Beige Alert!

Batter Blaster!

Wed, 17 Sep 2008 17:16:57 GMT

I'm not making this up. Batter Blaster! Pancake batter in a spray can! Best part: It officially meets the USDA Organic standards! Yes, Organic pancake batter in a spray can! We live in an amazing world, I tell you.

(And yes, there is a wacky video on their web site.)

"Bucket of death"

Tue, 16 Sep 2008 03:42:35 GMT

The TV show Smash Lab takes on the challenge of inventing safety devices that make good TV. What is good TV? Good TV involves danger, crashes, people getting hurt. Result? SAFETY FAIL! Typical projects attempt to ameliorate a very specific, unlikely hazard through the use of dangerous explosives. This is good TV but pretty much the opposite of safety. When the designer of a safety device ends up describing it as "a bucket of death" you know you've got the combination of good TV and Safety Fail!

Also, if you want to see two guys use a stun gun on each other for no good reason, you can see it on the Mythbusters web site here.

F-22

Sun, 14 Sep 2008 00:18:13 GMT

Two of my favorite F-22 Raptor photos from Oshkosh:

Dryness theft!

Thu, 04 Sep 2008 02:16:40 GMT

Very funny cryptography proposal. Dryness rights management! Cryptography = business-model preservation.

Advertising

Sat, 30 Aug 2008 00:40:04 GMT

Advertising is somewhat scatter-shot, but advertisers do generally make an effort to put their ads where plausible customers for their product might tend to see it. I've always assumed you can learn at least a little about the demographics of wherever advertising is seen by the ads. Sometimes it's obvious. Leaf through an issue of GQ, and in between the photos of semi (and sometimes fully) naked women you'll see ads for aftershave and cologne and fancy wristwatches, but none at all for feminine hygiene products. Back when Highlander the TV series was on, I was somewhat surprised by the ads (extra protection for heavy flow days!) given who one might naively expect the audience to be given a brief description of the show (these guys get into big fights with swords and try to chop each other's heads off!). But I assume the advertisers knew what they were doing.

I took this fascinating photo of some advertising in a bus the other day. Bus advertising is special. When the "Transit TV" is working (mercifully, it was broken on the last trip) you get an endless succession of ads from lawyers. Have you or anyone you know been injured or killed by whatever drug or medical device is currently the one people are suing the manufacturer of? Have lung disease and need to sue someone? Have you already won a lawsuit or settled one and have steady settlement payments coming in but "need cash NOW" and want to convert that into a much smaller lump sum? Want a computer but can't afford a crappy computer and can't easily borrow the money because your credit is so bad that even though cats and dogs and parrots can get credit cards these days, you can't? Well, for just 97 low easy payments, a crappy computer can be yours! And the print ads, like that photo... Addicted to cocaine? Looking to abandon a newborn baby? Think you might have a sexually transmitted disease?

In a way, it seems like an odd mix. The stuff for poor people fits the American concept of the bus as being exclusively for poor people. I'm not certain how the lawyers fit into that, given that the only thing capable of burning through money faster than a lawyer is a manned space flight program. I assume they're expecting a contingent fee sort of arrangement. Do victims with good personal injury cases tend to ride the bus a lot? It's a mystery.

What is the advertising in the public transit where you live like?

Photos

Sat, 23 Aug 2008 03:58:42 GMT

I have photos of the tall ships at the Port Washington (Wisconsin) maritime/pirate festival last weekend up on Flickr for those who like sailing ships.

Also, if you're the type who likes power plants, I also have photos of the Port Washington Power Plant, which is right on the lake shore there. This plant was originally built in 1935 as one of the first pulverized-coal plants and held the thermal efficiency record until 1948, and was designated an ASME Historic Mechanical Engineering Landmark. It was recently rebuilt as a pair of half-gigawatt natural gas-fired combined cycle units. Some of the old, and very pretty, brick walls have been preserved. I do have some photos on film of the old plant configuration that I might hunt down and scan someday.

baaaaa!

Fri, 22 Aug 2008 15:10:54 GMT

I'm blaming jaelle_n_gilla for alerting me to the nerd quiz:

Being an über nerd, my first thought was, "Isn't über spelled with a 'ü'?"

The Fonz

Tue, 19 Aug 2008 14:05:04 GMT

Well, the bronze statue of "The Fonz" has been installed here in Milwaukee. Fonzie was a character in a old TV show, Happy Times or Happy Days or something like that. I actually watched this show occasionally back when I was a little kid, but I can't remember much. Apparently the show was set in Milwaukee, which I was unaware of at the time I was watching it, but decades later, when I moved to Milwaukee, long after most people forgot the show ever even existed, people here still remembered it was set in Milwaukee.

