Cui Bono

"In the decade since 9/11 over half a billion people have died worldwide.  A great many choices could have delayed such deaths, including personal choices to smoke less or exercise more, and collective choices like allowing more immigration.  And cryonics might have saved some of them.  Yet, to show solidarity with these 3,000 victims, we have pissed away $3 trillion ($1 billion per victim), and trashed long-standing legal principles.  And now we’ll waste a day remembering them, instead of thinking seriously about how to save billions of others.  I would rather we just forgot 9/11." — US economist Robin Hanson  It’s a very brave or very insensitive American who would publicly question his nation’s entire 9/11 memorial project on the day of the 10th anniversary.  “Most people know how to remain silent.  Few people know when.”  The response to 9/11 didn’t do any of the things that the "leaders" who pushed those responses said those responses were going to do.  What those responses did do was piss away $3 trillion (and counting), kill a bunch of US soldiers, and squander the “good will” of the rest of the world while committing evils; the killing of many Iraqi civilians, the strengthening of al Qaeda, and the bankrupting of the US economy.  If we have any respect for history or humanity or decency left, isn’t it time to rip the Band-Aid off the wound, to remove 9/11 from our collective consciousness?  No more invocations of those attacks to explain otherwise inexplicable wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and our oh-so-global war on terror.  No more invocations of 9/11 to keep the Pentagon and the national security state flooded with money.  No more invocations of 9/11 to justify every encroachment on liberty, every new step in the surveillance of Americans, every advance in pat-downs and wand-downs and strip downs that keeps fear high and the homeland security state afloat.

A fleet of US military drones on a Nevada Air Force base has been infected by a keylogger virus that tracks every key and button their pilots press.  The virus was first noticed by officials at Creech Air Force Base nearly two weeks ago using the base’s security system.  It logged every keystroke of the pilots in the control room on the base as they remotely flew Predator and Reaper drones on missions over Afghanistan and other battle zones.  There has been no confirmation of information being lost or sent to an outside source, but the virus has been resistant to military efforts to clear it from the system.  “We keep wiping it off, and it keeps coming back,” a source said.  [Does this mean that drones could be hacked and redirected?  That’s a scary thought.  I trust safeguards are in place.  I suppose it could even mean that the virus will now be able to be blamed for some “mistake” in the future when a virus-infected drone kills the “wrong” person(s).  But that’s unlikely ever to happen as that ploy should be too obvious to be considered by anyone, shouldn’t it?]

A new study says that 71 drivers in Chicago cross a structurally defective bridge every second.  CBS Chicago reports the 400 bridges included in the survey were all ones on which an engineer has identified a major defect in the deck or support structure.  Some of the bridges are shored up with temporary supports.  Maybe it’s hard to get a sense of urgency about infrastructure that’s been sitting there for half a century.  Sure, it needs to be fixed — but one more year won’t hurt.  Let the next administration deal with it?  It’s a big bill coming due.  Maybe it’s time for a transportation change.

Students in Bucks County’s Pennsbury School District are learning a new subject this year: marketing.  The 16 elementary, middle, and high schools are being adorned with — some say defiled by — advertisements as large as 5 by 10 feet.  Ultimately, 218 will appear on walls and floors, and shrink-wrapped over lockers, locker-room benches, even cafeteria tables.  In what administrators say is a first in the Philadelphia area, the Pennsbury school board signed a contract with a national advertising agency that can boost the district’s battered budget by as much as $424,000, giving the firm’s clients access to the habitat of 10,950 children of all ages.  New Jersey is allowing school districts to put ads on on the outside of school buses.  School Media has contracts for ads in 9 other districts in Minnesota and California.  The Los Angeles School District last year approved a corporate naming-rights plan that could bring in an estimated $18 million.  This past summer, the San Juan Unified School District, also in California, approved the posting of corporate signs on middle and high school campuses and hired an advertising firm.  Advertising works through the repetition of images and messages — the more you saturate, the more it gets into the brain.  But reaching kids in an authoritative, credible environment implies endorsement that may not be intended.

