metabo

"As part of its intensifying efforts, the company has started giving its employees “metabo check” towels that double as tape measures."

leave it to the japanese to make clever gadgets to go with their metabo campaign.



japan is setting waistline limits on its citizens to help combat obesity, or as they call it, metabolic disorder. companies are measuring their employees, retirees, and families. i would call it a social prophylactic. japan is not (yet) fat.


over the course of a week in tokyo in 2007, spending most of my non-work time roaming the streets in search of my next noodle house exploit, i saw maybe 3 noticeably overweight people. tokyo. busy, cram packed, dense tokyo. it was incredible.




i came back to the states to loud, undereducated, morbidly overweight, rude, low tech americans and wanted to get back on the plane. i felt like i was in the wrong country. i still do.



mmm. noodles.



mmm. midgety autos.

toe jam

i like david byrne.

history

this toy came up in conversation with our pregnant safety officer today at lunch. i told her the story, and she cracked up, making all her pregnant parts jiggle.

thanks for the memories quirkmaster.

gives new meaning to roach coach

how can you resist a story like this. entomology, and more specifically host-parasite interaction was often a favorite subject in school. i really like the part where the wasp drives the roach home like a cadillac. for the author, this conjures up images of alien. for me, it's mars attacks! and mib.

timing

absolutely scary

defining species

canis soup and very uncoli-like coli

very berry

miracle fruit

march 2007 - no progress

by march 2007 i had nearly finished the bamboo floors inside, and was chomping at the bit to eliminate the invasive vines outside. it was getting to be time to dig in the dirt again.

the view from upstairs shows how close the oak cluster is to the house. the canopy covers about half the roofspace and shields much of the hot late afternoon sun.

the side yard is narrow and steep. needs steps badly. this is a zero lot line with the neighbors siding acting as my fence.

the front was a patch of boring st. augustine with a reasonable raised bed trimmed in railroad timber. while a bit dilapidated, this will do until the budget allows for poured concrete or dry stack/flat stack stone.

june 2006 - blank slate

this was my back yard shortly after move in: a massive infestation of asiatic jasmine and english ivy. these are popular in my area, which borders the bull creek preserve. why people think it's ok to plant invasive non-native vines here, i'll never know.

the live oak cluster just behind the house. diagonal view across the ocean of asiatic jasmine. i had no idea what was underneath that mass. i had too many things to tend to inside the house to find out.

gas

because god cares about gas prices. (thanks don)

good cat

joel didn't believe me when i said irobot made a gutter cleaner. then he comes back with this. i may want that more than the squeegee bot. i could talk to my dogcats from work. or manage the cats when they're on autopilot while i'm on a weekender.

santa, that's what i want for xmas.

needles

some vaccines are easier to develop than others

safe injection sites

that time of year

browse austin gardens

sparky's time machine

maybe that's not so far from the truth.

“This research supports the theory I introduced that animals are stuck in time, with no sense of time extending into the past or future.” link

cecropia

i saw one of these on the weekend dying on the sidewalk outside tomlinson's pet store. today i got a newsletter from the ladybird johnson wildflower center describing that very moth.

no wonder i saw it dying: it only lives 10 days in its adult phase.

measure twice, cut once

i watched this movie back in school. we all knew the biochemical cascade of inflammatory response, but finally being able to visualize it made the process that much cooler. this movie was more relevant to my job at that time, which was heavily rooted in discovery and exploration. now i'm just a glorified mechanic of things nano. here, fix this. it's broken.

here's another good one that i hadn't seen until recently about the nifty little silencing enzyme, dicer. measure twice, cut once.

to die in the name of seed diversity

i should have been a field biologist. this is yet another example of how life would be better not under fluorescent lights.

"Stalin wanted nothing to do with genetics, and Vavilov's progressive ideas amounted to heresy. In 1940, in his early 50s, Vavilov was jailed for pursuing "impractical science." Three years later, he starved to death in prison."

loss of diversity.

"In the past 200 years in the U.S. alone, 75 percent of the variety within crops has vanished... Crop yields will need to roughly double in the next 50 years to keep up with the pace of population growth."

seed vault.

