine blamed a neurological disease on the dish. Bilger treats each eccentric character with a distant respect and hints at the melancholy of losing tradition, no matter how bizarre."

Quote

"tick tick tick

I'm nostril-deep in murky water, sunk to the calves in gelatinous muck.

Noodling, I know, is the fishing equivalent of a shot in the dark. For his master's thesis at Mississippi State University, a fisheries biologist named Jay Francis spent three years noodling two rivers.

All told, he caught 35 fish in 1,362 tries: 1 fish for every 39 noodles."

To "noodle" is to dangle your arm in the water until a catfish swallows your hand. The fish record catch includes one at 111 pounds.

"When clamped on your arm, catfish also have an unfortunate tendency to bear down and spin , like a sharpener on a pencil."

... "once that thing gets to flouncin' and that sandpaper gets to rubbin', it can peel your hide plumb off."

Here's the trailer for the movie
Okie Noodling


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World Countdown or Up

Time to die

Here's a clock that shows what is happening second by second.

How many are being born and how many are dying and by what means.


PoodleWaddle.com:

World Clock




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Euros to Lira

Pint's a pound

This application allows you to complete many different types of conversions; it includes all the mathematical functions offered in Microsoft Calculator.

It will also do currency conversions.

Microsoft Calculator Plus

Exchange rates are downloaded from the European Central Bank.
You can enter non-European rates by hand.

A more extensive currency conversion tool can be found at:
The Full Universal Currency Converter®



None of them verify that a pint's a pound the world around.
How much does a gallon weigh?




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Full Moon Stuff

50 things about the moon

The Belfast Telegraph had an article on moon detritus:

3 -Lunar eclipses - caused by the passage of the earth's shadow across the illuminated hemisphere - only occur during a full moon. However, because of the angle of tilt of both bodies the moon normally passes either north or south of the earth's shadow.

4 -The chances of being bitten by a dog are twice as high during a full moon, according to a study at Bradford Royal Infirmary, which reviewed 1,621 cases of dog bite between 1997 and 1999. However, a study at the University of Sydney in Australia concluded there was no identifiable relationship between the state of the moon and dog bites.

16 -In October 1939 in Springfield, Missouri, the full moon appeared to fall from the sky. The event was reported in the local newspaper but was later revealed to be a plunging weather balloon.

26 -The full moon may appear round, but is actually shaped like an egg with the pointed end facing earth.

33 -The full moon is the brightest object in the night sky. It has an apparent magnitude of -12.6 compared with the Sun's of -26.8.

50 -In a study of 1,000 tonsillectomy operations, 82 per cent of post-operative bleeding crises occurred nearer the full moon than the new moon, according to the Journal of the Florida Medical Association.

The sky at night




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Resume Writing

Get a Job

There are a number of templates installed in Word that will help in creating a good looking resume.
Get started on your job hunt with Word templates

Here are some suggestions about what a resume should look like:

The Rockport Institute:
How to Write a Masterpiece of a Resume

About.com
Resume and Cover Letter Guide

The Riley Guide:
Prepare Your Resume for Emailing or Posting on the Internet

Want to work for Microsoft?

Microsoft's Zoe Goldring and Gretchen Ledgard:
What is it like to interview at Microsoft?

Chris Sells:
Interviewing at Microsoft

Blog:

Technical Careers@Microsoft



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