Clients: the other white meat

For everyone who's ever had to deal with clients - and that probably means all of us - here's something you'll appreciate. Read on and enjoy.

Gangsta graphing - it's the new hardcore nerd

Ted posted a gangsta graph on his blog recently, so here's one I found to respond. Gangsta graph duel anyone?

You can truly find ANYTHING on the interweb!

Found this while Stumbling on the web.

Initial reaction: I laughed my ass off...HAHAHAHAHAHAHA

But then: the more I thought about it the more sense it made...hmmm

And so: I started looking around the site to learn more...and that's when I found the Humor page. Make sure you click on the "Worst Date Ever" link. Repeat laughing your ass off...HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA

Try ur hand at backyard baseball

Just like when you were a kid...

Play Games at AddictingGames

Overheard in a court room

Lawyer: "Doctor, before you performed the autopsy, did you check for a pulse?"
Witness: "No."
Lawyer: "Did you check for blood pressure?"
Witness: "No."
Lawyer: "Did you check for breathing?"
Witness: "No."
Lawyer: "So, then it is possible that the patient was alive when you began the autopsy?"
Witness: "No."
Lawyer: "How can you be so sure, Doctor?"
Witness: "Because his brain was sitting on my desk in a jar."
Lawyer: "But could the patient have still been alive nevertheless?"
Witness: "Yes, it is possible that he could have been alive and practicing law somewhere."

That's why it's called Canadian football

Like most guys, I'm into my football, making this the greatest time of the year. Stumbled Upon this hilarious clip of an end zone celebration in the CFL. Doesn't look like much until you see it from a different angle at the end of the clip. Funny as hell!

Man Law: Write it out before you hyphenate

When Helen and I got married, she did not hesitate for one second in deciding not to hyphenate her last name. Here are a few more examples of when that's not such a good idea.

Reminds me of the old telephone game

Having worked in both advertising and wireless product development, I really appreciate a good creative. Watch it.

First snow of 2007

Just got the first snow of the year this weekend. Since we're pretty high in the foothills we actually got socked in with about 8 inches!

I love when it snows because it makes everything so much prettier, especially the mountains. Of course, western Washington doesn't really get the type of real winters that befall other parts of the world.

Of course Jack loves the snow! Ever since the first time we took him on a snow hike he's absolutely loved playing in the snow.

Got me plenty of beer, lots of football and movies on the tele, so it's all good!

Newsmap

If you're like me, you probably wish that you could scan all the news headlines in a single visual glance and then decide what interests you. Most traditional news sites seem to have designed their online editions to map to their printed versions. Although this may insure a sense of familiarity, it's a model that bears exploration. A few years ago I fell in love with Google News, and that's been my home page since. Newsmap presents an interesting twist to the way we might consume news. Give it a shot.

Cool Lego Art

Click the picture for more.

The New New Math

We spent a nice Thanksgiving evening at our friends Gus and Shaz's - drinking, eating, laughing and talking. Surprisingly one of the most interesting topics of conversation was about education. Since Helen and I don't have children, we were fascinated by the discussions about how math is taught in grade school today.

Unlike the traditional algorithms our generation learned, today's math includes some new alternative methods and attempts to blend in foundational problem solving approaches. Concepts like clustering, lattice method, and partial quotients are being touted as new ways to teach basic math skills and comprehension. Among the revelers were a teaching assistant (and mother of 3) and a school librarian, so we got first hand insight to the new thinking and strategies for education.

Although I wholeheartedly agree with teaching problem solving skills, something bothered me about the fact that they don't teach rote methods like the multiplication table anymore. Granted that students benefit from understanding that problems can be solved in many ways and that thinking about how to solve a problem is a valuable skill, it seems to me that there's an equal benefit to following that up with teaching the most efficient methods. After all, there are times you need answers, and times when you need answers quickly.

It's certainly a ripe topic for debate, and I found a conflicting viewpoint offered by MJ McDermott:


All in all, an interesting evening of topical discussion, and certainly an appreciation of how much innovation and progress have come to education over the past 20 years.

Dear Patron of the Arts...

A hilarious post from the Best of Criaglist.

Mysteries of Stonehenge Revealed!

We've all watched the Discovery Channel specials about the mysterious origins of Stonehenge and how inexplicable it is that druids could build it without complex tools or huge numbers of laborers. Here's a video that shows how it could have been done with some simple ingenuity.

The business of dating

Check out this post and response found on Criagslist. Possibly one of the most hilarious social excerpts I've ever encountered!

Incredible halftime show

An argument for having kids

I want you back Jackson five cover by Castillo kids

Dancing Machine

I've been hooked on the Fox reality talent show So You Think You Can Dance. But those clowns don't compare to this dude.

You know you're living in 2007 when...

1. You accidentally enter your password on the microwave.

2. You haven’t played Solitaire with real cards in years.

3. You have a list of 15 phone numbers to reach your family of 3.

4. You e-mail the person who works at the desk next to you.

5. Your reason for not staying in touch with friends and family is that they don’t have e-mail addresses.

6. You pull up in your own driveway and use your cell phone to see if anyone is home to help you carry in the groceries.

7. Every commercial on television has a web site at the bottom of the screen.

8. Leaving the house without your cell phone, which you didn’t have the first 20 or 30 (or 60) years of your life, is now a cause for panic and you turn around to go and get it.

10. You get up in the morning and go on line before getting your coffee.

11. You start tilting your head sideways to smile. : )

12 You’re reading this and nodding and laughing.

13. Even worse, you know exactly to whom you are going to forward this message.

14. You are too busy to notice there was no #9 on this list.

15. You actually scrolled back up to check that there wasn’t#9 on this list

AND NOW YOU ARE LAUGHING at yourself.

