The Quietest Room in the World | Industries & Trends | Twin Cities Business

I always thought it would be cool to be in a super quiet place, but it looks like it really just drives you crazy. If you're alone with only your thoughts and the noises generated by your body for company, turns out that's not really a good thing.

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nsf.gov - News - This Is Your Brain--It's Organized Like a Woven Cloth and Not So Tangled As Once Thought- All Images - US National Science Foundation (NSF) - US National Science Foundation (NSF)

Sophisticated scans reveal how the brain is physically structured. Brain fibers are actually woven together like cloth, then stacked in sheets, which fold as we grow. Really fascinating.

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On disobedience...

I'm reading Stephen Ambrose's Band of Brothers, the famous story of Easy Company of the 506th Regiment of the 101st Airborne infantry. (As a side note, it was interesting to learn that the author lived in Bay St. Louis up until his death in 2002, and he was instrumental in the founding of the World War II Museum in New Orleans. Next time we're down that way, we'll have to visit.)

There is a scene later in the book, in February of 1945, when the Americans had pressed into Germany, maneuvering the Germans towards surrender. The soldiers of Easy Company had survived D-Day, Operation Market Garden in Holland, and the siege of Bastogne in the Battle of the Bulge, and were slowly beginning to think that if they watched their asses they might actually make it out of the war alive.

Colonel Sink ordered soldiers from Easy Company to make a night patrol across German lines, with orders to capture some German soldiers for interrogation. The patrol went so well that Colonel Sink ordered a second patrol the next night. Ambrose says, "In the meantime, however, it has snowed, and turned colder. The snow was frozen on top, crunchy, noisy. The cold air had cleared out the sky, and the moon was shining. Winters thought a patrol under such circumstances was suicidal, so he decided to disobey orders." Winters had the men assigned to the patrol to wait out the colonel, who got drunk on some omnipresent looted wine, and passed out. The next morning Winters lied to the colonel and said they had made the patrol but had not captured any Germans.

This act of insubordination prompted Ambrose to explain by quoting another military author, Glenn Gray, in The Warriors:

"To be required to carry out orders in which he does not believe, given by men who are frequently far removed from the realities with which the orders deal...is the familiar lot of the combat soldier...It is a great boon of front-line positions that disobedience is frequently possible, since supervision is not very exact where danger of death is present. Many a conscientious soldier has discovered he could reinterpret military orders in his own spirit before obeying them."

I guess it should be obvious that such things would happen when lives are at stake, but I'm familiar with the mentality that we will do what we deem to make the most sense, sometimes in defiance of what we've been told, when what we've been told doesn't make much sense, and the consequences of insubordination are likely to be delayed if they ever happen at all.

This book to me is a meditation on what it means to be a man. I'd previously written about Major Richard Winters, the hero of the book and the TV series. I don't know how I would act if really put to the test. I remember reading in Shelby Foote's Civil War narrative about the Battle of Shiloh, and that early on the Confederates were routing the Federals, who were caught completely by surprise. Panicked Union soldiers had fled to the river banks farthest from the action. General Grant was late arriving at the scene of battle, and as he and his staff disembarked from the river boats and headed towards the battle, deserters shouted that they were whipped, that they were done for. One of Grant's assistants started to force these men back towards the battlefield at gun point, but Grant told him to lay off, saying that fear was a contagious thing, to leave these men where they were.

LEMMETWEETTHATFORYOU

A little Twitter trolling widget. Here I am as Paula Deen.

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Obama

Bro move: deaf guy signs "I'm proud of you" to Obama, Obama signs back his thanks and moves on.

In cancer science, many discoveries don't hold up | Reuters

Oh well, this is pretty cheery stuff...

(Reuters) - A former researcher at Amgen Inc has found that many basic studies on cancer -- a high proportion of them from university labs -- are unreliable, with grim consequences for producing new medicines in the future.

During a decade as head of global cancer research at Amgen, C. Glenn Begley identified 53 "landmark" publications -- papers in top journals, from reputable labs -- for his team to reproduce. Begley sought to double-check the findings before trying to build on them for drug development.

Result: 47 of the 53 could not be replicated. He described his findings in a commentary piece published on Wednesday in the journal Nature...

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World's Worst Mix Tape Boombox Challenge

Aziz lost.

