Screenshot: A Weblog

"When I talk to young designers, and I talk to people who want to be designers, I tell them, "Here is the truth: The truth is, you are never going to make your dream game, so get over it. Okay? You are going to work really, really hard, you are going to go to school, you are going to spend time learning, you are going to write papers, you are going to intern someplace where you work very hard, and when you finally get your first job, it's going to be designing levels for Hello Kitty." And what I look for, when I am interviewing designers, I want a designer who can look at that and say, "Yeah, I don't play Hello Kitty myself personally, but I am going to make this the best darn Hello Kitty game those twelve-year-old girls have ever seen, and I am going to take pride in that design." That's a true designer, and that's what I look for."

Interview with Sheri Graner Ray, longtime game designer, In Kafai, Heeter, Denner and Sun (eds.) (2008) Beyond Barbie and Mortal Kombat: New Perspectives on Gender and Gaming. Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press.

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It is nice when a little thing that has been done wrong for so long will start being done right. Case in point, I was actually mildly excited to read that after doing it wrong for years, Subway will start tessellating their cheese triangles worldwide starting July 1, which is silly because I maybe get a sub there once or twice a year max. But now I won't have to live with the knowledge that every time I drive past a Subway there are people in there making subs with asymmetric cheese distribution.

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As pointed out at Slashdot a couple of days ago, there is a pretty interesting converstation going on over at Wikipedia about whether it is ethical for them to include images of Rorschach inkblots. The inkblots are now in the public domain, so the issue is not ownership. The issue is that the Rorschach inkblot test requires that the images be novel to the subject, so would Wikipedia be doing harm by potentially depriving those in need of psychological help a potential treatment tool. The conversation on the talk page has gotten quite long so I've only skimmed most of it, but it's interesting to look through - both for the debate on this particular issue and for the view of how it is determined what to include or not. Is the choice of whether to include the images on Wikipedia the same as the choice of whether to include them in a scholarly text which the public might also access (but presumably less conveniently). Is the fact that there are many experts who deny the validity of the test and feel it is not a legitimate psychological tool?

With regards to the blots, they are currently shown at the bottom of the page. It sounds like there has also been discussion of whether they ought to be hidden behind a link with a disclaimer that allows people to choose whether they wish to see them or not.

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I think everybody knows about Bacon numbers (distance between people in the six degrees of Kevin Bacon game) and if you hang in math circles you know about Erdos numbers (publication distance from the prolific Paul Erdos) but I just found out that people have started computing Erdős–Bacon numbers (via ALOTT5MA). Traditionally one only counts credited movie appearances towards one's Bacon number, but for this, a relaxed set of rules is adopted which gives me a Bacon-Erdos number! I get an Erdos number of 4 through a paper with my PhD advisor and I get a Bacon number of 4 through an appearance on a kid's talk show hosted by the guy who played "Bob Dog" on Mr. Roger's Neighborhood with Fred Rogers. That gives me a Erdos-Bacon number of 8 - one greater than Carl Sagan!

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Sitting at this stoplight, I found myself wondering, how do you even figure out how many hit points a van has left?

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Happy Easter!

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I finally got around to watching this short documentary (split into five pieces) about a nuclear laboratory surplus shop in Los Alamos while baking cookies today, and it is pretty cool. Both the stuff that this guy has, but also the fact that this guy is living in Los Alamos, used to be a machinist at the lab, is currently repurposing what the lab discards, and is now quite outspoken against nuclear experimentation. It's interesting to see the town reaction to him also.

If you haven't seen that site, which I had not before this, it's got some other interesting films there too. I think it is cool they figured out a fairly low-tech way to film inside a running dishwasher.

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The week before finals is the long dark teatime of the academic soul. When it corresponds with the first frigid, blowsy weather of the winter, the mind turns to piles of poofy blankets. Barring that, I end up wondering if we have enough laptops to relocate my small advanced programming class to be held around the campus center fireplace with mugs of hot chocolate.... I start thinking that a brain shawl would be cozy and timely. Or at least decide that I need to get serious about shopping for a new winter coat.

It is not too late to catch up on the 2007 X-Entertainment Advent Calendar, if you like odd stories acted out using Playmobile and LEGO characters, riffing off the contents of toy advent calendars. It's like improv weblogging.