"Dug nearly 400 feet deep into a sandstone mountain, the vault's interior temperature is immune to changes in the surrounding permafrost. It sits roughly 425 feet above sea level, protected against flood even if all of Antarctica were to melt... capable of holding 4.5 million samples of vital crop seeds."

who knew.

"Before it gained notoriety for its prison, Abu Ghraib was the site of Iraq's national seed bank. It was destroyed and looted after the 2003 American invasion, its collections of lentils, rye, barley and other seeds gone forever."

chemistry

careful who you work for: the birth of vx

custom blend

about 2 yrs ago i started mixing my soft drinks 1/2 diet, 1/2 full strength at the fountain thinking it might cut some unneeded calories while satiating my carbonated sweet tooth. specifically i was hoping to get rid of my 30th birthday present (tummy fat, the kind that makes your belly button look deeper). i have not noticed a difference. at all. reading this blurb and the corresponding journal article in bne makes me wonder. i'm a firm proponent of highly evolved, hardwired physiological response. our biochemistry dates back to well before our species originated in africa 200,000 yrs ago. not to mention the empirical evidence that the general consumer of the diet drink is big as a house.

it may be time for some self-experimental data taking.

dear bad date,

i dedicate this article to my lousy date some months back at the starbucks in westlake. that was my 1st of 2 lousy dates at that place. who wants to meet at an abominable $4 coffee place in an uppity neighborhood? free market capitalists. that's who.

a society medicated

some statistics on lifestyle drugging.

"A study of antidepressant use in private health insurance plans by the New England Research Institute found that 43 percent of those who had been prescribed antidepressants had no psychiatric diagnosis or any mental health care beyond the prescription of the drug."

(thanks quirkmaster)

three trillion dollar war

$16bn per month is quite a tab. and really really bad accounting practices to boot. as in, oops where'd i put that $8.8bn?

"...the official Congressional Budget Office estimate for the cost of the war so far was of the order of $500bn. The figure was so low, they didn't believe it, and decided to investigate. The paper they wrote together, and published in January 2006, revised the figure sharply upwards, to between $1 and $2 trillion." the cost of war.

a woman overlooked

nearing the 50th anniversary of her death. this story always makes me a little sad.

the teapot dome scandal

a nice story about corruption, oil, illicit love, and the republican national committee. the present day storyline has not changed much since the 1920s.

hvd

change is afoot

battery replacement

for quirkmaster: i'm sure you've already seen this bit about replacing the battery on your new macbook air.

"Let me put it this way: if Tom Cruise jumping on Oprah's couch was an 8 on the scale of scary, this is a 10."

i have to agree. check out tom cruise on scientology. this is a convenient follow-up to the conversation on scientology last night (thanks zack!). go check out your local chapter, make up a name, fill out the questionaire and enjoy the consultation. and how does that place on guadalupe afford the rent? they must have signed a lifetime lease.

nanohazard symbol competition

i've always been a huge fan of meaningless hazard symbols. you've seen them. one of my favorites is the giant baby falling into the bucket on the side of your homer bucket.

time to make up one for nanotechnology. you know there are going to be a bunch of phallic submissions.

economics of drug dealers

found it. as a graduate student, sudhir alladi venkatesh went into the 'hood in chicago with a questionnaire and collected data about the economics of drug dealers. the story includes sudhir being kidnapped, befriending these guys and acquiring the detailed account logs of a local drug lord. it's on the reading list. (thanks zack!)

dearest beard,

whiskerino. sometimes i'm a little late in discovering things. let's face it, there's a lot of internet out there.

deadly tree sperm

the cedar pollen is at near lethal levels. there's so much mucous in my synapses i should not be operating heavy equipment much less conversing in nerd speak at work.

caring for robots

as my friend joel spoke fondly of his growing relationship with his roomba (he was inspired to buy one after my recent excitement over buffy), describing its behavior tenderly, i noted how he has assigned purpose and possibly feelings to this machine. i could not help but think of the three laws of robotics. meanwhile i have purchased my first of possibly many maintenance kits to compensate for my daily use of buffy.

the woodcock johnson

in a discussion about iq tests last night, i was debriefed on the futility of measuring intelligence, particularly with the use of the woodcock johnson test.

can you imagine telling your kid to take a test designed by a man named richard "dick" woodcock who collaborated with a guy named johnson?