Abandoned Pianos - An Unlikely Urbex Attraction | Urban Ghosts |

Abandoned Pianos - An Unlikely Urbex Attraction | Urban Ghosts |:

We moved to Bay St. Louis when I was in the second grade, and lived for a few months in a big, scary rented house on DeMontluzin Street. One day I was exploring with my new friend Scott Tudury, and we poked through an abandoned house a block over on St. John's Street, which was a "black street." The house had big holes in the floor and I distinctly remember an old piano was still in there. It looked complicated and heavy, partially fallen through the floor. I wondered about its story.

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Bring Art Nouveau Back | I Can Has Internets

Okay, it's time for me to get off my butt and get started on my next mosaic--a border for Nan's bathroom mirror. Haven't found a pattern I like yet, looks like I will have to freehand it...aaargh.

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Not Just Movies: Life of Brian on Friday Night, Saturday Morning

A recently unearthed Youtube video of a classic TV debate over the controversial movie The Life of Brian, between two members of the Monty Python troupe, versus an Anglican bishop and conservative broadcaster. Interesting to watch the tone of the interview change once the older guys come in, and Cleese and Palin try to get a word in edgewise. The elderly gentlemen each lay down an impenetrable torrent of words dripping with condescension. It is interesting to listen to the eloquent, mannered, but very passive aggressive digs made about "this squalid number" by these two elder spokesmen.

Excerpt from the Not Just Movies blog:

...The Christians who accuse the Pythons of immaturity and juvenilia interrupt and speak with single-minded anger, while the Pythons address each point respectfully (if comically) and sincerely. Part of the drama of the program is watching Cleese and Palin slowly lose their patience as the unyielding strains of Muggeridge's and Stockwood's attack force them to keep repeating the same basic arguments and preventing the full range of their well-considered, well-researched view of their film and of Christ...

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Rhetological Fallacies

Fascinating analysis and visual reference created by David McCandless at Information is Beautiful. He analyzes the errors in the kinds of rhetoric we hear from politicians, pundits, advertisers, religious leaders, or others who are trying sway our opinions. Here is a breakdown of the kinds of manipulations used.

Excerpt:


"The word ‘rhetological’ is made up. Just so I can munge two types of entity: rhetorical techniques and logical fallacies. Both are used heavily by institutional powers – governments, religions, political parties, across the entire spectrum – to sway opinion, confuse and obfuscate. And, unfortunately, we internalise them, like bad habits, into our own decision-making and mental processes."...


Here is the process applied to the speech of a British Catholic bishop on the subject of same-sex marriage.

I think we would be better off if we would recognize how we are being influenced. How can we sort out the truth of what we hear when we are subject to a hornet's nest of manipulations? I think we start by using the example of the little boy who points out that the Emperor has no clothes. We have to call things out for what they are. I think we all exist in a certain trance state, subject to a variety of illusions that have been sold to us, illusions that serve someone's purpose. One quick example would be the illusion that tap water is not safe to drink, and if you want to drink water, you must buy it from the store, because bottled water is safe and delicious.


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Times Higher Education - Pseuds' corner

Interesting analysis of what makes bad nonfiction bad, by a very British writer. Excerpt:

• The Third Characteristic of Bad Books: their central arguments depend on special definitions or special knowledge peculiar to the author.

 A persistent rhetorical sequence in bad books is "assumption creep". Things described in early chapters as speculation or conjecture soon become likely, and are then taken as established facts. The question "Could the Cathar 'treasure' like the 'treasure' Sauniere discovered, have consisted primarily of a secret? Could that secret have been related in some unimaginable way to something that became known as the Holy Grail?"

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Just saying...

Who are the spenders?

Link via Think Progress.

Woodcut Maps: Handcrafted wood-inlay maps, designed by you.

Brilliant concept--you upload a map of your choosing, a woodcut artist sends it back to you as a finished work. Awesome.

Found via Boing Boing.

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Dragonborn Destinations from GamerPrint - Video Game T-shirts, Hoodies and Prints

Skyrim art prints and media found via Neatorama.

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Republican Propaganda Posters

Artist Bas van Oerle presents a series of propaganda posters for the Republican presidential candidates. 

Theaters will charge premium on 2D movies in order to lower the cost of 3D movie tickets - Boing Boing

What? I'm not surprised, but it seems unfair. I don't much care for 3D movies. They don't seem to add much to the experience.

A few weeks ago I went to see a movie with Dale and Keith, my two brothers-in-law. It was fun to get out. Keith wanted to see, what was it, John Hancock, John Carter, Jimmy Carter, something like that.

It was about a Confederate soldier who is out West after the Civil War for some reason--we missed the first few minutes because Dale was running late. John Carpenter finds some kind of amulet and when he picks it up he is transported to another planet, where adventure ensues. There is a lot of CGI.