Some believe humans have a God-given dominion over the earth and others argue that we’re bound to a larger Gaian system and are, at our best, caretakers.  (I lean toward the caretakers idea.)  Maybe humankind made a subconscious collective bargain at the dawn of the industrial age to trade the resources of our planet for the chance to escape it.  (Wait a minute — I lean toward that idea, too.  But that doesn’t mean that I have to think that man has dominion over all the earth and that it was God that had it to give.)  In this middle age (of trading resources for chances), the West evolved a middle class — one which is now eroding and may be less enduring than the “American Dream” — exported to the rest of the world by culture and conquest.  Many people now have food, cars, gadgets.  Can we begrudge a single person these luxuries if we want them ourselves?  Can the planet bear my lifestyle multiplied by 7+ billion individuals?  Every consumer good has a cost not borne just by its price but bolstered by a “vanishing resource” economy.  We squander millions of years’ worth of stored energy from our planet to make not only things critical to our survival and comfort but things that simply satisfy our desire to possess.  [But is that a necessary stage we must go through — a type of adolescence — on our way to a more mature civilisation?]  We hope our consumerist culture makes life better — for ourselves, of course, but also for those who can’t afford to buy everything that we purchase, consume, or own.  If they can afford more than they once could, is that sufficient?

When Chris opened a letter from the Indiana Election Division, he was curious why there was a small Styrofoam cube inside the envelope.  Luckily, there was an explanation on a strip of paper packed with the letter: “The Styrofoam cube enclosed in this envelope is being included by the sender to meet a United States Postal Service regulation.  This regulation requires a first class letter or flat using the Delivery or Signature Confirmation service to become a parcel and that it 'is in a box or, if not in a box, is more than 3/4 of an inch thick at its thickest point.’  The cube has no other purpose and may be disposed of upon opening this correspondence.”

The American Cancer Society has turned down a donation worth $500,000 from the Foundation Beyond Belief, a secular charity funded by atheists, freethinkers, and humanists.  Their offer to raise up to a half million dollars through the American Cancer Society’s Relay for Life programme was recently tabled when the American Cancer Society declined to allow the Foundation to create a national Relay team as other non-profits have done.  The reaction to the decision by ACS to reject the generous offer made by the secular group has been one of disbelief and anger.  The ACS Facebook page has been flooded with angry posts disgusted with what they believe to be religious discrimination, and what many believe to be a foolish decision to decline a generous offer that could have done much good towards the fight against cancer.

Gary Becker’s theorem of social interaction is colloquially known as the rotten kid theorem.  He suggests that family members, even if they are selfish, will act to help one another if their financial incentives are properly linked.  Suppose that children will receive gifts of money from a wealthy, altruistic parent in order to make them happy.  One of the kids is a selfish, “rotten” kid who would take pleasure in harming his sibling.  The altruistic parent can induce the rotten child to behave benevolently by making his welfare contingent upon the welfare of his sibling.  The theorem suggests that parents should delay gifts of money to their children until they are older, or possibly until after they die.  If parents plan to will their children money in accordance with their needs, each child will have an incentive to help his siblings maximize their income, because higher earnings by the other siblings will mean that more of the money will be given to the rotten sibling.

Over the past few years, there have been an number of unexplained and unsolved disappearances on board cruise liners.  According to the US-based International Cruise Victims Association, 165 people have gone missing at sea since 1995, with at least 13 in 2011 alone.  Cruise ship holidays are enormously popular.  But what is happening to all these passengers who simply vanish while at sea, never to be seen again?  Are they the victims of a sinister crime wave?  Have they had a mishap at sea and fallen overboard, or perhaps chosen to take their own lives?  The sad fact is that, in many cases, no one knows.  And for the family and friends they left behind, that only compounds the heartache.  Loved ones remain in limbo; bereft, baffled and unable to grieve.  Is the idea of someone “slipping overboard” credible?  The rails on cruise ships are at least 3 and a half feet high (over a metre), which makes it incredibly difficult for anyone — even someone who might be drunk or ill — to pitch overboard.  Cruise ships have two things in plenty: alcohol, and isolation (for those who choose to cruise solo).  They also offer an easy method, which is close to hand 24 hours a day.  In your land-lubber life you may not always be close to a bridge or on the roof of a tall building, but on a cruise ship you’re only ever a few steps away from the railing.  The combination of alcohol and isolation is also one that can breed crime.  A rape, dispute, or mugging gone wrong could easily lead to the victim being knocked unconscious and pitched over the side.  It’s unlikely that people are falling off cruise ships accidentally.

