Although hilarious, this video does touch on a great point, “Where are we heading as humans?” Social apps like Facebook, Twitter, MySpace and even Linkedin have changed how we communicate. Many people think it’s the death of the human race as we know it. Of course, many said the same thing when televisions and telephones were invented.

In the end, it’s all communication, and whether it’s done in the “Twittersphere” or over a hand written letter, humans have been communicating for tens of thousands of years. I doubt this is the end of humanity because of some little blue bird. The banks on Wall Street will do more damage in the long run.

The next time you are washing your hands and complain because the water temperature isn’t just how you like it, think about how things used to be. Here are some facts about the 1500′s:

Most people got married in June because they took their yearly bath in May, and still smelled pretty good by June. However, they were starting to smell, so brides carried a bouquet of flowers to hide the body odor. Hence the custom today of carrying a bouquet when getting married.

Baths consisted of a big tub filled with hot water. The man of the house had the privilege of the nice clean water, then all the other sons and men, then the women and finally the children. Last of all the babies. By then the water was so dirty you could actually lose someone in it. Hence the saying, “Don’t throw the baby out with the Bath water.”

Houses had thatched roofs (thick straw piled high), with no wood underneath. It was the only place for animals to get warm, so all the cats and other small animals (mice, bugs, etc.) lived in the roof. When it rained it became slippery and sometimes the animals would slip and fall off the roof. Hence the saying, “It’s raining cats and dogs.”

There was nothing to stop things from falling into the house. This posed a real problem in the bedroom where bugs and other droppings could mess up your nice clean bed. Hence, a bed with big posts and a sheet hung over the top afforded some protection. That’s how canopy beds came into existence.

The floor was dirt. Only the wealthy had something other than dirt. Hence the saying, “Dirt poor.” The wealthy had slate floors that would get slippery in the winter when wet, so they spread thresh (straw) on the floor to help keep their footing. As the winter wore on, they added more thresh until, when you opened the door, it would all start slipping outside. A piece of wood was placed in the entranceway. Hence the saying, “a thresh hold.”

In those old days, they cooked in the kitchen with a big kettle that always hung over the fire. Every day they lit the fire and added things to the pot. They ate mostly vegetables and did not get much meat. They would eat the stew for dinner, leaving leftovers in the pot to get cold overnight and then start over the next day. Sometimes stew had food in it that had been there for quite a while. Hence the rhyme, “Peas porridge hot, peas porridge cold, peas porridge in the pot nine days old.”

Sometimes they could obtain pork, which made them feel quite special. When visitors came over, they would hang up their bacon to show off. It was a sign of wealth that a man could, “bring home the bacon.” They would cut off a little to share with guests and would all sit around and “chew the fat.”

Those with money had plates made of pewter. Food with high acid content caused some of the lead to leach onto the food, causing lead poisoning death. This happened most often with tomatoes, so for the next 400 years or so, tomatoes were considered poisonous.

Bread was divided according to status. Workers got the burnt bottom of the loaf, the family got the middle, and guests got the top, or “the upper crust.”

Lead cups were used to drink ale or whisky. The combination would sometimes knock the imbibers out for a couple of days. Someone walking along the road would take them for dead and prepare them for burial. They were laid out on the kitchen table for a couple of days and the family would gather around and eat and drink and wait and see if they would wake up. Hence the custom of “holding a wake.”

England is old and small and the local folks started running out of places to bury people. So they would dig up coffins and would take the bones to a bone-house, and reuse the grave. When reopening these coffins, 1 out of 25 coffins were found to have scratch marks on the inside and they realized they had been burying people alive. So they would tie a string on the wrist of the corpse, lead it through the coffin and up through the ground and tie it to a bell. Someone would have to sit out in the graveyard all night (the graveyard shift) to listen for the bell; thus, someone could be, “saved by the bell” or was considered a “dead ringer.”

And that’s the truth…Now, whoever said History was boring!

Some people are like Slinkies…

Not really good for anything, but they still bring a smile to your face when you push them down a flight of stairs!

“The thing I like about this fellow is he grew up on a farm”

Yeah…

My brain actually stopped after I read that.

As far as I can tell, this browser, for all intensive purposes, looks to give the major browsers like Microsoft’s Internet Explorer and Mozilla’s Firefox, a run for their money. Of course, some of you may argue it’s just another browser and that market is already saturated with the aforementioned browsers as well as many others. To this I say, you are correct and Flock is dead, conversation over! Well, I’m not going to say that, because saying that would be down right ludicrous I tell you!

This thing is more than just a browser, it’s an interaction with the digital life around you. Thomas talks about the Personal InfoCloud and I think this browser moves in that direction. Flock brings what you want on the web, to you, without using web applications or scripting plug-ins for your current browser. This thing ties into your blog and your del.icio.us bookmarks, bringing a portion of your digital life to you. Now granted, it may not bring all of your digital life, but it is a start.

Browsers themselves have faced an unfortunate doom in the past few years. They are all on the same path of rendering valid mark-up being the basis of what a browser should do. On this level, I believe all browsers should be the same and I hope that in that aspect the browser wars are from over. Where browsers will take off is in the functionality and how they tie into the web and the data you want. As Thomas has already said:

In a “come to me web” this is very important.

The browser itself is rather slick in appearance and a rather usable interface to boot. I’m anxious to see what comes of this browser, as it is still in its early stages of development and testing. Will it die, or will this browser become something in the near future? Will this become as valid a browser as Firefox and IE or will it only be embraced by the blog and geek communities? Time will tell I guess.

The popular CMS, WordPress, allows for the categorization of the content on ones site. It does this through “Categories,” which seemed like an odd term for the information at hand. When I first saw this word, I thought to keep things simple and that the less categories, the better. Now I’m seeing differently, that these categories serve well as tagging and at large expanse, need a better place than in the sidebar of WordPress. The list can become rather long and almost unmanageable. Finding data in the lists and sub-lists can be somewhat tiresome and mind numbing at best.

I really like the idea of tagging in a CMS as opposed to categorization. I think along with my redesign will come the expansion of my categories into a tagging system along with a way to manage those tags. Does anyone have any plug-ins or ideas to make the integration of tagging easier? If so, I’d like to hear them.