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It is slightly frightening that we have moved past saying that just having a high school degree is not enough, to just having a college degree not being enough to just having a law degree not being enough. Okay, that is an exaggeration, and these people definitely seem well employed, but this is an interesting look at the mind-numbing grunt work some lawyers are getting hired to do. It feels like the legal analog to programmer outsourcing - the good jobs are the creative jobs, and the competition for them is strong. Certainly this type of skilled temp/contract work is prevalent in both fields, particularly for new graduates.

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I did a bit of a mental double-take when I saw this article about Russia planting a flag on the North Pole seabed to claim the land as Russian, because it seemed a century or two out of date. On reading it, it turns out that I am not the only one who thought so:

In a record-breaking dive, the two craft planted a one metre-high titanium Russian flag on the underwater Lomonosov ridge, which Moscow claims is directly connected to its continental shelf.

However, the dangerous mission prompted ridicule and scepticism among other contenders for the Arctic's energy wealth, with Canada comparing it to a 15th century colonial land grab.

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I'm back from traveling for a couple of weeks and am digging out from a backlog of real and electronic email and feeds that I've fallen behind on. So, that is going to just be a hodge-podge link dump today of what caught more than my passing attention...

I don't think I would use the Polar Clock in a web browser or even on my computer, but this would make an awesome digital clock to hang on the wall. The only thing that is a little odd is that the outer ring is the day of the week instead of the year, though that would raise the question of what to use as the starting and ending points, and I suspect haveing an outer ring that changes more frequently than the month ring is aesthetically nice.

This Consumer Reports page lets you watch crash test videos from a wide variety of cars - use the pull down menus to find your car or look for cars that don't fair so well (Jeep crashes seem pretty dramatic).

Sort of a variant on Galaga with gun upgrades and better graphics, Lone Starship: Defender of the Planet Game is fun and a good balance of challenge with easy controls - I'm usually playing these things on my laptop with a trackpad so games with tricky controls usually don't work for me.

Don't go Googlewhacking - go Wikigroaning: my favorite pairs listed in the article are probably "Jet Propulsion Laboratory" versus "Black Mesa research facility" and "List of conflicts in the Middle East" versus "List of furry role-playing games".

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Over the past couple of days I've come across a few things that I absolutely do not need, and absolutely covet - mostly because I am a huge geek:

• spicelab small magnetic spice rack - display your spices mounted in test tubes! I'd use up the spices that come with it and then use it to store the herbs I grow in my backyard....
• blossom lights - led lit branches with faux flowering buds are so pretty
• pretty much everything at Pololu, a new-to-me robotics shop - I suspect they even sell gears!

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I have relatively little to add to this hilarious post from defective yeti about the stupidity of Deal or No Deal except to agree that the show is idiotic, relying on the mathematical ignorance of its contestants and audience. It really makes me crazy that people think "the banker" actually makes decisions about what to offer based on a personal assessment of the contestant, when it is clearly a selection of an amount from an error range around the mathematical expectation of what the contestant might win. Yeti's proposed game show might be more entertaining - I'm trying to brainstorm who would be a good host. Anna Kournikova? Martha Stewart (who would never do it, but who would be hilarious to watch if she did)?

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I'm getting down to the wire on a few projects, so here is some random fun to get you through the middle of the week....

I'm a huge Stephenson fan, so I'm excited that the SciFi channel is making a mini-series out of Diamond Age. It isn't my favorite Stephenson book, but I actually like it a lot - more than I think a lot of people do. I really love the idea of the instructional friend book/computer. It reminds me of some of the parts of Ender's Game I liked a lot. They're having Stephenson do the adaptation, so it might actually be good. And then maybe we'll get Snow Crash: The Movie!

More fun from the Make Blog: if you know how to wire up an LED without exploding it, you can do this Embarassingly Easy Case Mod. I have a feeling some of my readers will enjoy the radio-controlled potato gun. Finally, I must make myself this Tetris Tote Bag.

And, I must remember to tell my students about the Butterfly Amicus 3000 - a ping pong playing robot.

