Feel tired? That's because you're heavier.

Science Quake May Have Made Earth Wobble--US Scientists
Reuters.com
If I understand the basics of gravity correctly, then...

(notice the big if?)
If the recent HUGE quake made the Earth more compact (as is claimed by the scientists in the article above), then the gravitational force that it exerts on YOU is greater, too. For the same reason that the Earth is rotating EVER-SO-SLIGHTLY faster than it was before the quake, you are EVER-SO-SLIGHTLY heavier.

Or maybe it was all that punkin' pie.

OK, physics people - if this is wildly inaccurate, by all means, post comments and educate us.

Quoth Robyn Hitchcock :

You're basically a filter for your experiences. I suppose when you're younger you have to rely more on your intuition, and when you're older you can rely on your experience. I don't sense the net in which I catch ideas. To me it's just like I have a big broad net and all of these ideas come like plankton or krill or something, you know, and I gather them all in. If it works, I make a song out of it and if it doesn't, I just sort of chuck it back in the sea. Sometimes you just have to do a bit more living, and then the songs will come.

This was taken from a short Studio 360 interview [Link to the archived show] in November. I liked the metaphor, specifically for the way he pinpoints that part of us that we never really see- the part that makes us see Minivans everywhere once you decide that you have to buy one, or the part of us to which whatever is appealing or noticeable, is appealing or noticeable.

Happy Christmas, everyone.

Now that there's a moment to breathe, I wanted to say:

HAPPY CHRISTMAS, EVERYONE

I hope that everyone had a blast - we did.

Edison, with the look of the stately captain - or engineer, as the case may be.

GabeusCorpus

Ana Tobin, again,

GabeusCorpus

Angelic Ana Tobin, taking a nap on the seat in the gondola car

GabeusCorpus

A very sweet candid shot of Lesley

GabeusCorpus

Going out on the train with Dad and Barb this weekend, Dad and Barb and I got a few great shots of everyone...

GabeusCorpus

Brandon Bird: "Killing Machine"

I never cease to be thrilled and amused by the imaginations of creative people. Brandon Bird has painted a stunning portrait of Bea Arthur snapping the neck of a velociraptor. Thank you, Brandon, thank you.

Brandon Bird: "Killing Machine"

Baseball is presidential, war is not.

Regardless of whether you trend liberal or conservative or free-thinker or just erratic, sometimes you just gotta love John McCain. More interesting than him speaking his mind ( no news there, really) was the fact that on the same day, the story that AP pegged to his possible "Presidential Hopes" was his strong stand against baseball breaking out among stereoids - fueled atheletes. BEcause your opinion about sports is what makes you a good candidate, not how you would manage a war...
Yahoo! News - McCain Has 'No Confidence' in Rumsfeld

Yahoo! News - McCain's Steroids Push Puts Him in '08 Mix

Not to be out done...

Gabe's tree is nice, but where are the illuminated eyeballs?



Yes, Jami not only agreed to this, she encouraged me!

Happy Holidays

The Hidden (in Plain Sight) Persuaders

The New York Times > Magazine > The Hidden (in Plain Sight) Persuaders
The article is long, but worth the effort.

Yikes. This article from the New York Times Magazine details a particular company that recruits volunteers for word-of-mouth "buzz" marketing campaigns, and it intrigued me all of the way through. This has a lot of implications, and there are a lot of items to think about here - maybe more to worry about than to be excited about.

People are out on the street, pimping products with genuine revolutionary zeal, who have been put up to it by companies paying 6-figure fees to create sales. The people seem to do it for a sense of belonging, for knowing about something cool before other people do, and it gives them something to talk about. In short, it makes them feel cool. One person feels like it's changed his life, brought him out of his shell, enabled him to engage people in all sorts of public places and venues. What they (the so-called "BzzAgents") don't talk about is their motivations. Most people won't TELL you they're doing "buzz" marketing - and that has, to me, some creepy implications for the commodifation of everyday commercial speech. Sure, they genuinely likethe product they're "Bzzing" (in the parlance of the company that the article is about), but they're NOT telling you that they have another motivation for pimping the product. It's not monetary currency, but the "BzzAgents" are getting paid in a sort of social currency that renders their recommendation - no matter how genuine - duplicitous.

As someone who is a compulsive "recommender" this idea is both attractive and repulsive. I love to talk and I love to recommend things that are good to people. But I also have a great love of authenticity.

In the long run, if you work in marketing, you'll need to know about this, because in an era where people are exhausted with advertising and marketing messages, this is working. And I'm not sure I'm pleased about it.

Your thoughts?

I haven't been feeling very "Christmassy" yet, so this weekend I took the kids out to buy a Christmas tree... And this picture, taken this evening, shows what you get when a 3 year old and a 1-1/2 year old hang the orrnaments.

GabeusCorpus

A Taliban of our Very Own (RANT ALERT!)

Apparently, they had to go somewhere -- they're here, promoting a restrictive and fundamentalist agenda from within our own government. It gives me the creeps:

---

A "Gay book ban" has been proposed in a bill by Republican Representative Gerald Allen, in the state of Alabama. Books with gay characters and textbooks "suggesting that homosexuality is natural" would be banned from libraries and schools.

