Michele Bachmann's Bus

Update: I saw the bus again 3 days later tooling down the freeway!

Another Update: Someone else spotted Obama's bus in Minnesota. It is a monster. See at the end...

I stayed a hotel last night and when I got up in the morning to go to my car I was greeted by Michele Bachmann's bus sleeping in the parking lot. If your are not familiar with her name (Michele, not the bus), she is running for President of the United States. And she is Purdy!

I did not see her at the hotel, but there were some security guys.

How much does a bus like this cost. $500,000 US?

Update: But that cost does not compare to Obama's bus spotted Minnesota in August. His bus has to be $10M+ $1.1M:

(Obama bus: AP Photo/Carolyn Kaster)

They probably have one of these on the dashboard of the bus:

Look! He is waving,
just like in the picture above!

You can click on this picture and actually order one. I have one, it gets a lot of stares from other drivers on the highway!

Restroom Graffiti

Don't ask why I was there and why I was taking pictures in the men's restroom!

I was in Mount Pleasant, Iowa in the old train station. I had to use the restroom, as if often the case. I sat down, looked up, and saw this wonderful graffiti on the wall!

What is it? I'll probably never figure it out.

Bunny Jumping

There is a new sport taking over. Bunny Jumping! Officially called "Rabbit Hopping". This so cute and amazing, why have I not heard about this till now?

The sport started in Sweden in the 1980s. All you need to know about how to start jumping your bunny is located at this website: http://www.kaninhop.dk/uk/. It is obviously very popular in Denmark.

You can order custom made bunny leashes. But you have to pay in danish Kroner. Interesting fact: The plural of krone is kroner. One US dollar = about 5.27kr.. On a website that sells leashes, the most expensive leash is only 75kr, or $15US.

Bunny Leash!

Take a look at the video below. Now I understand why no garden fence is a deterrent against bunnies. Can they jump a 12 foot fence? Cute and amazing!

The Anti PowerPoint Party

Politics at its best!

Note to reader: Don't fall asleep! This is an article about Power Point presentations - but hold on - this is interesting (at least I think so!).

Update: 3 hours later I received a reply to my inquiry. See the end of this post.

Switzerland has a new political party trying to gain momentum. It is called the APPP - the Anti Power Point Party. They intend to become the 4th largest political party in Switzerland. See their website at http://www.anti-powerpoint-party.com/.

The main point of this movement is that whenever a presentation has to be made, people will most likely use Microsoft's PowerPoint software, or something like it. The result is that there are A LOT of really boring presentations being given out there. The presenter relies too much on the software and not the content and presentation technique. The result is that A LOT of people waste A LOT of time attending really boring presentations. If you have ever been to a boring presentation with a lot of PowerPoint slides being presented, you are familiar with the sickening feeling of your eyelids forcing themselves closed and your desperate attempts to keep your eyeballs regressing into your head showing only the white parts. It is terrible!

But PowerPoint presentations are not only boring. They are BIG money wasters. The PowerPoint software is very expensive. And time spent boring people is productivity lost for all those people. The APPP estimates that in Switzerland US$2.5 Billion dollars is wasted every year. Worse yet, they estimate that Europe wastes US$160 Billion a year on bad and useless presentations.

If I lived in Switzerland, I'd think about joining this party. Here is a video on their site where the founder Matthias Poehm explains the APPP's concept:

>

One question remains that I did not see on their website (I may have just not seen it). If you HAVE to make a presentation, what are your alternatives? Mime? I'll send Matthias and email and ask him. I'll post the answer here if I receive a reply.

Update: Just after I emailed Matthias Poehm, I found it on their website. See this page: http://www.anti-powerpoint-party.com/the-cause/the-solution/. The answer: Flips Charts! See his explanation.

Update: I just received a reply to my inquiry (3 hours later). This guy is on top of things!

Dear Gello
I just saw that you already discovered the site with “the solution”.
But here is the answer to your question anyway:
The best proven alternative to PPt ist the „Flip-chart“. You’ll get a multiple effect compared to a presentation with powerpoint.
It’s because of two reasons:
First: People convince and not technical aids. This always have been and always will be.
Second: It’s not the result that creates the effect – but it is the CREATION OF THE result. Therein lies the effect and not in the result itself. That’s why PowerPoint as a principle can’t work.

Please watch this two-minutes video to see a demonstration of it: http://www.anti-powerpoint-party.com/the-cause/the-solution/
You can also introduce this video to your blog. (it’s also on youtube)
In this site you will also find a lot of tipps how to use the flipchart professionally.

Regards
Matthias

P.S. Please become a proponent of our movement. You stay anonymous, you have no fees to pay, no obligations. It’s only by having a lot of members that the medias will report widely, and thus people in everywhere start talking about it, and thus things are going to change. So one minute for a big change: http://www.anti-powerpoint-party.com/participate/become-a-member

Thank you
Matthias

Bill Haast - Injecting Snake Venom

Warning: If you did not already know, injecting snake venom is is not something you should actually do.

Bill Haast - snake venom expert extraordinaire - died on June 15, 2011 - 100 years old. He was an expert in snakes and snake venom. He was an expert at "milking" the venom from poisonous snakes and supplying the venom to medical facilities around the world so they could make anti-venom. An amazing fellow.

In the course of his career he was bitten by poisonous snakes 173 times! I guess if you are in his field you keep accurate bite counts for posterity. Here is a 1962 interview of him recovering in the hospital after one of his bites. Pay attention to the doctor at the end - he is funny...

Bill was in the habit of injecting himself every day with a cocktail of many different snake poisons to help build up his immunity to snake venom. He claimed that the venom shots were healthy for him. Look at the following video - filmed when he was 88 years old. You have to admit that he looks pretty good for his age. Maybe he was on to something.

Luckily you can not buy snake venom anywhere. At least not easily. If you could, there would be homeopathic medicine aficionados we would all have to worry about.

Oprah Winfrey Tattoos

40% of Americans have a tattoo. Personally, I've never been tempted to get a tattoo, I think they are unattractive.

But that was until I discovered Oprah Winfrey tattoos! Supposedly it is all the rage. They look awesome. Should I get one?

The video is of a man getting and Oprah Winfrey tattoo. It looks like it hurts, but the end result is that it actually looks like Oprah. And it will last a lifetime.

I've discovered some other photos of Oprah tattoos. These are from http://www.bestweekever.tv/2011-06-24/the-5-most-inspirational-oprah-winfrey-tatts/. See their page for more examples, or just Google for them.

Debris Missed the International Space Station

A piece of space debris missed the International Space Station by only 750 meters today (June 28, 2011). The debris was traveling thousands of miles an hour. The crew had to scramble to get into their rescue craft where they remained till it passed.

Space debris, or space junk, is becoming a big problem. There is so much of this junk orbiting the earth that it is amazing the International Space Station has not been hit already. There have been several other near misses in the past.

Even though this is a big problem, the government has yet to take it seriously. Case-in-point: The Allen Telescope Array has been proven to be a great tracker of space debris, but the government can not seem to find the $2.5M/year that it takes to run the Allen Telescope Array. You can see the program announcement here: http://www.seti.org/afspc, but the Allen Telescope Array ran out of operational funding and had to go into hibernation till the United States Air Force Space Command can release the funding. This is sad and shortsighted.

Space debris has the potential of disturbing all satellites and global communications.

A great article with more details is at Yahoo News.

Photo courtesy of NASA.