Category Archives: Interesting

San Diego

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I haven’t paid all that much attention to the fires in California, especially after discovering that my family out there wasn’t anywhere near the blaze. But take a look at this. This family just got back from their honeymoon and their house was burned to the ground. Very literally. There’s a small pile of ash left.

AT&T is coming after them trying to collect $300 for the receiver that was damaged in the fire. The guy on the phone at AT&T had the audacity to suggest that they should have taken the rented satellite receiver with them when they evacuated.

Way to go, AT&T. Short of changing your logo to a swastika or making fun of 9/11 victims, I’m not sure you could possibly have made yourself look more foolish than this.

Parfum

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Would you buy perfume from a site called “I hate perfume?”

Check out chemist Christopher Brosius’ collection,  including scents like “Ocean,” “Snow,” dirt, mushrooms, basil, carrot, hay, “Burnt Wood,” pipe smoke, leather, ice cream cones, “Celo Tape,” and rubber.

In another collection, he’s got gems like burning leaves,  beach, and some that can’t be succinctly described like Mr. Hulot’s Holiday.

This one sounds like a winner.

Shirt

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Rusty and I usually don’t see eye-to-eye on style. But when he sent me a link to this shirt, I knew he was onto something.

Granted, it’s not out yet. But that doesn’t mean I’m not going to be ordering one. Not only is it “geek chic,” but it’s functional, too: I often wonder if there’s a good WiFi signal in various locations.

As an aside, tell me that this doesn’t fill a need in your life. And seriously, I’m buying this. Which makes me wonder… Bluetooth is 2.4 GHz, too… Will it false-alarm my shirt?

Mmm, bacon.

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It’s amazing what the Internet has unleashed. Today I stumbled across a mention of the Vosges Bacon Chocolate Bar. It was an amusing typo, I thought: it almost sounds like a chocolate bar with bacon in it. My roommates have long joked about my love for bacon. (A local pizza place offers a dish known as the “heart attack,” which is a calzone stuffed with mozzarella sticks and bacon–its name is well-deserved. But ohhhh is it good.)

But it turns out that I hadn’t misunderstood anything. It is a chocolate bar with bacon in it. Sitting on a hot tip like this, though, I knew I had to act fast, so I sent the link to the Snack Maniac. Barring the Maniac’s ghostwritten entry, the Internet had gone a whole month without any snack updates, so I’m proud to take credit for leading to the first update in a month. So proud, in fact, that I may have to take todays “Hero of the Day” designation away from [deep breath] the man suing to keep his amputated leg that he stored in a barbecue smoker in a storage shed but was inadvertently sold when he missed his rent payments and is now used by the guy who bought the smoker at an auction as some sort of bizarre exhibit in his backyard[deep breath], and instead give it to myself… (The Hero of the Day designation, not the amputated leg stored in a barbecue smoker in a self-rental shed.)

Having recently resolved that I need to focus on eating healthy, I was thrilled to learn that the Snack Maniac was sending me a bacon-chocolate bar of my own. And while I confess that I don’t have the experienced palate of the Snack Maniac, I’ll be sure to post an update on how it tastes.

Military Intelligence

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Rusty, who doesn’t actually use his own blog because he is a lazy slacker, sent me this link last night.

Apparently,

  • The architect never noticed that he had just designed an enormous swastika-shaped building for the U.S. Navy.
  • The U.S. Navy never noticed, until it was too late, that their architect had designed an enormous swastika-shaped building for them.
  • People on the ground were oblivious to the fact that the building was shaped like a swastika. (I, for one, notice the shape of buildings?)
  • There aren’t, say, fire exit plans posted everywhere in the building depicting the building as an enormous brick swastika.

That said, Hitler did forever destroy our ability to use what’s probably a good layout for an office complex.

Wow

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These photos are some of the most amazing things I’ve ever seen. And I’ve seen a lot of amazing photos.

As you look at more and more, you realize that there’s clearly heavy post-processing being done, e.g., Photoshopping details in, and generally doing more than just ‘fixing’ things up a little. (Some clearly get a bit unnatural, but most are realistic, just too consistently perfect.)

It’s spurned a bit of debate on the DPReview forums about how far is too far. And I think I’ve changed my tune a bit: you can go as far as you want, it’s just that at some point your cross over from “Wow, you really brought out the details in that shot” to “Wow, you manufactured a great image!” But then there’s the in-between, where you can’t quite be sure how much was manufactured and how much was just an amazing shot.

In any case, you owe it to yourself to check out the photos. And maybe book a spot on the next flight to Java.

Two-Dollar Bills

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First sobriety checkpoints, now something else I’ve wondered about for a while and finally got around to researching: Why are there so few $2 bills?

The Wikipedia article is particularly informative, but the short version is that there was a lull in production decades ago, but they now produce the $2 actively. They’re not at all scarce: they minted 61 million in 2005, for example. There are a few reasons they’re not in wide circulation:

  • Everyone thinks they’re rare, so when they come across one, they save it.
  • Not everyone seems to think that $2 bills are even legal tender
  • A big catch 22, but cash drawers don’t have a slot for $2’s, so stores don’t use them in any great volume.
  • Also a big catch 22, but banks, although they usually carry $2’s, don’t usually hand them out unless you ask.

So basically, there are hundreds of millions of two-dollar bills in circulation, but no one’s actually circulating them. They’re not at all rare, they’re just in everyone’s sock drawers.

Sobriety Checkpoints

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This answers something I’ve wondered for a long time: how are sobriety checkpoints not a violation of the Constitution?

The Constitution says that “The right of the people to be secure… against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated… but upon probable cause.” It seems pretty clear to me that the police pulling people over, even if it’s random, to check if they’re sober constitutes a search without probable cause.

It turns out that the SCOTUS has already decided this. In essence, Chief Justice Rehnquist admitted that the stops do constitute a search, but that the public good outweighs the need for probable cause. Therefore, they are legal despite being very clearly prohibited under the US Constitution.

There’s some hope, though, indicated towards the end of the linked article. The case originated in Michigan, which had ruled that they were unconstitutional. The ruling, obviously, was overturned by the SCOTUS. But Michigan’s Supreme Court ruling also said that they violated Michigan’s Constitution. Ergo, they’re still illegal in Michigan even though the US Constitution “doesn’t” prohibit them. (I never thought I’d use quotes in that way…)

Some Photos

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I don’t have any special image-handling code, but here are some photos I wanted to share:

title=”Photo Sharing”>Lemon Trees

That’s a lemon tree! More accurately, it’s about four lemon plants, a few weeks old. Half as a joke, I took the seeds out of a lemon and put them in some soil. About two weeks went by, and we were just about ready to throw the whole thing out, when one little sprout came through the next day. I now have a total of 11 lemon plants.

title=”Photo Sharing”>Lemon Trees

That’s a view from above. I really have no idea how the lemon trees will fare in the winter, although I plan to keep them indoors.

title=”Photo Sharing”>Rolex

Finally, here’s my latest watch. (I have reason to believe it may be fake.)