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It's the first day of the semester for me, tackling a new class which I am both insanely excited about and having the requisite new-class jitters over. One of the things I love about my school is having the opportunity to totally obsess about just one course for a month - I've been lucky and always been able to teach something I was interested in obsessing about for a whole month, which I suspect makes all the difference.

But, I'm pretty scatter-brained this morning because of that, so today I'll just bring you a smattering of random fun stuff - call it the weblog version of the traditionally hodge-podgy first lecture of a class.

It's been everywhere, but if you didn't hear, Wired labels Pittsburgh one of the top 10 tech towns, largely because of the presence of CMU but acknowledging the real growing tech industry around here. And our high complement of comic book stores...

I'm not usually a fan of puns, but User Friendly makes a math pun today that just kills me.

While such statements are usually exaggerations, it is quite possible that Digg got it right in labeling the play in this video the worst play in hockey ever.

I suspect there are two distinct groups of people: those who are unwarrentedly geeked about there being a new, and wonderfully horrible looking, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles movie coming out this spring and those who think it is the final nail in the coffin of our film industry. It is possible that both groups are right.

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If, like me, you never remember to get a new calendar until the start of the new year, you could always just print out a copy of the Classic Pulp Sci Fi Magazine Cover Calendar downloadable from the Website at the End of the Universe. [via Boing Boing] While I would generally object to what is essentially a bikini-girl calendar, I love the old sci fi art and I think it's really interesting to consider the images as historical artifacts. There are actually four years worth of calendars at the site to browse through, if you are interested in such things.

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Next time someone commits you to making balloon animals, head on over to How to Twist a Balloon Dog for awesome step-by-step instructions and a cute little animated gif of the process in action. Then go twack the person who committed you to making balloon animals over the head with a blunt instrument.

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Tomorrow is Museum Day. What is Museum Day? Started by the Smithsonian Institution, it is a day when a number of museums across the country offer free admission to visitors who present the Museum Day Card available on the page I just linked to. For those in Western PA, the Carnegie is participating, so this is a great opportunity to check it out if you haven't been before.

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A faithful reader mailed me the photo below last night, demonstrating the perfect merging of Pittsburgh's fanaticism about the Steelers and Pittsburgh's utter lack of interest in helping people get around the city who do not already know what they are doing. Be assured, this is not an off-duty bus, and the over-door route number signs have been replaced with the same message. I'm not sure if this exceeds the insanity of Washington, er, that is, Steeler, PA (damn - was I supposed to change my business cards?). Flipping channels last night, an advertisement showing that a local channel's entire news team has relocated to Detriot for the week was followed by a story opening with the solumn statement "Ben Rothlesberger likes milk." Frankly, it seems that the entire region has shut down for the weekend; I'm a bit frightened to see what my class turnout looks like Monday morning....

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I don't understand why it is impossible to find a pad of blank, unlined 8 1/2 x 11 paper. Not an art pad or anything - what I think is called a "glue top scratch pad". I've been getting them at the campus bookstore, but they don't sell them anymore, and it turns out nobody else does either. What is so difficult about what I am looking for? Yes, that website I linked sells them, but not cheaply and I shouldn't have to go online to find such a thing.

While searching around, though, I found the best Wikipedia entry ever: Notebook. How awesome is it that they have four paragraphs on notepads, and can't avoid a Star Trek reference in that space. Awesome!

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Don't miss out on the fun - today is International Talk Like A Pirate Day! Perhaps after work I'll dust off my copy of Pirates and play a game....

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To all appearances, the "credit card" to the left might appear to be your run of the mill fake card that companies put in their mailings all the time. But American Express has reached new lows - what you are seeing there is not just a phony card, but it is in fact a magnet designed to look like a credit card. One wonders what marketing genius decided to promote their product with exactly the item that destroys their product. Or perhaps they're hoping for a little industrial sabotage against their competitors already in your wallet....

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A new, informal study shows that scientists may be self-censoring to avoid controversial research. This article presents this as fairly categorically bad, implying that those raising the controversies are stifling academic freedom and intellectual endeavors. But isn't it good if our scientists are feeling pressure to stop and think about whether the advantages of their research are really worthwhile? Am I supposed to feel bad that "Others said they have given up experiments on dogs - traditional objects of medical research - to avoid the wrath of animal rights activists."? Or this statement:

Today, Blass said, ethics overseers are unlikely to allow anything that involves tricking a research subject. As a result, even though he'd like to follow up on Milgram's work, he said he censors himself by not bothering to try.

