If you're using Chrome, the right column of this blog isn't displaying correctly. Switch to Firefox. If you're using the iPad, you're a tool. If you're using IE, go kill yourself.
(This person is kinda upset that I dissed their favorite browser. I actually use Chrome and I like it, but for some reason the layout here is different than on Firefox. And of course, the iPad and IE just plain suck. You tool.)

Friday, April 30, 2010

Last drop concept

So simple it's genius.

Thursday, April 29, 2010

Odell Waller

Odell Waller was a 25 year-old black sharecropper in Virginia in 1942. He and his white landlord, Oscar Davis, got into a fight over 52 sacks of wheat, which Waller harvested and were his. But Davis would not release them. While Waller was away, Davis evicted the sharecropper's wife and mother from their tin-roof shack. Waller, after returning and becoming enraged, shot and killed Davis. An all-white jury convicted Waller of first degree murder, the sentence being the chair. The verdict was made even more egregious when in the same Virginia county a white farmer who murdered an unarmed black sharecropper was acquitted in 15 minutes and was set free on $1,000 bond.

Waller, using what little grammar and spelling skills he had, wrote this statement:

Have you thought about some people are allowed a chance over and over again then there are other allowed little chance some no chance at all. ... In my case I worked hard from sun up until sundown trying to make a living for my family and it ended in death for me. You take big people as the President, Governors, judges, their children don't never have to suffer. They has plenty of money. Born in a mention [mansion] nothing ever to worry about. I am glad some people are that lucky. The penitentiary all over the United States are full of people who was pore tried to work and have something, couldn't so that maid them steel and rob.

Just weeks before his scheduled electrocution, Waller also wrote to First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt, champion for the downtrodden, to allow him a chance. She pleaded FDR to at least place Waller in the army. But it was inappropriate for the president to try to use the bully pulpit to influence a decision that was left solely to the governor of Virginia, Colgate W. Darden. FDR weighted his choices and decided to write a letter to the governor anyway, asking if he could forgo Waller's death sentence. At that time the U.S. Supreme Court refused to take action, leaving the governor to listen to Waller's counsel to consider commutation. But in the end, Darden decided against it.

Odell Waller was electrocuted on July 2.

Paraphrased from FDR (pgs. 568-572)

Wednesday, April 28, 2010

Bete noire

BĂȘte noire means "a person or thing especially disliked or dreaded."

Tuesday, April 27, 2010

Atheist, theist; agnostic, gnostic

A good post on what it means to be atheist/theist and agnostic/gnostic. I am in the unique position of being right in the middle of the chart -- I really don't give a shit if there is or isn't a god.

Monday, April 26, 2010

Back-formation

A back-formation is the process of deriving a word from what appears to be its derivative. For example, the word editor actually came first, and the word edit was formed after it.

After the Siege of Mafeking of the Second Boer War, the British were so excited that they created the verb maffick, which means "to celebrate boisterously," after the town of Mafeking.

Here's a list of back-formations.

Sunday, April 25, 2010

You don't put ties in the washing machine

Yep. I'm a rookie when it comes to dressing nice. Last week I had an interview where I of course had to wear a necktie. As with all my other clothes, I put the tie I wore in the washing machine after the interview. Then hung it outside. Then saw that it could never be de-wrinkled again.

Neckties are fucking useless anyway. I truly don't understand what their function is supposed to be. You don't need something hanging off your neck to look nice. The bowtie died, I wish this one would too.

Saturday, April 24, 2010

Recent immigrants trust the government more

From NPR, summarizing a Pew Research poll released last week in which 194 immigrants, mostly young Mexicans who live in the south, were asked about their views of the government:

About 32 percent of them said they're basically content with the federal government, while only 15 percent of native-born Americans said the same.

Thirty-one percent of immigrants said they trust the government of Washington always or most of the time, versus 21 percent of people born in the United States.

More than half of immigrant Americans said the federal government is affecting the way things are going positively; only 22 percent of those born in the U.S. said the same.

