smart ass saturday

today is pi-day! it was chosen because today is also einstein’s birthday and because 3/14 is the beginning sequence of pi.

smart me! learned this from a book i am currently reading. stay tuned for when i can put it up on my reading list.

during my vacation, it was mentioned to me that dogs are colorblind. that really confused me because first of all, if this was true, i really questioned my school education (as this was never mentioned as far as i can recall). then i wondered how they even found this out. it’s not like you can just talk to a dog and say “is this a red sock?” and expect an answer. i’ve never had a dog so maybe you would get an answer to that.

whatever. i just don’t get it. so i googled my question and boo-ya, dogs are color blind but it somewhat depends on the definition you put to color blind. because they only have two primary colors (yellow and blue – dichromatic) they cannot see the same range that we can. but they see better in the dark because they have more rod cells.

so, yeah, i guess dogs are color blind after all and i did not pay attention in school. now you all know!

something else i learned, but that is really more of an observation than newly acquired knowledge: germans are highly annoying! when i was on my way back home from berlin, and today when i took the train from home back to lz i noticed the following: people get up from their seats and get dressed, drag their luggage towards the door and wait there impatiently for the train to arrive at the station. they do this AT LEAST 15 minutes before the next stop is even announced. in the meantime, they interrupt everyone because of course they need to yell at their travel companions about whatever instead of trying to keep it more low key because, hey, you are not all by yourself on that train.

coming back from berlin last week, i had a family on the train that did this and i was very annoyed by them. not just me, but everyone else in the coach.

today, the train was so crowded that i had to sit on the floor. 20 minutes before the scheduled arrival time, people started getting up, moving luggage, being all very agitated. a man mentioned to me that “we are approaching leipzig and things will get very hectic now”. i took a look outside the window and said “gee thanks, i do think we are nowhere near lz, there aren’t even any houses yet but thanks for letting me know, i’d surely would have missed it”.

this “have to be ready on time before time” is so annoying! my mom does it, many other germans do it. i guess i do it, too. but geez, why is everyone so stressed out? chill, people.

franzi

smart ass saturday

what is there to say about the things i learned this past week? i learned that one infidel guy can keep the media busy for days. not only did they report on what they think he will say and how. they also reported on what he said, what he didn’t say, what others said, what they didn’t say, how the wall street reacted to his statements and, here’s my favorite news headline “who was in tiger’s front row”.

uh, i cannot stand this topic any longer. i feel like i almost wish for a disaster to happen that would take the attention away from this “news story”. let’s face it, this is not news. and for any channel to spend so much energy on this topic is a sad loss to the real tragedies of this world. speaking of which, i changed the sponsor for my social vibe – fill the cup donation widget i have on the right side bar. click there to help alleviate world hunger. the money does not go to support tiger woods!

something i learned just a few hours ago: there is a town in pennsylvania called centralia. this mining town is basically built on coal. back in 1962 their landfill caught on fire. the problem was that this fire ignited the coal underneath the town and somehow no one managed to put out that fire. so since 1962 the coal underneath the town has been smoldering resulting in a terrible air quality. eventually, people were asked to evacuate the town, move somewhere else. the ones that stayed behind are now stuck in this smoldering mess. estimates say that the coals will burn for another 100 to 300 years….wow…

that’s my smart news for today.

franzi

smart ass saturday

oh i’m so proud of this post. it’s smartness from head to toe!

i saw a documentary about how skyscrapers are built. for the world trade center, they used a thing called “kangaroo crane”. these cranes are able to lift themselves up higher inside a frame structure. this way as the building is getting taller, the crane is able to move on up with it. the kangaroo jumping part is the actual lifting.

they also talked about something called “jumping form”. they used that for that burj chalifa tower they recently finished building in dubai. in addition to the kangaroo cranes. the jumping form is used to be filled with cement and once it is dry and hard, the form “jumps up” on the cement wall it just created and is ready for another load of cement. i know this sounds difficult to explain. it’s like using your two hands to form a wall for your sand castle. when you want that wall to be higher, you put your hands on top of the wall you just built and use them to stabilize the the new taller wall. that’s what this form is doing. just higher up.

wow, this is a real smart post. more smartness from me who failed all business classes she ever took (except for the one i had to pass or i would have been forced to change majors). and actually i also passed that economics for nonprofits class pretty well, also! there’s a way to calculate if a currency is overvalued or undervalued (i have no idea if these are the actual english  terms to use). the smart folks look at the price of hamburger in the respective countries and compare prices. and then they calculate something with the currency exchange rate. ideally, the outcome of the equations is equal, meaning the value you get for one unit of currency is exactly what you could get for one unit of the other currency. if they are not even then there is an imbalance and the value of the currency is not actually worth what you can buy for it (either you can get more or less). whatever, the point i am trying to get across is they use hamburger, fatty, everyday hamburger to determine this! it’s called big mac index or burgernomics. i guess business is hands on if you want it to be.

glad you’re living your life smarter now ;-)

franzi

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