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Oh my - the Seattle Star Wars fan is at it again, settling down in line four and a half months before Episode III is scheduled to open. He's weblogging his wait this time too - caution, the current top post is a highly obscene rant against those telling him to get a life. Which, I have to say, kind of goes against the screed in one of the posts lauding his waiting as a near-religious defiance of modern consumer culture. Also interesting is this comment, posted in his 1/7/04 "Get a Life" entry:

Hey... I still want to know where you were yesterday morning when your couch had something all balled up to look like you were sleeping.

I was there for a half hour. We wanted to interview you for our morning show. Will you please answer?

Stephanie Rose
Stephanie@kmps.com

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I'm sure this is entirely impractical in a real house where clutter on a table gets shoved into each other and cats or small children run around, but I'm fascinated by the Toro Tissue Ring. Maybe for one's office. Ooo - Drugstore.com and the Container Store both sell them. I'd have pegged this as more of an Ikea product....

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If you plan on doing any traveling by car, you absolutely must join AAA. Besides being covered if you break down, run out of gas, or generally need automotive help, the free maps and tour books can get you around the country and in and out of strange cities, and the attraction and restaurant recommendations are good. And if you call them, they'll help you find an office near you while you're on the road and give you directions so you can restock your maps on the go. That's not including the fact that, if you're going to many tourist attractions, the membership will pay for itself in admission discounts. Go join now!

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I've almost exhausted my stock of Bobs Old Timey Peppermint Pure Sugar Sticks, which I can buy at one store in my area only during the month of December, and while I could order them from this site, I'm not sure that I really need a box of 24 bags. They're just so yummy and have such a funky texture and give you such a great mid-afternoon sugar rush. They're slightly porous, like those peppermint puffs, except not quite so much.

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Oh, I know people in the Cult of Diet Coke. It's become so common, I was surprised to see it's only been around since 1982, though I do remember Tab (which definitely wasn't a man's drink the way Diet Coke can be). Maybe if a Diet Coke With Lime Cult started up, I might get on board....

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I "helped" a friend buy a car recently, and I was really impressed with how well they handled the whole process. I don't do well in that setting in part because I have a hard time believing the stereotypes about car salesmen. So I found this investigative report on selling cars at Edmunds really interesting. They sent a writer in to work at two different car lots, one high-pressure and one of the "no haggle" style. The difference is shocking, even if things aren't as low-pressure as they pretend at the no haggle places. Don't miss the sidebar photos either - they're a fun counterpoint to the story. He does comment on the impact of the internet either by selling directly on the web or by having well educated consumers change the process because they can't lie about invoice or trade-in value. [via Eatonweb]

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Back in the 70's, the gate to Emily Dickinson's family burial plot was stolen, but it was just recently found in a Vermont antique shop and is being returned to its rightful place. It's an interesting story of the gate being passed through many hands, for a while serving as a fireplace screen, and not having been identified until now. The brass plaque from the 50's which would have clearly identified its source had been removed from the gate (probably when it was originally stolen), and had been returned to the Dickinson Family Association six years ago, at which time a substitute gate had been put up, but now they'll be able to put back up the original.

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Just stopping back here to record, mostly for myself, that my department's volunteer system, known around here as "czarships", has been deconstructed in the entry "The new age of Czarism (and of Czar Czarism)" at samizdata.net. Very entertaining.

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If you're local, or near-local, to Ithaca, this is perhaps the best weekend of the year around these parts, so get out and enjoy yourself. The Ithaca Apple Harvest Festival, Craft Show and Sale starts today and runs through Sunday on the Commons. At the least, go pick up a peck of local apples and bake some pies this weekend. Then, on Saturday, get over to the opening day of the fall Friends of the Library Book Sale, the 3rd largest used book sale in the country. The prices drop each day, so remember to go back next week, and for closing day on the 20th when you can get books for $1 a bag. With the beautiful fall weather finally here, but the snow still holding off, it's going to be a great weekend to go out and enjoy the town. I can't wait!

