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Why bother producing power when we can simply take it?

Although stealing energy from this algae is now possible, the electrical current produced by the algae is not nearly enough to power a consumer electronic device.
U.S. Department of Energy

THE GIST:

Rather than harvesting electricity from algae, scientists are now able to outright steal it.
Creatures have been stealing energy from algae for nearly as long as algae have been around.
The energy generated from the process isn't yet powerful enough for modern gadgets.

Why spend the time and expense necessary to harvest energy when you can simply steal it?
For the first time, scientists from California and Korea have successfully stolen an electric current from algae. The research could eventually create a new and environmentally friendly way to generate electricity.
"We have shown that we can steal an electrical current from algae," said Fritz Prinz, a scientist from Stanford University and co-author of the ACS Nano Letters article.
Creatures have been stealing energy from plants and algae for nearly as long as plants and algae have been around. Usually they steal the chemical energy, stored as sugar, starch and other molecules.

WATCH VIDEO: Find out how biomass gas can be transformed into green gasoline.

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In the scientists' case, they stole electrons from a widespread and well studied algae called Chlamydomonas reinhardtii. To be able to extract energy from the algae, the scientists must first essentially jump-start the cells by applying what's called an over voltage, a tiny current of electricity that zaps the cell into action.
The over voltage only works when the algae are exposed to sunlight. If the algae cells are zapped in the dark, they will not produce any current. When zapped and exposed to light, however, the electricity flows.
The amount of current harvested from the algae is tiny -- far too little to power any consumer electrical device. To get even one amp, the scientists would have to hook up trillions of cells, said Prinz.
That would take far too long, since the process reduces the algae's lifespan down to tens of minutes. Furthermore, the amount of current harvested does not exceed the amount of current necessary to jump start the algae into producing energy; there was no net gain in energy from the experiment.
However, algae are tiny, cheap and plentiful. Even so, it would take millions, probably billions, of electrified algae to power a commercial device. Such a setup is not practical at this time, nor will it be for many years, said Prinz.
Gary Brudvig, a scientist at Yale University, agrees with Prinz that a commercial device powered by stolen electrical current from algae is impractical. Still, the fact that Prinz and his colleagues stole any electrical current at all was impressive and opens new research opportunities.
"This paves the way to imagine using algal cells in some new kind of solar energy conversion process," said Brudvig, "that diverts what nature does into a way that could be used more directly than growing and harvesting a crop."

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1: The Clock

Whether you prefer digital or analog, there's a good chance that a wall of your classroom, the desk in your office or a bank you passed on your ride to work or school sported a clock. If that isn't enough, there's the clock in the family car, and all of the ones on the DVD players, VHS players, cable or satellite boxes, televisions, microwaves, coffee makers and ovens. The time seems to be everywhere, but that wasn't always the case.

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Clocks can be found just about everywhere.

The first clock was most likely a stick partly buried in the ground. As the sun made its circuit across the sky, the shadow cast by the stick moved in measurable increments. This was a rudimentary sundial; a smart, if limited, way to tell the time. Accuracy was the real problem when it came to early man's attempt to lock down short-time measurement. The sun was a great indicator, but the system didn't work at night or when it was cloudy outside. Another problem was that the length of the day changed throughout the year, changing whatever incremental measurement was set to mark the time.

In the 2^nd century, Ptolemy, a Greek astronomer, deduced that placing a slanted object parallel to the Earth's axis would provide a consistent incremental measurement regardless of the season [source: Behar]. This led to standardized time measurement, solving one problem. The second problem, telling time when the sun wasn't shining, inspired a number of ingenious solutions. Water clocks used dripping water, leaving a small opening in a container to mark the passage of time. Candles were also widely used because they burned at a consistent rate when there was no breeze. Romantic methods like hourglasses were also widely employed, but it wasn't until around the beginning of the 14^th century that a new, reliable method came on the scene: the mechanical clock.

The Birth of the Alarm Clock

Ever wondered who’s to blame for that alarm clock blaring in your ear every morning? Well, you can thank the Greeks. Around 250 B.C., a modified water clock whistled when the clock’s water rose to a certain level [source: Bellis].

