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Showing posts from November, 2009

Adha Moubarak and Happy Thanksgiving

On behalf of the Mind Soup team I would like to wish you a happy thanksgiving and Adha Moubarak :)

New Office 'Slang'

404 - Someone who is clueless. From the Web error message, “404 Not Found,” which means the document requested couldn’t be located. “Don’t bother asking John. He’s 404.” Adminisphere - The rarefied organizational layers above the rank and file that makes decisions that are often profoundly inappropriate or irrelevant. Alpha Geek - The most knowledgeable, technically proficient person in an office or work group. Assmosis - The process by which some people seem to absorb success and advancement by kissing up to the boss rather than working hard. Batmobiling - putting up emotional shields. Refers to the retracting armor that covers the Batmobile as in “she started talking marriage and he started batmobiling” Beepilepsy - The brief siezure people sometimes suffer when their beepers go off, especially in vibrator mode. Characterized by physical spasms, goofy facial expressions, and stopping speech in mid-sentence. Betamaxed - When a technology is overtaken in the marke

Job Titles Descriptions -- ( No Offence)

1. CUSTOMER SERVICE - Bright, cheery, positive, you are a fifty-cent cab ride from taking your own life. As children, very few of you asked your parents for a little cubicle for your room and a headset so you could pretend to play "Customer Service." Continually passed over for promotions, your best bet is to sleep with your manager. 2. MARKETING - You are ambitious yet stupid. You chose a marketing degree to avoid having to study in college, concentrating instead on drinking and socializing which is pretty much what your job responsibilities are now. Least compatible with Sales. 3. SALES - Laziest of all signs, often referred to as "marketing without a degree." You are also self-centered and paranoid. Unless someone calls you and begs you to take their money, you like to avoid contact with customers so you can "concentrate on the big picture." You seek admiration for your golf game throughout your life. 4. TECHNOLOGY - Unable to control anything

Read my articles in Outlook Online.

Read my articles in the AUB newspaper online on Outlook's new blog. http://outlooknewspaper.blogspot.com

Can you spot the difference?

School buses in Japan School buses in India Can you spot the difference?

Smart Parrot

Meet Griffin, the grey parrot, whose astonishing vocal and physical skills are demonstrating just how smart the avian world really is. Griffin has recently begun to play with objects and speaks English in a way that raises fascinating questions about the thought processes going on inside a bird's brain. The parrot will stack different-sized bottle caps in the right order, for example. He will also mix up the English words he has learned, and will say simple phrases, like "wanna green nut". This type of behaviour was once thought to be exclusive to humans, great apes, and monkeys. Griffin suggests Parrots should be added to the list. "Human children start combining their labels at about 22 months," says Dr Irene Pepperberg, who works with Griffin at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. "So, they start not just identifying 'cookie' and 'milk', but will say 'want milk' or 'want more cookie'. "And they also t

Amazing electron microscope photos

Almost all of the following images were captured using a scanning electronic microscope. Incredible details of 1 to 5nm (nanometer) in size can be detected 1. Red Blood Cells They look like little cinnamon candies here, but they're actually the most common type of blood cell in the human body - red blood cells (RBCs). These biconcave-shaped cells have the tall task of carrying oxygen to our entire body; in women there are about 4 to 5 million RBCs per micro liter (cubic millimeter) of blood and about 5 to 6 million in men. People who live at higher altitudes have even more RBCs because of the low oxygen levels in their environment. 2. Split End of Human Hair Regular trimmings to your hair and good conditioner should help to prevent this unsightly picture of a split end of a human hair. 3. Purkinje Neurons Of the 100 billion neurons in your brain. Purkinje (pronounced purr-kin-jee) neurons are some of the largest. Among other things, these cells are the masters of mot

How Much Time Google Saves Us

I have been reading a book called 55 Ways to Have Fun With Google and found the section below under chapter 9 and I thought I'd share it with you guys. You can download the whole book here . We might forget how much fun a search engine is, and how much time it saves us in doing everyday things, until the internet connection is interrupted and we’re left without Google. (Or, and this happens more rarely, when Google itself is down.) But usually after some minutes, things are back to normal – and we got our extended memory, our library of more books we could ever read, our information center, and our universal answer machine. And now, for just a moment, I would like you to imagine what today’s life would be without all that. What life would be without Google... and how much more time we’d be spending on solving our problems. Finding Your Lost Keys With Google: You enter “How to find lost keys” into Google, and the pages you find suggest to search every place again. Time spent

On the 150th Anniversary of Darwin’s Origin

November 24 will mark the 150th anniversary of Charles Darwin’s book On the Origin of Species , one of the most influential books on biology ever written, and arguably the most controversial. One hundred and fifty years after Darwin made popular the idea that the diversity of life on planet Earth today descended (or ascended?) from lower life forms over millions of years, the general theory of evolution is still not accepted by vast numbers of people, to the chagrin of large numbers of evolutionary biologists.  Did all of life really descend from one-celled organisms that developed in primordial waters billions of years ago? Is that really what happened? If so, we should see plenty of evidence of it all around us, and there are significant numbers of scientists who argue that we indeed find just that. They argue that there are a sufficient number of transitional forms in the fossil record to support Darwin’s theory. They argue that natural selection, acting to preserve small benefici

