Crooks Labs

It's about time that I get around to updating all my sites. I've been doing a lot of work behind the scenes - experimenting with design - so I've decided that I'm going to begin uploading some of my fun creations.

Going Viral...

Love this ...

Latest News

Just in: latest marks from my most recent class: International Marketing (University of Toronto) - Nearly complete another certificate.

Numbers

The United States needs to pay $1.6 Trillion on infrastructure projects over the next 5 years alone!

Words

"You can get a lot done in ten minutes" - Ingvar Kamprad founder of IKEA

"Fix it before it's broken"

"Value time over money. Only time cannot be replenished." - From a fortune cookie

"Imagination is More Important than Knowledge." Albert Einstein

"The American imagination demands the real thing and to attain it, must fabricate the absolute fake." Umberto Eco

Tourists are: "sightseers, mainly middle class, who are at this moment deployed throughout the entire world in search of experience" – Dean MacCannel - Book: The Tourist (1976)

English in Decline?

Well some in the United States think so. A group of citizens is actively fighting to have English be made the official language within the country, severely limiting the use of other languages in all sectors of public services. Maybe they should look north to Canada and see that a multi-lingual nation isn't a threat to the English language, but what do I know! (I don't think this group is a big fan of immigrants!) See the site: U.S. English

Puts everything in perspective...

* A TV screen shows 24 pictures a second. Because a fly sees 200 images a second, it would see TV as still pictures with darkness in between.

* The amount of sunlight reaching the earth's surface is 6,000 times the amount of energy used by all human beings worldwide. The total amount of fossil fuel used by humans since the start of civilization is equivalent to less than 30 days of sunshine.

* The highest temperature ever recorded at the South Pole was -13C (well give that record only a few more years)

* The mass of the Earth increases every year because of 3,000 tonne's of meteorite debris that hits its surface from space.

Was it the fake air bag?

Globally 1.25 Million People die in car accidents each year.

Food for thought

French fries constitute one-fourth of all 'vegetables' consumed in the United States

I Must Agree...

"Computer games don't affect kids; I mean if Pac-Man affected us as kids, we'd all be running around in darkened rooms, munching magic pills and listening to repetitive electronic music."
- Kristian Wilson, Nintendo Inc.

Don't go for seconds...

Believe it or not just consuming an extra 100 calories above your daily needed intake will cause the average persons weight to jump by 10 pounds in a year.

Why Trailers?

So have you ever wondered why the movie clips seen before a movie are called 'trailers'? Well it turns out that during the glory days of cinema, previews for upcoming new movies was actually shown after the film. I wish that's when they would play them.

This is a true story...

In 1879 the Liege, Belgium postal service employed 37 Cats to deliver mail within a 30 km radius of Liege City Centre, the service failed as the Cats proved to be thoroughly undisciplined!! or as I read while doing my research one person said it was: "discontinued when cats refused to cooperate"!!

What were they thinking??? Anyone who knows cats know they wouldn't put up with mail on their back. Their going to walk 2 meters and start trying to chew off the string. After that the cat is going to nap. You can't make stuff like this up!!

Canadian Elections

I must admit - I love politics. And every time I review this page, I realize we're just around the corner from another election. Here's an interesting website that tried to predict the outcome for each riding in Canada: Election Prediction Project. The website has an impressive record, they predicted with 91.26% accuracy the 2003 Ontario election.

The Pweor of the Hmuan Mnid

The paomnnehil pweor of the hmuan mnid. Aoccdrnig to a rscheearch at Cmabrigde Uinervtisy, it deosn't mttaer in waht oredr the ltteers in a wrod are, the olny iprmoetnt tihng is taht the frist and lsat ltteer be at the rghit pclae. The rset can be a total mses and you can sitll raed it wouthit porbelm. Tihs is bcuseae the huamn mnid deos not raed ervey lteter by istlef, but the wrod as a wlohe.

Men hate fiction

Only 20% of Fiction based books are sold to men. Some bookstores claim it's as low as 5% of men buy fiction books. It's become a chicken and egg phenomenon - where all the books being created predominate female oriented books. What men do buy are books based on history and biographies. Men seem much more interested in purchasing non-fiction oriented titles. I will agree with the statistics - I never read fiction. I feel it's a waste of my time. Personally, want to learn facts when I read. I'll leave the story telling to television and movies.

Lots of Taco Bells

20 Million People - nearly the population of Canada live illegally in the United States, so says a recent study by Bear Sterns. The study showed that $400 Billion dollars could be obtained if those people simply paid taxes.

Hound Dog

Hounds were the original term for Dog - Dogg is actually a old Dutch word - A Dutch trader brought over 'Hounds' but claimed that they were not Hounds - but were Dogs - yet one and the same.

ideas... The good ones are mine.

PSP

My prediction is that the new Sony Play Station Portable (PSP) will become a raging success and will put the nail in the coffin of Nintendo (which has the dual screen, very unusual Gameboy). PSP is a unique, high quality product. It will be this years iPod. I was able to see a PSP just after Christmas, and I must say the graphics and visuals were highly impressive. The ability to play additional content like movies and music will make this a major player in the content distribution world. The major drawback is the content needs to be on a proprietary disk, so you won't be able to play any of your current cd's or DVD's in the unit. But I predict that soon an offshore pirate manufacturer will create a mini disk burner so you can liberate your content.

CD Uncool?

So it's in my opinion that CD Walkmans are quickly becoming as uncool as the original portable tape player. It's no longer hip to be pulling out cd's and carrying around the larger cumbersome devices. Were getting close to the point where people will begin to get self conscious of the devices. It's MP3 player time.

Give back the books

So I've become a heavy user of the public library. Now I do understand that a certain portion of our property taxes goes to funding the institution, I still feel a bit of guilt that when I'm reading (therefore slowly wearing out) books from the library. I kind of feel like I'm using their resources and not contributing anything back to the system. And having seen the Dutch system where every book has a sign out fee of around 0.50$ cents, it seems like the Toronto system is a bargain. So I'm one of the very few people that see's library fines as a good thing - for I'm helping them buy more books. But I've started to do something else. When I'm finished with books that I have little need/desire to keep - I simply donate the books to the library. I figure it's better that 20 people can get something out of the book as opposed to simply collecting dust on a shelf at home. So if you have good books lying around your house that you have no intention of ever reading again - take them down to your local library and give back to the city.