Persin is a fungicidal toxin present in the avocado.  It is generally harmless to humans, but when consumed by domestic animals in large quantities it is dangerous.  Consumption of the leaves and bark of the avocado tree, or the skin and pit of the avocado fruit have been shown to kill birds 12-24 hours after consumption.  Eating the leaves will kill rabbits.  Larger female mammals get mastitis.  Persin has been suggested as a treatment for breast cancer.  Its chemistry is not yet understood, but it’s similar to a fatty acid, carried in an oil, and leaches into the body of the fruit from the pits.  Negative effects in humans seem to be primarily allergies evidenced in susceptible individuals.  Persin has recently been discovered to kill breast cancer cells.  It has also been shown to enhance the effect of the breast cancer fighting drug Tamoxifen.  This could potentially reduce the necessary dosage of current cancer drugs.  Persin is, however, highly insoluble in aqueous solutions and more research will be needed to put it into a soluble tablet form.

This demonstration of quantum levitation doesn’t show up in a photo as well as I would like.  The video is less than 2 minutes long.  I found it mesmerising.  The video was made by the superconductivity group in the School of Physics and Astronomy at Tel-Aviv University.

This might be a good time to consider fuel-efficient 2-wheel transportation.  Or, in the case of the Piaggio MP3 400, fuel-efficient 3-wheel transportation.  Though weather realities and cargo capacity will always limit their utility, motorcycles and scooters move millions of people every day.  But a persistent drawback keeps them from being even more widely accepted: they can fall over.  There can be many causes — forgetting to put your feet on the ground at a red light will do it — but loss of traction is among the most common.  A single front tire on a conventional scooter or cycle provides the rider all his steering control and nearly all his braking force.  In a panic stop, sliding the front wheel can cause a sudden crash, especially on slippery pavement or when the rider tries to brake and turn simultaneously.  On the highway, though, the MP3 400 easily stays with the traffic flow, even at the 75 miles-per-hour cruising speeds that prevail on the interstate (Piaggio says the top speed is 88 miles-per-hour) and delivers an average of 58 miles-per-gallon.

Only 1/3 of the heat energy produced in a nuclear reactor is transformed into electricity.  In Japan, the remaining 2/3 of the energy that remains – that is, twice as much energy as contained in the generated electricity – is disposed of in the sea.  In the cooling system, seawater cools the water vapour, which condenses again to water and is circulated through the reactor once again.  This heated seawater is called “thermal discharge”.  How much heat does this thermal discharge put into the sea?  The amount is startling.  Before the Fukushima accident, Japan’s 54 nuclear reactors were producing a total of 49,112,000 kilowatts of electricity.  Every day they were throwing away twice that much, approximately 100,000,000 kilowatts of energy, in the form of heat, into the sea.  Of course it seriously impacted the ocean’s ecology.  Before saying that nuclear power plants supply 1/3 of the demand for electricity, it needs to be said that twice that much energy released as heat.  In Japan, the number one global warming agent is the nuclear power plants.  When this thermal discharge is released, the heat does not immediately disperse.  Rather it concentrates and remains suspended in what are called “hot spots.” This has a very large effect on sea life near the shore.  In the shallows, even a difference of 2-3° kills fish eggs or young fish.  (But, to put this in perspective, a coal plant wastes about 60% of its heat energy rather than 67%.  See the Rankine cycle for an explanation of why.)