The 3D glasses kept sliding down my nose, although they did fit over my regular glasses. The screen looked kind of dim, which I hear is a problem where theaters don't light the 3D enough. I know Michael Bay wrote a letter to the projectionists of America asking them to make sure his Transformers movie was lit well enough to make it look like a good movie. And the projectionists of America took offense, and one wrote Michael Bay a nice letter back. All I know is that the John Glenn movie was annoyingly dim. Not taking sides on the Michael Bay thing, but he could be right on this one. If you're gonna show 3D, light it up!

I guess the bottom line here is that 3D is an expensive fad in which The Man has invested a lot of money, so it looks like we're stuck with it. By the way, Roger Ebert thinks 3D sucks, too.

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Top 10 Lessons of the Iraq War - By Stephen M. Walt | Foreign Policy

Lesson #1:  The United States lost.
The first and most important lesson of Iraq war is that we didn't win in any meaningful sense of that term. The alleged purpose of the war was eliminating Saddam Hussein's weapons of mass destruction, but it turns out he didn't have any. Oops. Then the rationale shifted to creating a pro-American democracy, but Iraq today is at best a quasi-democracy and far from pro-American. The destruction of Iraq improved Iran's position in the Persian Gulf -- which is hardly something the United States intended -- and the costs of the war (easily exceeding $1 trillion dollars) are much larger than U.S. leaders anticipated or promised. The war was also a giant distraction, which diverted the Bush administration from other priorities (e.g., Afghanistan) and made the United States much less popular around the world...

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Travel Posters For Lazy People

Awesomeness...

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Listening to Xanax:

or How America learned to stop worrying about worrying and pop its pills instead.

The author takes a mostly positive position on the impact of anxiety medications as a way to cope with the stress of modern life, or modern American life, anyway. I think that anxiety medications touch off the addictive cycle, and don't help us learn to deal with the things that make us anxious. I think they are an end run on coping. On the other hand, they do work. I still think every form of refuge has its price. I think there is a lot of commerce behind the idea that this is the way to go. But you could also say that my livelihood and the industry of what I do has a stake in calling anxiety medications into question. I can see that, but I think I'm right.



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Embarrassment: Three stories

1. Invalid Card

We were on our way back from visiting my Mom this past New Year's Eve eve. Our last stop was at a Ruby Tuesdays' in Athens, TN, because they have a good salad bar. It was a good thing that I remembered where we ate, because a couple days later I opened my wallet and noticed that my debit card was gone. I'm familiar with that brief panic, then a search of my memory for the last place I remember using the card. This was the third time I'd left it at a place of business. How did these lapses happen? Well, I don't know. If I did know, it would never have happened to begin with. I know how I do keep my card--I see it and think to myself, there's my card, I better not forget it. What happens when I forget it? I'm not sure.

I feel like it's at the Ruby Tuesday's so I Google up the phone number and call, then wait while somebody puts the phone down for a while. Finally a manager comes on the line and, sure enough, they have my card! She is very nice about it, says this happens "all the time," and offers to put my card in the mail. I am grateful and promise to be a loyal Ruby Tuesdays customer for life.

Time passes--a week goes by. I wonder how long it takes the mail to make it up from Athens, TN. I figured one day, two days? I thought about calling the place again, but I didn't want to be pushy about it. So I waited. A second week went by. I find out that I've gotten pretty debit card-dependent. I'm not used to carrying cash. I kept not having money when I wanted to buy something. It was like I was back in 2008 all over again.

One day I thought, well, this is ridiculous. I'm just going to the bank and have them cancel the old card out and give me a new one. So that's what I did. They told me that my new card would be arriving in the mail, after about a week. The next day, Old Cardy, freshly canceled, arrived in the mail from Ruby Tuesday's. Oh well.

Right on time a week later, my new card finally arrived. I called to activate it, we went out to the Mexican place for dinner, but my new card didn't work yet. I used Nan's card--no big deal. The next day, Nan and I were at the big Wal-Mart in Kingsport, and we agreed that I'd give the new card a second chance in case it took time for the activation to "go through." I didn't want to be embarrassed by the cashier, so I figured I'd try the Self Check-out.

I had failed to consider how the Self Check-Out walks you through the process with a helpful but loud woman's voice, "PLACE THE NEXT ITEM!" It's all well and good until I swiped my card, and the machine bellowed, "INVALID CARD, PLEASE TRY AGAIN!" Heads were turning.  I tried again, glutton for punishment that I am, and once again the Self Check-out robot hollered, "INVALID CARD. FOR ASSISTANCE PLEASE CALL THE MANAGER!" Once again I got Nan's card and we were able finally to get the hell out of there.

