In college, I was a researcher/writer for 'Let's Go: Europe,' assigned to Crete and Cyprus. I was supposed to go to England, but at the last minute they transferred me, despite the fact that I spoke not a word of Greek. I learned the very basics, and...
People used to pooh-pooh the idea of a check-in, saying that this wasn't interesting. But when you have 3 billion of those data points, you can take any latitude and longitude anywhere in the world, and I'll tell you what is interesting now, 20 minut...
I loved every minute of my childhood - sunbathing on the fire escape, digging for buried treasure in the back yard, pulling alewives out of the sand... Then it was all taken away from me. I came back every summer to visit my father until I was 18, bu...
Photographic memory is often confused with another bizarre - but real - perceptual phenomenon called eidetic memory, which occurs in between 2 and 15 percent of children and very rarely in adults. An eidetic image is essentially a vivid afterimage th...
'Moonwalking with Einstein' refers to a memory device I used when I memorized a deck of playing cards at the U.S. Memory Championship. When I competed in 2006, I set a new U.S. record by memorizing a deck of cards in one minute and 40 seconds. That r...
Democracy is a con game. It’s a word invented to placate people to make them accept a given institution. All institutions sing, ‘We are free.’ The minute you hear ‘freedom’ and ‘democracy’, watch out… because in a truly free nation, n...
Kirk: Time? Saavik: Three minutes, thirty seconds. Kirk: Distance from Reliant? Chekov: 4000 kilometers. Sulu: We're not going to make it, are we? [Kirk turns to look at David, who slowly shakes his head]
My downtime tends to resemble my uptime. Weekends are workdays, but toned down. Over the whole weekend, I may have five meetings, as opposed to six on a weekday. I used to play piano for 30 minutes at night, but I had to pull that out of my schedule....
I had a 2-week courtship with a fellow student in the fiction workshop in Iowa and a 5-minute wedding in a lawyer's office above the coffee shop where we'd been having lunch that day. And so I sent a cable to my father saying, 'By the time you get th...
To attain the rank of grand master of memory, you must be able to perform three seemingly superhuman feats. You have to memorize 1,000 digits in under an hour, the precise order of 10 shuffled decks of playing cards in the same amount of time, and on...
I was working for a Swedish TV show - I'm Swedish - who basically did kind of spectacular stories. It was almost like CBS '60 Minutes,' but a Swedish version where we actually did travel quite a lot. After a while, I realized that travel is the most ...
Every job I take, within minutes I'm thinking, 'I can't do this.' I think it's what makes me work. People think I just swagger in and do it. But I doubt myself all the time. It's what pushes me, what makes me work harder. The older I get, the less I ...
Consider: The human genome consists of about 3.3 billion base pairs. Since there are only four types of pair, that amounts to 0.8 gigabytes of information, or about what you can fit on a CD. With a microwave radio transmitter, you could beam that amo...
The truth of why I used to listen to Arrested Development on my Walkman was because if I didn't, it would take me 20 minutes to walk to school. If I did, it took me 15. That's the reason I loved it. I just had more of a kick in my step, more of a bou...
Hoke Colburn: [Hoke is driving Daisy to Mobile] Did I evre tell you about the first time I ever been outside the state of Georgia? Daisy Werthan: No, when was that? Hoke Colburn: Oh, a few minutes ago.
[the town sits at dinner on the Fourth of July] Ma Ginger: A police car has just been seen in town and it has just made the turn up Canyon Road! So they'll be here any minute. Martha: Should I ring the bell? Tom: No, Martha. Grace probably heard.
Gunnery Sergeant Hartman: Reveille! Reveille! Reveille! Drop your Cocks and grab your socks! Today is Sunday! Divine worship is at 0800. Get your bunks made and get your uniforms on! Police call will commence in two minutes!
Diego: Hello, ladies. Oscar: Hey, look who finally decided to show up. Soto: Diego. I was beginning to worry about you. Diego: No need to worry. In about two minutes you'll be satisfying your taste for revenge. Soto: Very nice.
Mathilda: I hope you're not lying Leon. I really hope that deep down there's no love in you. And if there is, I think in a few minutes you'll regret you never said anything. I love you Leon.
[Picking up a young prostitute] Young prostitute: What have you got in mind? Martin Riggs: Well, I want you to come home and watch television with me. Young prostitute: You serious? Martin Riggs: Yeah. "The 3 Stooges" are on in 20 minutes.
Frank: Wilma, I promise you; whatever scum did this, not one man on this force will rest one minute until he's behind bars. Now, let's grab a bite to eat.