If you use your laptop on your lap, or leave it plugged in all the time, you may well be cruising for what some experts call Picnic (Problem in Chair Not in Computer) or ID-10t (idiot) errors — computer problems caused by clueless users.  Technical support professionals say these errors are responsible for at least half of all computer repairs.  “You’d be surprised how many people unknowingly damage their computers,” said Derek Meister, a technician for the Geek Squad, Best Buy’s repair and on-line support service.  A classic mistake, Meister said, is using a laptop on your lap.  Despite the name, a laptop should be operated on a flat and firm surface so that it rests on the four little nubs usually found on the base.  A lap desk or even a large enough book will suffice.  The point is to allow air to circulate around the machine.  Letting a laptop rest on your thighs — or worse, sink into a cushy comforter — prevents internal heat from radiating outward and can block air intake vents.  This causes overheating, a major cause of component failure in computers.  Using a laptop on a less-than-flat surface can also put the hard drive at an awkward angle, which can also cause damage.  Leaving it plugged in all the time diminishes the battery life and degrades its performance.  Batteries, like muscles, atrophy if not exercised.  Unplugging your laptop once in a while, say 2-3 times per week, is enough to keep the battery fit.  It’s also not a good idea to drain your battery completely and not recharge it for extended periods.  Leaving a battery uncharged for a long time can cause a degradation of its chemicals.

• “Unlike in the past, ignorance is no longer tempered with humility.  Rather, after years of psychotherapy disguised as pedagogy, ignorance is now buoyed by self-esteem — which, in turn, makes students more resistant to remediation since they don’t believe there’s a problem.  For the last two decades, I’ve taught freshman courses at CUNY and SUNY colleges in the city; the majority of my students have been products of the city’s public schools.  I am saddened, therefore, to report that more and more of them are arriving in my classes with the impression that their opinions, regardless of their acquaintance with a particular subject, are instantly valid — indeed, as valid as anyone’s.  Pertinent knowledge, to them, is not required to render judgement.” — Mark Goldstein, State University of New York, “Other Opiates: What Kids Know”
• “I hear more and more from our faculty members that students simply do not turn in assignments, do not attend class with any regularity, do not respect others in their demeanor or behaviours, and do not see any value in learning as a process.  These students, they tell me, are convinced that the final product is the goal, whether that is a grade, a certificate, or a degree.  All of this, they say, is in much greater frequency now than in the past.  I hear it so often now, from so many disciplines and demographics, that I believe it is the most important barrier to good learning in our classrooms, both for these students and for those who are more responsible.” — Larry Oveson, faculty co-president, Minnesota State College, The Green Sheet, December 2002
• "Nowadays, students seem to be better than teacher."  Spoken by a student, of course.  But in some ways, she’s likely right.  The value of depth of knowledge in relation to breadth of knowledge needs to be computed for the long-term during periods of changing opportunities.

Steve Jobs and his biological father met, allegedly before either knew they were related in the 1980s.  According to a 60 Minutes interview with Walter Isaacson, Jobs used to frequent a restaurant his father managed in the 1980s.  Jobs was adopted.  Later in life, he befriended his biological sister, Mona Simpson.  When Simpson visited their father, he told her, “I wish you could have seen me when I was running a bigger restaurant.  Everybody used to come there.  Even Steve Jobs used to eat there.  Yeah, he was a great tipper.”  Simpson told Jobs about the conversation, but Jobs never pursued a relationship with his father because he didn’t trust him.  He did recall the meeting though.  “I had been to that restaurant a few times, and I remember meeting the owner.  He was Syrian.  Balding.  We shook hands.”  One of the comments said, “Is this stuff really that fascinating?” — which is no doubt true from a certain perspective.  But there are 350 million people living in the US.  The odds are certainly against them randomly meeting, and even more heavily against them each remembering the meeting later.  My husband was adopted shortly after his birth in Indio, California.  Several decades later, he learned that his birth mother’s family owned a marine supply store in San Diego, in which place he had spent a considerable amount of time.  Neither he nor the owners were aware of any relationship.  Do I think anything is meant by this?  Not really.  We all get around a lot more than we used to.  That said, there often is an affinity that draws related people to each other if they do happen to meet.  For my part, I suspect Jobs went to the restaurant specifically to anonymously meet his father.