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Lots of special holidays looming! Tomorrow on the 19th, of course, we get the first Talk Like a Pirate Day. Arrr! Wear your eye patch and cutlass to work, or just go see Pirates of the Caribbean again. Then entertain your more serious side, and celebrate the start of Banned Books Week starting on Saturday. Then close off the weekend with The International Day of Peace on Sunday.

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How did I miss this! I noticed a link to this list of Most Misspelled Cities in America (based on web search data), but nobody told me number 1 is Pittsburgh! I mean, I momentarily thought it might make the top ten, but it's just not that hard to spell. Of course, as the article points out, in the late 1800's the U.S. Board on Geographic Names standardized location spellings after over a century of people naming their towns whatever they wanted, willy-nilly. They ruled that all *-burghs would drop their final "h", except for Pittsburgh, which got an exemption. So, in typical Pittsburgh style, it makes number 1 by virtue of refusing to get with the program. I love it! [via Gael's new Test Pattern]

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I'm late on the bandwagon, but everybody else has been telling their blackout stories, and it's cliche by now, but it really does reflect the type of town you are in. And in my case, it pointed out how much of a small, hippy town I'm really in. It's a small town, so there wasn't panic, because even at rush hour we've got no subways or skyscrapers, so there weren't masses of trapped people. The university even had a heads-up that it was coming, as we got e-mail warning us to shut down our computers so as to avoid power-loss damage. It's a small yet not destitute town, so even though the traffic lights were out, there was the police manpower to put road flares and temporary stop signs at every intersection. It didn't hurt that, with students still out of town, we were still at half-population for the summer. And we're a hippy town, so once dark rolled in I was able to sit on the front porch with a friend listening to the imprompu banj-and-fiddle concert taking place on the opposite corner. Many of the people walking through the neighborhood stopped to listen and dance in the flickering light of the road flares. It was very Little House in the Big Woods, with more citronella.

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I've meant to go to the New York State Fair for the past several years, and yet it always falls the last week of August and I'm either out of town or just busy, but Friday I decided that I didn't have anything that couldn't wait to be done Saturday and I took the day off to drive up to Syracuse and check it out. It had been a long time since I'd even been to a county fair, and I had a great time. The New York fair in particular has really beautiful grounds with nice old buildings for the exhibits. I loved the Arts & Home Center building in particular. It made me start pondering crochet projects of my own that I might enter, though I really don't need any new projects on my plate right now. Some of the quilts totally blew me away though - I don't have anywhere near the technical skill that most of them demonstrated. Even the farming exhibits were pretty interesting to look at. Who doesn't love 4H vegetable sculpture competitions?

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A full teaching schedule for the past couple of weeks has kept me running, but I've been having a great time. It's all content that I personally find interesting, which makes a huge difference. And despite the crazy work schedule I've gotten a few fun outings in. My latest adventure yielded the photo at the top of the page, from here at Cornell's very own Lynah Rink. Very cool!

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Speaking of hometown sports, the Pirates got an image upgrade last week when first baseman hit a woman in a large foam italian sausage costume over the head with his baseball bat at a game against Milwaukee. There is a link to video of the interrupted "Sausage Race" at that link, and it looks a lot worse than it sounds like it really was. Of course, this caused a huge amount of ongoing commentary, particularly in the Pittsburgh press. The large foam representative of the Allegheny County Health Department, Browny the Burger is fired up by mascot abuse, with one woman saying she is glad that she is no longer spreading Browny's anti-E.coli message from inside a large foam target. On the other hand, a retired Pittsburgh Pierogi (foam participant in the traditional "Pierogi Race" at each Pirates game), has come out with a statement in the Sacramento Bee saying that he thinks the sausage took a dive.

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A friend reminded me today of what turns out to have been only a regional phenomenon, Mr. Yuk, a green frowny-face sticker from the 1970s that parents were supposed to mark household poisons with. Mr. Yuk had a dour, dirgeful theme song which was often played as a PSA during cartoons (you can hear the whole, long thing on his website), and he didn't believe in sugar coating things for children:

Mr. Yuk is mean. Mr. Yuk is green.
Home is full of lots of things that children shouldn't touch.
Home is full of bad things that can hurt you very much.
Now there's a man whose face is green that you ought to get to know.
He'll warn you when danger's coming, fast or slow.

