Monday, December 30, 2013

Things I learned lately 30 December


  • Steven Spielberg thinks that the movie industry is betting too much on mega-blockbusters on the big screen, having lost much of the movie-going audience to TV and the Internet. He predicts that if a massive budget film or three flops, it could implode the entire movie industry.
  • Former UK drug czar David Nutt (and author of Drugs Without the Hot Air) calls modern drug policy "the worst case of scientific censorship since the Catholic Church banned the works of Copernicus and Galileo."
  • The most used line in movies is "Let's get out of here."
  • More than 61% of all internet traffic in 2013 was generated by 'bots', meaning 'not human'. Some of those bots are good (search, etc.), but only about half.
  • 79% of Canadian teens don’t want to wear their winter coat, it’s not even that cold out (from the book 'Stats Canada - Satire on a National Scale')
  • There are no freezers or microwaves in any In-N-Out restaurants because the company has a strict policy of serving its food fresh. Therefore, all locations must be close to its distribution facilities, which are in Baldwin Park, CA and Dallas, TX. They make all the hamburger patties themselves and deliver them fresh to all the restaurants with their own delivery vehicles. Nothing is frozen. New restaurant locations are limited by the distance they can travel from the patty making facilities and distribution centres.
  • According to Bloomberg, the 50 stocks with the lowest Wall Street analyst ratings at the end of 2011 outperformed the S&P 500 by seven percentage points in 2012. 
  • The National Library of Norway has struck a deal to digitize all of its Norwegian books and make them available online to anyone coming from a Norwegian IP address.
  • In order to receive their negotiated raises and any holiday bonus, Parliament Hill staffers are being required to sign a lifetime gag order.... I mean 'confidentiality agreement', with hefty penalties for any breach, designed to thwart whistle-blowers. So much for transparency in government.
  • China has now landed a spacecraft (and rover) on the moon.
  • When Rupert and Anna Murdoch divorced, Anna got $1.7 billion in assets, including $110 million in cash.
  • In-N-Out Burger prints bible citations on wrappers.
  • KFC is smuggled to the Gaza Strip through underground tunnels. It takes 4 hours to get an order illicitly delivered from Egypt.
  • You can't add a data plan to a pay-as-you-go mobile account. At least - not with Fido.....

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