From She And Him.
Listen to the entire album at NPR.org.
You know it’s a good nap …
03/18/2010 By Leave a Comment
When you awake three hours later.
Without a clue as to where you are or how you got there.
BONUS: Scattered blankets.
DOUBLE BONUS: Dreams involving the electric slide, fold out bleachers, basketball played wearing hockey equipment and an on-the-fly decision to buy tickets to Ireland.
M. Jodi Rell and a bus.
03/17/2010 By Leave a Comment
Photos by the great Chion Wolf.
http://www.flickr.com/photos/wnprimages/sets/72157623517084623/show/
I think too much about LOST
03/17/2010 By Leave a Comment
So OK … here’s my big thing with this whole episode … (SPOILERS/Fanboy writing abounds …)
[Read more...]
Mr. Smarty Plants in danger?
03/16/2010 By Leave a Comment
Plant poaching was a topic we lightly addressed today.
It’s becoming a problem for carnivourus plants in the United States, particularlty for Venus Fly Traps in North Carolina, where roadside stands sell the plants on the black market.
The state department of agriculture is working to address the issue, but admits its policy is lax. Fines are relatively low ($200) and arrests are exceedingly rare.
Poaching is just one problem. Toxic runoff and nitrogen depletion are bigger issues.
Carnivorous plants like the venus fly trap are notoriously picky. Their considerable eccentricities have confined their native area to small slivers of land in the Carolinas, where nutriet-depleted soil mingles with boggy conditions and lots of sunlight.
Fewer than 150,000 plants live in the wild in roughly 100 known sites, and the number is dwindling.
Will they be able to adapt and survive?
I didn’t RSVP – Or why my generation is a bunch of social ingrates.
03/15/2010 By Leave a Comment
I admit it. I didn’t RSVP. And in so doing, I’m one of the 12 bastards who inspired this brilliant NYT op-ed.
I’m not a jerk. I’m just a kid who grew up in a culture of spam. And unless your RSVP really catches my eye, I’m likely to ignore it.
You can’t blame me for being so cutthroat. After all, the rapid-fire nature of online networking sorta forced my hand.
I RSVP so selectively because I am queried so frequently. Facebook. E-mail. Twitter. Text message. A friend request here. A networking invite there. An RSVP here … it’s a sea of constant queries.
On any given day my inbox will fill up with RSVPs from an ex-girlfriend (eek!), a childhood acquaintance I haven’t spoken with in 20 years (scary!) or a random person I’ve never met in real life (creepy!).
Part of this culture of “friend spam” is attributable to a widespread party-planning fallacy. Namely, the more people invited, the more legitimacy conferred upon said event.
Celebrating Alpaca Day? Invite 300 people! At least a few dozen are bound to attend, right? I mean with such a guest list, how can they NOT think this this is the social event of the season?
The problem is everyone does this. People send invite after invite to anyone and everyone on their friend list. We’re a culture desperate for validation. A culture desperate for a response.
Which in me … triggered a simple reaction … I shut down. I stopped responding. I tuned out to the whole scene.
Unfortunately, the fallout is that when I get a request from an actual friend – an actual real life acquaintance (such as Rand) – I tend to carry over the same boorish behavior. I let things hang in the digital ether. I ignore them.
But don’t take that as a personal dig on your well-meaning party. It’s a consequence of my self-induced alienation from the rapid-fire world of impersonal online requests.
This n’ that.
03/13/2010 By Leave a Comment
- Translating Star Wars into Old Norse will boost your nerd credentials by 50,000 hit points.
- Wired Reread recalls old Prodigy ads I used to read (and save) as a kid.
- We’re specks of cosmic dust: All life’s ingredients found in Orion nebula.
- Radiolab explores the boundaries between human and animal with the story of Lucy the chimp.
- Your computer is really part of you: How we see through our tools and conflate them with our cognition.
I’m a nerd.
03/10/2010 By Leave a Comment