Mr. Yuk is mean. Mr. Yuk is green.
When you see him stop and think.
Do not smell. Do not drink.
Do not touch. Do not eat.
Or you will be sick.

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Is dodge ball the next extreme sport? This article thinks so, as do the World Dodgeball Association and the National Amateur Dodgeball Association. As the article points out, the organized, safety-conscious, rules-based version promoted by the WDA isn't the same game that is popping up on college campuses:

The WDA and other dodgeball organizations tone down the game's violence by using lightweight foam-based balls and outlawing head shots, while emphasizing teamwork. At the WDA website, the extensive rules (four "dodgers" on the inside; three "floaters" on the perimeter) read like a story problem from hell's geometry class.

"Everyone's going to have their own house rules, and that's great," Gelman says. "But we have to have a set of rules, because there are tournaments with money involved."

Kent's current rules could be spelled out on a Post-It note. Two teams line up at opposite ends of the court; play begins with a dash for the balls -- usually about 20 -- which are lined up in the center. Each team then retreats with its ammo, and a rubberized free-for-all ensues, with balls slamming off players and walls until one man is left standing. It usually takes just a few minutes.

Shots to the groin are permitted; shots to the head are applauded.

"If you can't take one to the face, you're in the wrong place. Yoga ended half an hour ago," says Marc Ybarsabal, an Ohio State sophomore who was part of the triumph over Kent.

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Working too late leaves me with little substantive to weblog. My latest internet addiction has been loading up on free nickles with Amazon.com trivia. I was very frustrated when only my office computer was offering me trivia questions, and even after clearing my cookies they still won't show up until I visit a subpage or two. But it's a brilliant advertising scheme that has me checking back daily. Hey - those Babylon 5 DVD's are expensive - getting a couple of dollars off doesn't hurt!

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Drunken prank call tip: restrict calls to your local area, as your inebriated state will probably prevent you from correctly converting west-coast time to east-coast, and particularly avoid the Daylight Saving switch as you'll surely miscalculate that 11:30 your time is 3:30 at the house of your friend. Who, by the way, isn't necessarily the person who will answer the phone. You'll probably end up speaking to somebody who neither knows or nor cares whether your friend borrowed your vibrator.

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My hometown's at it again. Pittsburgh has spent the past couple of years in a serious self-promotion drive, and their latest effort involved training taxi drivers as ambassadors for the city, encouraging quality service through a reward system.[via JRE] I'd be seriously disturbed if my taxi driver started playing the clarinet when the traffic got bad.

At least it's better than their $200,000 effort to develop a "Pittsburgh brand" - a major flop, generating a 45 word statement whose only use is fuel for mocking, such as in the Pittsburgh Branding Phrase Generator Tool, provided by the Pittsburgh-centric weblog YinzerMullet. The existence of a weblog with that name is the best summation of modern Pittsburgh I've seen in a while...

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I'm not a big poster person, but over the past few days I've come across a couple of items I'm wishing I had for my walls. I'm tempted to find a poster printer for The Computer Tree family tree of computers of the 50's and 60's.[via Larkfarm] And I saw several One Page Book posters in a local bookstore and while I have no need for a poster of the entirety of Macbeth, I still think it's really cool.

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Wow - I was just checking a flight arrival time on the US Airways site and found this press release linked on their front page: US Airways Implements 'Peace of Mind' Flexible Travel Policy.

ARLINGTON, Va., March 18, 2003 -- US Airways announced today that it has implemented the 90-day "Peace of Mind" flexible travel period, effective tomorrow. The "Peace of Mind" flexible travel policy, which is being implemented due to the conflict in Iraq, allows customers to make changes to itineraries for travel originating March 19 through June 17, 2003, without incurring standard change fees. Travel within the U.S. or between the U.S. and Canada may be rescheduled to originate on or before June 17, 2003.

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Let me put some love out there for the local utility companies. This morning when I got up, there was no heat, no hot water, and no gas coming out of the stove. Not only have they kept my house from blowing up from the gas main which had accumulated water, but they're still out there now tearing up the road and such, and think I'll be hooked back up by midnight. With the low tonight forecast at an entire degree above zero, it will be appreciated.

