Big Brothers

The best part about this image is you can not only see functioning satellites, but also nonfunctional satellites and general space junk. Check out the full-size image here.

Five Best Online Backup Tools

How do you back up your computer? CDs, DVDs, Dropbox, Mozy, personal server, external hard drive, online or maybe you use all of those... or none.

LifeHacker summarizes a few of the online options here. My computers tend to fail me quite often, so I'm happy to have a few options to get my data back.

Your Career: How to Get Organized as Work Piles Up

Life organization tips from Google's former CIO, here in the NYT.

Brainteasers, but not trick questions

Ah, it started off as one of those old-school email forwards, but it is worth posting:

1. Name the one sport in which neither the spectators nor the participants know the score or the leader until the contest ends.

2. What famous North American landmark is constantly moving backward?

3. Of all vegetables, only two can live to produce on their own for several growing seasons. All other vegetables must be replanted every year. What are the only two perennial vegetables?

4. What fruit has its seeds on the outside?

5. In many liquor stores, you can buy pear brandy, with a real pear inside the bottle. The pear is whole and ripe, and the bottle is genuine; it hasn't been cut in any way. How did the pear get inside the bottle?

6. Only three words in standard English begin with the letters ' dw' and they are all common words. Name two of them.

7. There are 14 punctuation marks in English grammar. Can you name at least half of them?

8. Name the only vegetable or fruit that is never sold frozen, canned, processed, cooked, or in any other form except fresh.

9. Name 6 or more things that you can wear on your feet beginning with the letter 'S.'



Answers To Quiz:

1.. The one sport in which neither the spectators nor the participants know the score or the leader until the contest ends: Boxing.

2. North American landmark constantly moving backward: Niagara Falls . (The rim is worn down about two and a half feet each year because of the millions of gallons of water that rush over it every minute.)

3. Only two vegetables that can live to produce on their own for several growing seasons: Asparagus and rhubarb.

4. The fruit with its seeds on the outside: Strawberry.

5. How did the pear get inside the brandy bottle? It grew inside the bottle. The bottles are placed over pear buds when they are small, and are wired in place on the tree. The bottle is left in place for the entire growing season. When the pears are ripe, they are snipped off at the stems.

6. Three English words beginning with dw: Dwarf, dwell and dwindle...

7. Fourteen punctuation marks in English grammar: Period, comma, colon, semicolon, dash, hyphen, apostrophe,question mark, exclamation point, quotation mark, brackets, parenthesis, braces, and ellipses.

8. The only vegetable or fruit never sold frozen, canned, processed, cooked, or in any other form but fresh: Lettuce.

9. Six or more things you can wear on your feet beginning with 'S': Shoes, socks, sandals, sneakers, slippers, skis, skates, snowshoes, stockings, stilts.

*** Some of the answers are questionable, so if you know that any are wrong -- please post a comment.

In honor of my first Inbox Zero in a month...

I will outline a few tips across the web for how to clean out your inbox (or if necessary, declare email bankruptcy). Here is the original Inbox Zero process from Merlin MAnn at 43 Folders. Here is the Lifehacker post about it.

Scott Hanselman begins his journey to email zen with this opening:

I am always made uncomfortable when I see an email inbox with 1000's of emails. I wonder how folks can handle the psychic weight of all those emails. I continue to try to effectively implement Getting Thing Done as I've mentioned before in my systems of organization post....

Read the rest of his process here.

Lost Generation

Phenomenal.

What happens when a history scholar drinks 1.5 bottles of wine? Drunk History.