[Epilogue: I had to go by the bank and have the lady put some code in, because when I cancelled the other card, it put some kind of fraud alert on the account and you couldn't just walk into Mordor and activate the new card.]

2. Down in My Back

A few months ago I was having an episode of back spasms and I'd made myself an appointment with my nurse practitioner, Kellie, at the St. Charles Clinic. She had graciously fit me in, but I had to wait a while. The lobby was crowded, and I ran into one current client and two former clients. I was not very presentable, but it's okay.

The nurse finally stood at the door and called my name. When I tried to stand, I had a back spasm that caused me to have to gut it out for a moment, halfway between seated and standing. (These things hurt really bad, but I've learned to just hold on, they will pass. The worst thing I can do is to give up ground and then have to do the same movement all over again. I'm okay sitting, okay standing, but getting from one position to the other is the tricky part.)

So there I am trying to get up, waiting for my spasm to pass. A lady sitting nearby hollered out to the nurse and staff and anybody who could hear, "HE CAN'T GET UP! Y'ALL ARE GONNA HAVE TO BRING HIM A WHEELCHAIR! HE CAN'T GET UP!" I was unable to turn my head to see who this was, my guardian angel, but in as normal a voice as possible, I said, "I'm gonna be fine. Thanks, though." And I was okay once I stood up.

3. Bad Dog

We enrolled Gizzy in behavior training at the Petsmart in Kingsport. And of course it's really pet owner training, because we're as much the problem as he is, it turns out. I can accept this. It's odd to be the client, and it's odd to be the client in a corner of the store that is on view by all the customers.

Our guru, Antoinette, really has taught us a lot. It is somewhat embarrassing to me because she uses established principles of behavior training that I know very well, and all her advice makes perfect sense. But as parents to a dog with a behavior problem, we can't see the forest for the trees.

Antoinette is working with us on how to take Gizzy out in public--when to reward him, how to encourage him to be more sociable and get over his fear/aggression. We're leaving the Petsmart, Nan has Gizzy on a leash, walking out past the checkout counters through the crowd of customers. Antoinette walks before Nan, hollering out to the store, "EVERYBODY STAND BACK! DO NOT TRY TO PET THIS DOG! DO NOT APPROACH THIS DOG!" Nan's expression as she followed behind, attached to this adorable six pound psychopath by a green leash, was priceless.

2011 Internet Memes: The 50 Funniest Memes of the Year

What I love most about internet memes is that the crowd-sourced humor is a kind of meritocracy where the cream rises to the top, and some of it represents the cutting edge of pop culture and funny. I love Baby Godfather:

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Unseen Titanic

National Geographic photo gallery from the Titanic.

Sailing in Luxury
A gilded clock rests intact on an electric fireplace in the elegant Straus suite, which looked like the one on the Olympic (next photo). Isidor Straus, an owner of Macy’s department store, and his wife, Ida, died together after she refused to get into a lifeboat without him. His body was found wearing a fur-lined coat, a gray suit, brown boots, and black silk socks.

The few, the proud, the very rich « The Berkeley Blog

...Upon closer inspection, the Forbes list reveals that six Waltons—all children (one daughter-in-law) of Sam or James “Bud” Walton the founders of Wal-Mart—were on the list. The combined worth of the Walton six was $69.7 billion in 2007—which equated to the total wealth of the entire bottom thirty percent! ...

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The Overjustification Effect « You Are Not So Smart

The Overjustification Effect « You Are Not So Smart:

The Misconception: There is nothing better in the world than getting paid to do what you love.

The Truth: Getting paid for doing what you already enjoy will sometimes cause your love for the task to wane because you attribute your motivation as coming from the reward, not your internal feelings....

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Reality Check

via Dan Gurewitch...

Breaking It Down - Page 1 - News - Houston - Houston Press

Breaking It Down - Page 1 - News - Houston - Houston Press:


It may not be PTSDs or brain injuries that pose the most long-term danger to our surviving vets from their Middle East tours.

A A AComments (9)By John Nova Lomax Wednesday, Mar 14 2012

The real problem is back injury leading to chronic back pain.
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Stratocam

Stratocam takes the most beautiful landscape satellite photographs from Google Maps, as voted on by visitors, and switches them every few seconds, with a fullscreen mode.

