I always enjoy reading instruction manuals. They’re filled with misplaced modifiers, split infinitives, curious fragments and hilarious typos of all shapes and colors, especially with imported electronic gear. But this post isn’t about any of those things; it’s about an unusual paragraph in the instruction manual from a new oven I recently bought. If you can’t read the highlighted text there from the actual oven manual I scanned, the words go like this:

IMPORTANT: The health of some birds is extremely sensitive to the fumes given off during the self-cleaning cycle of any oven. Move birds to another well ventilated room.

Okay, so this is bizarre in a few ways, right? For starters, shouldn’t it say, “IF you own birds, please move them…” How can they just assume that I have a pet bird? They further assume that I keep my pet bird in the kitchen. Shouldn’t it read, “IF you own a pet bird and DON’T keep it in a well ventilated room away from the kitchen, please move it there pronto!”

It’s also strange because, well, let’s face it folks, imagine the testing that went on before they discovered birds dying.

Lastly: hello?! Anyone ever hear of the canary-in-the-coalmine syndrome? If birds are up and dying, maybe we humans should move to a well ventilated room while the oven is cleaning, too!

Rant over. If you have a funny instruction manual story to share, please do. I’ll leave you (after the jump) with a couple other good ones I found over on one of my favorite sites, always good for lots of laughs: ThisIsBroken.com

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Read what happens when you get rid of all the illegal immigrants. Some towns are rethinking their recently-enacted hard-line laws.

Could Alzheimer’s disease be a third form of diabetes? The presence of insulin-resistant neurons in Alzheimer’s patients is due to a toxic protein, which may lead to new therapies in treatment and prevention.

How to Drink Great Coffee for a Fraction of What You’re Paying Now. The “do it yourself” part is always where the quality control comes in.

Rethinking the age of sexual consent. Should sex with a 16-year-old be the same crime as the rape of a 5-year-old?

Amphibious Vehicles, both past and present. Looks like fun, but for the price of one of these, you could buy a car and a boat and have money left over.

This post is exactly what it sounds like, and it’s a sad corollary to Sandy’s compendium of celebrity suicide attempts. Tear-water tea was sad, but this is sadder: people who have committed suicide in their garages.

Before the prevalence of catalytic converters, there was a significant amount of carbon monoxide in car exhaust; even so, if you’re going to run a car in an enclosed space, there’s going to be CO (in response to which, there are patents to deactivate the ignition if CO is detected, much like the proposed BAC sensors). There’s really no proper segue into this, so here’s a list, albeit incomplete, of artists/celebs, RIP, who have died in their garages (or cars) this way.

• Thelma Todd, Hollywood starlet aka “Hot Toddy,” 1935

• Morris K. Jessup, author of “The Case for the UFO,” found inside his car at a nearby park; hose to exhaust

• John Kennedy Toole, 1969

• William Inge, 1973, found inside his car; hose to exhaust

• Anne Sexton, 1974, found in backseat of her car wearing her mother’s fur

• Jeff Ward, NIN drummer, 1993

• Jim Ellison, frontman for punk band Material Issue, 1996

And then there is the tale of the woman who killed herself this way, and then killed her father, too. The carbon monoxide entered the house and he died in his bedroom.

This is fun. Let’s try animals. A special guest artist has stopped by to add an animal to the whiteboard. Guess which animal and win a t-shirt.

(Guess the special guest artist and win a virtual pat on the back.)

See this morning’s competition here, with the winner announced here.

Update: We have a winner!

A truly useful article came up on 43 Folders this week: Jeff Bigler’s “tact filter” theory. The notion is basically that normal people (hereinafter “normals”) apply tact to what they say, so as not to offend; whereas nerds apply tact to what they hear, ex post facto. In practice, this means that normals communicate well with other normals, and nerds with nerds — but when you mix the two communication styles, nerds become frustrated and normals take offense. Here’s a sample from the original article:

When normal people talk to each other, both people usually apply the appropriate amount of tact to everything they say, and no one’s feelings get hurt. When nerds talk to each other, both people usually apply the appropriate amount of tact to everything they hear, and no one’s feelings get hurt. However, when normal people talk to nerds, the nerds often get frustrated because the normal people seem to be dodging the real issues and not saying what they really mean. Worse yet, when nerds talk to normal people, the normal people’s feelings often get hurt because the nerds don’t apply tact, assuming the normal person will take their blunt statements and apply whatever tact is necessary.