Other great ideas promoted by Mr. Allen include laws requiring women to wear Burqas and prohibiting men from shaving their beards. It's moments like this that I wonder what "Freedom and Democracy in Iraq" is going to mean.

---

Now... I'm not sure if this is scarier, or just as scary...
From the Washington Post:
Some Abstinence Programs Mislead Teens, Report Says
Some of the items that are being taught to children in government sponsored "abstinence only" sex-ed programs -- using our tax dollars -- are flatly false an out of step with medical knowledge on the subject. What makes this creepier than driver's-ed style hyperbole is that these kids are being left unable to protect themselves, should they fall off of the abstinence bandwagon. Maybe even more infuriating is that it's MY tax dollars that are paying for "culture war" propaganda in our children's classrooms.
A few low-lights:

Among the misconceptions cited by Waxman's investigators:

• A 43-day-old fetus is a "thinking person."

• HIV, the virus that causes AIDS, can be spread via sweat and tears.

• Condoms fail to prevent HIV transmission as often as 31 percent of the time in heterosexual intercourse.

One curriculum, called "Me, My World, My Future," teaches that women who have an abortion "are more prone to suicide" and that as many as 10 percent of them become sterile.

If I heard that someone had tried to tell Ana Tobin this, there would definitely be a parent-teacher conference:

Some course materials cited in Waxman's report present as scientific fact notions about a man's need for "admiration" and "sexual fulfillment" compared with a woman's need for "financial support." One book in the "Choosing Best" series tells the story of a knight who married a village maiden instead of the princess because the princess offered so many tips on slaying the local dragon. "Moral of the story," notes the popular text: "Occasional suggestions and assistance may be alright, but too much of it will lessen a man's confidence or even turn him away from his princess."

The kicker:

Alma Golden, deputy assistant secretary for population affairs in the Department of Health and Human Services, said in a statement that Waxman's report is a political document that does a "disservice to our children." Speaking as a pediatrician, Golden said, she knows "abstaining from sex is the most effective means of preventing the sexual transmission of HIV, STDs and preventing pregnancy."

And it seems that government-sponsored misinformation is threatening to become a leading cause of ignorance.

Now if you'll excuse me, I have some letters to write.

One for Gabe

For the one who sends me so many weird music links, here's one from Blogger via moi.

http://www.geekspeakweekly.com/cowbell/

Vainglorious

The price you pay for giving me unfettered posting rights...

Wallace Stevens once wrote: "A poem is a meteor."

I wrote:

"LuluBelle"

A fat black sleepy cat
collapses by a window
under the weight of warm dusty sunlight.

If a poem is a meteor,
then I am a cat,
but I would like to be a meteor,
which is a very un-cat-like desire.
This is the source of all human suffering.

- Richard

Extract your own DNA

Part of what makes science so cool is the fact that much of it is so weird. The Guardian Unlimited (UK) has published an article about a "List of 100 things to do before you die" as suggested by a group of scientists. Among the more bizarre ones was this gross, but cool item:

Extract your own DNA by spitting gargled salt water into diluted washing-up liquid and slowly dribbling ice-cold gin down the side of the glass. Spindly white clumps which form in the mixture are, basically, you

Another cool item claims that Manchester researchers are testing foot-pads that would allow you to climb buildings like Spider Man. Rock on.

The article:
Guardian Unlimited: Turn yourself into a diamond: tips from science on a good life, and death

Weird Al Dontgetsick: Food safety music

Yet another one from those clever Boing Boing people:
Food safety music sung o the tunes of (mostly) 60's and 70's hits, made by a food toxicologist at the University of California. Complete with powerpoint slideshows...

My personal favorite? "They Might Kill You/ We are the Microbes" to the tune of "We will Rock You/ We are the Champions".

A sample:

Buddy you're a young man, dumb man, careless
And you're gonna make someone quite sick someday
You got spores on your plate
They'll incubate
There's trouble if you cross-contaminate

Microbes they might kill you
Microbes they might kill you...

Tasteless,
Priceless.

An odd product for Target's assortment...

I bet that this will be removed pretty quickly, but for the time being, this is pretty funny. See Target.com's product page for Marijuana

This, too, brought to us by the fine people at BoingBoing.net... their post also has a link to a screenshot, since it's sort of expected that they'll remove it.

Truth be told, I'm testing out HELLO, which makes it easy to load pictures to the blog. Nifty, indeed. Check out this picture of Edison...

GabeusCorpus

I just recently located some photos we took at the Sunset Grille in August. Here's a slightly blurry, but no less cute shot of Ana Tobin.

GabeusCorpus

HAPPY THANKSGIVING

To all of those I didn't get to say it to in person, Happy Thanksgiving. There are many, many things to be grateful for, and you are most likely one of them, so pat yourself on the back.

Here is another thing to be grateful for (courtesy of BoingBoing.net):
The BananaGuard

I am so relieved.

A quick glance at the layers of the Ocean

Dive! Dive! Dive!

From WIRED - a breakdown of the layers of the ocean. Nift-o-matic.

Introducing Cognatatorium

I like the "Blog" medium, and I know quite a few interesting people, with interesting ideas who live in different places and at different times. The Cognatatorium is something like an aquarium for thoughts, or a large hall with a pool in it, for ideas to gather and compete or possibly synchronize, but all of that is entirely up to you. At the very least, I hope that it will be a place where interesting things are shared.