mo mo mo

How can I contact Bill Gates?

Before I tell you why I’m writing this post, I have a thought. I heard one time that Elvis was so popular that mail simply addressed to “Elvis, Memphis, Tenn.” would get to him. That kind of puts you on the same level of popularity as, say, Santa Clause. Now I’m not sure if this was an urban legend or if he really got mail like this. But somehow I can believe it. Anyway, Bill Gates may be about that famous, and is certainly as powerful. So my answer to “How can I contact Bill Gates?” is simply to write a letter and address it to “Bill Gates, Redmond, WA.”

Now… why I’m writing this post. As part of my overall SEO experimentation, I researched a few famous people and how often the exact phrase, “How can I contact (celebrity name here)?” gets searched for. It turns out that Bill Gates wins this unscientific survey. What phrase gets searched for next? It’s hard to believe, but it’s actually “How can I contact Flavor Flav?” Who would have thought it? The following are the approximate number of daily searches for a few random celebrities:

1. How can I contact Bill Gates? 750 searches a day
2. How can I contact Flavor Flav? 97 searches a day
3. How can I contact Tom Cruise? 44 searches a day
4. How can I contact Barry Manilow? 5 searches a day

By the looks of this, and doing some simple math to extrapolate how many people are trying to contact these celebrities, you’d be about 17 times more likely to contact Tom Cruise than Bill Gates (if you were trying). And 150 times more likely to contact Barry Manilow. And oddly enough, I think I would rather talk to Barry than either Tom or Flava. Now Bill Gates, sure, I’d love to have lunch with him someday. That’s all for tonight. Check out my cool science toys if you’re in the market for something educational. Now if you really want to contact Bill, and you’ve read this far, you might be able to via the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation site. Good luck.

Posted in Indiscriminate, Shameless SEO posts | 1 Comment »

How much does Beyonce weigh?

So how much does Beyonce weigh? Well, the latest sources (late 2008) say that she weighs about 139 pounds. Of course, she is also 5 feet 7 inches tall so that would make her pretty thin. Now to continue with my SEO experiment, which of the below search strings do you think gets the most daily searches?

How much does Beyonce weigh?

How much does Britney Spears weigh?

Hold your mouse over the link to see the latest approximation of how many daily searches each receives. As an aside, I think it’s a shame that either of these get searched for at all. I certainly don’t much care. But it is intriguing that so many people do care. Who are these people? Please leave a comment if you care, and let me know why. Meanwhile, you can click on the link to go to a different page about these two young ladies.

Posted by mo for the best selling science toys at Atomic Elephant Toy.

Posted in Indiscriminate, Shameless SEO posts | 3 Comments »

When was Leah Remini in Playboy?

When was Leah Remini in Playboy? She never was. But she was Zack Morris’ girlfriend in Saved by the Bell back in 1991 and being on that stalwart show pretty much gives you the same level of clout as being in Playboy. I’m really not sure why so many people think she was in Playboy, but for some reason this term gets searched for several thousand times a day. Maybe that’s just the wishful thinking of thousands of teenage boys who swooned over her aesthetically pleasing New York City accent. Right.

Read the rest of this entry »

Posted in Indiscriminate, Shameless SEO posts | 8 Comments »

When did Dr. Seuss win the Pulitzer Prize?

Theodor Seuss Geisel (March 2, 1904 – September 24, 1991) was an American writer and cartoonist, most widely known for his children’s books written under his pen name, Dr. Seuss. He published over 60 children’s books, which were often characterized by imaginative characters, rhyme and frequent use of trisyllabic meter. His most notable books include the bestselling Green Eggs and Ham, The Cat in the Hat, and One Fish Two Fish Red Fish Blue Fish. Numerous adaptations of his work have been created, including eleven television specials, three feature films and a Broadway musical.

Geisel also worked as an illustrator for advertising campaigns, most notably for Flit and Standard Oil, and as a political cartoonist for PM, a New York City magazine. During World War II, he worked in an animation department of the United States Air Force, where he wrote Design for Death, a film that later won the 1947 Academy Award for Documentary Feature. Read the rest of this entry »

Posted in Indiscriminate | 2 Comments »

How did Tina Fey get the scar on her face?