Blue blistering barnacles — it’s Jackson.  Sir Peter Jackson, dressed as Tintin’s sea-faring pal Captain Haddock, appears in a new book, The Art of the Adventures of Tintin. The book was written by Weta Workshop’s Chris Guise.  Andy Serkis, who plays Haddock in The Adventures of Tintin: The Secret of the Unicorn, said he was gobsmacked at Jackson’s acting attempt.  “This was real hard for me because he played the part so well.  He’s a brilliant actor and could actually play Haddock.  I was quite lucky to get in there really, because some of that early test stuff he did was hilarious.”

Lieutenant Colonel Barbara Ridler who died on August 10 aged 95, was the friendly dragon who presided, as establishments’ officer, over the administration of the Conservative Research Department during the 1970s.  It was in no small measure thanks to Barbara Ridler’s benign if somewhat military discipline that parliamentary briefings, policy papers and speeches for opposition spokesmen, not to mention the door-stopping Campaign Guides, were produced on time (and without too many typographical errors).  One of her main responsibilities was to manage the secretaries, mostly girls from “good families” several notches up the social scale from the “desk officers” for whom they worked.  Legend has it that they were recruited, at Barbara Ridler’s insistence, under a “1,000-acre test” (possibly on the ground that no girl whose father owned anything less could possibly live on CRD wages).  During her years of service Barbara Ridler had frequent contact with Princess Mary, the Princess Royal, controller commandant of the WRAC.  On one occasion during a visit by the Princess to HQ, Northern Command, the Princess held out her hand to shake that of a general’s young daughter who, unbeknown to Barbara Ridler, “had concealed a hamster in it.”

It’s not just that a lot of the shows are set in suburbia — suburban life actually creates the appetite for them.  Reality TV (from the Kardashians to Jersey Shore ) is a product of isolation plus sprawl.  Sprawl + isolation = the substitution of televised, crazy-eyed pods of frenemies for actual human communities.  “The knee-jerk reaction to reality TV is that it’s dumbification,” celebrity urbanist Richard Florida says.  “But it’s not, and the people watching aren’t dumb.  They’re just looking for connection.”  Florida uses Cambridge University psychologist Peter Rentfrow’s concept of communal consumers to describe reality junkies.  “These are people who want stories about people and who used to rely on gossip, or on the little mini-dramas in their community,” he says.  “And when you’re isolated in the suburbs, you don’t have that.”  (My grandmother watched soap operas for the same reason, I think.)  The prospect of having to settle for the sniping of a Real Housewife of Beverly Hills (which has taken on darker overtones following the suicide of a cast member’s estranged husband) in place of a real drama-dishing housewife from down the block is pretty bleak.  But such, Florida argues, are the results of picket-fence-bounded displacement.  “Think of it this way,” says the New Jersey–bred Florida, setting up a comparison from his own upbringing.  “My parents, growing up in Newark, had no need for these types of stories.  They could get all the interaction and the drama they needed right there in the neighbourhood.”

I’m not from Britain and I haven’t owned a tv for decades.  I didn’t even know who Pan Ayres was before I saw this, but I still thought this was funny.  I don’t know if she’s always funny or not, but I see where she’s soon to perform in Wellington, so I could go find out if I wanted.  (I won’t.)

In a recent study, biologist Anthony Cashmore has argued that a belief in free will is akin to religious beliefs, since neither complies with the laws of the physical world.  One of the basic premises of biology and biochemistry is that biological systems are nothing more than a bag of chemicals that obey chemical and physical laws.  Generally, we have no problem with the “bag of chemicals” notion when it comes to bacteria, plants, and similar entities.  So why is it so difficult to say the same about humans or other “higher level” species, when we’re all governed by the same laws?  As Cashmore explains, the human brain acts at both the conscious level as well as the unconscious.  It’s our consciousness that makes us aware of our actions, giving us the sense that we control them, as well.  But even without this awareness, our brains can still induce our bodies to act, and studies have indicated that consciousness is something that follows unconscious neural activity.  Just because we are often aware of multiple paths to take, that doesn’t mean we actually get to choose one of them based on our own free will.  As the ancient Greeks asked, by what mechanism would we be choosing?  The physical world is made of causes and effects — “nothing comes from nothing” — but free will, by its very definition, has no physical cause.

