Questions that popped in my head today

Have you ever had those moments when a question just popped into your head and you just sit there gazing into the distance? Then after an hour of wondering, you give up and HAVE to Google it? Then after another hour of finding it and reading about it you say to yourself, “ahhh.. now I can sleep easy tonight.”

What? Just me?

Anyway, here are some of those random questions popped into my head suddenly. My curiosities are usually triggered by watching TV, some are sudden realization in things I do routinely. So read on and delve into my weird mind and who knows.. I might answer some of your ‘popped questions’.

Why Apple (as in the iPod, Mac) is called Apple?

This came about while I was playing my iPod, of course.

The reason why Apple Computers are called that is so that it would, symbolically, come before rivals Atari in the phone book.

How did people with poor eye-sight see before glasses were invented?

This question popped into my head while watching Will & Grace.

Now this took me a while to find out but I was too curious to be satisfied with just one answer.

There are a few answers out there. Here are a few that I found and made sense to me.

1. There was no definite exact date of when glasses were invented and by whom. It was a technology that was developed over time. In an old transcript by a Roman, in 4 B.C., said that he was able to read “all” the books in Rome peering through a glass globe of water. Then there was Emperor Nero, watching gladiator matches with an emerald in front of his eye. But since the emerald was green, it could mean he used it to block out sunlight so that he could see well. Kind of like sun glasses.

Around 1000 A. D. the reading stone, what we know as a magnifying glass, was developed. It was a segment of a glass sphere that could be laid against reading material to magnify the letters. It enabled presbyopic monks to read and was probably the first reading aid. The Venetians learned how to produce glass for reading stones, and later they constructed lenses that could be held in a frame in front of the eyes instead of directly on the reading material. The Chinese are sometimes given credit for developing spectacles about 2000 years ago--but apparently they only used them to protect their eyes from an evil force. But even with all this information, the life expectancy in those days was 40 years-old. And sight deficiency doesn’t usually start until after that age.
Now you might be thinking, “I’m way younger than 40! And I have glasses as thick as the Hubble Telescope!” On to number 2.

2. Early sight-loss could be in the genes but most cases can be blamed to lighting. Either there’s not enough, like reading in a dim area or watching TV in the dark; or it could be because of too much light. With all the technology we have now, TV, computers, etc, our eyes are having a hard time coping and get very strained easily. Long hours in front of these artificial lights were not a daily ritual in the old days as it is today.

3.Glasses weren’t really ‘discovered’ until after the 16^th century. So before then, literacy was a rare skill to have and the rich were the only ones that could afford books and if they lost their eye-sight, the Egyptians would used their slaves to read for them.

How much is it to advertise on Facebook?

I wondered about this when I was just checking my account and noticed the tiny advertising. So it got me thinking.. Since Facebook is so popular and costs over a billion dollars, the advert cost should be immense!

On the contrary it could be cheap, even normal people could advertise. I couldn’t find the exact number online so, I wore my journalist hat and went to the advertising section of Facebook. There, you can advertise almost anything. I tried to advertise this blog.

From there, I can choose which type of people I’m trying to target. Here, I chose any ages since my blog is family friendly. As you can see, you can choose your potential ‘targets’. (that’s how they use our profile details to get their money). Over 10 million people. Cool. It’s going to get me a lot of hits. J

Next, you choose your budget. It can be as low as $5.00. Then you choose how much you’re willing to pay per click.

Let’s say I chose to be cheap and will only pay just $5.00 and $0.01 per click, your advert will be on Facebook until your budget runs out. But since I was being very cheap, it could mean, my advert would pop up very rarely, making it rare for people to click on it. Or more often so that I’ll pay again for advertising. Now I get how online networking can be so lucrative. Anyone want to start one with me?

Okay, this post is getting too long now and I don’t like long posts. Look for part 2 in the near future. Hope you had a good read.