How did Tina get her scar?

Appearently, Tina addressed this in a 2001 NY Times article. “She started as a co-anchor for Weekend Update with a cast member, Jimmy Fallon, last year, wearing her navy suit and trademark glasses. Her other trademark is a scar that runs along the left side of her face, although she won’t discuss it. “It’s a childhood injury that was kind of grim,” she said. “And it kind of bums my parents out for me to talk about it.”

So what’s the real story? A reliable source told me that before her days on SNL, she was making the rounds on the professional lawn dart circuit. While she never achieved the world fame of the top-ranked Rob Finkelstein, she was able to break into the top 10 in the New Jersey Lawn Dart Association (NJLDA) in the early 1990s. A tragic event unfolded just before the 1992 mid-Atlantic tournament when Tonya Harding’s boyfriend jumped her outside the White Castle on Burlington Avenue in eastern Connecticut. The scar resulted from the ensuing scuffle and Tina decided to give up on her dream of becoming the world’s top-ranked female lawn dart thrower. Soon after, she settled for a gig on the late-night low-budget cable show.

As an aside, until writing this fascinating story, I had no idea Tina Fey even had a scar. And I sure can’t see it in the picture above. Meanwhile, here’s my shameless SEO plug for a free Kim Possible sex comic. Whatever that is.

Posted in Indiscriminate | 1 Comment »

How many people does a sheet cake feed?

If you stumbled upon this post, it’s likely because you searched for the exact question in some search engine. While this post is primarily part of an SEO experiment, I might as well try to answer this question for you. There are really only a couple of variables needed to consider in answering this. For example, how big is your sheet cake? You could call these variables L, W and H. A full sheet cake is 2 ft by 3 ft (or 24 by 36 inches). The next variable to consider is how big do you want the pieces? If it’s about one inch thick (H=1″), then you might want to make the pieces about 2×3 inches. That would be six square inches. Your total cake is 24 x 36, or 864 square inches. Then 864 divided by 6 would give you 144 pieces.

Of course, if the cake was thicker, you could make the pieces smaller, say roughly 1×2 inches which would give you a whooping 432 pieces.  Square pieces at 2×2 inches would still give you 216 pieces. You could easily get away with this if you were also serving ice cream with the pieces.

This is about the lamest post I think I’ve ever written. If you’re wondering why the hell I care about this, the answer is that I don’t. Except that the exact question of the subject line of this post gets searched for almost 2,000 times a day, and there’s very little competition for this keyword phrase. With very little effort, this simple post could possibly bring up to a hundred unique visitors a day, hence boosting a pretty lame PR. Now check out a real article I wrote about the physics behind the thermodynamic drinking bird and then check out my store selling science educational toys.

Posted in Indiscriminate, Shameless SEO posts | 4 Comments »

Where is the Statue of Liberty located?

The Statue of Liberty, or, more formally, Liberty Enlightening the World, was presented to the United States by the people of France in 1886. France intended it to be placed at the entrance of the Mall of America in Bloomington, Minnesota but as the standard shopping mall format hadn’t yet been invented, the dock workers in New York City decided to just place it right where they took it off the boat. Plus, it was lunch time and they didn’t want to drive to Minnesota.

Instead it was placed on a small chunk of land in New York Harbor called The Island of Misfit Gifts - whose name was later changed to Liberty Island to not confuse it with the island of a similar name in the classic stop-action animated Christmas special, Rudolph the Red-nosed Reindeer.[credible source needed]

The statue now welcomes visitors, immigrants, and returning Americans traveling by ship. The copper-clad statue, dedicated on October 28, 1886, commemorates the centennial of the signing of the United States Declaration of Independence and was given to the United States to represent the friendship established during the American Revolution between Benjamin Franklin and Amelia Bartholdi (a lovely house wench working at the Viollet-le-Duc Tavern).[source needed]

Posted by mo for the godzilla monster gallery and ein-o science toys at Atomic Elephant Toy.

