The Museum of Failures

January 8, 2019January 8, 2019 Markozen.com Offbeat, Technology

Every successful product launch is usually preceded by a string of failures, but we only remember the winners and ignore the failures and pretend they never happened. A new museum is set to open in Sweden that hopes to make this right.

The “Museum of Failures” is the brainchild of Dr. Samuel West, an organizational psychologist, who has spent the last seven years studying failure and success and what people say about both.

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Dr. Samuel West holding the Nokia N-Gage.

“I got tired of all of this glorifying of success, especially within the domain of innovation where 80 to 90 percent of all projects fail,” Dr. West said.

Then, he stumbled into the Museum of Broken Relationships—which collects mementos from failed romances and displays them under glass—while he was on a family trip to Zagreb, Croatia, and he had a light bulb moment.

“I rushed out, and I had this sort of eureka moment that I’m going to start the Museum of Failures. Like, there’s no going back,” Dr. West told NPR.

The purpose of the museum, Dr.West says, is to show that innovation requires failure. “If you are afraid of failure, then we can’t innovate,” he said.

Scheduled to open in June this year, the museum will showcase over sixty failed products and services from around the world. “Every item provides unique insight into the risky business of innovation,” the museum’s website says.

Some of the products that will be on display includes —Harley-Davidson perfume; Bic pens made especially for women; Coca-Cola Blak, a coffee-inspired drink; Nokia N-Gage that was a mobile phone and a gaming console in one; Apple Newton, a personal digital assistant; beef lasagna from Colgate; and more recent products such as Amazon Fire Phone and Google Glass.

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The Twitter Peek, a device for tweeting, launched in 2008.

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Frozen beef lasagna from a toothpaste company.

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The Harley-Davidson’s fragrance, according to Dr. Samuel West, was a “total flop.

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Apple Newton, an early PDA.

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Trump: The Game was released in 1989, based on buying and selling properties.

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The Sony Betamax video cassette player, which lost the format war to its rival, VHS.

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Coca-Cola BlaK was a coffee-flavored version of the soft drink, launched in 2006.

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Bic for Her pen, which was discontinued at the end of 2016.

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Google Glass.

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Kodak pioneered the digital camera in the 1990s but failed to market it.

National Geographic Images

January 8, 2019 Markozen.com Images

Elephant and Queleas, Tanzania

Base jumping, Yosemite national park, California

Water Buffalo India

Great White checking out the shark cage

Cheetahs in Kenya checking out the tourists

Leopard (left) stealing a Cheetahs kill

Elephants moving through the Serengeti

Geladas monkeys Ethiopia

Giraffes and Gazelles Namibia

Child and buffalo in Vietnam

Harvesting Kash flowers India

Kyrgyz girls Afghanistan

Mountain gorilla and baby

Chicken farm Pennsylvania

Climbing redwood trees in California

Lions in the Serengeti

Sleeping white lion South Africa

Tigers India caught on trail cam

Free rock climbing Yosemite California

Lake Wakatipu New Zealand

Lions chilling in Tanzania

CN Tower in Toronto

January 8, 2019 Markozen.com Buildings

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Today

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The Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter

January 7, 2019 Markozen.com Space

The Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter (LRO) is a NASA robotic spacecraft currently orbiting the Moon in an eccentric polar mapping orbit. Data collected by LRO has been described as essential for planning NASA’s future human and robotic missions to the Moon. Its detailed mapping program is identifying safe landing sites, locating potential resources on the Moon, characterizing the radiation environment, and demonstrating new technologies.

The probe has made a 3-D map of the Moon’s surface and has provided high resolution images of Apollo landing sites. The first images from LRO were published on July 2, 2009, showing a region in the lunar highlands south of Mare Nubium (Sea of Clouds).

Launched on June 18, 2009, in conjunction with the Lunar Crater Observation and Sensing Satellite (LCROSS), as the vanguard of NASA’s Lunar Precursor Robotic Program, LRO was the first United States mission to the Moon in over ten years. LRO and LCROSS were launched as part of the United States’s Vision for Space Exploration program.

Artist’s illustration of the LRO

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Tycho Central Peak

Far side of the Moon

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Near side of the Moon

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North Pole

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South Pole

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Earthrise over Compton Crater

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Apollo 11 landing site

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Apollo 17 landing site

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Canal Du Centre

January 7, 2019January 7, 2019 Markozen.com Engineering

The Canal du Centre is a canal in Belgium, which, with other canals, links the waterways of the Meuse and Scheldt rivers. It has a total length of 20.9 km (13.0 miles). It connects the artificial lake Grand Large near Nimy, with the Brussels–Charleroi Canal near Seneffe.

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The canal begins in the west at Mons, and passes through the towns of Nimy, Obourg, Ville-sur-Haine, and Thieu. This section is 15 km (9.3 miles) long, and has a relief of 23.26 metres (76.3 feet). The canal climbs by means of six locks. There are five locks with a relief of 4.2 m (14 feet), and a final lock with a relief of 2.26 m (7 ft 5 in) at Thieu.

The next section of the original canal route between Thieu and Houdeng-Gœgnies climbs 66 metres (217 feet) over a distance of 6,790 m (22,280 feet), which is too steep a climb for canal locks. Therefore, this section contains four hydraulic boat lifts, dating from 1888 to 1917, which are now on the UNESCO World Heritage list.

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The Strépy-Thieu boat lift lies on a branch of the Canal du Centre in the municipality of Le Rœulx, Hainaut, Belgium. With a height difference of 73.15 metres (240.0 ft) between the upstream and downstream reaches, it was the tallest boat lift in the world upon its completion, and remained so until the Three Gorges Dam ship lift in China was completed in January 2016.

