Shiny Things
Oct. 11th, 2008
09:18 am - CDOs Explained
This is a great 6-minute explanation of how problems with bad mortgages escalated into the financial fix we're in now. (via ![[info]](http://p-stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif){kind=small}
rob_donoghue )
08:57 am - Monkey Bartenders
Normally I think monkeys are kind of creepy, but this is pretty cool: this restaurant in Japan has a pair of pet monkeys that help serve customers.
Oct. 10th, 2008
Oct. 9th, 2008
07:44 am - JustinGerard.com
One of my favorite artists has a new website up: JustinGerard.com. Check out his gallery! You might see an image you recognize. (Hint: part of it accompanies this blog post.)
Oct. 8th, 2008
05:29 am - Man Decorates Basement with Sharpie
And does a rather good job. (Lexington Herald-Leader / Kentucky.com)
Oct. 3rd, 2008
03:30 pm - The Law of Infinite Meeting Expansion
As the number of people invited to a meeting increases, the number of people they insist must also attend also increases.
(My meeting currently has 12 accepted attendees, 2 tentative, 3 non-replies. One of the _tentative_ attendees said I had to invite at least one, possibly two more people. And this is after I was told I had to have a pre-meeting meeting with 6 of these people already, to cover the same material beforehand and get internal consensus before talking to the non-IT people. I tell ya, I'm wasting a lot of people's time, but it's not my fault.)
09:00 am - Starbucks Logo
What _is_ the Starbucks logo supposed to be? Is the female figure holding up coffee bags or what?
( Answer... )
Oct. 2nd, 2008
07:53 am - Fluorescent Food
A colleague provided some M&M candy in Halloween colors for my bird feeder this week. They're interesting colors, and I wondered briefly if they were fluorescent: not in the colloquial sense of being brightly colored but in the technical sense of emitting visible light when struck by light. How cool would that be, to have a pot of candy set out at a Halloween party, actually glowing under a black light?
Unfortunately, there appears to be no such thing. It shouldn't be a real surprise that no one has yet come up with a coloring that is both fluorescent and safe for human consumption, but our world is so full of color these days that it's hard to remember that pigments come from chemicals, and some of those chemicals are fairly nasty.
If you've ever seen real fluorescent food (or even better: phosphorescent food!), I'd love to hear about it.
Oct. 1st, 2008
07:59 am - Google Site Search
Here's a sometimes-useful tip for searching old blog entries for something that you know was posted, but don't know when. In Google search you can add the term "site:<sitename>" and find entries that match the other terms. For example:
Last week I was looking for the post I wrote last year about why trees turn colors in the autumn, so I did a search on "leaves site:sirvalence.livejournal.com". (It was under the second result.)
Last night Russ and I were telling Brandon about a really cool game we'd seen on the Reaction! blog, so I did a search on "game site:http://www.etre.com/blog/". (It was the sixth result, for Fez, the 2D -> 3D platform jumper.)
However, searching back in krikketgirl 's blog, I can't find any mention of her being interviewed in the October 2008 Indianapolis Monthly article, "Comma Sense". I assume it was there and I just missed it. I only found out yesterday when someone handed me the article, thinking it would interest me.
It doesn't always work, and for my own journal I find downloading everything and searching via LJArchive seems to work better, but sometimes it helps.
Sep. 28th, 2008
09:21 am - Maybe that word doesn't mean what I think it means.
Why aren't inconceivable and impregnable antonyms?
Sep. 23rd, 2008
07:20 pm - Emerald Nuts
Here's a commercial Karen spotted during this week's episode of Heroes. She had to share it with us, so I'm sharing it with you.
Sep. 22nd, 2008
11:47 am - Tigger
I'm glad I wasn't taking a drink when I read today's Savage Chickens.
09:10 am - Wikipedia in Simple English
I love Wikipedia, but the articles are frequently far too technical. For example, today I wanted to put a label on the bird feeder I use for candy, to warn people that it sometimes contains nut and peanut products. I settled on a label stating "WARNING: CONTAINS NUT & PEANUT ALLERGENS" but I wasn't sure "allergen" was the right word. So I looked up "allergen" in Wikipedia. Here's the first sentence:
"An allergen is a nonparasitic antigen capable of stimulating a type-I hypersensitivity reaction in atopic individuals." (Wikipedia)
I'm a fairly technical person, and I have a degree in English, but I wasn't sure that this answered my question. So I used the Simple English link in the Languages box on the left side of the page, and here's the first sentence from that article:
"An allergen is something that causes allergies in humans." (Wikipedia)
Much better.
Sep. 18th, 2008
01:00 pm - ChaCha
I just read this CNN article about ChaCha. I've thought before that it might be fun to answer questions for them, but for 20 cents a question (and then only if you answer 300 questions that week)? It just doesn't seem worth it.
Sep. 17th, 2008
12:47 pm - White Night, by Jim Butcher
I just finished White Night, the 9th book in the Dresden Files series. They just keep getting better. Amazing.
Sep. 13th, 2008
07:47 pm - CPR
The American Heart Association recently determined that simply giving chest compressions to someone suffering a heart attack is sufficient aid: it circulates the oxygen that remains in the blood, it doesn't require anyone to come into oral contact with the patient, and no one has to remember the right ratio of breaths to compressions. To convey this new information, they've developed a couple of amusing commercials:
http://handsonlycpr.eisenberginc.com/fun
Note the song being played at the end of each clip: in a wonderful coincidence that will hopefully also serve as a mnemonic aid, the beat of "Staying Alive" is just about the right rhythm for the compressions. :) (Discovered via the Made to Stick blog.)
In a related note, I recently received a message from a colleague suggesting that if you are alone and begin to suffer a heart attack, you should try to cough in order to keep your heart beating. As it turns out THIS IS TERRIBLE ADVICE. If you are under the care of a trained professional, you might be guided through a coughing exercise, but without that assistance you almost certainly make things worse. If you are alone and having a heart attack, what you should do is:
1. Call 911.
2. Chew and swallow an aspirin.
Aspirin impedes blood clotting: since a heart attack is caused by a blood clot preventing blood from feeding your heart, you want to thin your blood so more clots don't pile up behind the first one. More information is available on Snopes.com.
Sep. 9th, 2008
08:00 am - Mudita
This morning as I waited to cross the street, I moved away from the puddle along the curb, in case a car chose to deliberately drive through it in order to spray me. I pondered schadenfreude, and it made me sad to think that I didn't know a word that meant its opposite, in the sense of "taking delight in the joy of others".
Fortunately, there is a Buddhist word for the concept: mudita. I wish it were more common, but I suppose it isn't as inherently interesting.
Sep. 7th, 2008
12:07 pm - Conversation with my Daughter
My daughter is standing wrapped in a blanket and looking at me with big, sad eyes.
Me: Are you okay?
Her: (nods, sadly)
Me: Are you sure? You look so sad.
Her: (sadly) I like looking sad. (*giggle*)
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