No one knows who invented it, but this remarkable device used an oscillating escapement to control the movement of the clock mechanism [source: Eveything2.org]. This was a pretty stable method of short-time measurement, and it revolutionized the way man related to the passage of time. Now, people could begin setting appointments and reliably keeping them. Precise planning, like that of many religious observances, could be closely scheduled. The world was beginning to change. A faster pace was possible because it was easier to organize activities. Man was on the road to three-minute eggs, stopwatches and power lunches.

Now that we can synchronize our watches, let's proceed to the next section where we'll explore the wonders of the toilet.

2: The Toilet

The History of Bathroom Tissue

In 1880, the British Perforated Paper Company manufactured the first paper used especially for personal hygiene. Before bathroom tissue (also known as toilet paper), people used a variety of useful and sometimes unusual items. When paper was scarce, leaves, sand and sticks were usually plentiful. People used items that were nearby and disposable, even resorting to stones and shells when they couldn’t find anything better. Later, reusable sponges were sometimes used too. After paper became more commonplace in the late 15^th century, recycling was the order of the day. Privies, water closets and chamber pots were equipped with old letters, newspapers and old paper bags.

Although attempts at developing a plumbing system can be traced to Mesopotamia around 2,500 B.C., it was the Romans who implemented a broad plumbing plan [source: Behar]. Under Roman supervision, outhouses were strategically placed over a network of sewers equipped with running water. It was a great idea, but it didn't catch on very quickly. By the Middle Ages, Europeans were still pitching waste out of their windows, and the humble chamber pot was a staple in every home. The stench in London's streets from the lack of sanitation was awful, and after a devastating cholera epidemic, a comprehensive system for sewage disposal became a priority [Source: Behar].
This roughly coincided with the manufacture and distribution of a new luxury item, the flush toilet. The indoor facility that housed this wondrous device was called a water closet. Although aborted attempts at indoor waste disposal have been discovered as far back as 2,500 B.C., it wasn't until Sir John Harrington created an inspired water closet design in the 16^th century that indoor plumbing became a practical reality. An upgraded version consisted of a bowl with a hole at the bottom that was fitted with a valve. Water was fed to the bowl from a cistern, and gravity was used to flush the waste after use [source: Castleden].

Thomas Twyford is the man to thank for the manufacture and distribution of what would become the modern toilet. He took the water closet concept, refined it and mass-produced it. By 1885, the clumsy and unhygienic water closet had morphed into a sleek all-china closet. This was a clean and efficient precursor to the modern commode.

Now, we'll move from the bathroom to the kitchen and look at the refrigerator.

3: The Refrigerator

The next time you make your midnight foray to the fridge for a piece of pie or a leftover burrito, consider what life would be like without that big cold box. You wouldn't have ice for your drink, and you wouldn't be to keep food fresh. Many of the staples you enjoy like eggs, milk, cheese, meat and butter would have to be purchased in small quantities or not at all. Expand this to the broader landscape, and much of the variety you see in your local market would be impossible to ship, store and sell before it spoiled. You might even have to resort to growing some food yourself to insure that you had a regular supply.

The Ice Trade

In the early 1900s, an American businessman, Frederic Tudor, made his fortune by shipping ice around the world. He outfitted ships with special insulation, packed them with blocks of ice and delivered them to the Caribbean and beyond, making his place in history as the first Mr. Freeze.

The father of the modern refrigerator, Carl von Linden, didn't build a cold box; he developed a process that changed a gas into a liquid [source: Behar]. This process had an interesting side effect: it absorbed heat. Refrigerators work by using a system of coils filled with this liquid coolant to transfer heat out of the confines of the refrigerator's insulated compartment.

The first refrigerator built for the purpose of preserving food was made in 1911, and a practical, self-contained model was mass-produced by Frigidaire in 1923. Once production brought the price down, the market for refrigerators grew sharply. As an important refinement, a small freezer compartment used to make ice cubes was soon added. Iceboxes, or insulated boxes filled with ice to keep food cool, were used less and less, and the refrigerator became an essential appliance and a part of the modern home.

Now, we'll take a look at the next essential appliance on the list: the washing machine.

