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350 Is The Upper Limit
"If humanity wishes to preserve a planet similar to that on which civilization developed and to which life on earth is adapted... CO2 will need to be reduced from its current 385 ppm to at most 350 ppm." Jim Hansen, NASA

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This Ain’t Yer Futurama’s Farnsworth

The Real Farnsworth

Philo T. Farnsworth?

I love that name. It’s history. This guy changed our lives. For real.

And it turns out, he and I had something in common.

Imagine growing up decades ago. Some of you can remember it. No internet. A couple of TV stations and mainly it was radio that you kept up with. Oh yeah, the seventies, in North Carolina, growing up on the farm. Spending hours and hours going back and forth over pieces of dirt about 4 feet in width, and what seemed like miles long….

Philo grew up like that, too, only decades earlier than me. He had practically no radio, and any TV available was capable of only 15 frames per second. Anything less than 30 is a waste of time, so really, he had no TV. But he had the idea of TV. And one day, going back and forth across miles and miles of aisles of his very own plough’s making… he got the weird idea of dragging electron beams back and forth across a field of phosphorous. Well, maybe not quite that developed, but he saw a way to make TV actually work.

He changed his world, and he made this one possible. Without him, you would not be sitting there, reading this. Below is just a few seconds of video simulated from 1927, to show you what electronic television looked like when it was all shiny and new!

Okay, I just have to add this. He figured this stuff out when he was 14 years old… here’s a video of his appearance on TV’s fun and funny show from the 50’s, “I’ve Got A Secret”. To some of my readers, this will be a re-run, to other, younger ones… who are we kidding, they won’t bother to look at it. I wonder if they would if they knew it was one of the top rated shows for most of the 50s and 60s?

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I am Jon, and none of my monitors drag electron beams, anymore. I guess that’s progress…
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March 7th, 2008 Posted by Jon | Computers, Fun Stuff | 2 comments

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Don’t Talk To Machines, Get A Human

For A Human, Press The Tilde Key

I absolutely hate talking to machines on the phone. Thanks to Christopher Null:The Working Guy, I’ve learned how to get a human on the phone. All I have to do is remember to check with the guys over at GetHuman.com, where I’ll find a list of commonly called companies and the phone keystrokes to get a human.

These guys are all about customer service. The home page actually has all these numbers right there without making you jump through hoops. Two of the three-man team listed on the “About Us” page have their phone numbers listed. The “Caller Tips” page actually has good tips. For instance:

“To obtain company and government phone numbers at no charge, the best solutions are either 1-800-GOOG-411 (Google) or 1-800-CALL-411 (Microsoft). These work great from a mobile phone since they are hands-free and they even complete the call for you at no charge. They both also deliver the number to your cellphone as a text message. Note that even though these numbers are not toll-free, they become free to the caller by going through either the Google or the Microsoft services.”
(emphasis added)

So now you know how to make those particular kinds of long distance calls for free, by getting Google or Microsoft to pay for them. You should head over to GetHuman and add it to your marks.

Another thing I like about these guys is their sense of humor. Check out the video found via their “Press” page, below…

GetHuman.com

I am Jon… Hello? Hello… Hello! …. Is this thing on?

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March 7th, 2008 Posted by Jon | FAQ, Fun Stuff, The Net, Uncategorized | one comment