The Geeks' Guide to World Domination

by Garth Sundem

  Generally, a number of these systems will be attached to a horizontal beam, called a batten, to which the actual scenery is attached. Along the theater's back wall is a locking rail that provides the base for a long rack of anchored pulley blocks and control levers.

  A simpler system uses tied-off ropes with sandbags as counterweights.

  THE LONGEST AT-LEAST HALFWAY BELIEVABLE DESCRIPTOR FOR DESIGNER COFFEE

  Half-caf double-tall triple-shot nonfat three-pump three-Splenda whole-milk-foam caramel mac-chiato in a double cup, no lid, with wings.

  THE NINE MEMBERS OF THE FELLOWSHIP OF THE RING

  A SAM LOYD MATHEMATICS PUZZLE

  PROPOSITION—How much does the baby weigh if the mother weighs 100 pounds more than the combined weight of the baby and dog and the dog weighs 60 percent less than the baby?

  A STRANGE THING SOMEWHAT NEAR REDMOND, WASHINGTON

  On December 19, 1920, the Hol-stein heifer Segis Pietertje Prospect broke the world's record for the most milk produced in a year (37,361 pounds, as opposed to the 4,000-pound average at the time). In her day, the cow, nicknamed Possum Sweetheart, was visited by Jack Dempsey and the French commander in chief, Marshal Joseph Joffre. Today, you can visit her statue in Carnation, Washington, about twelve miles from Microsoft headquarters.

  THE PETERS PROJECTION VERSUS MERCATOR MAP

  Thank you, Aaron Sorkin, for using your political drama to point out the fact that we have been lied to: The world is not shaped the way we thought it was. The map we all grew up using, known as the Mercator projection, is reasonably accurate within fifteen degrees of the equator, but as you move toward the poles, distance is stretched, making, for example, Greenland look much bigger than it actually is. In fact, Africa has almost fourteen times Greenland's surface area, but they look almost equal on the Mercator. Here's why: imagine ripping open the globe and flattening it into the shape of an oval; now draw eleven dots along the equator and these same eleven dots along horizontals as you move toward the poles so that your map looks like this:

  Now, you want your map to be a rectangle and not an oval, but when you stretch the top and bottom to make this possible you also expand Greenland. Despite its misleading shape, the Merca-tor map offers the advantage of representing navigational bearings as straight lines, and has thus been the standard since the time of exploration.

  The Peters projection map represents land according to surface area and thus removes the potential for West-centric capitalist pigs using the world map as justification for NATO world domination.

  Some Australians think the world looks like the map shown below, but they are wrong.

  REFRACTION: HOW TO POP A CAP IN A CARP

  If you haven't the infinite ammo of the late Hunter S. Thompson or the lightning-fast trigger finger (and impressive spray radius) of a recent vice president, it actually takes considerable skill to shoot a fish in a barrel (exact difficulty proportional to size of barrel and fish depth and inversely proportional to size of fish). Some of this trickiness is due to refraction, or the change in speed and thus direction of light waves as they move from air to water.

  Wait a minute?! Isn't the speed of light constant? Yes. But only in a vacuum. If you shoot light through glass, it travels only 0.67 times its original speed and if you shoot light through water it travels only 0.75 times its speed in a vacuum (in beer, 0.74). And the more you slam on the brakes, the more light changes direction. You can see this when you stick a straw in a glass. Refraction is also responsible for rainbows: As white sunlight refracts through atmospheric water, each frequency contained within this white light adopts a slightly different speed and thus refracts slightly more or less, spreading out into the immediately recognizable ROY-G-BIV spectrum. Thus, as seen in this diagram, if you are trying to shoot a fish at position R, it in fact appears at position L, and you will need to aim lower than it appears in order to hit it.

  Note: shooting fish drastically decreases the chance of successful catch and release.

  AHAB : MOBY-DICK :: SHIMOMURA :

  If you answer this question correctly on an electronic version of the ACT or SAT II, your social security number will be automatically forwarded to admissions officers at CalTech, MIT, and the Indian Institute of Technology (not really). The answer, of course, is Mitnick—Kevin Mitnick, who, if he hadn't been reformed and reintegrated into American society, might joyfully have hacked the College Board Corporation to pirate said SSNs.