Apparently a number of the actors from the show have been in town, including someone named Anson Williams, who played Potsie Weber. Every time I see the character's name "Potsie" in the news paper (and this has gotten extensive news coverage...) I wonder how that was pronounced. Presumably it's a French name, right? Roughly like Poe-zae or something like that? Couldn't be pot-zee, that would be silly. Unless the character smoked a lot of pot, of course. Beats me, I can't remember a thing about the show. All I can remember is the gang always gathered in that run-down restaurant or bar or whatever it was, and Fonzie would start the juke box playing by smacking it with his arm, a move none of the other characters could master. Other than that, I don't recall a thing. Perhaps when the Fonz wasn't around to start the juke box they all got out their guitars and sang hilarious parodies of the pop songs of the day? That might have been a great show. Maybe they did different, ever more elaborate musical productions that way, culminating in the famous "shark jumping" episode, in which the entire cast wrote, rehearsed, and performed an elaborate arrangement for chorus, woodwinds, and pipe organ of the theme from the movie Jaws. Maybe.

As far as I know the Fonz statue was designed by someone who actually remembers the show, which is probably for the best, but imagine what could have been designed by someone like me, creativity uninhibited by any actual memories of the show. Imagine a stirring tribute to that iconic Happy ~~Times~~ Days episode: The Fonz, playing his clarinet, and, standing beside him, his buddy the pot-smoking Frenchman, holding the papier-mâché shark. It would be unforgettable.

Mercury!

Thu, 14 Aug 2008 15:46:06 GMT

Back when I was a little kid, I read in a book of some kind about a higher-efficiency power plant that was to use a mercury-vapor topping cycle combined with a regular steam bottoming cycle. Mercury would be boiled at high temperature but low-ish pressure, used to run a turbine (that's got to be a weird turbine design) and then condensed back to liquid at still quite high temperature, boiling water to steam in the mercury condenser. That steam would then run a normal steam turbine and be condensed at ambient temperature in the usual way. Now, even as a small child, this didn't seem like a great idea to me. By this time, back in the early eighties, safety had been invented. Giant mercury boiler? You'd be better off living downwind of an RBMK.

It was with delight that just yesterday I encountered the weird and wonderful website The Self Site with its Museum of RetroTech. It turns out that several such power plants were actually built, back in the days before safety had been invented. There are even photos of what's left of one in the Mercury page.

the pipetting boy-band

Thu, 24 Jul 2008 18:32:24 GMT

Via boingboing, the Eppendorf epMotion music video. It's probably not as good a song as the Bio-Rad PCR music video, but what do you expect from a boy band?

Tourists

Mon, 21 Jul 2008 15:56:52 GMT

Some of you (lisande and kinder1of5 in particular) will surely appreciate this Onion piece, "Going To Tops Of Things Still Favored By Nation's Tourists". As some of you know well, I really love traveling a great distance in order to climb to the top of something.

Lasers!

Fri, 18 Jul 2008 00:32:00 GMT

I'm led to believe that in Odense, Denmark they run a little car with a laser scanner over the bike route network to scan for tiny defects in the pavement that will in the future degrade into actual holes, so they can fix them before the pothole even forms. This seems entirely unbelievable, like some sort of joke. Presumably, next I'll be told that at the edge of town instead of an airport they have a spaceport with regular flights to the moon.

I mean, before you'd scan the bikeway with a laser, you'd presumably have to first be willing to fix the actual holes, which in the USA will never happen. In the US, I'm not sure how you'd even go about laser scanning a bikeway. How would you define the surface? With all the gravel, mud, the leaves, branches, fallen tree limbs, and unrepaired holes and bumps, what would you even define as the pavement surface? Presumably in the US you'd program the computer to just ignore any fallen tree limb over a certain size, on the theory that it totally blocks the path so someone on his way to work will stop, get off his bike, and try to shove it out of the way, at which point the problem will be solved and there will be no need for any effort on the part of the city or county.

If you wonder why we Effective Cycling types want to be out there on the road with the cars, this has a lot to do with it. There is an off-road bike trail running along the little river that actually makes a useful commuting route for me. It is certainly prettier than the six-lane 40+MPH Highway 100, and since it doesn't intersect with roads, it's reasonably safe. Normally, of course, bike paths intersect with roads in a totally random, very unsafe manner, so in the US at least you have to avoid intersecting at all. It's also shorter, which is nice. But it's in lousy condition, debris covered, and it always floods even after minor rain. The worst crash I've had in a very long time was a mud-related slide there. Highway 100 might be safer, plus it's passable even if it rains. And the fallen trees get removed.

Merger with Run-DMC

Fri, 11 Jul 2008 00:55:13 GMT

The "Steven Tyler Laid Off From Aerosmith As Band's Jobless Rate Hits 20%" article in The Onion is mostly a typical so-so Onion piece. There is one paragraph I really, really like, however:

This cost-cutting personnel change is Aerosmith's most radical shift in economic model since the band's experiments as a drug-trafficking cartel from 1978 to 1984, their brief 1986 merger with Run-DMC, and their short-lived 1994 attempt to switch over to fabricating microchips.

Microchips!

Death of Rats

Wed, 02 Jul 2008 01:52:27 GMT

aunty_marion made a Death of Rats for me! It arrived today intact, even though the letter carrier really crammed it into the mailbox.