I work with a broad spectrum of nerds and normals on a daily basis. I’m pretty sure I’m on the normal end of the scale, unless I’m talking shop with known nerds in my field. It can be very liberating for me to drop the tact filter and “Go Nerd” on favorite nerd topics like aquaria, computers, office supplies, documentaries, etc. When working in a mixed team of nerds and normals, I often make statements multiple times, once in each style (usually I try “normal” first), and let the listener pick the one that fits. (Yes, this is the kind of high-priced Management Thinking I bring to my work….)

You can read the original article by Jeff Bigler (it’s short), then read a nicely-illustrated post on lonelysandwich. If this whole tact thing is news to you, read up on tact or perhaps buy the Tact Magnet.

So, do you fall towards the “nerd” or “normal” end of the spectrum? Do you constantly have to adjust your filter for a particular coworker, or perhaps your spouse? Are these questions totally tactless?

Wow, what a response.

Congratulations to Kami, who with the 109th comment correctly guessed Singapore. She wins the shirt of her choosing.

We’re sharing this office with several other companies. Our next-cube neighbors seemed baffled after seeing me take pictures of Mangesh’s artwork. If they had to guess who we were and know their flags, they’d probably say a Singaporean design consultancy.

Stay tuned for your second chance to win a t-shirt. Back with round two shortly…

Nuclear subs
Yesterday, we showed you where submarines go to play (underwater … with rich people), and today we’ll show you where they go to die. These nuclear-propelled submarine reactor compartments float rusting in the Russian bay of Chazma, just a handful among the many out-of-service subs in Russia’s fleet, one of the world’s largest. (North Korea has more — about 700 according to the U.S. State Department.)

Locomotives in Bolivia
These trains outside of the town of Uyuni in Bolivia have long stopped locomoting, and now sit in eerie silence in the midst of one of the world’s largest salt flats, Salar de Uyuni. The trains come from all over the world, as do the tourists who come to see them.

Not cleared for takeoff
Sometimes known as the 309th Aerospace Maintenance and Regeneration Group, but usually just called “The Boneyard,” this Tuscon, Arizona facility is the sole repository for out-of-service government aircraft. Planes that come here — more than 4,000 at this point — are either there for long-term storage, or are destined to be picked apart and either recycled or sold for scrap. Needless to say, it’s a slow process. If you want to get a closer look (and you don’t work at the Boneyard), check out the Pima Air and Space Museum nearby.

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We’re going to use the whiteboard hanging in our office – OK, leaning against our cubicle wall – to give away some t-shirts. We were planning to simply ask you to guess a number between 1 and 100. But that neglects to highlight Mangesh’s artistic prowess. So let’s do this instead:

1. Mangesh will draw one nation’s flag in dry erase marker.
2. You will take a wild guess as to which country’s flag he’s drawn. (You will not get to see the artist’s rendering, making your guess all the more wild.)
3. The first person to correctly identify the country wins a t-shirt.
(4. We come up with a second whiteboard game.)

Before we start, a couple of rules:
a) 3 guesses per person, but they must be in separate comments.
b) Comments don’t appear on the site until we moderate them. But we’ll be able to tell who was the first successful guesser.

And here’s what you’re playing for: the t-shirt of your choosing, courtesy of the mental_floss store:

OK, he’s drawing now. No hints. Let the guessing begin.

Update: We have a winner. Round two begins shortly.

In the past, I’ve dropped a lot of useful tips in this feature. Here are a few you might recall:

How to save money at the pump

How to wash a sponge

How to make free directory-assistant calls

How to remove a bumper sticker from your car

But today I’m doing a twist on the IQ-tip and turning it around. You see, my wife and I bought a house back in April and there were 3 cute little tree ferns on the property. They looked as if they’d been there for decades. (The house was built in 1926.)

But over the past months, one has died and the other two have been slowly following suit. The worst part is, we can’t figure out why. Not especially knowledgeable about trees and shrubs, we put our heads together and came up with an exhaustive list of ideas to help save the ferns:

1. Watering

You see the problem. So… anyone have any ideas? We think it’s in the cyathea atrox family, if that means anything to anyone. Or maybe it’s an Ostrich fern. I remember eating fiddleheads once as a kid, which I believe are the curled-up, immature fronds of Ostrich ferns. They were pretty tasty but I don’t recall what the trunk of the Ostrich fern looks like. As you can see from my photos, these ferns have short-ish, stumpy trunks.

Any green-thumbs out there have a real idea about how to save our ferns?

The talented Matthew Smith has drawn up a quiz about the creative ways TV characters have been killed off their shows. It’s equal parts fun, nostalgic, challenging and morbid. Honor the memories of television’s fallen legends by testing yourself on their causes of death.

Take the Character Assassination quiz, then let us know how you did.