  Mitnick's high-tech forays onto the murky side of the law started early. By age seventeen he was phreaking Bay Area phones, stealing free long distance, listening in on conversations, and making technology-assisted prank calls, including changing the class of service to make targets’ home phones request 20¢ in order to make calls and rerouting directory assistance to lines of his choice, where Mitnick and his friends offered any number of fake phone numbers. (“Yes ma'am, that's seven, three, nine, four and a half. You do know how to dial a half, don't you?”). Unfortunately for Mitnick, his early hacks were brazen enough to be solvable by even standard FBI apes, and before he was twenty-eight, he had been arrested and convicted of computer-related crimes five times (though let it be said, his arrests were usually due to errors in human judgment, not in computer skill—once he was turned in by a friend and another time by a friend's girlfriend).

  After being caught violating parole in 1992, Mitnick went underground, entering his most productive hacking period. It was during this time that he accessed Nokia, Sun Microsystems, Fujitsu Siemens, NEC, and Motorola systems (among many other alleged offenses), all while staying one cyber-step ahead of the law.

  Then Kevin Mitnick picked on somebody his own size. In 1992 Tsutomu Shimomura was a senior fellow at the San Diego Supercomputer Center. Mitnick hacked Shimomura's home computer, stealing thousands of files. Shimomura made it his personal mission to nail Mitnick, setting up electronic listening posts and finally tracking down Mitnick's online cache of stolen information. Shimomura staked out the data and, though the dial-up calls used to access the info were painstakingly rerouted, Shimomura finally tracked the source to a cell phone in Raleigh, North Carolina. Armed with a cellular frequency finding antenna, he cruised Raleigh with a Sprint technician and pinpointed Mitnick's signal originating from a specific apartment complex. The next evening, FBI agents knocked on Mitnick's door.

  Kevin Mitnick served forty months. He now runs his own computer security firm.

  THREE BASIC TAP- DANCE STEPS

  Step-Ball-Change: Start by marching in place, in time to music. Now, step backward onto the ball of one foot, then step with your flat forward foot, and finally bring the trailing foot back to its starting position. If possible, the step-ball-change should be a syncopated hiccup in time, with the backward step onto the ball of a foot coming between beats.

  Cramproll: This is a modified jump in which you land first with the ball of one foot, then on the ball of your other, then on the heel of your first foot and finally on the heel of your second foot.

  Flap-Heel: From a basic standing position, scuff the ball of one foot forward and then bring it down (this is the flap—think two syllables: fl-ap). Then bring down the heel of this forward foot. By alternating feet you can walk with the flap-heel. For optimal effect, practice this at the office while on the way to and from the watercooler.

  TRAGICOMIC EVENTS IN THE LIFE OF FABIO

  • On March 30, 1999, the hunky Italian supermodel was hit in the face by a goose while riding the Apollo's Chariot roller coaster in Busch Gardens, Williamsburg, Virginia. Fabio was rushed to the emergency room at Williamsburg Community Hospital and later claimed his survival was “a miracle.” It took one stitch to close the cut on his nose. The goose was killed. You can still find the video online.

  • On November 7, 2007, Fabio was dining at a Los Angeles eatery with five female guests who had donated to the California Highway Patrol Foundation to earn the pleasure of his company. One of his guests snapped a picture of George Clooney who was sitting ne
arby. Clooney was irritated and when Fabio approached Clooney's table to explain, the two sex symbols came almost to blows and had to be physically separated. Fabio said of the incident, “I just feel badly that it ruined the night of these women who paid to support charity. I am thinking of something to make it up to them.”

  • In addition to penning the modern classics Champion, Rogue, Pirate, and more, Fabio recorded an album titled Fabio After Dark, on which he waxes poetic about life and love over a background of what can only be described as porn music (offering evidence that Edison as surely as Einstein has doomed the human species). If you further investigate only one thing in this book, please, please make it this—you can find a copy of the album online. You will be a better person for it.

  • After learning that object-of-competition Larissa had dated Fabio, Gil Hyatt of Average Joe 2: Hawaii left the show, claiming that “every guy would understand.”

  • Fabio is a spokesman for I Can't Believe It's Not Butter!

