On the other hand, the inflation rate in Japan has averaged close to 0% for the past 30 years. Japan used to be considered an expensive country, but now I think it’s safe to say that it’s cheaper than much of North America and Europe

Corned beef seems to have originated in Ireland and Scotland, but was commonly used throughout the British Empire for the past 400 years. I assume the cooking and salting process makes it last much longer without going bad, which would make sense for long voyages.

There was certainly a plug-in or something that made Reddit look like an Excel spreadsheet, so reading Reddit made you look like you were doing important calculations!

A nation of people so advanced that they decide their dictatorial ruler through a trial by combat.

In a sense, yes. If you are trying to get an international volunteer visa, most developing countries have no interest in more unskilled labor coming into their country. You need some kind of qualification, whether it’s a degree or a carpenter’s certification.

In the same way, to teach English in Japan you need a “Specialist in Humanities” visa. It’s easy to get one, as long as you have a university degree.

A lot of the education and engineering seems to be about the area you are studying, like chemistry or electronics or buildings. But in fact, the most valuable part of it is learning problem-solving skills in the middle of all of those courses. In that sense, I still use my engineering education all the time. But not the degree itself.

When I went into university to do chemical engineering, in 1981, I had never even touched a computer. I didn’t know until I got there that you could even do computers as a career.

I graduated, and then volunteered as a teacher in Africa for 3 years. I came back to Canada, and then taught English in Japan for 3 years.

But after my first year of university, my family got a computer (a Commodore Vic 20, with 3.5 kB of memory) and I was obsessed from that woman onward.

Leaving Japan, I went back to school and did a diploma in computer science. Unlike chemical engineering, where I dutifully learned things that I was told I needed to learn, I was delighted to have the chance to learn about software, operating systems, databases, graphics, etc. The difference was astonishing, and I found it easy to maintain a GPA just under 4.0.

I have been working as a programmer for more than 25 years, and although it has been stressful at times, the joy is still there. I’m not an artist by any means, but I do feel like a craftsman, and I enjoy the opportunity to continue learning everyday.

They also practiced polygamy, so that rich and influential men would have multiple wives and poor men would have none. Imagine the rage when you were a Shepherd tending someone else’s flocks, knowing that you will never have a wife or family.

It makes sense to have occasional wars with neighboring tribes so that excess males can be removed from the system.

I have never, ever, in my life enjoyed running. I never got up to long distances, but used to be able to do about 5k without too much trouble. An hour of swimming? No problem. 30 minutes of high intensity rowing? Happy to do that. Cycling 50k? I’m all over that. But running just makes me feel bad.

I’m willing to bet that there are millions of teen parents who would have a different view of this. The problem is that teens often don’t have access to birth control, or are manipulated, or plain stupid because their brains haven’t finished developing yet.

I’m sure that some people would have regrets about not getting laid as teens. But it’s hardly a hard and fast rule.

Next you are going to say that we stole our alphabet from the Romans, who stole it from the Greeks, who stole it from the Phoenicians!

POST means Power On Self-Test. All motherboards will run some diagnostics and detect basic problems (e.g. missing RAM, no boot media).

If the motherboard beeps, you can look up the motherboard and see what the number of beeps means.

And the Joker was very definitely inspired by Conrad Veidt in the movie The Man Who Laughs

Captain Sensible. He was the guitarist for the punk band The Damned, but had a #1 hit in the UK with “Happy Talk”, a song from the 1949 musical South Pacific.

I think that you are off by about an order of magnitude. Spotify pays $0.003 per stream, and title apparently pays $0.01 -0.05.

I have a Bip watch as well. I actually bought a fancier one, but the Bip has a display that is on all the time, and after 5 years of use still has a battery life of about 5-6 weeks!

It tells the time, buzzes when I get a phone call, and tracks my steps. That’s about all I need.

Or, as The Onion reports, Boeing intentionally hires employees with suicidal tendencies.

I agree. The section on web browsers mentioned that Nicola Pellow joined a team of 19 developers at CERN. It doesn’t say that she was the only woman on the team, but since she was singled out that is the way I interpreted it.

It’s a bit hard to say that web browsers would not have existed if one out of 20 team members was not there.

Sounds like you should look at a few years of https://thedailywtf.com entries. Enough to make the staunchest man (or woman) weep.

Oh wow, I didn’t see it. It makes sense, because I guess he started out writing for buzzfeed. So he recycled his own work.

Strange Planet is one of the few cartoons that my wife and I actually both find funny. Very much worth checking out!

Thanks for the correction!

This is a straight rip off of the Strange Planet cartoon by Nathan Pyle. I have the daily calendar, and this was on it about a week ago.

Edit: so it appears that this is an early version of a cartoon that he redid in the Strange Planet style. I didn’t notice the name, because it’s white on light gray.