4: The Washing Machine

As long as people have been wearing clothes, they've had to come up with ways to clean them. If you lived a couple of thousand years ago, you'd be beating your clothes on a stone to get the stains out like the Romans did. They had special stone troughs for washing and used rendered animal fat as a crude form of soap. Fast forward a few hundred years, and the stone troughs were replaced with wooden boards for scrubbing. But the process was still slow and backbreaking, and the results were probably less than stellar.

Taking the Clothes off the Line

Drying clothes when it rained used to be a big problem. Clotheslines were a great way to air-dry clothes when the sun was shining, but when it rained or the wind picked up, the outdoors was a hazardous spot for your wardrobe. Moving laundry day into the modern age meant more than just getting your clothes washed without a major workout; it meant drying them, too. Since its development early in the 20^th century, the electric clothes dryer has been a popular appliance, working side by side with the washing machine as the dynamic duo of the laundry room.

Things started to get interesting when agitators were developed. These paddles or dollies were suspended in a tub of water with the dirty clothes and then turned backward and forward manually. They still required muscle, but the process was similar in concept to the way we clean clothes today, agitating the water to release dirt from cloth fibers. In 1908, Alva J. Fisher introduced the modern washing machine. It was called the Thor, and it was the first washing machine with an electric motor [source: Castleden].

Modern washing machines use a two-drum system to clean clothes. The inner drum holds the clothes near the agitator, while the outer drum holds the water in the machine. When the washing cycle is complete, the inner drum spins, draining the water via hundreds of holes. In fact, during the final spin, a washing machine's inner drum can rotate at speeds approaching 80 mph (130 km/h) [source: Woodford].

Now that you don't have to spend two hours a day scrubbing dirty clothes, straining your back and ruining your manicure, you can chat with your friends and family on the telephone, the next appliance we can't live without.

5: The Telephone

The phone has gone from a fixture on the wall that connected you to a switchboard and a party line to a wireless device that uses satellite technology to connect you to the rest of the world. That's pretty dramatic. It didn't take very long, either, at just a little more than 100 years [source: Woodford].

ARPANET and the World Wide Web

We have the U.S. military to thank for the Internet. During the 1960s, the Advanced Research Projects Agency (ARPA) began a project for the military designed to link up four important computers in case of a nuclear attack. To learn more about it, read How ARAPNET Works.

Even though Alexander Graham Bell has been widely credited with inventing the telephone, an Italian immigrant named Antonio Meucci actually deserves that honor. Meucci filed an intention to patent the talking telegraph in 1849 but never proceeded with it, allowing Bell to file a patent for his version in 1876.

Today, cell phones are quickly replacing landline telephones. According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) in a report covering the last half of 2007, nearly 16 percent of American homes used cell phones exclusively, and more than 13 percent of people received most of their calls via a cell phone even though they had a landline in their home [source: Blumberg]

Moving from advances in the way we use our phones to our passion for music, in the next section we'll explore recorded sound.

6: Recorded Sound

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Recorded sound has gone through some major changes since its inception.

Your MP3 player is a portable music machine that's small enough to fit in your pocket. It can store thousands of songs and play them back on command. You may define your mood by the music you listen to throughout the day and change your choices with a simple click.

Music clearly speaks to something deep in the human consciousness, and wherever we go, we take our music with us. Imagine a world in which there was no way to record sound. The only music would be live, created for the moment and then gone forever.
Although there were primitive attempts to reproduce sound as far back as 1500 B.C., it wasn't until the development of the phonograph in 1877 that we begin to see big developments in the science of recorded sound. The phonograph was the brainchild of Thomas Edison and used recording technology created by the French inventor, Leon Scott, a couple of decades earlier [source: Time Magazine].

Vinyl vs. Digital Sound Quality

Those old vinyl records may have advantages over digital media. Where vinyl is an analog recording, closely copying the original sound wave, digital media takes a series of sound snapshots and puts them together. In the process, certain types of sound can be lost in the minute gaps between digital signals. If you think that drum solo is missing something when you listen to it in digital format, you're probably right.

Edison's phonograph used a foil wrapped cylinder and stylus to record sound waves and play them back, something Scott's machine failed to do. Other inventors worked to improve his initial design, particularly the sound quality, including Alexander Graham Bell, who took out a patent on the phonograph in 1885 [source: Castleden].