  BE AFRAID. BE VERY AFRAID: THE CPSC'S TOP FIVE HOME HAZARDS

  According to a 2007 press release by the Consumer Product Safety Commission, every year 33.1 million people are injured by consumer products in the home. No one is safe, and constant vigilance is required to avoid maiming and/ or death (paraphrased). Here are the prime offenders:

  1. Magnets: If a child eats your wedding ring, it will pass. If the same child eats both your wedding ring and a magnet, the two might attract through intestinal walls, creating a massive kink and making it very difficult to retrieve your ring.

  2. Recalled Products: At cspc.gov, you can sign up for e-mail notification of recalled goods. With about four hundred recalls a year, you can rest assured that your inbox will be a constant source of terror.

  3. Tip-Overs: You likely already know that vending machines are deadlier than sharks. But did you know that tipping TVs, ranges, and other furniture account for more than ten times the annual deaths of even killer soft-drink machines?

  4. Windows & Coverings: The CPSC'S press release states that “Kids love to play around windows,” where they are at risk of strangulation and falling. While they suggest cutting looped cords, they fail to take into account children saved from falling out open windows by tenaciously gripping looped cords while awaiting the arrival of the fire department.

  5. Pool & Spa Drains: Beware the frumious suction—a pool drain can hold you as surely as can a giant clam (featured horribly and unforgettably in the Chuck Palah-niuk story “Guts”).

  TONGUE TWISTERS IN LANGUAGES OF FEWER THAN A MILLION SPEAKERS*

  Welsh: Oer yw eira ar Eryri. (Cold is the snow on Snowdon.)

  Maltese: Toni taghna tani tina talli tajtu tuta tajba. (Our Tony gave a fig because I gave him a good berry.)

  Icelandic: Ái á Á, á á í á. (Grandfather from “Á” farm has a sheep in a river. Note: as you may remember, Iceland also produced Björk.)

  Gaelic (Scottish): Cha robh laogh ruadh luath a-riamh, is cha robh laogh luath a-riamh reamhar. (A brown calf was never swift, and a swift calf was never fat.)

  Gaelic (Irish): Ná bac le mac an bhacaigh is ní bhacfaidh mac an bhacaigh leat! (Don't bother with the son of the beggarman and the son of the beggarman won't bother you!)

  Esperanto: Serpo servu cin por cerpo el cerbo de serba cervo. (May a billhook serve thee to scoop out a Serbian deer's brain.)

  Manx: Ta'n bear gaih gee burgeyr. (The teddy bear is eating a burger.)

  holds that the most difficult tongue twister in the English language is “The sixth sick sheik's sixth sheep's sick.”

  * Courtesy of Simon Ager at Omniglot. com. Omniglot also includes recordings of many of these tongue twisters, though suspiciously, none of them is repeated ten times fast.

  HOW TO WRITE YOUR NAME IN ELVISH

  The Eldar of Middle-earth used Quenya, or High Elvish, for formal speech and writing, much the same way Europe of yesteryear used Latin. High Elvish also makes for a killer tattoo. The only necessary rule is to raise vowels above or below the letter they follow.

  Elvish images courtesy of Ned Gulley at starchamber.com

  CAFFEINE TOXICITY: HOW MUCH IS TOO MUCH?

  There are four caffeine-induced psychiatric disorders recognized in the DSM-I V, the diagnosis manual of the American Psychiatric Association: caffeine intoxication, caffeine-induced anxiety disorder, caffeine-induced sleep disorder, and caffeine-related disorder not otherwise specified. And, as you know if you have ever had to walk low-Starbucks-density wastelands, withdrawal can result in nausea, lethargy, and depression. But what of the classic, washed-up-child-star-style overdose?

  The Mallinckrodt Baker Material Safety Data Sheet describes the lethal dose of caffeine as 192mg/kg in rats (note: does this imply study of multiple-kilogram rats? Potentially capybaras? Maybe Norwegian browns from the Bronx?). In humans, lethal toxicity is estimated at between 150 and 200 mg/kg, meaning that an average adult would have to consume between eighty and one hundred cups of coffee in a very short period of time. Forensic Science International reports a couple deaths from caffeine toxicity, all resulting from overdose of caffeine pills.