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Act One. Mister Daisey Goes to China. | Mr. Daisey and the Apple Factory | This American Life--updated...

Act One. Mister Daisey Goes to China. | Mr. Daisey and the Apple Factory | This American Life:

Mike Daisey performs an excerpt that was adapted for radio from his one-man show "The Agony and the Ecstasy of Steve Jobs." A lifelong Apple superfan, Daisey sees some photos online from the inside of a factory that makes iPhones, starts to wonder about the people working there, and flies to China to meet them. His show restarts a run at New York's Public Theater later this month. (39 minutes)


But, hold the phone! There is an update, in fact, a retraction!


And then a response to the retraction...

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Breaking Bad POV compilation...

Skyrim Mom (skyrimmom) on Twitter

Skyrim Mom (skyrimmom) on Twitter:

On true companionship: "I really miss Lydia! Is she out there somewhere? Will I run into her eventually? She has half my gold!"

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What is the most hauntingly beautiful song? - Quora

Top vote getter so far is Johnny Cash's Hurt. Oh, man. That one will rip your guts out. Here you go,if you can stand it...

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Things I've Said to My Children: Honey | Flickr - Photo Sharing!

Artist dad immortalizes things his kids say...

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It's an Annoying Song (After All) - Jason Richards - Entertainment - The Atlantic

In pop music, what's the line between catchy and irritating?

Loren Javier/flickr

The musician Robert B. Sherman, who died last week at 86, penned a ton of beloved songs with his brother Richard, including the Oscar-winning soundtrack to Mary Poppins and the music fromChitty Chitty, Bang Bang. But his most enduring accomplishment may be the most irritating song of all time: "It's a Small World (After All)."...

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Where the Wild Things Are, as read by Christopher Walken

Bountygate: waiting on the sentence...

A couple Fridays ago NFL commissioner Goodell gave a news conference in which he announced that the league had concluded an investigation into allegations that the New Orleans Saints had for three years maintained a "bounty" program that not only paid for big plays, but also rewarded injuries to opposing players, including "knockouts" and "cart-offs."

It was ironic that I've been obsessively watching my DVD's of Super Bowl 44, along with select "best games of the 2009 season." My favorite is the Monday Night Football game against the New England Patriots in which the Saints scored seemingly at will and made a statement with their 38-17 win, and during which Brees achieved the highest possible passer rating. The way Brees looked off the safety and hit Devery Henderson for a long bomb, the way he hit Marcus Colston in stride on a back shoulder throw, or the way Pierre Thomas took a screen pass and wove through the defense for a touchdown. All of these were things of beauty.

 I needed more. So I ordered a DVD of the NFC championship game against the Minnesota Vikings, and had it queued up when the bountygate news broke. The Saints certainly went after Favre, and I knew Williams was known to say that if you kill the head, the body will die. I'm not proud to think that this is how we had to beat the Vikings, but I didn't really see any attempts to harm Brett Favre. TV analyst and former QB Troy Aikman didn't have any problem with the way the Saints were going after Brett Favre. I also recall that in Super Bowl 42, the Giants defense relentlessly attacked Tom Brady and put many, many hits on him, reducing his effectiveness in that game. I didn't feel great about the way that Kurt Warner was decleated  by Remi Ayodele after that interception Warner threw late in the first half of the divisional playoff game. I understand it was a clean hit, and I know Drew Brees has taken similar hits before. In fact, he took a number of shots in the NFC championship game.

I hate hearing some people question whether the Super Bowl victory after the 2009 season was deserved. I don't think there's any doubt that the Saints earned the title through their play. Refs were on the field to enforce the rules. Moreover, the league reviews plays and fines players for called and uncalled violations. Anthony Hargrove was fined for his late hit on Brett Favre following a handoff on an endaround in the NFC championship game. He denies having collected on any bounties for that hit, but did not go so far as to deny knowledge of any bounty system.

At this point, Williams has apologized for being a "participant in a pay-for-performance program." Roger Goodell made clear that it was more than pay for performance, that it was pay for knockouts and cart-offs. General Manager Micky Loomis and head coach Sean Payton, after several days of silence, issued a joint statement saying they took "full responsibility" for "violations disclosed by the NFL during their investigation of our club." Drew Brees, meanwhile, issued a statement denying participation in any such program and denying knowledge of its "real existence," whatever that means.