Depressed Woman's Facebook Pics Ruin Her Insurance Benefits

It seems that placing privacy settings on your social networking profile isn't enough to keep snoops away. Nathalie Blanchard, of Quebec, Canada, learned that lesson when her long-term, sick-leave benefits were stripped from her because of photos on her Facebook account. For the past year and a half, Blanchard had been on leave from her job at IBM as the result of being diagnosed with serious clinical depression. Since the diagnosis, she had been collecting a monthly check from Manulife, her insurance firm. But after Manulife investigators discovered photos on her private Facebook page that showed her out partying with friends at a bar and vacationing on sunny beaches, the company decided to cut off benefits. The insurer considered the photos evidence that Blanchard was no longer depressed, according to a report by the CBC. Blanchard told the CBC that she was only following doctors' orders and trying to have fun through nights out and short getaways. She added that while s

Oprah ending talk show in 2011

(CNN) -- Oprah Winfrey will announce on Friday's "The Oprah Winfrey Show" that she will end her talk show, said a spokesman for Winfrey's Harpo Productions. "Oprah will be ending her talk show," Harpo spokesman Don Halcombe said Thursday. "She will be speaking about it on tomorrow's live show." The show will air live from its Chicago, Illinois, studio at 9 a.m. CT (10 a.m. ET), he said. The show will end on September 9, 2011, as its 25th season draws to a close, according to a letter from Harpo Inc. that President Tim Bennett addressed to partners and obtained by CNN affiliate WLS-TV. "Tomorrow, Oprah will announce live on "The Oprah Winfrey Show" that she has decided to end what is arguably one of the most popular, influential and enduring programs in television history," Bennett wrote.  The show has been the highest-rated talk show for 23 consecutive seasons, according to the Oprah.com site. It is seen by an estim

My articles about the AUB elections in Outlook

Me interviewing Dr. Najat Saliba My Press Pass Below are the three articles I wrote, you can read the whole issue of OUTLOOK (pdf) by clicking here . 1) Vote for me; I am your best friend. M.H. Biology Senior Letter to the Editor Just before counting the votes Imagine this: There's someone who adds you on facebook with a million AUB friends in common, you accept, but still have no idea who she is. Next thing you know she sends you a message saying: "Heyyy [insert name here]. How are you? Long time no see. You know I'm running for SRC right? I'm counting on your vote, OK? Don't forget me (since I'm your friend n all)! and btw good luck with your exams :D" Which brings us back to "Vote for me, I'm your closest bestest friend!" You have this look on your face: "say whaaa? do I know you?" and she's like: "you know I was with you in that class. I sat behind you (but you are beneath me and I wouldn't b

Revenge from Yellow

Warm like summer bright startling it makes me uncertain unsafe and exposed I hate summer too much heat too much sweat queasy yellow who came up with it? such a perky color I hate perky yellow is evil if God likes yellow he would have made the sun blue and the sky yellow sunflower yellow gay smiling flowers chasing the yellow sun bananas are yellow an excuse for a fruit full of starchy starch like eating pounded rice with sugar urine is yellow makes me nauseous even angry reminds of diseases cowardice but yellow is so fresh they say don't you know I am only happy when I am depressed? I am only happy at night when the prancing sun is away and the moon is out? yellow makes people happy gives them confidence gives them warmth God I hate yellow! Mohammad Hijazi

Fattest Kid in the World

The child eats 10,000 calories a day, she cannot walk or bear physical strain and her cardiovascular system is at risk. Seven-year-old Jessica Gaude differs greatly from her pals. With 222 kilograms, she is the fattest child in the world. She eats 10,000 calories each day in Coca-Colas, 15 hamburgers with fries and several kilograms of chocolate. What she eats in one day some children eat in half a year. Her breakfast consists of white bread, potato chips and two litres of coke. And she wants more. When she last visited the doctor four years ago she had 110 kilograms. Unfortunately, she can no longer run and instead of walking she drags herself on the floor. Under such bodily weight her bones have already become distorted. Mother Carolyn gives her daughter whatever the child wants. In the first week after she was born, when the baby cried because of stomach pains, the mother calmed her by feeding her with a bottle beca

Vote for me. I am your best friend.

This is an article I wrote about the upcoming AUB elections. Tell me what you think. So imagine this: there's this someone who adds you on facebook with a million AUB friends in common, you accept, but still have no idea who the hell she is. Next thing you know she sends u a message saying: "Heyyy [insert name here]. how are you? wen hal ghaybe? (long time no see). You know i'm running for SRC right? i'm counting on your vote, ok? don't forget me (since I'm you're friend n all)! and btw good luck with your exams :D" which brings us back to "Vote for me, I'm your closest bestest friend!". and you have this look on your face: "say whaaa? do I know you?" and she's like: "you know I was with you in that class and I sat behind you (but you are beneath me and I wouldn't be caught dead talking to you in regular circumstances, but now since I need your vote we should get to know each other, since you know, I am your clo

Couple with the Same Full Name, Meet Mr and Ms Kelly Hildebrandt

It's not too unusual to hear stories of married couples who met online. But it IS unusual when that couple that meets online and marries also has the same name. In this case, it's a guy from Texas named Kelly Hildebrandt and a gal from Florida named Kelly Hildebrandt. They are about to get married. Kelly Hildebrandt met Kelly Hildebrandt when Kelly, the girl, looked up her own name on Facebook. “I was like, ‘I wonder if there's any other Kelly Hildebrandts on Facebook',” she explained. “So, I searched my own name and he's the only one that came up. And actually, in the picture, he didn't have his shirt on, and I'm like, ‘oh, he's cute!'” And the Kelly in Texas was also intrigued. “She started off, ‘Hey, I see we have the same name, and I thought it was kinda cool, so I wanted to say hi, I guess'. Lots of laughs,” he said… Eight months after that innocent Facebook message, Kelly proposed to Kelly, and pretty soon they'll become Kelly Hildebra

Could you pass a driving test?

15(ish) Things Worth Knowing about Coffee