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If I thought I was disturbed when, around about Thanksgiving this year, I heard John Madden rambling about some Turducken abomination, I am even more disturbed that you can see upclose-and-personal Turducken photos, from someone who ordered one off the internet and actually served it to their friends. (Of course you can order Turducken off the internet....) [via Anita LOL]

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I'm absolutely hopeless with my hair, so I was intruigued by The Traditional Hairdressing Page featuring "classic" hairstyles from the 60's and 70's. Most of the diagrams actually show placement and orientation of curlers and lots of people have left notes and tips. I wish I could get stuff like this to work though - it looks fun so long as I didn't have to do it on a daily basis. Heck, I'm still trying to figure out how hair commercial women with plain straight hair get it to do that shiny single-curtain-of-hair look. They imply it's the shampoo, but I'm starting to wonder if they put something in their hair and dry it in a special way or something.

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The banana extinction story has been getting a lot of press today (though mostly in international media, I've noticed). I had no idea that edible bananas were sterile. I haven't seen any explanation of how you breed a sterile fruit; is it a hybrid or something, like with mules?

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I don't know as much about architecture as I feel I should - it seems like an area I should be interested in, with its balance of design and engineering. It's not a great site for beginning reading, but the collection of images of buildings at The Great Buildings Collection (some of them 3D models, though you need to download special software to view them) is very extensive and detailed. If I get some projects off my plate I might have to order one of the basic books off the bibliography list.

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Driving into Pittsburgh from the west today, an official PennDoT lit sign (of the type that normally warns of bad traffic) read "Brownie Fans - Welcome to Mordor". How nice to see my hometown taking a literary turn to its sports fanaticism. One almost hesitates to point out that in the stories surely being alluded to, those who went into Mordor emerged triumphant.

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Looking for a hobby? Why not try Modern Moist Towelette Collecting. You can get a peek at the beauty and variety this hobby could expose you to in this site's Gallery or enjoy a rousing game of Moist Towelette Concentration!

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I'm swiping this directly from Allen but he is very correct in reminding researchers than without dated research notes you may be undermining your ability to receive patents. With so many of us keeping our records electronically, Stamper, a free PGP Digital Timestamping service, is a very useful resource. Thanks for finding this, Allen!

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An interesting article on the many, many libraries that Andrew Carnegie founded around the world: Deconstructing the Philanthropic Library. It's a brief discussion of why Carnegie chose to found libraries in particular; a large part is his own history of self-education and a belief in a meritocracy. I find the background image odd given the content - it gives an unsubtle message that the article is really about the money. I thought the Carnegie libraries I frequented growing up were quite good, though the main branch attached to The Carnegie Institute was intimidating. [via BookPeople]

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Last night a friend regailed us with a description of the underground tunnel connecting the concourses in the Detroit Metro Airport, and I hesitantly admit that I was suspicious enough of the bizarrely psychadelic nature of the display that he described that I jumped on line and confirmed that commuters through Detriot do indeed get treated to "a wonderful light and sound show" as they rush from gate to gate (select item 7 in the virtual tour for a poor rendition of the tunnel). I'm almost hoping for a layover there sometime, now.

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With minimal artistic license, a snippet of this evening's conversation:

Guy on TV, to skinny girl: You're a stick figure!
Them, to me: You're not a stick figure.
Me: No, I'm three dimensional.
Them: I'm so big, I'm four dimensional!
Me: Yes, you take up time and space....

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A bunch of little links, which I don't have many comments for...