Your MP3 player uses a hard disc and sophisticated compressed files to store music. MP3 recording software evaluates the sounds relative to the range of human hearing, the times a sound is repeated, and the overlapping sound pitch to compress files efficiently. Digital recordings use equally complex methods of recording sound using binary code. Whatever the method, if you're listening to recorded music, the process all started with a scratchy rendition of "Mary Had a Little Lamb" recited by Edison himself onto a piece of tin foil.

Want some pictures with your sound? Take a look at the next section where we'll discuss the next appliance you can't live without, TV.

7: Television

From the principle of photoconductivity and the phenomenon of visual persistence, the idea of television was born in the late 19th century. It took only 90 years to go from that modest beginning to the televised broadcast of the first moon walk in 1969.

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TVs just may be the most popular appliance in the world.

Before television, people huddled around the radio to listen to news and entertainment programming. Before that, they relied on their newspapers and the entertainment value of their friends and neighbors. With the advent of the box with moving pictures and sound, the world was available at a flip of the dial. Although television didn't play a part in World War II, the end of the war brought an interesting and important development to television. The surrender of the Japanese in 1945 was broadcast over the fledgling television medium, bringing the drama and immediacy of current events to the minds and hearts of the public [source: Castleden] The NBC network, which began in 1939, started to grow, and television, an oddity that graced a few public bars and hotels, became a part of our collective consciousness.

There are more than 1.5 billion television sets in the world today, and that number is growing [source: Woodford]. New television technologies are vying with one another for supremacy, and the potential for the viewer to access and control the viewing experience is almost unlimited. Companion technologies, like the digital video recorder (DVR, TiVo), which allows viewers to schedule, automatically record and play back television programming, are gaining in popularity, and the future for the medium of television is bigger, brighter and sharper, and it couldn't be better.

Next, we'll see how America got cool and explore the next appliance we can't live without, the air conditioner.

8: Air Conditioning

Sunday Matinee

The local movie theater used to be the best place to be on a hot day. Why? The air conditioning, of course. The local department store ran a close second. Retailers discovered soon after the introduction of air conditioning that a little cool air was very good for business.

In the middle of a summer heat wave, it's great to have air conditioning. Before Willis Carrier invented his method of cooling indoor air, it was a challenge to stay comfortable in hot weather. A nice, cold drink was helpful, and some homes were designed to make the most of a light breeze, such as the traditional shotgun style homes. Even a nice, big tree for shade was great, but the promise of a temperature controlled home was still very appealing.

In 1902, Carrier's first air conditioner was built to cool a printing plant and remove some of the humidity created by the printing process. After taking out a patent for his design in 1906, Carrier started selling his air conditioning units for commercial applications. And in 1928, he released the Weathermaker, his first home air conditioner [source: Time].

Now that we've got our homes cool, let's get our food hot with the microwave.

9: The Microwave Oven

The First Microwave Ovens

The first microwave ovens were very different from the countertop models we’re familiar with today. In 1947, the Raytheon Company’s first commercial units weighed a whopping 750 pounds (340.91 kg).

With the introduction of the domestic microwave oven in 1967, the notion of meals in minutes became a reality [source: Idea Finder]. The average microwave can cook meat six times faster than a conventional oven [source: Woodford]. That means less time spent in the kitchen.

Microwaves were used in World War II for radar reconnaissance but weren't adapted for use in cooking until a happy accident occurred in the mid 1940s. Dr. Percy LeBaron Spencer, an employee of the Raytheon Company, accidentally melted a candy bar with radio waves. Microwave ovens use a magnetron tube that generates high-energy, short radio waves that agitate the water molecules in food, cooking it faster and more evenly. Taking advantage of this discovery, Raytheon's Amana division introduced the first commercial microwave in 1954 and followed up with a domestic model in 1967, the ®Radarange. It's estimated that 90 percent of American homes are now equipped with a microwave oven [source: USDA].

Next, we'll move on to one of the more recent inventions to permeate our lives: the computer.

