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I was playing around with MSN Desktop Search (which rocks, by the way), and came across an email from an old friend and co-worker, Tim (last name withheld for future Google-searching anonymity).

I have no idea if this is true or not, but take it as a parable, not so much gospel. It makes me laugh and wonder every time I stumble across it.

Ever Wonder Why?…

The US standard railroad gauge (width between the two rails) is 4 feet, 8.5 inches. That’s an exceedingly odd number. Why was that gauge used? Because that’s the way they built them in England, and the US railroads were built by English expatriates.

Why did the English build them like that? Because the first rail lines were built by the same people who built the pre-railroad tramways, and that’s the gauge they used.

Why did “they” use that gauge then? Because the people who built the tramways used the same jigs and tools that they used for building wagons which used that wheel spacing.

Okay! Why did the wagons have that particular odd wheel spacing? Well, if they tried to use any other spacing, the wagon wheels would break on some of the old, long distance roads in England, because that’s the spacing of the wheel ruts.

So who built those old rutted roads? The first long distance roads in Europe (and England) were built by Imperial Rome for their legions. The roads have been used ever since.

And the ruts in the roads? Roman war chariots first formed the initial ruts, which everyone else had to match for fear of destroying their wagon wheels. Since the chariots were made for (or by) Imperial Rome, they were all alike in the matter of wheel spacing.

The United States standard railroad gauge of 4 feet, 8.5 inches derives from the original specification for an Imperial Roman war chariot. Specifications and bureaucracies live forever. So the next time you are handed a specification and wonder what horse’s ass came up with it, you may be exactly right, because the Imperial Roman war chariots were made just wide enough to accommodate the back ends of two war horses. Thus, we have the answer to the original question.

Now the extra-terrestrial twist to the story…

When we see a Space Shuttle sitting on its launch pad, there are two big booster rockets attached to the sides of the main fuel tank. These are solid rocket boosters, or SRBs. The SRBs are made by Thiokol at their factory in Utah. The engineers who designed the SRBs might have preferred to make them a bit fatter, but the SRBs had to be shipped by train from the factory to the launch site. The railroad line from the factory had to run through a tunnel in the mountains. The SRBs had to fit through that tunnel. The tunnel is slightly wider than the railroad track, and the railroad track is about as wide as two horses’ behinds.

So, the major design feature of what is arguably the world’s most advanced transportation system was determined over two thousand years ago by the width of a horse’s ass.

And you wonder why it’s so hard to get ahead in this world…

The countdown for the extinction of CDs is about to begin

MP3 players are changing peoples listening habits. We dont carry folders filled with CDs anymore. We carry our library in our MP3 players. We dont listen to CDs. We listen to playlists that we adjust all the time. We dont burn CDs anymore, its too time consuming. We copy all our music to our MP3 players so its all available at our fingertips.
All of our music in a single device. Available to us where ever we are, for whenever we want it. Music how we want it, when we want it. Easy and breezy. Thats how we want to consume music.
Thats not how we are being sold music.

…

There is absolutely no reason I shouldnt have been able to buy the song or CD i wanted from the FYE record store I was standing in side of , IPod in hand, ready to buy. If only I could just connect the thing and download the songs.

…

The only question is who will be the first label to crack and offer this and how soon will it be. Of course the cynics will say that this wont ever happen, but Im not buying it. Its too much cash up front for the labels to say no to. It also makes too much business sense.

Mark, you’re just cool enough to make another billion with this idea. Screw the labels; screw the consortiums. Do it, man. We’ll beat a path to your door.

I just bought this shirt… I think I need to get in the T-shirt business.

Link

[Via Preshrunk]

The Sociology department at Columbia Univ. is running an experiment in what makes a hit song. From BoingBoing:

My colleagues and I in the Sociology department at Columbia University are doing an experiment about pop music which might be interesting to your readers. If they participate they will have a chance to discover and download new music for free.

After listening to the music of Britney Spears, we became interested in why some musicians become superstars while other seemingly similar musicians don’t. To understand this process better, we decided to find out how people form their musical tastes. We have created a website where people can listen to, rate, and download songs by cool, up-and-coming artists. All the downloads are free and legal so the site is a great place to find new music, help support emerging artists, and help out science — all at the same time.

Once the research is completed we hope to be able to shed light not just on the popularity of music, but also on the popularity of other cultural objects like books, movies, and works of art.

Some pretty good stuff there.

Link
[Via Boing Boing]

Support your independent coffee house (or a second, not-as-large chain).

Or, just Googlebomb this site with
Starbuck’s Delocator. Why? From BoingBoing:

“‘The Delocator’ is a site that helps you find independent alternatives to Starbucks in your neighborhood. So why isn’t it called the ‘Starbucks Delocator’? Because the San Francisco Art Institute was too scared that Starbucks would come through with the corporate smack-down. Of course this renaming means the site won’t show up in google when people search for ‘Starbucks’, and what’s the point if people can’t discover it?

Or, it’s a complete fake used to send people to Starbuck’s because there are no “other” options. (It also serves Starbucks locations, which I don’t quite understand; cynacism rising.) I added Sweetwater’s to the list. Comon A2, where are the other ones?

eCoustics has a helpful guide that will show you how to setup your home theater speakers for best performance.

Direct link to article

[Via DesignTechnica]

Sorry for the hiatus, I’ve been sick and work is fuggin’ insane.

In the meantime, enjoy today’s April Fool’s sites.

Urgo’s list of April Fool’s Jokes on Websites

I’ve said once and I’ll say it again: “it’s sad when we have to make our comedians the voice of sanity.”

Download this video [4MB WMV]. Watch it. Point people here. It explains why this is a story. Ok, no it does’t, but it does point out just how insane this whole thing has become.

I know I promised unpronounceable words next time I did a restaurant review, but I have to rave about a new place. We went to Ari Rang on Ann Arbor-Saline Rd near Godaiko and Outback. Wow. What a great lunch.

Since it was lunch (and we’re not restaurant reviewers) we both ordered Bee Bim Bop in stone bowls. All the sides that came with it were awesome; spicy radish and cabbage, fish cakes, thinly sliced squid, zucchini in a light sauce. The Bee Bim Bop lunch portion was just right for both of us. The ingredients were fresh, the smell was making us hungry before the dish hit the table, and the sauce on the side was, for us, perfect: spicy enough for me and cool enough for J– to use it twice, no small feat.

We didn’t get any appetizers, but we’re definitely going back. This is the first Korean place that we liked in a long time. They’re still working out some newly-opened-restaurant issues (they got slammed and forgot our bill at the end), but the woman that rang us up said they opened two days ago, so I’ll give them a pass. I know places in town that have been around for years that can’t get that right.

Go check this place out; it’s simple, really good Korean food at reasonable prices (lunch was about $8 for a bowl of Bee Bim Bop).