People who frequently use tanning beds experience changes in brain activity during their tanning sessions that mimic the patterns of drug addiction, new research shows.  Scientists have suspected for some time that frequent exposure to ultraviolet radiation has the potential to become addictive, but the new research is the first to actually peer inside the brains of people as they lay in tanning beds.  Several parts of the brain that play a role in addiction were activated when the subjects were exposed to UV rays.  The findings, which appear in the coming issue of the journal Addiction Biology, may help explain why some people continue to tan despite awareness about risks such as skin cancer, premature ageing and wrinkles.  “What this shows is that the brain is in fact responding to UV light, and it responds in areas that are associated with reward,” said Dr Bryon Adinoff, a professor of psychiatry at the University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center and an author of the study.  “These are areas that we see activated when someone is administered a drug or a high-value food like sugar.”  On one occasion, the researchers used a special filter that blocks only the UV light, although the tanners weren’t told of the change.  But the tanners could tell.

Propofol (Michael Jackson’s cause of death) is not a sleeping aid; that’s “not even in the ballpark of appropriate use,” says anæsthesiologist Beverly Philip.  But propofol has another property: a significant potential for recreational use.  “It’s not a narcotic like heroin, and doesn’t get you high,” says anæsthesiologist Ethan Bryson of Mount Sinai Medical Center, NY, “but it does provide a feeling of oblivion or being spaced out.”  As a general anæsthetic, propofol acts on the brain’s GABA receptors, which cause inhibitory neurons — those that quiet other circuits — to fire; that’s how it induces unconsciousness.  It also increases levels of the feel-good neurotransmitter dopamine, triggering a sense of reward similar to sex or cocaine.  Some users experience euphoria, sexual disinhibition, even hallucinations, followed by a feeling of calm and an upbeat mood.  Since it’s so widely used — it revolutionised ambulatory anæsthesia, allowing a physician to knock someone out in seconds and have them up and about 10 minutes later — scientists have no shortage of subjects able to describe their experience.  About 1/3 remember nothing; another 1/3 say they dreamt, but don’t recall specifics.  The rest experience “vivid, strange dreams, sometimes of a sexual nature.”  Once it wears off, many report feeling well-rested, energetic, and happy.  Murray said he gave Jackson propofol because the singer wanted to feel energised for rehearsals, but it doesn’t provide a restorative sleep; anyone using it regularly could become dependent on it to function.  A survey of academic anæsthesiology departments found 18% reported propofol abuse by physicians or nurses — a 500% increase from 10 years earlier.  Upward of 30% of abusers eventually die from using it.  Unlike other anæsthetics, it has no reversing agent and no straightforward way to rescue someone who takes too much.

Nimble Ma Jei astonished tourists when she scrambled 70 feet up a virtually sheer wall at Zhonghau Castle, in Nanjing, eastern China — just to dodge the £2.50 admission fee.  Thrifty Jei — who had no rope or safety equipment — told fellow visitors she’d grown up in Jiangsu province, climbing the walls of Zhonghau Castle since childhood and had never once paid to get in.  But unfortunately her stunt encouraged other visitors to follow her example — with two falling and breaking their legs and three others having to be rescued by police.  “She ran up the wall like a goat and made it look easy.  But when people tried it for themselves they saw it wasn’t quite as simple as they thought,” explained one tourist.

From a description of one speaker’s speech at the Indianapolis Creation Evidence Expo: "The next half of his speech was about the Great Flood and how Pangaea split with the tower of Babel.  He went on about how God gave all nations some sort of specialty and that’s why great scientist and geniuses come out of Europe." P Z Meyers’ reaction to that: “I do like the image of plate tectonics explained by god smiting a tower in Mesopotamia and sending North America skittering westward to create the Atlantic Ocean.  And the idea that Pangaea could be found on earth roughly, according to Young Earth Creationism chronology, in 600BCE is hilarious.”  Actually, Pangaea formed during the late Paleozoic Era when several smaller continents collided, welding together to form a single supercontinent.  The animated gif begins early in the Mesozoic Era, during the Triassic Period, showing the motion of the continents to their present positions.  Uploaded 13 April 2003 by the US Geological Services.  photo source: GeomapsUSGS