A commenter on the site named Mourice pretty much sums it up:

It's all in perspective. If you were born in America you have no appreciation (educational opportunities, public libraries, ready resources, freedom of movement) Americans just whine about everything, while those coming from other countries appreciate it because they came from countries that do not have these things. That's why I get ticked (ticked because I care not whining immaturity) when status quo America treats education, etc., etc. as something that they can just CUT. Budget cuts on things that make America America. When people from poor countries start seeing America as just like where they came from IT'S OVER FOR AMERICA. That's your real BEROMETER of America.

Friday, April 23, 2010

Mark Fiore

Thursday, April 22, 2010

Hawthorne effect

From Research Methods in Psychology (p. 347):

One specific novelty effect has been labeled the Hawthorne effect. This refers to changes in people's behavior brought about by the interest that "significant others" show in them. The effect was named after events occurring at the Hawthorne plant of the Western Electric Company in Cicero, Illinois, near Chicago, between 1924 and 1932. Studies were conducted to examine the relationship between productivity and conditions of the workplace. In one experiment, the amount of lighting in the plant was varied and worker performance was examined. Results reveal that both experimental and control groups increased their productivity during the study. Although there is some controversy surrounding the exact factors responsible for this effect, a Hawthorne effect generally refers to a change in behavior that results from participant's' awareness that someone is interested in them.

Wednesday, April 21, 2010

ECNALUBMA

It only took me a little over two decades to figure out that the AMBULANCE sign is printed backwards so people would look in their rearview mirrors and yield the right of way.

And I take pre-med classes.

Tuesday, April 20, 2010

In so many words

If you are saying something in so many words, you are saying it bluntly.

Monday, April 19, 2010

Crystal Night

Crystal Night was a government-sponsored wave of rioting against Jews in Germany on November 9-10, 1938, which left 91 Jews dead, 25,000 to 30,000 arrested and put in concentration camps, and 267 synagogues destroyed. It began after a young Jew whose parents had been deported to Poland shot and killed an official at the German Foreign Office. It eventually led to the Holocaust.

Crystal Night also started a shift in American public opinion from isolationism to more of a sympathetic outlook toward the Ashkenazi Jews.

Sunday, April 18, 2010

OpenCola

OpenCola is the Linux of soft drinks. It's an open source beverage that allows people to change its contents under the GNU General Public License.

Saturday, April 17, 2010

City chicks

Today I went to the Live Green Expo, which was about two blocks from my house. And yes, I took a car. The keynote speaker was Joel Salatin, the farmer featured in the movie Food, Inc. He gave us this tidbit. From the book City Chicks:

The chicken biomass converter and waste diversion strategy is exactly what the city of Diest in Flanders, Belgium is using to reduce their refuse management budget. Because chickens process food and yard waste, by giving 3 laying hens to 2,000 households, the city of Diest is using chickens as an economical solution to the costly problem of recycling biomass trash. Recycling biodegradable trash costs the city about $600,000 annually, and city officials expect to save a significant amount of that expense using personal poultry power. The chickens’ production of eggs, compost, topsoil, and fertilizer are spin-off added benefits.

Friday, April 16, 2010

Dark energy, as explained by Steven Weinberg

One of the things I've always wanted to learn more about is astrophysics. I don't talk about the universe much here. So today I decided to go to a lecture at UT Dallas featuring Steven Weinberg, who won the 1979 Nobel in physics for his work on explaining the unification of electromagnetism and weak force. At the end, an audience member asked him how the universe could be expanding when gravity pulls galaxies together. Here's how he responded, and note that I'm only paraphrasing.

Twenty years ago, he would have said that gravity isn't strong enough to bind objects together. As with a rocket that propels at several miles per second to escape Earth's gravity, two galaxies are speeding up at such a fast pace that it's impossible for gravity to keep a hold on them.

Now, he said, theoretical physicists like himself explain this phenomenon by citing a yet poorly understood concept known as dark energy. This form of energy actually goes against gravity in separating two objects, thus making the universe bigger.

Reading the Wikipedia articles on dark matter and dark energy won't help me; I don't know much about astrophysics to begin with, although I do at least know the general idea of how the universe was formed and expanded thereafter, making way for galaxies to appear. I need to buy his book, The First Three Minutes. That'll help me.

Thursday, April 15, 2010

3.14 in a mirror spells...

... PIE.

