Plus: Even More Excuses for Tardiness, Cursing at Our Computers and a Seagull Bot.

Do You Physically Abuse Your PC?
If you’ve ever been so frustrated with your computer that you’ve cursed at it — or even thrown something at it — you are not alone. In a recent survey of more than 14,000 people worldwide, nearly 40 percent said they have at some point audibly cursed or yelled at their computers.

Additionally, according to IT security firm Avira‘s findings, 9 percent of respondents admitted to hitting their personal computer with their fist or a baseball bat, and 11 percent said they wished for a catastrophic act to happen to their PC. Three percent have actually picked up a computer and smashed it into the ground or against another object in disgust.

The good news for many pieces of hardware is that not everyone reacts this way when faced with a frustrating computer issue. Nearly as many people who curse at their PC claim they would never yell at their computer because it’s “too sensitive.” Instead, they encourage it to keep working with positive words.

“There is probably some anger management factoid in the results some place, but we’ll worry about the PC side of things,” Elisabeth Rothbart, PR manager at Avira, said. “I don’t recommend violence of any sort toward computers or anything else, but I can relate to the feelings of frustration.”

Bird Flight Deciphered for Seagull Bot
Yesterday Festo unveiled its 2011 Bionic Learning Network projects, “the most awesome of which is definitely SmartBird,” according to IEEE Spectrum’s Automaton blog.

The German industrial control and automation firm’s bio-inspired flight machine can take off, fly and land autonomously like a seagull thanks to an active torsion system combined with a complex control system. “Its wings each consist of a two-part arm wing spar with an axle bearing on the torso,” Popular Science reports. “The wings and tail are the only mechanisms creating lift, and Festo engineers had to figure out bird flight in order to do it.”

Festo explains:

First, the wings beat up and down, whereby a lever mechanism causes the degree of deflection to increase from the torso to the wing tip. Second, the wing twists in such a way that its leading edge is directed upwards during the upward stroke, so that the wing adopts a positive angle of attack. …

The tail … functions as both a pitch elevator and a yaw rudder. When the bird flies in a straight line, the V-position of its two flapping wings stabilises it in a similar way to a conventional vertical stabiliser of an aircraft. To initiate a turn to the left or right, the tail is tilted: when it is rotated about the longitudinal axis, a yaw moment about the vertical axis is produced.

Here’s how it works:

Even More Excuses for Being Tardy to Work
“Well, see, my car was inhabited by a hive of bees and, despite my best efforts, I couldn’t use the car for two hours until those bees left.” That was one employee’s excuse for showing up late to work in a recent CareerBuilder.com survey.

Nearly 2,500 employers and almost 4,000 employees in the U.S. recently shared with the job-search site a variety of reasons for being tardy. Workers’ top excuse was traffic-related (30 percent), followed by lack of sleep (19 percent), while 9 percent blamed the bad weather and 8 percent cited a delay in getting their kids to daycare or school. Other common reasons included public transportation problems, wardrobe issues or dealing with pets.

Some of the less-common reasons included the following:

• Employee claimed a public-transit delay and produced a note signed by “The Bus Driver”;
• Employee claimed his Botox appointment took longer than he expected;
• Employee claimed his hair was hurting his head;
• Employee claimed lack of sleep because boyfriend’s wife threw them out of the house;
• Employee claimed his Karma was not in sync that day;
• Employee claimed he got hurt taking a fork out of the dishwasher; and
• Employee claimed he wasn’t late — the company clock was wrong!

Don’t you hate it when you can’t get to work on time because your hair is hurting your head?

Here’s some more on the subject:

• Ridiculous Excuses for Playing Hooky in 2010
• More Far-Fetched Excuses for Tardiness
• Outrageous Excuses for Missing Work
• More Weird Excuses for Missing Work
• Top Excuses for Missing Work

Cheers.