December 2010
3 posts
Greg's Favorite Christmas Songs →
I put up the Christmas tree yesterday, and to get in the mood I broke out the Christmas songs. For me, that means taking Christmas Songs playlist out of its folder and back to the main…
Love and Other Drugs →
imdb link Photos Plot: Jamie Randall (Jake Gyllenhaal) is a slacker and hustler who is trying to break into the pharmceutical sales business. He meets Maggie…
Mac Excel 2011 Paste Special Bug Work-around →
Macros are back in Microsoft Excel:Mac 2011As mentioned in a previous post, the paste-special shortcut does not work in Excel:Mac 2011, but it is easy to write a work…
November 2010
3 posts
Podcast Playlists in iTunes 10 →
Do you listen to a lot of podcasts? I do, and sometimes I get behind, and want to put them into a playlist so I don’t lose them. I was planning to drive to Grandma’s over…
21th Century Human are the Weakest Ever →
Writer Peter McAllister in his book Manthropology, claimed that men are physically weaker than our ancestors. McAllister does not say “people” he says “men,” maybe to be…
Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, Part 1 →
imdb link Photos Plot: Lord Voldemort (Ralph Fiennes) grabs control, and seeks to kill Harry and his other opponents. Harry (Daniel Radcliffe), Hermionie (Emma…
March 2010
6 posts
Hot Tub Time Machine →
imdb link Photos Plot: Four guys get in a hot tub and travel back to 1986. Back in 1986 they try to relive their past and then return to the present. You knew…
Are you a Rockist? →
I learned a new word today, “Rockist,” which is an elite music fan or critic that thinks that rock music reached perfection at sometime, like when they were 23. They want all music to…
New Look At Depth of Processing →
Behold the new look on my blog. I have thought for a while the site looked to generic. With a few new Blogger tools, I have made it more custom, though perhaps not more interesting or…
60 Minutes of Exercise a Day to Lose Weight →
This week’s JAMA article on exercise and weight gain was discouraging. It showed women needed to exercise over 60 minutes a day to lose weight. The rest of them gained weight. Worse it…
The Ghost Writer →
imdb link Photos Plot: A ghostwriter, Ewan McGregor, is a writer hired by a British ex-Foreign Minster Lang (Pierce Brosnan) to write his autobiography. The…
Turbotax Online - Software Review →
Turbotax Online is a competent website, and easier than downloading software on your PC — if you count the constant updates from the company that are needed. I think that online tax…
September 2009
18 posts
The Arctic Ice Update. September is the Beginning... →
As everyone knows, the arctic ice melts in the summer, and freezes in the winter. In September, the melting stops, and the freezing slowly becomes more important. It is a good time to see…
Twenty Dollar Theory of the Universe →
Tom Ciarella of Esquire pockets a wad of twenties, and travels the world to see what a twenty dollar tip/bribe will do. Very entertaining.
The 2009 Merlot →
The big news this weekend is the 2009 Merlot, which is not really a Merlot, but a blend of two cases of merlot grapes with one case of syrah grapes. I got the grapes at California…
Surrogates →
imdb link Photos Plot: In a futuristic utopia, robots do all the work, and the people stay at home in their pajamas operating them. Of course, all the…
Boxbe, Trojan Horse Spam Machine →
Sorry to everyone who got a Boxbe invitation from me. Boxbe is a “white-list” email program, that I got invitation to, and then it grabbed by address book and spammed others. Also it…
Stevia is Going Mainstream →
Several years ago sister-in-law Tonee told me about Stevia, and said it was a great natural, sugar-free sweetener. I thought it had a strange aftertaste but the following year I…
The Informant! →
imdb link Photos Plot: This is a dry, wry comedy about fraud at the agricultural products company ADM in the 1990’s. Mark Whitacre, Matt Damon, is a vice-president at ADM…
Non-Fermenting Sugars →
I am toying with making a Hard Cider or sweeting some part of my 2009 Cherry wine. While I think that Spenda, sucralose, is an interesting idea, it is shockingly non-traditional, and…
Foreign Media Exaggerate Carter's Racism Charges →
I occasionally read foreign papers when I bored with American ones, and I was taken with a piece in the Singapore based Straits Times, that tried to explain Carter’s complaints about…
An Unreal Scene - Great Optical Illusion Display... →
This optical illusion caught my eye, and the reason that it works so well is that the man is clearly standing behind the chair. If this is a trick in perspective, then the woman has to…
Extract →
imdb link Photos Plot: Joel (Jason Bateman) runs a flavor extract factory, which has bickering factory workers, and during a spat Step (Clifton Collins) gets injured….
Vending Machine Deaths -- Fact or Urban Myth →
I bought pretzels from the vending machine for lunch today, and the bag got hung up in the machine. I hit the machine a few times, and could not dislodge it. I bought a second bag, and got…
Five Rules of Morality →
I came across an article by Jon Haidt on how people see moral differences.