10: The Computer

Although Charles Babbage is widely considered the inventor of the computer for the design of his mechanical "Analytical Engine" in 1840, like so many major technological developments, there actually are many people who contributed to the creation of the modern computer [source: Time].

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Although fairly new compared to some other appliances, the computer is incredibly popular -- at home and at work.

The earliest computers without metal gears and switches were number crunchers performing mathematical calculations for the military. Used by the Navy in World War II, the MARK 1 computer was 55 feet (16.7 meters) long and 8 feet (2.4 meters) high [source: Behar] These early electronic computers used vacuum tube technology and were huge, hot and expensive to run.

Although the early years of electronic computing saw some miniaturization with the use of transistors and integrated circuits, it wasn't until the development of the microprocessor that the computer really became accessible to the public and captured the world's imagination. In 1977, the Apple II personal computer was introduced, followed by the IBM PC a few years later [source: Time]. These competitors brought computing to the masses. Refinements like the development of a graphical user interface (GUI) and a more intuitive operating system soon followed.

Within 30 short years, computers have revolutionized the way businesses work, people play and the world communicates. It's hard to envision a single aspect of human life that hasn't been impacted by the development of computer technology.

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Job 10: Garbage Collector

Most of us wash our hands of garbage as soon as we set it on the curb. If we can avoid the chore of taking the trash out, we toss our rubbish in the trash can and forget about it. Not so for the garbage collector.

iStockPhoto/Mike Clarke
All in a day's work: a garbage collector cleans up our streets.

If you've ever noticed an overflowing trashcan on a public street, you may have taken a moment to feel bad for the person who'll have to clean it all up. In the pinnacle of dirty jobs, garbage collectors have to deal hands-on with our trash, day in and day out. In this thankless job, they make sure it gets from our curbs to the landfill. Sanitation workers often put in long shifts, traveling up and down our streets to pick up trash while dodging impatient drivers -- who occasionally hit the guys who are emptying trash cans. That's one reason why trash collecting consistently ranks high on lists of dangerous jobs [source: Morsch].

Aside from angry drivers, these guys deal with forces of nature as well -- working in rain, snow and sleet. And let's not forget the smell. The reek of dirty diapers and rotting eggs can't be pleasant, especially combined with -- and particularly after -- stewing in the sun on a hot day. Even if sanitation engineers eventually get used to the smell, it probably doesn't make them popular after working a long shift.

Despite the dirt, the danger and the smell, there's no shortage of garbage collector jobs. The average annual salary for this occupation is about $43,000 [source: SimplyHired]. In California, the average hourly wage is $16.04, and in some places, the overtime can help shoot the pay to over $60,000 a year [source: CEED, Parsons].

Job 9: Gastroenterologist

Sometimes the hardest tasks have to do with looking within ourselves. And we're not talking about soul-searching. Whatever we eat goes through a 25-foot (7.62 meter) journey in our digestive tract, and when problems arise, there's one kind of doctor we can go to for help -- the gastroenterologist -- also known as a GI doctor. These doctors specialize in the process that most of us wish would remain mysterious -- the body's digestion.

Rubberball/Getty Images
Nobody's happy to be visiting a gastroenterologist.

Nobody likes to talk about or describe their digestive problem. Whether it has to do with gas, abnormal stools or a pain in the rear, GIs diagnose and treat some of the most uncomfortable and embarrassing of ailments. So you can bet that the GI's patients aren't always happy to see him.

On top of it all, it's not easy to become a GI. These doctors have to go through four years of medical school, three years of residency and two to four years of a fellowship to become full-fledged gastroenterologists [source: AGA].

Why put yourself through so much grueling training for what's sure to be an aromatic job? Well, if helping people isn't enough of an incentive, it doesn't hurt that GIs make a handsome salary. Most GIs make between $250,000 and $400,000 a year -- not too crappy [source: Salary.com].

Job 8: Oil Rig Worker

iStockPhoto/Julie Kendall
Many oil rig workers live on a drilling platform in the middle of the ocean.

To say that oil is a booming industry would be an understatement. Given that modern economies largely depend on it, and as prices soar, you can bet that companies will pay a lot to find and drill for this black gold. But for most workers, striking oil isn't so glamorous in real life. Daily life on an oil rig is dirty and dangerous.