Now, what of the defensive players, some of whom had to be among the 22 to 27 involved? Middle linebacker Jonathan Vilma was said to have put up $10,000 to whoever could knock Brett Favre out of the NFC championship game. Vilma has only indirectly addressed the issue on Twitter, getting support for fellow players and followers, retweeting some of the hateful comments. Former free safety Darren Sharper admitted to there having been a player-run cash pool for big plays but denied there having been bounties. Former strong side lineback Scott Fujita similarly admitted to "pay for performance" but denied knowledge of bounties for injury. Brett Favre, meanwhile, told Peter King that he had no ill will towards the Saints and that he was not surprised or angered by the news about the bounties.

Apparently the league first investigated the matter in early 2010, players didn't admit to anything, so the investigation stalled out. Loomis at that time agreed to look into the matter internally and make sure nothing like this was going on, but the league says he did not follow through, nor did Sean Payton. A second allegation was made late in 2011 that the program was still going on, so the league got permission and cooperation from team owner Tom Benson to have full access to team emails, text messages, etc. It was during this second round of investigation that 18,000 documents of over 50,000 pages were reviewed. The fact that Goodell stated that experts were brought in to verify the identities of certain individuals shows how much of an investment the league put into the matter.

So now the Who Dat Nation waits for the other shoe to drop. A few weeks ago our biggest worry was the status of the contract negotiations for the Big Three of Drew Brees, Carl Nicks, and Marques Colston. We were hyped about the very real possibility of the Saints being the first team to host a Super Bowl next season. We just needed some help on the defensive front seven, and maybe Loomis and new coordinatory Steve Spagnuolo could work some magic.

Oh well. Can we be the new Oakland Raiders--bad and proud of it? I don't think that's going to happen. What will be the identity of our team going forward? So much is in the air. We don't even know who will be on the field, or who will be coaching them. There is no doubt that the NFL is going to make the Saints pay for their arrogance and disrespect of the rules. Hard times to be a Saints fan. But they're still family and I love them just the same.

All dogs go to...

Sensitive Man

My hero Marc Maron is in this awesome new Nick Lowe video.

Breakthrough

This is the breakthrough we've been waiting for. Now there will be no need to skinny up, because our motorized chairs will be all-terrain.

We've done it. Let's eat.

Skyrim ate my brain.

I have neglected everything else in my life, including sleep, since Thanksgiving. Am I addicted to Skyrim? No! I can quit any time I want to. I just don't want to.

This is my second and last tour of the countryside. I've got 300,000 coin, I'd like to bank 500K before I call it a game. Give me a break. I've finally got the Theives' Guild up where Tonilia has 4,000 coin to fence my goods. I've got my daedric bow up to a damage of 235, so I can knock most foes for a loop even with a weak ancient Nordic arrow. I had my sneak up to 100 a long time ago, got my pickpocket maxed. I own Skyrim. But the punks do continue to step up to get beat down, so what can I do?

 Random notes:

• Slobs! I knocked a plate on the floor in the Bard's College over a month ago and it's still laying there. But I have to say that in a land where it takes brawn just to survive the day, the folks of Skyrim have a decent music scene and tolerate their Bards well.
• I get married (for the money) to Ysolda. She runs a store out of my house, I think, because men are always leaving whenever I come home and she always has cash to split with me. She is very nice, unless I bump into something, at which point she will exclaim, "Hey! Be careful!" Our marriage is totally platonic but she is very nice to me and she is a good provider.
• If a town guard says, "Hey! I know you!" don't make eye contact, just keep walking. If you talk to them, you'll end up having to bribe your way out of some bounty for a crime you forgot about.
• If the bad guys would just shut up, they'd be better off. Note to self: If I'm ever in a situation where a stealthy bad guy is picking off people around me one after another, don't holler out, "Is somebody there?"
• I explore this one cave, and some young, strapping guy named Goldir stops me at the entrance to ask for help. He says a necromancer is inside busy desecrating his family's tombs. Goldir's aunt has gone in to deal with him. Let me get this straight--Goldir hangs out and waits for a random stranger to come by and possibly lend a hand, while his AUNT is inside fighting a necromancer and his undead minions. Will I help? Of course I will help. Goldir says, "Lead the way." Could Goldir be any more useless? The answer: no.
• Why do Falmer need gold? They live underground in the dark. They eat only fish and those weird insect critters. There are no stores around. For that matter, why is it that their chests are made out of chaurus shells and open with a weird, wet crunching sound, but the lock mechanisms are the standard Days of Yore pickable lock?
• Apparently the worst thing you can be in Skyrim is a Milk Drinker.
• Skyrim must be like DisneyWorld. In DisneyWorld, you never see any deliveries or behind the scenes activity, because there is a huge subterranean network of service tunnels. Skyrim has the need for a ton of service workers but you never see any. Abandoned forts with hundreds of burning candles and oil lamps. Complicated mechanisms to open doors and gates that obviously need maintenance or at least somebody to wind their springs back up.
• Skyrim repeatedly offers you the chance to be casually evil and it is so tempting, because the game brings out the OCD in you. I've got about 10 unfinished missions that just gnaw at me. These missions are unfinished because I just refuse to be a cannibal or to do some kind of evil thing just to get a weapon weaker than what I've already got. Evil is without consequence, which is an interesting experience to explore, because you can steal a place blind as long as you're not caught, and nobody will know it and they'll all love you just the same. 

