Blogs Not Bombs

Since I've recently joined the blogging community (which I have to admit I'm highly addicted to) I decided it would be courteous to show my support for my friend's and family's blogs. Whether they're up-and-coming or established, artsy or scientific, I pay a visit to each of these blogs almost everyday. I love seeing people I know utilizing this great medium to express themselves, even if it does give us a glimpse into their peculiar thought processes.

• ..dotted and undotted dotterings..: My brother's blog on "science, life, culture and exciting et cetera". Only on its second post, this blog is thought-provoking, knowledgeable, witty and periodically over my head.
• Autobiography of Blue (my life with fibromyalgia): As Hannah puts it, "The purpose of this blog is to coax my desire to write out of hibernation, to discuss and revel in the strange and lovely, and, especially, to explore and share my ongoing experience with fibromyalgia (FM)." A journal-style blog characterized by splendid writing and delightful images.
• fr.ivolo.us: There is plenty to explore on this blog, with its Sketchbook, Quotes, Blog and Snippets sections. Currently, Josh has been exploring and experimenting with Polyphasic sleeping. Certainly a fascinating read.
• Freestyle Quilting: If you're interested in quilting, sewing, design or just crafts in general, this is a really cool, innovative style of quilting to check out.
• Sunlight Homes Blog: Based in Albuquerque, NM, Sunlight Homes is an amazing business, building "custom designed green homes with passive solar design". Visiting their blog is a great way to educate yourself on the monumental importance of this topic.

If I know you and your blog isn't listed here, please tell me about it and I'll add it on! I want to make sure I know and recognize all my acquaintances' blogs. We must support one another!

On a final note, I wanted to share this picture with you. I found it on Freedigitalphotos.net and just really liked it. Yep.

The Future of the Past

According to the futurologists of the 1970's, our current generation should be much further along in creating those self-contained cities. I just found Buckminster Fuller and Paolo Soleri's Sea City 2000 concept of 1979. What are we still doing living in houses, taking up all this space?? We're supposed to be living in floating cities!
I really liked the idea behind their concept, and wanted to find out if anything like it has actually been done or is in the works.
The most interesting thing I found was the Shimizu Mega-City Pyramid, a proposed project over Tokyo Bay. It's 12 times higher than the Great Pyramid at Giza and would house 750,000 people! Crazy! I hope to see something like this come into existence before I die.
I guess this just goes to show, you really can't predict what's gonna happen.

Eureka!

Today marks my first doodle in my new sketchbook. I've had this new book for well over a month now, but hadn't been sparked with enough inspiration to make that first mark, which is agreeably the most distressing. Now, I assume my entries to come about more routinely and with less attachment. I wanted to share it with you.

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It's just my desk. My little plant that sits next to me while I work and the edge of my computer. Nothing profound, just what I saw. I was waiting for some amazing idea/design to pop into my head, an idea that I wouldn't be able to describe just in the right way so instead I would have to draw it. A there it would be...a revelation! A eureka moment!... At least that's what I hope to experience some day. But for now, drawing what I see is satisfying enough.
I liked how my plant looks like it's plugged into my computer, a plant-powered computer. How clever.
In celebration of this joyous day, I would like to share other famous firsts in history. I really enjoyed the section on famous pinball firsts.
Have a festive Tuesday evening!

What's So Evil about Pool?

Here are a couple of videos that made me smile and giggle.
Oh come on, it's Monday. Don't expect much.

Reason to be Green?

For the last week(ish), I've consciously added more green tea to my diet, around 3 cups a day. Plus, unintentionally I haven't had any black tea. Interesting... at least for now, I guess green tea is able to suffice my hot beverage/caffeine quotient. But why, you might ask, did I elect to incorporate this earthy elixir into my routine?
Well, that's a good question.
I'm not really sure. