January 2012
10 posts
WatchSuperconducting disc locked in upside-down levitation.
From The New Scientist: Superstuff: When quantum goes big.
Sports and Math: Where Leisure and Learning Meet →
From Only a Game:
If you need more proof that playoffs don’t necessarily result in the better team coming home with the trophy, consider this. Brian MacDonald, Assistant Professor of Mathematics at the US Military Academy at Westpoint says since 2000 the team with the better regular season record in Major League Baseball and the NFL only won the playoff match-up 50-percent of the time. For the...
How to I.D. Genetically Modified Food at the... →
From Spence Cooper’s post at Friends Eat Blog:
For conventionally grown fruit, (grown with chemicals inputs), the PLU code on the sticker consists of four numbers. Organically grown fruit has a five-numeral PLU prefaced by the number 9. Genetically engineered (GM) fruit has a five-numeral PLU prefaced by the number 8.
Isn’t that simple?
Between The Lines →
Excellent article from L.A. Magazine by Dave Gardetta about parking and how it affects our cities:
“Imagine what would happen at Dodger Stadium if every seat cost the same and went on sale game day,” says Dan Mitchell, an engineer at DOT. “Everyone would run for that seat behind home plate—it would be insanity. But that’s what we have now with parking—equal pricing.” This spring the DOT plans to...
The Death of Honesty →
In Defining Ideas, William Damon discusses the Death of Honesty
“In print, broadcast, and online news coverage, journalism has lost credibility with much of the public for its perceived biases in representing the facts. In civic affairs, political discourse is no longer considered to be a source of genuine information. Rather, it is assumed that leaders make statements merely to posture...
NYC will no longer require Taxi TV →
newsweek:
evangotlib:
dbreunig:
Respite!
In a nod to years of griping from captive passengers, taxi officials agreed to let the owners of the new cabs decide whether to install the screens, which are required in the city’s 13,000 yellow taxis.
“With Taxi TV, there’s a diversity of opinion as to the value for passengers,” David S. Yassky, the taxi and limousine commissioner, said rather...
Contradictory Proverbs
(from: Futility Closet)
Look before you leap.
He who hesitates is lost.
Absence makes the heart grow fonder.
Out of sight, out of mind.
You’re never too old to learn.
You can’t teach an old dog new tricks.
A word to the wise is sufficient.
Talk is cheap.
Fools rush in where angels fear to tread.
Nothing ventured, nothing gained.
Actions speak louder than words.
The pen is...
December 2011
1 post
“People just get things wrong. They read them wrong, or remember them wrong or...”
– What Is Good Fact-Checking? | Mother Jones (via rubenfeld)
November 2011
10 posts
“My Sorrow, when she’s here with me,
Thinks these dark days of autumn rain ...”
– Robert Frost, “My November Guest” (via bookoasis)
The woman who gave birth on 08-08-08, 09-09-09 and...
mentalflossr:
She had a good run.
[via The Grand Rapids Press]
October 2011
9 posts
themillions.com →
“She never used large words, but she had a natural gift for making small ones do...”
– ~Mark Twain, regarding his mother
5 tags
“Think what a better world it would be if we all, the whole world, had cookies...”
– Robert Fulghum
1 tag
September 2011
16 posts
“Generally the theories we believe we call facts, and the facts we disbelieve we...”
– ~Felix Cohen
Love Song
by William Carlos Williams
I lie here thinking of you:—
the stain of love
is upon the world!
Yellow, yellow, yellow
it eats into the leaves,
smears with saffron
the horned branches that lean
heavily
against a smooth purple sky!
There is no light
only a honey-thick stain
that drips from leaf to leaf
and limb to limb
spoiling the colors
of the whole world—
you far off...
Playing By The Rules
Vermont has always been considered the “outlaw” state, in part because the mountains and dark hollows are hard to navigate and easily swallow up bank robbers, revolutionaries, and worse. In fact, Daniel Shays, the Massachusetts farmer who turned against the government due to a fight about property taxes, brought his followers up to a mountaintop a half day’s walk from our farm. This ragged group...
“Give the people contests they win by remembering the words to more popular songs...”
– ~Ray Bradbury, Fahrenheit 451
9.20.11
Are you doing what you want to do or what you think you should be doing? Why aren’t they the same? Can you fix that?
I believe, more times than not, we should want to do what we should be doing and instead we tend to want to do what our wishes dictate and end up not doing anything.
There’s a time for dreaming about what could be and a time for doing what we can. Perhaps...
A bear, however hard he tries, grows tubby without exercise. ~A.A. Milne
9.16.11
As your faith is strengthened you will find
that there is no longer the need to have a sense of control,
that things will flow as they will, and that you will flow
with them, to your great delight and benefit.
~Emmanuel Teney
…something every political candidate should take note of:
The more you try to control people (through legislation) the less control you have. To use a metaphor...
3 tags
9.14.11
I need to write.
Perhaps you’ve said something similar to yourself, something that you should be doing because it’s in you to do but for any number of reasons you are not doing that thing. Call it resistance. Call it procrastination. Call it an obstacle; weakness; whatever.
Sometimes I find myself daydreaming about the possibilities of other pursuits. I see what someone else has...
“A lot of people enjoy being dead. But they are not dead, really. They’re...”
– ~Maude, from Harold and Maude written by Colin Higgins
What really hurts women →
Via: betterbeawesome:
Pardon me, I’m about to trip into the deep end here. What hurts women in national security isn’t other women expressing—or not expressing—their sexuality. What hurts women is an entrenched belief—like the one expressed by Dana Perino in Spencer’s post—that men inherently know more about…
The Kid Should See This →
…not just your kid, but the kid in you too. Some really cool stuff over there. Go look.
4 tags
“When I despair, I remember that all through history the way of truth and love...”
– Mahatma Gandhi (via wordpainting)
“People still retain the errors of their childhood, their nation and their age,...”
– Nicolas de Caritat, marquis de Condorcet, “Progress of the Human Spirit” (1795)
August 2011
12 posts
7 tags
1 tag
Purposeful Scars
I am not emotionally attached to my uterus, not even when I had one. Daily, I am physically reminded of its absence and will have a permanent reminder of the occasion of its removal the likes Boris Karloff would be jealous of.
Being that I only have a couple of noticeable scars prior to this helluva thing I have now (you’d think an alien came outta there and they shrugged their shoulders,...