Offshore rig life is especially difficult. It involves spending weeks at a time sleeping, eating and working 12-hour days or nights on a man-made drill rig in the middle of the ocean. Aside from the cramped conditions, heavy machinery and explosive materials make this a perilous job that requires hardhats and steel-toed boots. And the business side of oil drilling isn't the only part that's booming -- the machinery is extremely loud. Workers are typically required to wear earplugs on the job to prevent permanent hearing loss, and they communicate through hand signals.

But if you can stand the strenuous work and the time away from home, you'll be sitting pretty. Even lowly workers can get a nice annual pay over $40,000 [source: Miller]. Salaries can skyrocket for people with certain college degrees and for overseas work [source: OilJobFinder].

Job 7: Portable Toilet Cleaner

iStockPhoto/Rick Hinson
Somebody's gotta do it: Porta-Potty Cleaners clean up what we leave behind.

This job is a sort of combination of garbage collector and GI, and arguably more disgusting than both put together. Although most people in polite society methodically avoid situations where they need to use a portable toilet, modern outhouses can be lifesavers. As gross as they can be, they'd be worse without the folks who clean them for a living.

Using a tank and a vacuum wand, cleaners must suck up all the waste in a portable toilet. After picking up any stray toilet paper, they also wash down all surfaces that could possibly be soiled, including the walls. This is when a high-pressure hose comes in handy [source: Douglas]. Usually, cleaning one portable toilet takes only a few minutes, and most workers clean from 10 to 60 of them a day [source: AOL]. But it's not always that easy: Portable toilets that tip over require more damage control.

Nevertheless, some cleaners grin and bear it -- and take home $50,000 a year [source: AOL]

Job 6: Crab Fisherman

When most people think of fishing, they usually think of lazy afternoons on the lake and father-son bonding. It may come as a surprise, but fishing persistently ranks as the most deadly occupation in the U.S. [source: Christie].

Brian Stevenson/Aurora/Getty Images
Fishers risk working the most dangerous job in America to get us delicious Alaskan crab.

If you've ever seen an episode of "Deadliest Catch," you probably have an idea of why that's true. Off the Alaskan shore, crab fisherman face freezing waters and storms that give way to gargantuan ocean waves. If the fishermen can protect themselves from being swept overboard in a storm, they'll still have to worry about the dangers of fishing machinery and coils on crab boats, which can also fling them overboard. And even if they avoid drowning, cold temperatures can give way to fatal hypothermia. These workers brave harsh conditions in shifts that can last as long as 21 hours to haul hefty catches [source: Miller].

But, as you might expect, the crab fishing industry is as lucrative as it is dangerous. For a few months of work out of the year, experienced workers can rake in about $60,000 [source: Miller]. It all depends on how successful the yield is for a particular boat.

Job 5: Sewer Inspector

Rats, roaches, dark passages and the occasional corpse -- no, we're not talking about a day in the life of Indiana Jones. In a much less glamorous role, the sewer worker deals with all of this stuff and more while braving the depths of the hundreds of miles of sewers beneath our cities.

iStockPhoto/Mathieu Aucher
Sewer workers clean the bowels of the city to keep our waste out of the streets and to keep our water clean.

After we've done our business in the bathroom, all we have to do is flush our waste goodbye, and we'll never have to see it again. But this isn't the case for the people who take care of our sewer systems. Their job entails walking and sometimes crawling through sewer tunnels to inspect for cracks, clogs and other problems. As if wading through human excrement didn't sound bad enough, some workers are also sewage divers. As you probably guessed, they have to go all out to swim through sewage to clean out clogs. In addition to the excrement, smell, and creepy crawly bugs and rats, sewer workers sometimes come across dead bodies, both animal and human.

Before you write off these employees as nuts for voluntarily diving into human waste, note that, with above a high school education, they can make over $60,000 a year [source: Speer]. Many people consider sewer inspectors noble stewards of Mother Earth because they keep our water and our streets clean.

Job 4: Coal Miner

Joining the ranks of garbage collecting and fishing, coal mining is also one of the most dangerous professions today [source: Alford]. Although mining has come a long way since "How Green Was My Valley" days, it remains a tough job. Coal mines contain methane, and explosions can occur when falling rocks cause sparks. What's more, unstable mines can collapse and kill workers.