I would normally avoid any "news" related URL containing the word 'heartwarmers', but this picture is the absolutely cutest thing I've seen on the internet all month. [via Eclectica]

While it appears to take a fussier approach to cooking than I prefer in real life, the food weblog Saute Wednesday is very fun fantasy reading. [via Eatonweb]

If you thought NPR's ludicrous linking policy was an abberation, go check out Don't Link to Us!, a log of websites with stupid linking policies. [via RRE]

And while I'm not sure intellectually why this is any more disturbing than visiting a cemetary plot or having an urn of ashes, I'm creeped out by this company which sells LifeGems, artificial diamonds "created from the carbon of your loved one". [via Strange Brew]

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In a minor stroke of luck, I managed to avoid having to go pick up a friend from the mechanic's, as my slightly less fortunate friend incurred a large enough maintainance bill to be allowed to drive the "loaner" for the day. I insisted they take me for a ride, though, when I saw they were driving a behemoth "family truckster" style station wagon, complete with stained bench seats, clunking gear shift, and that boat-like ride. I'd forgotten how different they were from an SUV - they're as big, but they ride much closer to the ground. It was a major nostalgia trip. I kept feeling like I ought to be sitting in the back with a bevy of siblings or schoolmates.

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In a similar vein to the "Ryan and Jacob are fakes" spam I mentioned last week, I got this fascinating message the other day:

Subject: Time Travelers PLEASE HELP!!!
Hello,
If you are a time traveler or alien and or in possession of government or alien technology I need your help! My entire life and health has been messed with by evil beings! If you have access to the carbon copy replica model #50 3000 series, the dimensional warp, temporal reversion or something similar please reply! I simply need the safest method of transferring my consciousness or returning to my younger self with my current mind/memory. I need an advanced time traveler to work with who can help me, I would prefer someone with access to teleportation as well as a variety different types of time travel. This is not a joke! I am serious! Please send a separate email to me at: [XXXXXX]@aol.com if you can help! Thanks

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I always enjoy reading her advice, but Sars earned herself a big batch of approval in today's Vine when she took a woman to task for wanting to put her cat to sleep because it kept peeing on things. Sars is always very outspoken about pets being a responsibility, even when they become old or sick or develop a behavior problem. As she says, your pet is part of your family. If you can't handle that level of responsibility, get a plant.

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In case you hadn't heard, and I didn't until someone pointed it out to me, M&M has announced that the new color will be purple! That's a much better choice than the aqua and pink which, frankly, clashed with the existing primary colored M&Ms. Even the shade of purple they are using is a bit off, and should be less pastel. This article slipped in the fact that the purple candies will only be included for a limited time, though, starting in August. That's disappointing.

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There's nothing so satisfying as being handy around the house, and there's nothing that makes you feel quite so handy with so little actual skill as a power drill. Sure, I just put some holes in a dowel to hang a quilt, but I got to test bit sizes and produce sawdust and fiddle in my toolbox. It was a lovely little power tool experience.

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If you enjoy snarky commentary on odd pop culture artifacts, make your way over to Culture Freak. Advertisements, trademarks, and Americana all get their own photo gallery section. And if you actually go into the essays and archives, there's some more contentful, though still entertaining, analysis of modern culture. A good "between problems" browsing site. [via PCJM]

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In my neverending quest to keep y'all up to date on the absurdity in the world, I must point out the Wal-Mart Ham Trial in which a woman is claiming that a 13-pound ham fell on her head in a Wal-Mart and caused her to develop epilepsy. Wal-Mart responds: "The ham could not have struck Mrs. Vasquez, ... Even in Wal-Mart, Isaac Newton's law of gravity still exists." [via Bad Hair Days]

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Yes, I certainly owe you all a review of Star Wars: Attack of the Clones after the aborted theme-week attempt. In three words: I liked it. And, to close off the Star Wars link-of-the-day theme, you can now buy your own custom made light saber at this site [via #!/usr/bin/girl]. Cool!

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If you don't get their catalog allow me to point out that Land's End women's tank tops are currently on sale for $8. These are absolutely great tank tops, with high enough arm holes and wide enough straps you can wear any bra under them, and they're out of a really good cotton knit fabric that lasts forever. I have two that are only just starting to wear out now after ten years. Even at the $9 each that shipping and tax add on, this is a great price for these and I'd recommend them to anyone.

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In another reason to love Amazon, I was shipped a DVD by them last week which, this week, was lowered in price by $4. How do I know the price dropped? I just got e-mail from them letting me know that they're crediting my credit card with $4. Of course, one could also see this as a reason to dislike Amazon since I'm sure they dropped their price to stay competative with other stores and keep people from returning the movie and buying it locally at a lower price. But from the selfish consumer point of view, it was great.

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