Go on, forward this to your friends. You know you want to.

Courtesy of Thought Mechanics.

Just hug it out baby

Memorial Day 2007 and I have chalked up yet another quintessential Seinfeld moment. We're enjoying a nice cookout at our friends Monica and Hunter's place. Helen and I are sitting on their sofa chatting with another couple when the first bailers start making the rounds to say their goodbyes.

We stand as this nice couple we met earlier in the evening approach (I'll call them Tony and Laurie to protect the innocent).

"Nice to meet you."

"Good luck with house hunting."

"Maybe we'll see you again."

Just as we enter the handshake zone, Laurie makes an almost imperceptible lean towards me. A gesture that was not accompanied by extended arms, and somewhat tentative and hesitant. Uncertain. That's probably the best description.

In the milliseconds that pass between Laurie's lean and my reaction, my brain has deciphered her movement and processed the various reasons, assumptions and responses available to me. I remember my mind making lightning quick calculations and concluding that Laurie must be one of those touchy-feely people who hug on the first meeting. Maybe it was because we'd had a pretty engaging conversation earlier in the evening, or that I'd observed how affectionate she was with her son. In any case, I found myself leaning forward in a hug.

As I reached my arms toward her, Laurie's posture stiffened and her forward momentum jolted to a halt for just a nanosecond, before her torso continued on its collision path with mine. All of a sudden I found myself in a time freeze, where everything in the physical world crawled like a slow motion video. That fraction of a second between my realization that something was terribly wrong and the consummation of our awkward hug seemed like an eternity. Only the synaptic connection between thought, recognition and embarrassment moved at hypersonic speed.

"Oh crap...what did I do? She wasn't looking for a hug you idiot!"

As we engaged in the ridiculously embarrassing hug - complete with exaggerated forward lean and staccato back patting - I realized that Laurie had simply been reaching for her purse, which was sitting on the end table behind me.

If my friends were not as nice, I probably would have been the butt of laughter and ribbing. And if I had more Jim Carey in me, I probably would have gone all the way and just given her a crazy-faced two minute hug. Alas, neither happened and it will simply be filed under another cruel moment of cosmic comedy.

Sex Bomb

Normally I'm not much into figure skating unless it's accompanied by the pressure of the Olympics, but this is definitely entertaining.

What is genius?

I recently read a theory that proposes that all people have the same basic mental capacity, and that the only differences are how that capacity is divided. The theory posits that normal people have a more equal distribution of capacity - think of brain capacity as a pie, divided into relatively equal pieces. Geniuses have an overly large portion of one or more parts of the pie. However, since we all have the same basic capacity, other portions of the whole would be reduced. It is commonly believed that people who are considered genius often have odd deficiencies in some behavioral or mental areas.

The equal capacity theory goes on to define idiot savants as individuals who have an abnormal abundance in one mental area, and therefore extreme deficiencies in many other areas. Such individuals can perform seemingly impossible mental tasks such as complex mathematics, but cannot tell time or remember to feed their dog. Below is a fascinating video about Stephen Wiltshire, which seems to demonstrate this interesting theory.

Marvelous Engineering

I must have this.

Meet the World (Colbert Style)

A slightly different take on the world - also presented in the visual medium.

Meet the World

Brazilian journalist Icaro Doria's "Meet the World" project combines real data points culled from world relief organizations with national flags to create powerful visual messages about the state of the world today.

Grand Canyon Skywalk

I saw this picture of a skywalk over the Grand Canyon and my first thought was COOL! After clicking through and reading the post, I can't help feeling a bit sad. I'm sure it would be a fantastic experience, but you'd think that standing on the lip of one of nature's greatest vistas would be enough without human intervention.

Now that's awfully helpful

Brilliant moments #1

Good thing that was only a domestic beer!


At least you can't question her spirit.


Lost in translation?


Mother of the Year!


I knew I should have held out for the 401K!

Always interesting factoids

Butterflies taste with their feet.

A duck's quack doesn't echo, and no one knows why.

In 10 minutes, a hurricane releases more energy than all of the world's nuclear weapons combined.

On average, 100 people choke to death on ball-point pens every year.

On average people fear spiders more than they do death.

Ninety percent of New York City cabbies are recently arrived immigrants.

Thirty-five percent of the people who use personal ads for dating are already married.

Elephants are the only animals that can't jump.

Only one person in two billion will live to be 116 or older.

It's possible to lead a cow upstairs ...... but not downstairs.

Women blink nearly twice as much as men.

It's physically impossible for you to lick your elbow.

The Main Library at Indiana University sinks over an inch every year because when it was built, engineers failed to take into account the weight of all the books that would occupy the building.

A snail can sleep for three years..

No word in the English language rhymes with "MONTH."

Average life span of a major league baseball: 7 pitches.

Our eyes are always the same size from birth, but our nose and ears never stop growing. SCARY!!!

The electric chair was invented by a dentist.

All polar bears are left-handed.

In ancient Egypt, priests plucked EVERY hair from their bodies, including their eyebrows and eyelashes.

An ostrich's eye is bigger than its brain.

TYPEWRITER is the longest word that can be made using the letters only on one row of the keyboard.

"Go," is the shortest complete sentence in the English language.

If Barbie were life-size, her measurements would be 39-23-33. She would stand seven feet, two inches tall.

A crocodile cannot stick its tongue out.

The cigarette lighter was invented before the match.

Americans on average eat 18 acres of pizza every day.

Almost everyone who reads this will try to lick their elbow.

Don't forget to pass these weird facts on to everyone you know.

They will get a kick out of it !!

You tried to lick your elbow, didn't you?

Courtesy of www.frogview.com