I know how my conservative friends value loyalty and stability more than my liberal friends who…
We visited Greenfield Village, the outdoor... →
I was surprised how enjoyable the day at Greenfield Village was. We went there on Labor Day and visited an eclectic collection of historical homes, late 19th Century workshops and…
Do You Realize How Bad the Housing Bubble Was? →
A survey of housing prices shows that housing prices peaked nationally in 2006 and have dropped since. Optimists can see a leveling off in the last couple months. [This data is from …
500 Days of Summer →
imdb link Photos Plot: Tom Hansen (Joseph Gordon-Levitt) meets Summer Finn (Zooey Deschanel) at the greeting card company in LA where they work. The movie tells the…
Now running OS X 10.6 -- that's Snow Leopard →
I upgraded my MacBook to Snow Leopard, that’s OSX 10.6. Let me tell you that I notice almost nothing different from 10.5 Leopard that I had been running. Yes, Finder works a little…
Why Are More Babies Born On Tuesdays Than On... →
More babies are born during the middle of the week than on the weekend, and this is regular vaginal births not caesarians, that doctor’s could schedule. Furthermore, it does not seem…
The Prehistoric Human Diet and the Modern American... →
Richard Wrangham, Professor of Biological Anthorpology at Harvard says that the invention of cooking enabled pre-humans to grow their large brain and gave rise to our ancestor Homo…
August 2009
27 posts
The Time Traveler's Wife →
imdb link Photos Plot: Henry (Eric Bana) is a born time traveler. He begins time traveling to avoid death in a car accident that kills his mother, and continues to time…
Only Eat Freshest Sushi from a Chef You Trust,... →
Yesterday, DW Jenny brought home supermarket sushi. The first time I had raw fish sushi, the cognoscente said, “Always eat it at a Japanese restaurant from a chef you trust.” Later I was…
The Obama Roll: Change has Come to Sushi →
Our local sushi place, Black Pine Tree, has a new sushi roll, called the Obama roll. There roll is nothing like the one I found from Japan, made by Ken Kawasami. “Change has come to…
Aren't You Tired of Tributes to Edward Kennedy? →
I was tired of Edward Kennedy bios and interviews with seemingly everyone who ever knew him.
I think he was a great guy, but I think I know all I need to know about him.
Leading Indicators Up!! →
It made me happy to see such unabashedly positive economic news.
This is an average of twelve economic measures that historically predict what the economy is going to do. The individual…
Got the Water Heater Blues →
I’ve got the water heater blues. I was surprised to learn when I arrived home tonight that the water heater had been out all day.
I am always in a bad mood when I have major appliance…
Independent Gas Supplier IGS Energy →
I got a mailing from IGS Energy. I am sure hundreds of thousands of other people did too.
If you punch IGS Energy into Google, you can find stories of IGS horrors. Like this.
Ponyo [English]; Gake no ue no Ponyo →
imdb link Photos Plot: An underwater Princess (Ponyo) falls in love with a boy (Susuke,) and wants to turn into a human girl. Review: Sincere, Adorable, Cute —…
All the News that is Fit to Print -- About... →
I went for a walk in the woods yesterday evening, and I said, I’ll do a post on mosquitos. There is probably some interesting fact about mosquitos — maybe a good blog topic?
The Red Eye Flight and Me →
The Red Eye flight, or a night flight from the west coast to the east, is dreaded by some, but it fits my temperament.
Last night I flew home from California, and ended up at work by…
2009 Blueberry Wine and Wine Update →
It’s been three weeks since I started the blueberry wine, and I racked it for the first time today. I also removed it from its oversized demijohn and put in a three gallon carboy, where it…
District 9 →
imdb link Photos Plot: Aliens land on earth, but they are quickly herded into an alien ghetto in Johannesburg, with an obvious parallelism with…
District 9 - The Image Recognition Viral Game →
District 9 is the new movie for this weekend, and I’ll post my review tonight.
There is buzz about the game Sony put on the website, which uses your webcam to recognize a…
Alzheimers and the "Greek Diet" →
It’s in the news: the “Greek Diet” prevents Alzheimer’s disease. It drops the rate an astonishing 60% — and that is probably under-estimated because the subjects, who were all…
1920's Germany Poster →
Trawling the internet I found this picture from Weimar Germany. I was looking for German graphic design examples to show how it was different from American design. Working for German…
More Bad News for BisPhenol A Cans and Bottles →
There is more bad news about bisphenol A. This is a chemical used in plastic bottles and as a liner in metal cans & bottles.
First, it seems that there is a serious charge that…
Cooper's Hawk Comes for Breakfast →
We have seen some large birds circling over the woods this summer, but this morning I had a visitor on the deck. It was a Cooper’s Hawk, accipiter cooperii, which is not uncommon in…
Julie and Julia →
imdb link Photos Plot: Julie and Julia is the story of struggling writer Julie Powell who starts a blog about her life and learning French cooking. Julie (Amy Adams)…
Synthetic Organisms and Synthetic Biology →
In my post about Exxon’s investment in algae-based biofuel, I touched on Synthetic Genomics, a company that promotes Synthetic Biology — that is making completely de novo…