Here we see him sitting on the couch, watching the telly:

His eye:

Here's a closeup of the itty-bitty button on his cloak:

It's teensy-weensy!

New shoes, same as the old shoes

Wed, 02 Jul 2008 01:46:57 GMT

I bought some new shoes. I'm fairly sure this is the first time in my life I've replaced shoes with exact duplicates. Normally you can't still get the same model by the time the old ones wear out. These fit fine, and so I now have exactly the same, only clean and not worn out.

I will derive

Wed, 02 Jul 2008 01:07:53 GMT

Via Ezra Klein, math nerd music video I Will Derive!

Also, YouTube is just amazing. Check out that "related videos" selection for yet more mathematical music videos.

Today's winner

Sat, 28 Jun 2008 22:19:42 GMT

Today's winner in the unwieldy category of "Languages are Confusing: Best name of a country ever (depending on which languages you speak)" is "Island."

(A few of you might have already guessed what I'm getting at.)

There is this volcanic island in the north Atlantic, just slightly south of the arctic circle. This place is the country known in English as Iceland. The name is fairly descriptive, given the weather that far north.

In German, it is called "Island." If, like me, you mostly speak English, I suppose that's pretty descriptive, too. (The German word for island is Insel. In Icelandic Iceland is Ísland or Lýðveldið Ísland.)

You see, I was reading over this list of countries, in German. Some are pretty obvious (Kanada), some I already knew (Frankreich is France), and Island, um, well, it's the sort of thing that jars the brain. Though my guess, after a bit of thought, did turn out to be correct.

teh cute

Fri, 27 Jun 2008 13:59:10 GMT

Do I have cute photos from DucKon?

Ur rite

Fri, 27 Jun 2008 02:31:53 GMT

More joy from I Can Has Cheezburger

more cat pictures

Alcohol

Sat, 21 Jun 2008 15:24:05 GMT

A television show consisting of video of police arresting drunken troublemakers, with snarky narration provided by a not-really-celebrity panel? Sure, you think, it's supposed to be funny, but isn't it so dumb that no one with a functioning brain could stand to watch? Normally, yes, but I was drinking whiskey while watching, so it was hilarious. If you are going to watch drunk people, you need to be drunk.

And, really, I've tried drinking to excess, and it surely reduced my mental capabilities, but, wow, how much did these people drink? Because I've sure never had enough to behave like that.

One also has to admire the dedication to following proper procedures exhibited by police officers who know that they are being videotaped, doggedly attempting to run the sobriety tests on people who really don't need formal testing to be determined to be drunk.

Deutsch

Fri, 20 Jun 2008 03:01:55 GMT

One thing I've noticed is that any time I use even a few words of German in a Livejournal post, I get a bunch of comments, particularly from my German friends. What does this mean? I'm not certain, but if real life is like livejournal—and clearly LJ is just like real life, right?—then when I visit Germany, if I speak any German, I'll end up surrounded by charming and lovely German women. Who will tell me that I used the wrong article and the words are all in the wrong order and my accent is very ~~strange~~ cute.

We'll see in the fall :)

Eichhörnchengefahr

Thu, 19 Jun 2008 19:52:32 GMT

If you are menaced by squirrels, don't miss this at Nothing For Ungood.

No matter how much these things look like they want to cuddle up with you, keep away, as they are wild killing machines.

And on the subject of squirrels, Germans will always try to make you say their word for squirrel. Don’t do it, they are just going to laugh at you.

For more on the topic of trying to say Eichhörnchen, see Germans make fun of you when you try to say stuff:

Germans know their language is filled with sounds foreigners can’t make, so they try to get you to say certain words so that they can mock you. Such words include:

Eichhörnchen - This is the classic trap Germans set for us.

Oachkatzlschwoaf - This is the Bavarian cousin of the aforementioned.

Streichholzschächtelchen - This is the ultimate impossible German word to say.

(One of my many readers who actually speaks German will have to let me know if "Eichhörnchengefahr" actually makes sense or if I'm just messing up. And many thanks to legoline for making me aware of Nothing for Ungood.)

Duckon

Tue, 17 Jun 2008 01:40:19 GMT

Do I have photos? Yes. How much does a gigabyte cost these days? Not much. So, no, I haven't sorted through all thirteen gigabytes of them and put all the good ones up. I do, however, have these two that show two different wonderful, skillful, and, most of all highly dignified musicians performing:

Cities At Night

Wed, 11 Jun 2008 14:36:58 GMT

Via Kevin Kelly, check out NASA's Cities At Night gallery. "But taking pictures in the dark is difficult at best, made even more difficult by the fact that the International Space Station moves more than 7 kilometers per second (15,659 miles per hour) relative to Earth’s surface." So they rigged up a tracker out of stuff they found floating around in the space station, and have taken many lovely photos. They have a 127 megabyte video that's worth seeing. The narration sometimes sounds more robot than human, but it's quite interesting.