Entries Tagged as 'A Wandering Mind'

The Pill Makes Women Want to Inbreed

Ok now don’t get me wrong there’s nothing wrong with being attracted to your brother/uncle/cousin as long as you live in a southern state where class is something that you stopped going to when you were 7 but researchers in the UK have found that The Pill may inhibit a womans ability to choose a mate genetically dissimilar to herself.

Science Blog: “Disturbing a woman’s instinctive attraction to genetically different men could result in difficulties when trying to conceive, an increased risk of miscarriage and long intervals between pregnancies. Passing on a lack of diverse genes to a child could also weaken their immune system.

Humans choose partners through their body odour and tend to be attracted to those with a dissimilar genetic make-up to themselves, maintaining genetic diversity. Genes in the Major Histocompatibility Complex (MHC), which helps build the proteins involved in the body’s immune response, also play a prominent role in odour through interaction with skin bacteria. In this way these genes also help determine which individuals find us attractive.

Dr Craig Roberts, in collaboration with Professor Morris Gosling and Professor Marion Petrie from Newcastle University analysed how the contraceptive pill affects odour preferences. One hundred women were asked to indicate their preferences on six male body odour samples, drawn from 97 volunteer samples, before and after initiating contraceptive pill use.”

Why California’s Cell Phone Law is a Bad Joke, Waste of Time, and Impossible to Take Seriously

Last night my wife and I were talking about drivers we’d seen using cellphones while driving (including police officers and California Highway Patrol) so I decided I’d take a look at the FAQs of the new law. If you’re not familiar with the new laws the jist is drivers are supposed to use headsets or not talk on a cell phone. What I found is laughable. It’s cheaper to get a ticket than pay $99 for a bluetooth headset.

Here’s what I found:

Q: What are the fines if I’m convicted?
A: The base fine for the FIRST offense is $20 and $50 for subsequent convictions.
However, with the addition of penalty assessments, the total amount can be more than
triple the base fine.

Q: Will I receive a point on my drivers license if I’m convicted for a violation of the
wireless telephone law?
A: NO. The violation is a reportable offense: however, DMV will not assign a violation
point.

Q: Will the conviction appear on my driving record?
A: Yes, but the violation point will not be added.

I honestly don’t believe the fines are stringent enough to deter anyone once they find out what the penalties are.

If you’d like to check out the FAQs yourself you can find a PDF prepared by the California Department of Transportation here: http://www.chp.ca.gov/pdf/media/cell_phone_faq.pdf

Flickr’s Not Dead Yet

Flickr needs video. No really. Yahoo! has been struggling under the weight of Flickr since they bought it trying to find different ways to monetize but the answer lies in video. Let’s start with a scenario and maybe you’ll get where I’m going with this.

Thanksgiving. This year. It’s not yet time to dive into the golden brown bird so everyone is gathered around the new babies talking. Jim and Sue have the video camera rolling right as their daughter takes her first steps. Awesome! Jim says he wants to edit the video before putting it online for everyone to see. No problem since Jim lives in Wisconsin and he’s only at you house visiting.

Jim goes home after the holiday, edits his video and gets ready to put it online. Where should Jim upload it to? Youtube? Google video? Kind of impersonal. Jim doesn’t really want to share video of his daughter taking her first steps right alongside videos of drunken teen girls kissing and dancing to “Barbie Girl”.

What about one of the other video hosting sites? Who? I’ve never heard of them and odds are Gramma never has either. So Jim shuts down his computer and the video never leaves the desktop.

This is where Flickr comes in.

Flickr has already established brand superiority in online photo uploading. Millions of people upload every day! The user base is already there. There just needs to be a way for them to upload video now. WHICH brings me to the next point.

Flickr has developed an easy to use system for uploading and has left the API open so developers can build upon the system.

And the final point, monetization. Transcribing the video from whatever format it’s uploaded in to Flash based video or H.264 for download gives Yahoo! the opportunity to throw in “content sensitive” ads at the beginning or end of the video. This means money, money, money.