Getting some things off my chest. People are unnecessarily rude in Skyrim. These are a few of the many douchebags:

• Brynjalf, who says to me, the Guildmaster of the Thieves Guild, "I don't have time for you, lad. I'm in the middle of something important." He says this while sitting at a table leisurely sipping from a mug of mead.
• Similarly, Njada Stornearm, a rookie Companion, comes up to me, the recently proclaimed Harbinger of the Companions, and says, all sarcastic, "What guidance could you offer me?"
•  Speaking of sarcasm, how about my first housecarl, Lydia, whom I ask to carry stuff, who says, "I am sworn to be in your service," all sarcastic right off the bat. Too bad she gets killed  up the path from Whiterun in my first real arrow and magic fight.
• Or this one giant, not sure his name. From a distance I see he's duking it out with a dragon, so I come up and help him finish it off. We put the dragon down, and then the giant turns on me, trying to sworp me with his club! I have to back off and put him down, arrow-style.
• Kjoll the Lioness has poor Aeren in a Days of Yore version of the Friend Zone. But truthfully,  he's not a real impressive dude because while Kjoll is out kicking butt, he hangs out in Riften and just wrings his hands and frets about her safety.
• Random guard in Whiterun, who says, for no reason, "Let me guess--someone stole your sweet roll." Why is he mocking me? And what does that even mean?

Who said it? Mitt or Mr. Burns?

The science behind a tearjerker of a song...

Why Adele's 'Someone Like You' Makes Everyone Cry - WSJ.com:

On Sunday night, the British singer-songwriter Adele is expected to sweep the Grammys. Three of her six nominations are for her rollicking hit "Rolling in the Deep." But it's her ballad "Someone Like You" that has risen to near-iconic status recently, due in large part to its uncanny power to elicit tears and chills from listeners. The song is so famously sob-inducing that "Saturday Night Live" recently ran a skit in which a group of co-workers play the tune so they can all have a good cry together...

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Profiling is wrong

Ads Preferences Manager:

Go here to find out how Google has profiled you. Google says I am a 25-34 year old male. Cool beans, but too bad my body begs to differ.

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Haunted House? The Abandoned Mansion of Steve Jobs | WebUrbanist

Haunted House? The Abandoned Mansion of Steve Jobs | WebUrbanist:

On Ash Wednesday, the priest says as he wipes ashes onto your forehead: "Remember, Man, you are dust, and to dust you shall return." Humbling.

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The Six Stages Of Pop Song Addiction

The Six Stages Of Pop Song Addiction « Thought Catalog:

Stage One: The Highbrow Scoff

This is the first — and most self-congratulatory — stage of the process toward full-fledged, seemingly irreversible addiction. A song comes on the radio, and — almost impulsively — you make that god awful scratching noise with the back of your throat — the same one Becky made in tenth grade when that new girl from Menlo sat next to Steven in fifth period and “had her boobs hanging out all over. I mean, seriously, is she that desperate?” The first encounter generally lasts no longer than 30 seconds, during which remarks are made about how the artist “sounds so processed,” and “probably sucks live,” and “has the trashiest lyrics.” If possible, the iPod is turned on, or a CD is played, and once Bon Iver or The National are on again you’re reminded that you’re a socially aware, farmer’s-market-shopping 20-something who reads good literature and only buys fair trade....

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Late exams...

To be or not to be...

16. Radiation Sign

Here's an earlier mosaic that I just recently got around to photographing. I made it about 9 years ago for my friend Mark, an x-ray technician, and it hangs on the wall in the x-ray chamber or whatever he calls that place.  We used to work together at the St. Charles Clinic. It is flattering to hear Mark say that some of his x-ray patients comment on the mosaic and ask if I  made it, because so many of my pieces are at our office in Jonesville, (and so many of our customers are mutual.)