“In Bali, the range of accommodation options is virtually limitless.  There aren’t many places in the world that give as good a value as the hotels and villas in The Island of Gods.  Ubud Hanging Gardens is ridiculously difficult to find, but once there, it is heaven on earth.  The resort is quietly tucked away on top of a hill in the middle of a forest.  There is literally nothing at all within its vicinity.  What they offer is the ultimate in serenity and luxury.  Each unit is located on the hill slope, so instead of taking the lift from the lobby, you reach your room using a funicular train.  They have free internet access, an outdoor bathtub and a spectacular heated infinity private pool.  They are built in such a way as to resemble Bali’s cascading rice paddy fields.  But just outside the restaurant, overlooking the forest, is the resort’s most jaw-dropping feature: the double-storey freeform infinity pool.” — Kenny Sia

Some people find that they can live easily with lower bedroom temperatures merely by using a heavy down comforter.  But some prefer their beds to be warmed beforehand.  One economical way to do this is to take a cloth sack filled with feed corn and heat it in the microwave as if it were pop corn (it doesn’t pop), then use it as a foot warmer in bed (or anywhere cold feet or pulled muscles are a problem).  It works great.  One commenter: “We’ve had ours in use every winter for 5 years now.  No signs of wear.  My husband was in the custom canvas business at the time, and made it out of a scrap piece of “Sunbrella” acrylic yacht canvas — finished, it was about the dimension of a sheet of typing paper.  The corn always seems to give off a slighty moist heat, and faint corn aroma.  I suspect it reabsorbs moisture from the air.”  Another commenter: “I’ve heard that buckwheat seed works well too.  My friend sews a couple of kitchen hand towels together into a “pillowcase” shape and fills it with maybe 4 pounds of regular (not minute) rice, then sews the open end closed.  This size you microwaves in 3-4 minutes.  If you’re putting it directly on a person, you’ll want to wait a few minutes after microwaving to avoid TOO much heat, but as a bed warmer, no wait required.  For the deluxe, slightly aromatic version, you can use Jasmine rice instead.  If you want to wash the cover or change the rice inside, take out the last seam and remove rice, clean the bag, refill and sew again.”  For a quick “no sew” model, a clean, all-cotton tube sock with 1 to 2 pounds of rice works.  If the sock it too thick to knot the open end securely, after microwaving, fold over in a non-leaky way and safety pin shut.  This size microwaves in 1½-2 minutes.  (For safety, it is recommended you microwave them with a glass of water to provide a bit of moisture as this reduces the chance of smouldering.)

Grown at Abbotsbury Subtropical Gardens in Dorset, the Gunnera manicata leaf is big enough for a whole family to stand underneath.  The plant, native to Brazil, has been growing at the gardens for the last 30 years but its leaves this year are 3 feet longer than usual.  It is believed the wet summer is responsible.  The leaves of the plant — which is known as Giant Rhubarb — are usually about 8 feet wide.  It might look friendly, but there are thousands of tiny spikes on the underside of the giant leaf and down the plant’s stalk.  In the jungle the tropical plant’s leaves often overlap to form huge canopies used to shelter from rain.  The plant bears thousands of minute reddish flowers on club-shaped spikes up to 6 feet tall.

Korean truck elevators are useful for moving into or out of areas of tall buildings.

Bizarre Halloween Jack O’Lantern carved pumpkins by Ray Villafane take him just two hours to carve, slice and gouge.  He uses everything from spoons to scalpels to create his pumpkin masterpieces.  He also uses common clay carving tools.  The 42-year-old said: “Not all pumpkins will look good.  The most important thing is its weight.  You need to pick the meatiest pumpkin.”  He adds, “They are a pleasure to make.”  The pumpkin on the right, the zipperhead model, took “the best part of a day” to complete.  There was no mention of how long these last.  He also does sandsculpting — another hobby whose results (other than a photograph) are quite short-lived.

