Your Daily Posterous Spaces Update

	December 9th, 2012 再び Posted 1 day ago by Koichi Mitsui to s a s u r a u 揺れはじめた日本。 How to ruin a kid's holiday: Decorate the tree mathematically! Posted 1 day ago by Kate Rinsema to Holy Kaw! 3 Think the holidays are a time to put learning on hold? Think again, lovers of the phrase “teachable moments,” and make sure the kiddies don’t lose their mathematical edge this break with some Treegonometry direct from the great minds at the University of Sheffield, who developed the formulas for the perfectly decorated Christmas tree. If just looking at that list jumpstarts a fit of hyperventilation, Ian Chant at Geekosystem breaks it down into word problems (which are soooo much less intimidating, we know): - To determine the number of ornaments appropriate for your tree, take the square root of 17, divide by 20, and multiply by the height of the tree in centimeters. - The length of the tinsel in centimeters should be 13, multiplied by pi, divided by 8, and multiplied by the height of the tree in centimeters - For lights, multiply height of the tree (cm again) by pi to determine how many centimeters of lights you will need - And the height of the angel should be the rather simple height of the tree in centimeters divided by 10 Now, grab a glass (jug) of eggnog and get to work! If that eggnog has a little extra somethin’-somethin’ in it, though, they do offer a calculator at the website. Full story at University of Sheffield via Geekosystem. Holiday math. Photo credit: Fotolia Spoiler alert: Santa is the UPS man [video] Posted about 19 hours ago by Kate Rinsema to Holy Kaw! You and I both know he worked on this all year. Now, let’s give Ken Jones, the UPS man who so creatively uses his break time, enough hits to give himself a good vacation come January. Don’t forget to tip those deliver people this season! (And the garbage man, particularly if he picks up your cans from behind the fence because he knows full well you forget to put it out almost every week. Love those guys.) Embedded media -- click here to see it. Full story at YouTube via Mashable. Music on the move. Happy "Pretend to be a Time Traveler" Day! Posted about 18 hours ago by Kate Rinsema to Holy Kaw! We know, we know, it’s a little late to spring such an incredible announcement on you, but on the flip side, if you’re pretending to be a time traveler, you can very easily pretend tomorrow is today and not get fired for being a complete lunatic. Easy-peasy-lemon-squeezee! (See, right there, I was pretending to be in a time where that was a cool thing to say. Let’s assume that’s the future.) Ken Denmead at Wired has a few suggestions on how to celebrate this special day for those not busy with Hanukkah: 1) Utopian/cliché Future "If the Future did a documentary of the last fifty years, this is how badly the reenactors would dress." Think Star Trek: TNG or the Time Travelers from Hob. Ever see how the society in Futurama sees the 20th century? Run with it. Your job is to dress with moderately anachronistic clothing and speak in slang from varying decades… 2) Dystopian Future - This one offers a little more flexibility. It can be any kind of future from Terminator to Freejack. The important thing to remember is dress like a crazy person with armor. Black spray painted football pads, high tech visors, torn up trenchcoats and maybe even some dirt here or there. Remember, dystopian future travelers are very startled that they’ve gone back in time… Full story at Wired via Neatorama. Holidays second only to Hanukkah. Photo credit: Fotolia Sent by Posterous. Change your email settings or unfollow. Other questions? We'd love to help.