"nobody could have persuaded me to abandon these quirks"

my relationships are easily divided amongst the emotionals (emos) and the asperger's (aspies). when i first heard the phrase, "made love like a tin man" i knew intimately what this was like. that's quoted from this wonderful article in the new yorker written by an aspie, who coincidentally, has a fondness for rabbit's feet (p.3). while i do not consider myself an aspie, i relate to them innately. they have occupied my top friend spots for 13 years.

while not highly reviewed, this is on my reading list. and if you haven't read the wiki entry on aspies, it makes for a fun checklist when quantifying the penetrance of the behavior/syndrome/disorder in your friends.

this is not what i do at work.

Lip Dub - Flagpole Sitta by Harvey Danger from amandalynferri on Vimeo.

testosterone

makes men do funny things.

flying suit

buggy rollin

zilker tree

every year austin puts up a 150 foot tree of lights in zilker park. i carefully captured these choice photos on my cell phone. i could only twirl twice while looking up into the tree before i became completely disoriented.

hi dave!

thoughts on bots

i can't help but think of oh-so-cute jude law's loverbot 'gigolo joe' from spielberg's a.i., or darryl hannah from blade runner when i read about this (warning: not work safe) doll. definitely not legal in alabama. though the anatomical comlexity is amazing, the doll lacks any brain features your sony dog might have. sorry, stephanie realdoll 3583 will not recognize your face. somehow i don't think their target market is of the female persuasion. while aibo was killed long ago, i imagine stephanie is here to stay.

meanwhile, i am continually pleased with my new friend who faithfully cleans my filthy floors without hesitation or complaint. i have yet to name him/her. i almost called it isaac, but it talks in a female voice. maybe buffy ... not sure.

vroom vroom roomba

buffy in action from ktypnts on Vimeo.

a different kind of corkscrew

thinking i wouldn't be impressed watching former cart driver bryan herta get passed at laguna seca by alex zanardi in a technical turn called a corkscrew, i decided to see the movie. this was a story told to me by one of herta's childhood friends over lunch yesterday. folks, it's impressive.

zanardi later lost his legs in this horrific crash and now drives using a complex control cluster at the steering wheel.

all this in the context of something closer to home: we're getting our very own corkscrew. wonder if they'll let bikes on that part.

"The course under construction features a corkscrew turn modeled after the famous one at Laguna Seca and a tree-lined straightaway..."

link

the big boys get to race bikes at laguna seca during the circuit race at the sea otter classic. we're not likely to have national class racing here anytime soon (ever: remember the tour of texas and coors classic?), but at least the locals have another venue at which to play on tuesday nights.

"i like to take the couch on the highway"

it's been a long while since i visited this movie. figured it was time for a refresher. his drag race nyc is fun too. we've all seen it a million times, but it deserves a peek now and again. who can resist a good bike cam? his website ain't great, but people in glass houses shouldn't throw stones.

here's another version with proper engineering from a place where it's too cold in winter to do anything better.

a better place to be homeless

if you're going to be a homeless drug addict, maybe you should consider doing it in new york. the program offered by the national alliance to end homelessness has been doing it since 1992. they're undoing some of the damage from the reagan legacy.

"There are always going to be people," he replied. "They make it their own choice for staying out there."

the great communicator, my ass.

get in line for your barcode tattoo

hey, wait a minute. i used to work next door to these guys.

"Texans seeking to escape the next hurricane or state emergency by evacuation bus will first be submitted to criminal background checks, the state's emergency management director says. ... wristbands would be scanned by emergency management officials and the person's name would be added to a bus boarding log ... (that information) would be sent wirelessly to the University of Texas Center for Space Research data center."

teecheedaw

In the Snow: keeping you company from Zea on Vimeo.

men optional?

after recent events with psycho boy, which followed a string of failed ltr's, this idea hit me like a ton of bricks. i'm not the only one thinking about it. more women are discussing the 'choice mom' route.

haven't found good sources re: the legal implications of turkey basting with, for example, your best friend's sperm. what does that contract look like?