Posted in Shameless SEO posts | 1 Comment »

Who is George Mitchell?

Many of us will remember George Mitchell for his famous “Mitchell Reports” on steroid abuse in Major League Baseball. He may also be remembered for the less famous “Tickle Me Elmo Reports” which provided a great service by exposing the dangers of playing with plush red muppets that speak of themselves in the third person.

More formally, George John Mitchell, GBE (born August 20, 1933 in Waterville, Maine) is the American special envoy to the Middle East for the Obama administration. I suppose one could call him Sir George Mitchell as he does carry the title GBE beside his name which means he is a “Knight Grand Cross” of The Most Excellent Order of the British Empire. Or maybe we can’t call him Sir as officially he is not a national of a realm where Queen Elizabeth II is Head of State. I guess he’s just an official in Barack Obama’s realm.

A Democrat, Mitchell was a United States Senator who served as the Senate Majority Leader from 1989 to 1995. He was later promoted from a lowly senator to serve as chairman of The Walt Disney Company from March 2004 until January 2007, and was chairman of the international law firm DLA Piper at the time of his appointment as special envoy. He is the Chancellor of Queen’s University in Belfast, Northern Ireland. Despite all these lofty positions of importance, he has never bought any of the educational toys from my store.

Most recently (January 22, 2009), George Mitchell was appointed as a special envoy to the Middle East, working under President Barack Obama and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton. When not exposing steroid-using baseball players in his spare time, George enjoys long walks on the beach and collecting pictures for his Godzilla monster gallery.

Posted in Shameless SEO posts | No Comments »

Famous Hispanic Athletes

Who are some of the most famous Hispanic athletes? Well, I’m a baseball fan so famous major league baseball players are the first ones that come to mind for me. I’m thinking Roberto Clemente, Tony Perez and the more recent Roberto Alomar and Livan Hernandez. And I’m sure there are plenty of others. In fact, Wikipedia has a page titled Hispanic players in Major League Baseball in which they list hundreds (both past and present). When I think of truly Hispanic athletes, I think of guys who are actually native to their countries. Sure, Alex Rodriguez is Hispanic, but he’s a Dominican American who was born in New York City. Whereas Roberto Alomar was actually born in Ponce, Puerto Rico and one of my favorites, Fernando Valenzuela was born in Etchohuaquila, Sonora, Mexico.

Of course, all Hispanic athletes aren’t baseball players. There’s Alberto Salazar (a marathoner), Nancy Lopez (a golfer) and perhaps one of the most famous athletes of any ethnicity of any sport… Pele. Check out my store for science educational toys here.

Posted in Shameless SEO posts | 1 Comment »

Squirrel Monkeys for sale

When I was a kid, oh, maybe younger than 10 years old, I really wanted a pet monkey. I even used my allowance to buy a book called “Monkeys as Pets” at the Northgate Mall in Chattanooga, Tennessee. I also wanted a motorcycle and my mom always said that I could get a monkey and a motorcycle when I was grown and living on my own. Well, I did get a motorcycle when I was in my late twenties, but alas, like most kids I never got the monkey. It turns out that I had a great time with the motorcycle and miss having one now, but having a monkey as a pet is about the last thing in the world I would want now. Funny how things change as we grow up. Anyway, if you are seriously looking for somewhere to buy a monkey, check out the below page:

Links to Stores that actually sell monkeys

Anyway, squirrel monkeys for sale gets searched for almost 3,000 times a day and I was wondering if people really have them for sale and if so, do common people really buy them? I saw a site selling a couple for about $8,000 each. Holy cow. And squirrel monkeys really aren’t even that cool looking. They’re about as big as a squirrel. That would be paying about $1,500 a pound. I’ll pass.

Anyway, this post is mostly for SEO purposes so alas, my link for the best science and educational toys is here. Cheers..

Posted in Shameless SEO posts | 3 Comments »