How cool would it be to go to your Flickr contacts list and see not only the photos but the videos your friends have upload? Huh? Huh? Is that cool or what?

Yahoo! this is your chance to make a comeback. Don’t mess this up.

The New Age of Spam

If you’re a blogger you may have noticed spammers have figured out a way around us blocking them by keyword, don’t use keywords.

Most of the new spam looks like a real comment until you look at the person commentings link or the links in the body of the comment. Almost all the time it points back at a spam site or a bulletin board that is actually redirecting to a spam site.

Nice trick. Unfortunately for you (and fortunately for us) you haven’t realized that all your links still have “nofollow” tags on them so the search engines ignore your links. Sorry. We still win.

Vacations Are Great

Vacations are great…

at making you realize life goes on outside of work.

Dogs Laugh Too

Next time you’re walking around in your underwear that panting coming from your dog may actually be him laughing at you.

ABC News: Nancy Hill, director of Spokane County Animal Protection, admits she was skeptical at first that this noise would affect the other dogs.

“I thought: Laughing dogs?” Hill said. “A sound that we’re gonna isolate and play in the shelter? I was a real skeptic ‚Ķ until we played the recording here at the shelter.”

When they played the sound of a dog panting over the loudspeaker, the gaggle of dogs at the shelter kept right on barking. But when they played the dog version of laughing, all 15 barking dogs went quiet within about a minute.

“It was a night-and-day difference,” Hill said. “It was absolutely phenomenal.”

A Really Cool, Unique Shirt from Solo Tees

I got fired for blogging the tshirt

Solo Tees has a shirt that says, “I got fired for blogging.”

That rocks!

100 Ideas

Sometimes as creative people we need a little diversion to help inspire us. Keri Smith has found a great way by creating a list of things to do. Here’s the first 33:

Keri Smith
1. Go for a walk. Draw or list things you find on the the sidewalk. 2. Write a letter to yourself in the future. 3. Buy something inexpensive as a symbol for your need to create, (new pen, a tea cup, journal). Use it everyday. 4. Draw your dinner. 5. Find a piece of poetry you respond to. Rewrite it and glue it into your journal. 6. Glue an envelope into your journal. For one week collect items you find on the street. 7. Expose yourself to a new artist, (go to a gallery, or in a book.) Write about what moves you about it. 8. Find a photo of a person you do not know. Write a brief bio about them. 9. Spend a day drawing only red things. 10. Draw your bike. 11. Make a list of everything you buy in the next week. 12. Make a map of everywhere you went in one day. 13. Draw a map of the creases on your hand, (knuckles, palm) 14. Trace your footsteps with chalk. 15. Record an overheard conversation. 16. Trace the path of the moon in relation to where you live. 17. Go to a paint store. Collect ‘chips’ of all your favorite colors. 18. Draw your favorite tree. 19. Take 15 minutes to eat an orange. 20. Write a haiku. 21. Hang upside down for five minutes. 22. Hang found objects from tree branches. 23. Make a puppet. 24. Create an outdoor room from things you find in nature. 25. Read a book in one day. 26. Illustrate your grocery list. 27. Read a story out loud to a friend. 28. Write a letter to someone you admire. 29. Study the face of someone you do not like. 30. Make a meal based on a color theme. (i.e. all white). 31. Creat a museum of very small things. 32. List the smells in your neighborhood. 33. List 100 uses for a tin can.

She’s a great artist also so be sure to check out the rest of the list and her illustrations.

[Go there now]

One of My Most Favorite Quotes Ever

From an interview with renowned physicist Stephen Hawking:

What did he think of the program to send American astronauts back to the moon? “Stupid,” he answered. “Sending politicians would be much cheaper, because you don’t have to bring them back.”

Gotta love the guy.

How to Clean Anything

Ok, here’s one you’re going to HAVE to add to your bookmarks. How to clean anything and boy do they mean anything. Did you know you can remove cement from your car by using a mild acid like white vinegar? You can! Check it out.

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