Posts from — June 2008

There aren’t any fires too close to here, but the effects on air quality and the sky in general are very noticable. In late afternoon, the sun gets a deep red glow, and is abnormally dim to the point you can look directly at it in many cases. It’s weird.

(click to enlarge)

Source

I subscribed to the Cook’s Illustrated podcast a little while ago and I’ve really enjoyed it. I can’t find a way to subscribe over the web, but if you look in iTunes, it’s there (and free).

The videos quickly cover a few topics in each episode in a manner similar to their book, The New Best Recipe (which I use and recommend). Each episode, they work through a recipe (quickly) and discuss why they chose to do things different ways. They also do ingredient comparisons (e.g. which tomato paste they preferred), equipment reviews, and technique tutorials. Most of the videos are under 5 minutes, which somehow feels like the right amount of time. These videos include all the things I like about the book and add the missing visual component.

In other news, lifehacker had a good feature on grilling tips and techniques.

I’m a fan of Bill Moyers, as I’ve been watching Bill Moyers Journal for a while now. If you’re interested in journalism, you may enjoy his speech at the National Conference for Media Reform:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y0r71L7cojE

The most interesting thing to me was his point that as newspaper coverage moves to a model supported by contextual advertising, important stories that don’t perform well with this model (e.g. stories about the Iraq War) will decrease in prominence. I’m not sure if it’s true, but it’s worth consideration.

Language and perhaps the whole video are not safe for work…

I saw this video on BoingBoing a little while ago, and I find it disturbing and strangely hilarious. Especially the very last scene.. makes me laugh every time.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_VHQS5q6je0

“Rockefeller…”

Lifehacker has some tips on How to Get Drunk Faster, in case you’re in a hurry, and also Tips for Preventing Hangovers. Drinking lots of water is a good first step, though (I still haven’t mastered that part). Several commenters in that article suggested things like “go outside and run a mile or so”, which seems rather infeasible to me, even if it works. I suppose it depends on severity.

kottke has a great roundup of single-serving websites, which he defines as “web sites comprised of a single page with a dedicated domain name and do only one thing”.

Here are some of my favorites:
d-e-f-i-n-i-t-e-l-y.com - Send people who write ‘definately’ there for help.
SometimesRedSometimesBlue.com - This page is sometimes red and sometimes blue.
IsItTuesday.com - It’s not clear which time zone this is for…
IsTwitterDown.com - It’s sad that this is needed, but I do actually use this site.
AreWeAtWarWithIran.com
IsItChristmas.com
IsBarackObamaMuslim.com - With citations!

Since Rachel submitted a guess for the challenging puzzle I posted earlier, I’m now posting the answer. Rachel came in first place! I’m not sure how I would have done on this if I hadn’t seen the numbers before. Original source for this analysis is here and sources for each number are cited below.

Percentages of Americans who believe things
30% believe Saddam had weapons of mass destruction. (polling in 2007) source
23% believe they’ve been in the presence of a ghost. (polling in 2007) source
22% believe President Bush knew about the 9/11 attacks in advance. (polling in 2007) source
18% believe the sun revolves around the Earth. (polling in 1999) source
10% believe Obama is a muslim (polling in 2008) source (pdf)

According to this article in Wired:

By 2020, native speakers will make up only 15 percent of the estimated 2 billion people who will be using or learning the language. Already, most conversations in English are between nonnative speakers who use it as a lingua franca.

An analyst is predicting $7/gal gas by 2010. This is beginning to approach the price of gas in Europe, where prices are typically $8-$10/gal (see this table and scroll to the bottom for recent numbers). This is of course a problem in that it’s a huge burden to working poor who can’t afford to get more fuel-efficient cars or telecommute, but it seems that this is the only way to get Americans to take energy and transportation alternatives seriously. Hopefully something good will come of this.

The sense of entitlement about low oil prices is astounding.

Read it Later is an extension for firefox 3 (you upgraded, didn’t you?) that lets you save pages for reading later, even offline.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mLNfsLpM8zo

I’ve installed it but haven’t used it yet. Right now, I use Google Reader’s offline feature to give me a bunch to read on the plane. Unfortunately, this doesn’t let me easily save non-reader web pages for offline reading, so I’m hoping that Read it Later will fill the gap. I’ll give it a try next time I fly (two weeks!).