Tyler Stableford/Stone/Getty Images
Coal miners have literally the dirtiest job -- they emerge from the mines every day covered in black dust.

Aside from these dangers, working directly with coal is literally dirty. Forget getting your hands dirty -- working in a coal mine will get your everything dirty. Coal dust coats all surfaces and contaminates the air. Just from breathing, coal miners ingest coal dust and sometimes develop black lung, a condition that causes shortness of breath and emphysema. Although improvements in mine ventilation have reduced the number of cases of black lung, it's still a problem [source: HealthAtoZ].

Nevertheless, even if it's covered in a film of black dust, money is still money. In West Virginia, where coal is a huge industry, coal miners earn an average annual salary of around $64,000 [source: Brook].

Job 3: Embalmer

Most cultures have long and ancient traditions of funeral rites and special treatment for the dead. Some of these traditions include ritualistic attempts to preserve the body as much as possible. Whereas ancient Egyptians would mummify, many modern cultures embalm.

When a person dies, the body quickly becomes pale and unsightly. This doesn't make for a very pleasant experience when family and friends say their goodbyes to their dearly departed loved ones. That's where the embalming process comes in. It delays the decomposition of a corpse and cosmetically restores it to look presentable for the viewing. It also sanitizes the body to prevent spreading infection [source: Aurora Casket Company].

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Embalmers keep our beloved departed looking their best.

The details of embalming aren't pretty. It involves first washing the body with germicidal soap and massaging out stiffness. Then embalmers drain the blood and gases and inject disinfecting embalming fluid. Preparing the face involves securing the mouth shut with wires and the eyes shut with glue [source: Redwood Funeral Society]. Morticians can also beautify the body with makeup, manicuring and shaving. They also dress the body before the funeral for viewing.

Embalmers are exposed to toxic cleaning chemicals during the process and to diseases from handling the bodies. In addition to needing a rock-solid constitution in dealing with corpses, those charged with this brave task also have to switch gears and tactfully interact with the family of the deceased.

Embalmers, morticians and mortuary workers earn about $41,000 on average, and the pay rises with experience [source: CNNMoney].

Job 2: Plumber

For the modern American, the idea of living without indoor plumbing is unthinkable. Plumbing may be one of the greatest advances of society because it offers us significant comfort and convenience. No longer do we have to step outside to brave harsh elements of nature to get water from a well or to enjoy the privacy of the outhouse. So when pipes get clogged or spring a leak, most of us can't last long without calling in a plumber.

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Plumbers brave our disgusting clogs to keep our pipes running smoothly.

Plumbers have the quintessential blue-collar job, often having to crouch under sinks or through the crawl spaces under houses. If these cramped and dirty conditions aren't bad enough, they deal with our revolting clogs and waste or dangerously hot pipes. Customers commonly call with plumbing emergencies at all hours, making schedules unpredictable.
But despite the drawbacks, plumbers make a nice living, as even entry level plumbers typically pull in between $35,000 and $40,000 a year [source: Salary.com]. On average, plumbers make about $47,000 annually [source: CollegeBoard].

Job 1: Crime Scene Cleaner

Talk about cleaning up after someone. In the aftermath of a bloody crime or the discovery of an illegal chemical lab, the police investigators rush in to save the day and bring the perpetrators to justice. But in the hurry to clean up crime in the city, police don't have time to clean up the walls. Be it blood and guts or hazardous chemicals, not a lot of people jump at the chance to be a crime scene cleaner.

Joel Rogers/Stone/Getty Images
After the media and the police have moved on, crime scene cleaners come in to do the dirty work.

Murders and suicides can get extra bloody. Throw in fragments of bone, gore and other body pieces strewn about the place, and you've got quite a mess. This job isn't for the faint of heart -- anyone who is prone to getting queasy or emotional won't succeed in this line of work. Developing stress disorders from this work isn't uncommon. It's also pretty dangerous. Even on days they don't have to deal with anthrax-laden labs, they do have to worry about getting infectious diseases from the body fluids. This means suiting up with hazardous materials protection gear.

