6 Interns Who Ended Up Running the Company. Many of us started out at jobs way down at the bottom of the food chain. Getting coffee and stuffing envelopes isn’t exactly a dream job for most people, but if you’re doing it now, take heart in the fact that these people started out as interns as well – and ended up running the joint. 1. Roger Goodell, NFL Commissioner LARRY W. SMITH/EPA/Landov These days, most people know Roger Goodell as the NFL Commissioner. 2. In 2009, Ursula Burns became the first black woman to helm a Fortune 500 company. 3. A mere 10 years ago, Stanford MBA student George Hu joined salesforce.com as a summer intern. 4. Daniel Hesse didn’t let a little thing like college preference stand in the way of getting an internship at AT&T. 5. Rob Cavallo landed a sweet gig as an intern at Warner Bros. After his successful internship, Cavallo made a name for himself in the industry by producing Green Day’s Dookie album. By the way, Warner has a history of promoting people from the bottom rungs. 6.
11 Things Las Vegas Has Banned for Some Reason. Las Vegas lets its visitors get away with a lot. Gambling is legal. Walking down the street drinking a beer is legal. Prostitution is illegal but tolerated. It calls itself Sin City and promises that, “What happens in Vegas, stays in Vegas.” Despite this, there are still some things you can’t do in Vegas. Here are eleven odd things the city has banned over the years. 1. . © Scott Harrison/Retna Ltd/Corbis In the middle of downtown Vegas there is a large mall called the Fremont Street Experience. Since many of these independent vendors do not have permits, the city council of Las Vegas has continually tried to crack down on them. 2.
The ban on megaphones was also part of the attempt to ban unlicensed vendors at the Fremont Street Experience. Instead the council wanted to make two small “free expression” areas. In the end, a watered down ban allowed normal sized hula hoops in certain areas, and some megaphone use. 3. 4. 5. AJM/PA Photos /Landov 6. 7. 8. 9. 10. 11. 9 Regular People Who Became Memes. We may never know the true identities of Annoying Facebook Girl and Good Guy Greg , but we do know a little bit more about the people who inspired these memes. 1. College Freshman As a first-semester freshman, Griffin Kiritsy agreed to do an interview for Reader’s Digest , complete with a photo shoot on the UNH campus.
“No big deal,” he said. 2. Carly Phillips is a romance novelist and mother of two (and a few pets). 3. In November 2011, Dave, Rhiannon and their son Mason took a trip to the Museum of Natural Sciences, where they had some family photos taken by photographer Jarod Knoten. 4. Kerin Portillo is a model who lives in Bogota, Colombia. Generally the captions are based on misunderstood slang and sexual innuendo, but occasionally they just reflect the surprise a sheltered college freshman might have at finding out how life actually works. 5. No one has embraced memedom like Blake Boston. 6. 7. 8. If your rent is too damn high, Jimmy McMillan is your guy. 9. Why Does the Sound of Running Water Make You Have to Pee?
Reader Bill wrote in to ask, “Why does the sound of running water make me want to pee—and sometimes badly?” Faucet image via Shutterstock The quirk behind the burning need to pee when we hear rainstorms, waterfalls and babbling brooks seems to be all tied up in the power of suggestion. Most of you are familiar with the name Pavlov, and know that he had something to do with dogs. That something is an experiment where the Russian doctor showed that autonomic responses (visceral reflexes that occur automatically and unconsciously under the control of the autonomic nervous system ) could be triggered by outside stimuli. Dog owners will attest that when a pooch gets its mouth on a piece of meat, they usually produce a river of saliva. Pavlov thought that a lot of this automatic and unconscious learning happens all the time to people, and you can probably think of a few cases from your own life where you reflexively react a certain way to a seemingly unrelated stimulus.
22 Fictional Characters Whose Names You Don’t Know. You know the characters, but you might not know their full names. Store these away for future trivia nights. 1. Did you know the Comic Book Guy on The Simpsons has a name? It's Jeff Albertson. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. "It was a dreadfully long name to weigh down a poor innocent child, and one of the hardest lessons I ever learned was to remember my own name. 7. 8. 9. 10. 11. 12. 13. 14. 15. 16. 17. 18. 19. 20. 21 & 22. 14 Movie Cameos by the Authors of the Original Books. Why Are Unidentified People Called John or Jane Doe? See for Yourself: The Pentagon's $51 Billion 'Black' Budget | Danger Room. Photo: The military keeps a lot of little things secret. It could be the exact range of a jammer, sensitive missile data or the timing of a raid. But the larger context — that jammers and missiles exist, or that our forces conduct raids — is unclassified and even listed in the Pentagon’s budget for all to see.
