Friday Hodgepodge

Four Things

1. Here's an amusing and instructive example of no-holds-barred brainstorming:

For example, if you needed to advertise your home business but you had no budget for advertising, someone might say, "Call the local news and tell them you're going to burn your house down if you don't get some business soon." Where's the merit in that idea? The free publicity. Now you have to find a better way to get it. (p. 309)

This comes from Barbara Sher's I Could Do Anything if Only I Knew What It Was. I second the original recommendation.

2. Kindle owners rejoice! Amazon has recently improved the format of its cloud-accessible "Notes and Highlights" feature. My favorite improvement is that page and location numbers are shown, saving me from having to search for the highlighted quote in order to refer back for more context or to cite it properly.

3. A man automates his own job. Should he tell his boss?

... I've been doing it for about 18 months and in that time, I've basically figured out all the traps to the point where I've actually written a program which for the past 6 months has been just doing the whole thing for me. So what used to take the last guy like a month, now takes maybe 10 minutes to clean the spreadsheet and run it through the program.

Read here for more context and the discussion.

4. Around since the time of the dinosaurs, the horseshoe crab also graces many an aquarium petting tank. But did you know it is also of major medical importance?

When she's done with the show and tell, [Meghan] Owings squirts the contents of the syringe back into the tank. I gasp. "That's thousands of dollars!" I exclaim, and can't help but think of the scene in Annie Hall when Woody Allen is trying cocaine for the first time and accidentally sneezes, blowing the coke everywhere.

I'm not crazy for my concern. The cost of crab blood has been quoted as high as $14,000 per quart. [link in original]

Keep reading to learn what that blue blood is being used for.

-- CAV