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Massive Manitoba snow maze vying for world record

January 7, 2019 Markozen.com Manitoba

300 truck-loads of snow used to build maze near St. Adolphe, Man.

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A gigantic Manitoba snow maze may be the biggest the world has ever seen.

The maze, located about 25 kilometres south of downtown Winnipeg near St. Adolphe, officially opened Saturday at A Maze in Corn.

“It’s been a huge excitement to build it,” said Clint Masse, who owns A Maze in Corn with his family and spent the last three weeks with a crew of nine building the structure.

The maze was created using roughly 300 truck-loads of snow, and features 1,300 metres of tightly packed snow walls.

And it’s big — really big.

Masse is hoping it’s big enough to break the world record. But beyond admitting the maze covers just over 2,300 square metres, he remained coy about its exact dimensions.

“We can’t say the exact square-footage because we’re trying to beat them,” he said, referencing the current Guinness World Record holder, a maze built in Thunder Bay in 2015.

Political Cartoons Volume XXIII

January 6, 2019 Markozen.com Cartoons

99 percent of editorial cartoons are anti-Trump. The only reason I can come up with is that Trump is an ornery mean narcissistic fool who deserves all the criticism.

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Are Sasquatches Actually Space Aliens?

January 6, 2019 Markozen.com Paranormal

Are Sasquatches related to Wookies? The possibilities are mind-boggling.

Sasquatch having a crap at left, Wookie relaxing after a crap at right.

Rather than being a missing link between man and the apes, Bigfoot may possibly be an alien entity. This intriguing possibility is derived from evidence in several solid UFO cases.

The earliest clues date back to 1888, when a cattleman described an encounter with friendly Indians in Humboldt County, California. They led him to a cave where he saw a hefty humanoid creature covered in long, shiny black hair, with no neck, sitting cross-legged.

One Indian told him three of these “Crazy Bears” had been cast out of a small moon that dropped from the sky and landed.The “moon” then ascended back into the air. So it’s highly likely the “Crazy Bears” were really Bigfoots, and the “moon,” a spacecraft.

Now fast-forward almost 100 years to 1973… and Mrs. Reafa Heitfield. She and her 13-year-old son were sleeping in a trailer in Cincinnati, Ohio on the morning of October 21. Reafa arose at 2:30 a.m. to quench her thirst, and noticed strange lights in the adjoining parking lot. Looking out the window, her attention was drawn, in particular, to an inexplicable cone of light, shaped like a huge bubble umbrella — about seven feet in diameter.

Nearby she spotted a grayish, ape-like creature with a large, downward angled snout, no neck and a sizable waist. Moving slowly, it then entered into the light. About five minutes later, both apeman and UFO disappeared.

Another dramatic incident occurred a few days later on October 25, 1973. A group of farmers in Fayette County, Pennsylvania caught sight of a dome-shaped UFO that was brightly lit and about 100 feet in diameter. As the locals drove toward it, they saw a pair of gargantuan creatures covered with thick, matted hair, luminescent green eyes and long arms that dangled below their knees.

A farmer’s son fired a gun shot at the creatures, one of which raised its right hand in the air. At that very moment, the UFO disappeared. Then, the two Bigfoots escaped into the woods and were never seen again.

Dairy farmer William Bosak of Frederic, Wisconsin was returning from a co-op meeting about 10:30 p.m. on December 9, 1974, when he nearly slammed into a globular UFO on the road in front of him, its bottom half enshrouded in fog.

Inside the visible transparent dome was a six-foot-tall ape-like creature with reddish-brown fur covering its body (except for the face) and distinctive pointed ears. It appeared to be operating a control panel. As Bosak passed by, the object suddenly arose and disappeared.

In August,1976, after a series of UFO sightings around Rutland, British Columbia, Canada, several men and their children saw a hairy ape-like entity, six to seven feet tall roaming about a mountainside. They also found a clump of hair that was sent to the Royal Canadian Mounted Police for identification. Laboratory analysis confirmed it was primate hair, but, significantly, it could not be matched to any known species on earth!

Perhaps the Bigfoot creatures are UFO pilots, landing on earth for exploratory purposes. Or, conceivably, higher level ETs are leaving behind some specimens as “guinea pigs” to test our environment for long-term survival. Or, possibly,these Bigfoots are criminal entities being deposited on Earth as a form of cosmic deportation!

A hybrid cyborg?

Romulan hybrid?

Somebody has to set up a big net out in the forest and get one of these sneaky critters!

Street Pee Deterrent

Image January 6, 2019 Markozen.com Offbeat

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Saudi women to get divorce confirmation by text message

January 5, 2019 Markozen.com Demographics, Sex

Saudi women use their mobile phones during the Janadriyah festival of Heritage and Culture held in the Saudi village of Al-Thamama, 50 kilometres north of the capital Riyadh — Saudi women are subject to male guardianship laws

A new regulation in Saudi Arabia is set to stop Saudi women from not knowing about their own divorce.

Starting from Sunday, courts will be required to notify women by text on rulings confirming their divorces.

Local female lawyers suggest the measure will end what are known as secret divorces – cases where men end a marriage without telling their wives.

The directive would ensure women are fully aware of their marital status and can protect rights such as alimony.

Last year, a decades-old driving ban on women was lifted in Saudi Arabia.

However, women still remain subject to male guardianship laws.

“The new measure ensures women get their [alimony] rights when they’re divorced,” Saudi lawyer Nisreen al-Ghamdi told Bloomberg. “It also ensures that any powers of attorney issued before the divorce are not misused.”

Many women have filed appeals to courts over being divorced without their knowledge, lawyer Samia al-Hindi told local newspaper Okaz.

The new step is said to be part of economic and social reforms pushed by Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, such as allowing women to attend football matches and work in jobs traditionally reserved for men.