Depending on how bad the mess is, the cleanup could take a few hours to a few days. But you won't hear these crime scene cleaners complaining too much -- they charge by the hour. With a little experience under your belt and flexibility with your work hours, you can easily make about $75,000 a year with this job [source: Sahadi]. Although you don't need a college degree to get a crime scene cleaning job, it can help boost that salary into six figures.

There's no doubt these past 10 jobs justify the old maxim, "It's a dirty job, but somebody's got to do it." Maybe the next time we see a garbage collector or meet a funeral home worker, we can tip our hats to them for doing the jobs that most of us couldn't handle for one day.

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A typical cloud storage system architecture includes a master control server and several storage servers.

Comedian George Carlin has a routine in which he talks about how humans seem to spend their lives accumulating "stuff." Once they've gathered enough stuff, they have to find places to store all of it. If Carlin were to update that routine today, he could make the same observation about computer information. It seems that everyone with a computer spends a lot of time acquiring data and then trying to find a way to store it.

For some computer owners, finding enough storage space to hold all the data they've acquired is a real challenge. Some people invest in larger hard drives. Others prefer external storage devices like thumb drives or compact discs. Desperate computer owners might delete entire folders worth of old files in order to make space for new information. But some are choosing to rely on a growing trend: cloud storage.

While cloud storage sounds like it has something to do with weather fronts and storm systems, it really refers to saving data to an off-site storage system maintained by a third party. Instead of storing information to your computer's hard drive or other local storage device, you save it to a remote database. The Internet provides the connection between your computer and the database.

1.	Coca-Cola was originally green.

2.	The most common name in the world is Mohammed.

3.	The name of all the continents end with the same letter that they start with.

4.	The strongest muscle in the body is the tongue.

5.	There are two credit cards for every person in the United States.

6.	TYPEWRITER is the longest word that can be made using the letters only on one row of the keyboard.

7.	Women blink nearly twice as much as men!

8.	You can't kill yourself by holding your breath.

9.	It is impossible to lick your elbow.

10.	People say "Bless you" when you sneeze because when you sneeze, your heart stops for a millisecond.

11.	It is physically impossible for pigs to look up into the sky

12.	The "sixth sick sheik's sixth sheep's sick" is said to be the toughest tongue twister in the English language.

13.	If you sneeze too hard, you can fracture a rib. If you try to suppress a sneeze, you can rupture a blood vessel in your head or neck and die.

14.	Each king in a deck of playing cards represents great king from history. Spades - King David Clubs - Alexander the Great, Hearts - Charlemagne Diamonds - Julius Caesar.

15.	111,111,111 x 111,111,111 = 12,345,678,987,654,321

16.	If a statue of a person in the park on a horse has both front legs in the air, the person died in battle. If the horse has one front leg in the air,the person died as a result of wounds received in battle. If the horse has a all four legs on the ground, the person died of natural causes.

17.	What do bullet proof vests, fire escapes, windshield wipers and laser printers all have in common? Ans. - All invented by women.

18.	Question - This is the only food that doesn't spoil. What is this? Ans. - Honey

19.	A crocodile cannot stick its tongue out.

20.	A snail can sleep for three years.

21.	All polar bears are left handed.

22.	American Airlines saved $40,000 in 1987 by eliminating one olive from each salad served in first-class.

23.	Butterflies taste with their feet.

24.	Elephants are the only animals that can't jump.

25.	In the last 4000 years, no new animals have been domesticated.

26.	On average, people fear spiders more than they do death.

27.	Shakespeare invented the word 'assassination' and 'bump'.

28.	Stewardesses is the longest word typed with only the left hand.

29.	The ant always falls over on its right side when intoxicated.

30.	The electric chair was invented by a dentist.

31.	The human heart creates enough pressure when it pumps out to the body to squirt blood 30 feet.

32.	Rats multiply so quickly that in 18 months, two rats could have over million descendants.

33.	Wearing headphones for just an hour will increase the bacteria in your ear by 700 times

34.	The cigarette lighter was invented before the match.

35.	Most lipstick contains fish scales.

36.	Like fingerprints, everyone's tongue print is different

37.	And finally 99% of people who read this will try to lick their elbow