Steve Fischer's Random Blog

Category: Crazy

  • Why me?

    There’s an odd phenomenon when I walk down the street. On a crowded street in Brooklyn, or pretty much anywhere, if someone needs directions they invariably ask me.

    At first I thought I was just imagining it. But then I started paying closer attention. There’s no denying it. The number of people who ask me for directions is statistically improbable. Even Danielle has noticed it. She started asking me, “why does everyone ask you?”.

    This morning on the way home from taking Danielle to school, two more people asked me for directions. Even when travelling in a city I don’t know, people ask me (I’m obviously not very helpful).

    I guess I’m just the quintessential non threatening white guy…

  • Dolphins are smarter than most folks…

  • Almost funny…

    …if it weren’t deadly serious. A British company came up with an amazing bomb detector. It works very mysteriously, kind of like a dowsing rod. The company makes lots of money selling it to the Iragi military, who is convinced that it works. Unfortunately it does not.

    It starts to get press (not good) and ultimately gets investigated. The BBC points out that the device is worthless and the founder of the company gets arrested for fraud.

    As a reminder to people who believe in this sort of foolishness. There has been a $1 million prize promised to anyone who can scientifically prove that any sort of supernatural thing (dowsers, psychics, etc.) works in a controlled environment. This challenge has been in place since 1964 (though the money started much smaller) yet no one has been able to claim the money.

    Much easier to get money from suckers…

  • Stupid Media

    One of the things I hate about most media (print, online, whatever) is that the people who write the articles don’t write the headlines. I can’t even count the number of times that an article has completely contradicted the article.

    It’s especially bad with any article discussing science, because the headline writers typically don’t understand the article. But here’s a perfect example in the sports world.

    On msnbc.com, there’s a headline, Gasol is more valuable to Lakers than Kobe. And in the article itself there is this paragraph:

    One could make the argument that Gasol is just as important to this team as Bryant is. One would lose the argument, sure, but the fact it even could be made is revealing.

    Can we be logically consistent for more than a paragraph please?

  • More Twitter Follower amusement

    I recently read this article about a guy in Toronto who is a big LEGO fan. He orders a replica gun that’s made from LEGO. He apparently opened it in his office, built it, and then closed his door to do a conference call. But his window was open. So someone sees him through the window holding a gun and the next you know a SWAT team is busting into his office.

    So I do a quick tweet with a link to the article:

    If you have an office with a window, sometimes you should close the blinds

    So now on Twitter I’m being followed by a UK online window blind retailer…

  • Twitter followers

    The way some Twitter accounts follow you immediately following a single tweet continues to amuse me.

    We just cranked up the Origami Risk Twitter account. We don’t have real followers yet, but Twitter references help with the search engines and our momentum is building.

    We also just revamped our web site, particularly the product section. We have added so many new features, plus video help, that we needed a major update (as a quick aside, with no bureaucracy to worry about, the site revamp took exactly one day).

    So the new web site was an obvious tweet topic. I believe tweets should try to be amusing, so the tweet was:

    Origami Risk unveils updated web site. More articles, video and celebrity gossip (OK, 2 out of 3).

    Immediately, Origami Risk gains followers in the celebrity gossip world. Hilarious. They’ll be a bit disappointed if my next tweet is:

    The real cause of Tiger’s accident: Reading loss triangle while driving.

  • Ex STARS All-Stars

    What exactly is going on at my former place of employment? The list of talented people who have left or been kicked out just keeps growing. You could build a really great company just using former STARS folks.

    Oh yeah, we already did…

  • Actually, this isn’t funny…

    Credit goes to Linus who forwarded this to me.

    cartoon1 

    cartoon2

  • Conspiracy Theories

    Wired Magazine cracks me up…

  • Science doesn’t know everything

    Here’s a very funny, very anti-homeopathy comedian. You can guess what my favorite line is…