New Zealand sculptor Hannah Kidd is based in Franz Josef, but she exhibits throughout New Zealand and abroad.  “I’m investigating people and the relationships they have with their surrounding environment.  Animals continue to feature heavily in my work and are frequently used as a vehicle to discuss the human condition.”  Hannah graduated from Otago Polytechnic School of Art in 2001.  She sculpts predominantly using steel rod and corrugated iron.

A storm cloud threatens to develop into a full-blown tornado behind a cluster of family homes.  The photographer took this shot of an explosive storm from the roof of his house in Taber, Canada.  Expecting the sunny weather to take a turn for the worse he watched intently as the billows started spinning into a furious funnel.  He says: “Our area of the country seldom sees tornadoes so this was a rare sight indeed and the rainbow underneath made it even more special.”  This picture was created by stitching together multiple photographs in a vertical panorama.

Two Faces:

• At left: I posted another of these a month or two ago, but I like this one better.
• At right: A drawing by Leif Parsons — to me, it looks like a perfect illustration for indecision.  You might want to visit Parsons’ website because it is certainly — how shall I put this? — a bit out of the ordinary.

Some of the most overused words on resumes:
1.  Accomplished. Every job seeker is accomplished.  Instead try Peak Performer.
2.  Successful. Look at alternative wording.  Instead try: Best In Class.
3.  Skillful or Skilled. Boring.  Seriously.  Instead try: Talented, Resourceful.
4.  Problem-Solver. Does this really need saying?  Instead try: Troubleshooter or Forward-Thinking.
5.  Results-Driven. Don’t sound like everyone else — stand out.  Instead try: Performance-Driven.
6.  And last but not least Dedicated and Dependable. Instead try: High-Potential, Quality-Driven, Dynamic.

"I have no feelings.  If ever I do, they won’t defeat my intelligence."  The Piano Teacher (2001).  This is an animated gif, but she blinks and taps her fingers a bit before finally turning her head.  (I like understatement.)

Just in time for Halloween.  For some reason, this clip runs really slowly for me.  The original video is here.

I’m not sure why the picture on the left appeals to me: Its sparsity?  Its austerity?  I could find no information about it.  The photo on the right is Milford Sound, South Island, New Zealand.

From the inimitable Dr Boli.

What It Takes to Look Official: More — and less — than you might think…

This message has importence so listen up!

Are BAD Clients Better than NO Clients?

Client: “I don’t really like that the website has a top and bottom.”
Me: “Everything has a top and bottom.  That’s how it goes.”
Client: “Not true.  Circles don’t.”
Me: “So you want a circular website?”
Client: “Yup! Like a conveyer belt, or — ooh! — a rolodex.  Every time you scroll up past the top, you get to the bottom.  Every time you scroll down past the bottom, you get to the top.”
Me: “Then how will we designate the …”
Client: “What’s the top and bottom?  Good point.  If everything is continuous, then there can’t be a top or bottom.”
Me: “I can’t believe I’m having this conversation.”
Client: “So, what we need is a randomizer!”
 

Client: “Our last request is sort of a sensitive one.”
Me: “Okay…”
Client: “We’d like to ask that you to get rid of any, uh, pornography you might, uh, have on your computer.  We just wouldn’t want it to accidentally wind up on the website, you know?”
Me “Well, firstly, it doesn’t really work like that, you can’t just—”
Client: “I know those sorts of things are hard to get rid of, especially if you’ve formed an attachment to them.”
Me: “What?  No.  What!?”
Client: “I guess if you have to keep it, keep it at an opposite corner or file or whatever.”
Me: “What!?”
 

Client: “We want a no-right-click script so people, by which we mean pædophiles, can’t save pictures from our custom gallery of kids.”
Me: “But the gallery has an ‘email me this picture’ form.”
Client: “That’s for parents.”
 

Client: “We love our new building and we thought it would be great to have pictures of it in all 4 seasons from the exact same angle.”
Photographer: “That sounds like a really cool project.”
Client: “Great!  So what are the chances having those ready for our convention next month?”
 

Client: “I need this campaign to change direction completely, spin around in the other direction.  I know 360° makes you point the same way again, so I guess I’m asking for a 359° change.”
Me: “So you want us to exert the most amount of effort for the least amount of change…”
Client: “What?  No.  359°!  Big change!”