  The moral seems clear: once you reach your seventieth cup of the afternoon, consider switching to Benzedrine, methamphetamine, or another similar stimulant.

  LEGO ART

  Sure, we're all familiar with large-scale LEGO construction. And we're aware that designers have made rather incredible things with the Technic series, including a sewing machine, bubblegum sorter, and about ten varieties of fully automatic LEGO machine guns (demonstrations of which are viewable on YouTube). But when do these ambitious LEGO projects take the small step from craft to art? Certainly Nathan Sawaya, the full-time, freelance LEGO artist who has by now been featured in almost every major news source, including The Late Show with David Letterman, Extreme Makeover: Home Edition, and The Colbert Report (on which Sawaya revealed a life-size LEGO recreation of the host) has taken this step. To Sawaya, LEGO is only another medium, like oil, marble, or clay. Certainly it inherently generates more press attention than, say, papier-mâché.

  Note: for knit algorithms, check out the work of Eleanor Kent.

  THE SCIENTIFIC METHOD THE NASA WAY

  The image on the following page is from the materials of the NASA SciFiles website. Notice that the icons imply that if your observations do not support your hypothesis, you should feel massively dejected for an unspecified period of time. Then you should blame your experimental design and devise further tests to get the data you wanted in the first place.

  A SAM LOYD MATHEMATICS PUZZLE

  In pairs, the girls pictured here weigh 129 pounds, 125 pounds, 124 pounds, 123 pounds, 122 pounds, 121 pounds, 120 pounds, 118 pounds, 116 pounds, and 114 pounds. What is the weight of each one of the five little girls?

  FOUR VERY DIFFERENT “BEST” AMERICAN BOWLING ALLEYS

  RED ROCK LANES, LAS VEGAS, NV

  With seventy-two lanes, over one hundred high-def flat-screen monitors used for scoring displays, and the ability to lower disco balls, hit the strobe, and flow the fog at the flick of a switch, the new $31 million Red Rock Lanes will bowl your mind. (We would expect no less from Vegas.)

  SUNSET BOWL, SEATTLE, WA

  The venerable Sunset Bowl is retro-kitsch and proud, with Sunday nights offering National Bowling Karaoke Idol contests. According to the editor's review at citysearch.com, Sunset Bowl is pushing toward a bowler-to-tattoo ratio of one to one. It's open twenty-four hours.

  SEIDEL'S BOWLING CENTER, BALTIMORE, MD

  If Sunset Bowl is one end of a spectrum, Seidel's is the other. The most notable difference is the bowling itself—Seidel's is duck-pin bowling, meaning smaller pins, smaller balls, and three shots per frame. Though there is some debate, Baltimore claims to have invented duckpin bowling around 1900. With the exception of live music Saturdays, it looks as if some of the sport's original inventors still bowl at Seidel's.

  MINNEHAHA LANES, ST. PAUL, MN

  The huge, somewhat dila
pidated pink neon sign on top reads Food. Bowling. Cocktails. Inside is what you would expect—exactly what you would expect, and thus Min-nehaha Lanes makes this list due to its representation of the Platonic ideal of bowling alley.

  CORNELL UNIVERSITY'S “I TOUCHED CARL SAGAN” CONTEST

  Carl Sagan, the great astronomer and popularizer of science, started teaching at Cornell University in 1968, quickly becoming the school's most famous lecturer. Despite (or more likely because of) his pop image, Sagan lived apart from the Cornell community. A 1999 review of Sagan biographies in the New York Times described Sagan's Ithaca home as “a pseudo-Egyptian temple perched on the edge of a 200-foot gorge and protected by surveillance cameras and an iron gate.” By the 1990s, Sagan was rarely seen and almost never by undergraduates. When the gents of Alpha Sigma Phi invited Sagan and his wife to dinner, the scientist referred them to his lecture agent. In 1994, the conservative newspaper Cornell Review announced the “I Touched Carl Sagan” Contest, promising a six-pack to any undergraduate who could provide photo evidence of “actually making physical contact with Dr. Sagan.” Before the bet could be won, the university forced editors at the paper to close the competition, citing the eminent astronomer's privacy.