These secrets are different. Their names are obscured by code words, or simply listed as “classified programs.” This year, the military’s black budget appears to be a little over $51 billion, down from the $56 billion which held steady for the last two years, not including inflation. Because it’s not easy saying we have the complete number. These projects are also where to go when searching for what’s getting cut. Most other projects saw lesser cuts, however, and others like “RETRACT MAPLE” even saw minor gains. Yet, “The overall amount of troops and missions within [Afghanistan] are projected to increase,” it says. There’s also a slight problem. Study Shows What Hazardous Materials Lurk In Car Interiors | Autopia. Cue threatening music and ominous voiceover: An environmental advocacy group has published its latest list of the toxic and hazardous materials lurking within new vehicles. Researchers at The Ecology Center sampled 11 components on more than 200 new vehicles, testing for the presence of 11 chemicals such as lead, mercury, bromine and chromium.
The off-gassing of such materials contribute to the intoxicating aroma known as “new car smell,” which is less the odor of fine Corrrrrinthian leather than the off-gassing of volatile organic compounds from glue, plastic and flame retardant. Before you panic, it’s important to note there’s no guarantee that you’ll end up exposed to harmful levels of any of these substances — unless you regularly drink smoothies made from car armrests. It’s also worth stating that automakers have been reducing the amount of toxic materials in their cars. There’s also a smartphone app available for quick comparisons of various vehicles. Images: The Ecology Center. If the Cops Mistakenly Kick Down Your Door, Who Pays for the Damage? If the authorities knock down your door while following procedure to catch you in some nefarious act, you’ll be paying for your own door-fixing contractor.
But if the cops burst in by mistake, it becomes a trickier issue. Door image via Shutterstock In the United Kingdom, the police pay for their errors, covering the costs on so-called “wrong door” raids. In 2009 alone, British police paid out nearly $900,000 in damages. And of the 3,607 cases included in that sum, half of them involved repairing or replacing a door. In America, however, you might not get such charitable treatment. Of course, different districts have different policies. This article originally appeared in the January-February issue of mental_floss magazine . What’s the Difference Between a Street and a Road? Reader Brit asks: "Is there any rhyme or reason to calling a road an avenue, a boulevard, a street or a lane? Is it just at the discretion of whoever names the street?
" Although both terms are often applied to the same thing, a road is different from a street, at least in theory. Looking at the definitions that folks like city planners use and the history of the usage of the words, the difference is a matter of place and purpose. Roads run between two distant points — two towns, for example. In each of those towns, you'll find streets: paved roads lined with houses and other buildings. It used to be the paving and the buildings that made a street a street, but today you'll find many paved roads that have buildings on them (I grew up on Wisteria Road). The term street, then, should be specifically applied to urban roadways. In the real world, though, these textbook distinctions aren't always made. Other Places on the Map Street sign via Shutterstock. 10 Things You Didn’t Know About the President’s Secret Army.
© Yslb Pak/Xinhua Press/Corbis The U.S. Joint Special Operations Command (JSOC, pronounced: JAY-sock) is best known for the Osama bin Laden raid. But it has long served as the president's secret army, planning and executing the most dangerous, highly classified missions of the United States military. In 2009, its snipers rescued an American ship captain held captive by Somali pirates. In 2003, JSOC hunted down and captured Saddam Hussein near Tikrit, Iraq. In 1993, two Delta snipers earned posthumous Congressional Medals of Honor for actions during the Battle of Mogadishu (a JSOC operation portrayed in Black Hawk Down). 1. The U.S. 2. In 1980, Richard Marcinko, commander of SEAL Team 2, was tasked with forming a new U.S. 3. When JSOC teams collect intelligence on the battlefield, they benefit from a quiet revolution in document exploitation (DOCEX) techniques. 4. 5. 6. 7. 8. 9. 10.
D.B.