Wednesday, April 14, 2010

Bring out the GIMP!

First, watch this video that Adobe posted on YouTube:



Pretty damn impressive, huh? But since Photoshop is not free, the open source guys made this tutorial for use with GIMP. You'll have to download a plugin but it's worth it. I tried it and thought it was great.

And just for shits and giggles...

Tuesday, April 13, 2010

The real Gray's Anatomy

Henry Gray's Anatomy of the Human Body is a human anatomy textbook which was published by the British anatomist Henry Gray in 1858 (who by the way died at the age of 34). It is regarded as the classic work on human anatomy.

Monday, April 12, 2010

Chicago Pol

More Polish people live in Chicago than in any other city outside of Warsaw.

Sunday, April 11, 2010

Overton window

The Overton window is a "'window' in the range of public reactions to ideas in public discourse, in a spectrum of all possible options on an issue." This is how Wikipedia orders the range of possibilites:

* Unthinkable
* Radical
* Acceptable
* Sensible
* Popular
* Policy

Nate Silver argues that if Obama wants to nominate someone like Elena Kagan to the Supreme Court, he would need to present this list:

* Garland (moderate)
* Kagan
* Wood
* Karlan
* Sullivan
* Koh (liberal)

... instead of this one:

* Olsen (moderate)
* Posner
* Dorgan
* Garland
* Kagan
* Wood (liberal)

Saturday, April 10, 2010

Zayan

Zayan, my last name, actually means "bright." The website also had this horoscope-like description for the name, which pretty much fits me perfectly:

The name of Zayan incorporates a potential aptitude for concentration and patient, logical thought along mechanical or scientific lines. You tend to prefer to follow normal routine rather than cope with the disruption and uncertainty entailed in trying something new. You gravitate to situations where you have stability and the opportunity to make slow step-by-step progress, preferably in a technical field. Procrastination and lack of self-confidence may restrict your success.

Friday, April 9, 2010

Pig cig

Cigarettes may contain small amounts of pig's blood to filter out toxic chemicals.

Skip to 3:38.

Thursday, April 8, 2010

Another new hominin

Remember Ardi? Well, today we learned of the 2 million year-old Australopithecus sediba, a mother and possibly her child fresh out of a cave in South Africa. Some are saying that A. sediba has more in common with Homo erectus than Homo habilis does, which might even make the handy man sort of a side species. That's crazy when you think about it, but H. habilis has always been a bit of an enigma anyway. If I was him, I'd use my killer stone flakes and stab this new species in the eye.

The features for A. sediba are: small brain, small body, very long arms (all earlier australopithecine traits), advanced pelvis, small teeth, and projecting nose (later Homo traits). So now the problem is trying to put this sucker on the human evolutionary tree.

Side note: The team that discovered the bones used Google Earth to determine a good site for digging. And a 9 year-old made the initial discovery, which was of a clavicle. Old people, watch out.

Wednesday, April 7, 2010

This is where Kyrgyzstan is

In light of the recent revolution in Kyrgyzstan, I'm learning a little more about it. Today I learned where it is. Tomorrow I'll learn how to pronounce it.

It's that little blue country in the spotlight.



"God created war so that Americans would learn geography."
-- Mark Twain

Tuesday, April 6, 2010

Bear-ly dangerous

Monday, April 5, 2010

Clark Kellogg is 6'7"

But on CBS he doesn't look that tall. At least to me he doesn't.

Sunday, April 4, 2010

Ruby Bridges

In November 1960, Ruby Bridges became the first black child to desegregate an elementary school. It was William Frantz Elementary School in New Orleans. Her first day was commemorated by Norman Rockwell's painting The Problem We All Live With.

Saturday, April 3, 2010

Super Outbreak

The Super Outbreak is the largest outbreak of tornadoes in a 24-hour period. It occurred on April 3-4, 1974, with 148 confirmed cases across the midwestern and southern U.S. and Ontario. Six were F5 and 24 were F4.

Friday, April 2, 2010

Gene patents

Just watch it. All of it.

Thursday, April 1, 2010

Topeka?

So I guess Topeka is the guinea pig for a way cooler and better fiber optic network provided by Google.

Here's that April Fool's blog post from Google.