I made this piece back when I was using the glass mosaic tile, before I gave in to Nan's suggestion to switch to stained glass.

This yellow and red combined my two favorite shades of the glass tile. I love that rich mustard yellow, and I also love that rich red. The red was a bear to cut. It had such a strange texture, almost like a Jolly Rancher candy--it was stretchy and would fight back against the glass-cutting pliers. The red was also bad to send off razor sharp shards flying into areas of the floor you would hopefully find before your bare feet got to them.

There are a handful of other early mosaics of which I don't have a photo record. My lost babies.

Obsolete sounds...

11 Sounds That Your Kids Have Probably Never Heard - Mental Floss:

Oh man, every one of these started the sound in my head. Getting to be an old timer...Like this one:

2. Manual Typewriter

Manual typewriters had an entire subset of unique sounds that made them immediately identifiable…at one time. The keys clacked loudly as they struck the paper, the carriage lifted up with a distinct clunk when the shift key was employed, and then there was the ping of the bell warning you that you were nearing the end of the line. That meant you had to lift your left hand from the keyboard and swipe at the carriage return lever, which caused a sort of ziiiiip noise as you pushed the carriage back to the starting position.

Read the full text here: http://www.mentalfloss.com/blogs/archives/106713#ixzz1oEvJ94ws
--brought to you by mental_floss! 

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Another Amazon customer review

Amazon.com: Customer Reviews: Defense Technology 56895 MK-9 Stream, 1.3% Red Band/1.3% Blue Band Pepper Spray:

6,001 of 6,111 people found the following review helpful: 5.0 out of 5 stars Accept no substitutes when casually repressing students Whenever I need to breezily inflict discipline on unruly citizens, I know I can trust Defense Technology 56895 MK-9 Stream, 1.3% Red Band/1.3% Blue Band Pepper Spray to get the job done! The power of reason is no match for Defense Technology's superior repression power. When I reach for my can of Defense Technology 56895 MK-9 Stream, 1.3% Red Band/1.3% Blue Band Pepper... Read the full review › Published 3 months ago by D-bag of Liberty

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Road casualties.

US road accident casualties: every one mapped across America | News | guardian.co.uk:

This is a searchable map of road fatalities in the United States from 2001 through 2009. There were 11 fatalities on the stretch of highway in front of our house during that time. I think I'm going to use this information to write the state police and ask them to lower the speed limit to 45 mph. There is a roadside memorial across the street from our driveway to a young woman who was killed in a motor vehicle accident on the day after Thanksgiving in 2008.

Here is a screenshot of the fatalities on our highway during that time frame:

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103. Elephant

I've taken a sabbatical from this blog since November, all the while feeling bad about it. I've also taken a sabbatical from church, all the while feeling bad about that too, which is another story. I did finally finish Rachel's elephant. For the most part, I am okay with it, although there are a few problems.

The positives--the first impression I have is that the piece works. It's a bit large, but that works in its favor because the elephant is a large animal. The most successful aspect of the piece is that the elephant's eye communicates a certain sad dignity that I hoped would translate to the glass, and it seems to.

I enlarged the image enough so that I could get the detail of the complicated texture of the elephant's skin, and I think that works also. I've done this enough to understand the lower limits of size, which is about a millimeter square. Some of the pieces in the leg area are just a bit larger than that, but it gives a good sense of complexity. I'm also happy with the flow of the black background pieces, which sometimes don't feel quite right, but here it feels right.

I worried all through making this piece about the light and dark shading, and for the most part I think it came off okay. I was worried about the image as a whole being too dark, but it's about in the middle where I wanted it. I was also worried about the portion of the image where the ear is in the foreground and the elephant's body is in the background, because in the past I've had a hard time shading the image so that foreground and background are distinct enough from each other. Here, I cheated in a few spots just a bit to make it more obvious which is which, and I don't think I overdid it, so I feel like the ear sticks out enough. Additionally, I wanted to capture the complex surface texture of things like the trunk and the ear, and I think that worked pretty well.

Learning curve: a few problems. Well, first of all, my border is too thin on the bottom, too wide on the right. It's less noticeable with the grout, but it's there. The only other problem is that the grout is just a bit too light, so the shadows are not deep enough. I might be able to remedy that some with a sealer that will darken it, but probably not enough. (I started with a black grout, added just a bit of gray--I thought I had it right, but I overshot it. I should have only added just a touch of gray, as they say.)

On the whole, I'm happy with it. Next, I'm doing a border for a mirror for Nan. So now I'm back to the least fun aspect of making mosaics, which is figuring out the design.