原创 Fascinating factoids to consider

Whilst on the way into work several days ago, I heard on the radio that Apple is doing exceptionally well on the stock market these days. I don’t know why I care, because I don’t own any stock per se, but I must admit to having an interest in Apple having once met "The Woz," having read the I Woz and Steve Jobs biographies, and no longer being able to imagine life without my trusty iPad at my side.

So, how well is Apple doing? Well, I'm afraid "I am a bear of very little brain," as Winnie the Pooh might say, because I had a quick Google while no one was looking and I couldn’t make out what I was seeing. From what I understand, Apple was worth more than the entire Russian stock market, and that was in November 2014 before the Russian economy really started to tank.

I couldn’t find a direct reference, but my understanding is that Apple is currently valued at around $1 trillion, which isn’t bad for two techno-hippy-geeks who started out in a garage in the mid-1970s. If this is an accurate value, then it means that Apple is valued at about 1/18th of the ~$18 trillion US National debt, which is scarily depicted on the US Debt Clock.

(Click here to see a larger, dynamically-updating version of this image.)

 

I don’t know what to say about this Debt Clock except that I find it extremely disquieting. Wouldn’t it be great if we would work it back down to $0?

Moving on to happier topics... knowing my interest in drones, my chum Tobias in Germany sent me this link to a rather interesting article. At least, Tobias says it's interesting, but it's in German, which is not one of my languages (I speak both English and American). Fortunately, it links to this video on YouTube. Ooh, I would love one of these little beauties to play with.

By some strange quirk of fate, I also received an email from my chum Jay, who pointed me at an article that shows drones in all shapes and sizes. To be honest, I don’t know how Jay finds the time, because he's always sending me interesting tidbits of trivia and nuggets of knowledge, such as this link to an article on the US Navy's new electromagnetic railgun, which can launch projectiles at up to Mach 7 and hurl them 100+ nautical miles. According to this column: "The kinetic energy in a 30 mega-joule railgun projectile launch is the equivalent of an M1 Abrams tank travelling at 72 mph or a family sedan traveling at 410 mph!" Personally, I think a few more exclamation marks are in order!!!

Back to being scared... Jay also pointed me toward this article, which describes how software developed at the University of Illinois can help computers understand mathematical reasoning expressed in language, along the lines of "If Max has six pizzas and each pizza is cut into eight slices and Max has twelve friends (one of whom doesn’t like pizza), how many slices can each person have?" Do you recall my book review of Robopocalypse by Daniel H. Wilson? Well, "This is one more step toward Skynet," is all I can say.

OK, enough of being Ctrl+Alt+Scared -- how about we try for Ctrl+Alt+Inspired. I tell you, I don’t know how Jay does it, but he does come up with the most eclectic collection of "stuff," such as this article about an almost unbelievable hostage rescue story in which the Columbian army embedded a hidden message intended for hostages in a popular pop song.

And last, but certainly not least, for the moment, how about this column describing one man's quest to rid the Wikipedia of a specific grammatical error. It turns out that a software engineer named Bryan Henderson, who ranks amongst Wikipedia's most prolific contributors, has devoted his time on the site to address exactly one grammatical error -- that is, to fix the incorrect use of 'comprised of' in articles. Well, color me Ctrl+Alt+Impressed!