Friday Newsletter: June 8, 2012

I know is not Words Wednesday but this post today does have a certain words theme running through it.

From a ridiculously easy Wheel of Fortune puzzle which proved impossible for the contestant under the glare of the studio lights to a fun test to see how fast you can read, the words theme, although unintended, is certainly here.

There is also a stupid drinking game from a British student and a wind turbine which was allergic to the wind to enjoy this week.

As London counts down to the 2012 Olympic Games the Olympic torch will travel 7,000 miles across the UK in 70 days.

On Sunday I was up quite early. I think I got up at around 3am. My sleeping patterns are somewhat odd.

But the good news was that it meant I was able to watch the Olympic torch on its journey around the UK ahead of the Games opening in London at the end of July.

The torch was due to pass within 1/4 of a mile of my home at 6.23am so I grabbed my camera and set off to capture the moment.

Given the early hour I thought I would be among a small of handful of people out on the streets to see the event, but I was wrong. There were actually several hundred people lining both sides of the High Street. In fact I have never seen it so busy.

I suppose that this – while not exactly the most exciting event in the world – is a once-in-a-lifetime experience. After all there are not too many times you will get to see the Olympic flame pass through your neighborhood.

Now I know it was very early on a Sunday morning but I can’t help thinking that many of the local retailers missed a huge trick this morning.

There are quite a few food outlets on Holywood High Street but almost all of them were closed with the shutters down. The one shop that I saw was open and selling hot food had a long line of customers…including me.

Organisers of the Olympic torch relay say 95 per cent of the UK’s population should be within one hour of the route, so I was quite lucky being just a five minute walk away from it.

While running with the torch is the most common form of transport it has travelled on skis (Oslo 1952), Skidoo, (Calgary 1988) and ski-jumper (Lillehammer 1994.)

The torch has also taken to the water with swimmers, (Veracruz, Mexico 1968 ) been underwater at the Great Barrier Reef(Sydney 2000) and even flew on Concorde (Albertville 1992).

Pictures: © 2012 Patrick Griffin.

This masked man is nothing but a fool, but he is an internet drinking hero

It has long been a tradition that, here in the UK, many students go to university in order to learn how to drink vast amounts of alcohol.

But a 21-year-old student – thought to study at the University of Leeds – has become an internet sensation for his YouTube video clips where he drinks as much alcohol as possible in the shortest possible of time.

In one of his dozen or so videos on his YouTube channel he downed a pint of vodka in just seconds and now other young students are copying his stunts.

In a series of videos,  the man who wears a ski-mask to protect his identity, performs one outrageous drinking stunt after another.

As well as the vodka stunt he three full bottles of wine – one red, one white and one rose – within a minute.

And now to a rather embarras_ ing mis_ ake by a college student

Wheel of Fortune puzzles can sometimes be a little difficult to solve.

But , you might think, not this one.

Unless you are a Reed College student called Zach, from Portland, Oregon.

He stumbled for 10 seconds without being able to solve the phrase that appeared so easy to the crowd that they gasped and cheered when they first read it.

By the time he finally guessed it correctly, the buzzer had already sounded and he lost out on the prize…a gleaming new car.

See what happened here:

Video credit: WayoshiM/YouTube

 

How fast can you read? Quick, take this test now and find out.

Do you know how fast you read?

Well in the next couple of minutes you could know for sure.

Stationary suppliers Staples have put together a fun test to see how fast you really read.

The test comprises of a short page of text which you must read and, hopefully, understand.

Just so that you don’t skim through the words so quickly that you take nothing in, there is a very short multiple choice comprehension test at the end and the you get your result.

To take the test just click on the image below.

Good luck, and don’t forget to leave a comment to let me know how you got on.

 

‘Green’ Wind turbines take a terrible toll on the environment (and they are not too good at coping with high winds)

Environmental  correctness, like its cousin political correctness, strikes me as a form of mental illness.

In the UK successive governments have given the go-ahead to increasing numbers of these modern-day windmills in a bid to prove their green credentials.

The sad thing is that they are terribly expensive and horrendously inefficient…a bit like the governments which commission them.

The idea is that they generate ‘free’ electricity from the wind around them, but in reality things are much different. If the wind is not strong enough then the electricity they produce is pitifully small but if the wind is too strong then they have to be shut down to prevent them from breaking up.

They have another flaw that the environmentalists don’t seem to talk about too much either…they kill birds. These devices are actually very efficient killing machines.

In the USA it is estimated that they kill hundreds of thousands of birds each year and that figure could rise to more than one million a year as more and more of these turbines are planned to be built.

According to National Review Online bald and golden eagles are among the victims of these turbine blades which can spin at around 200 mph, effectively turning them into airborne machetes.

In California alone it is estimated that more than 100 eagles are killed each year because of collisions with wind turbines.

Now take a look at what can happen when the winds get too strong for the wind turbines to cope:

Video credit: Kourinsu/YouTube

 

This is a public safety announcement…texting and driving is not clever, it is downright dangerous

Most people would agree that getting behind the wheel after a night on the booze is not really a good idea.

However studies have shown that texting and driving can be as dangerous as driving while under the influence.

In Belgium a group called Responsible Young Drivers wanted to put this to the test by encouraging young people to send text messages while driving.

Warning: This was done under controlled conditions. Under no circumstances try this for yourself!

The experiment was done on the pretext that learner drivers would have to show that they would have to text and drive in order to pass their driving test and many of the youngsters were horrified at what they were asked to do.

This video shows what happened:

Video credit: RYDBelgium/YouTube

So you want to run your own traffic exchange?…then read this first.

I have said many times that opening a traffic exchange is easy…but keeping one going month after month after the initial flurry of activity has died down is where the real skill lies.

Bad Marketing’s Blain Jones addressed this very issue in a recent blog post.

I don’t think I could put it any better than Blain did, so if you have not already seen his post then click on the image below:

And finally…

“Words cannot describe how much I have predictive text.”

[You may have to think about that one!]

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Have a good weekend and God bless.

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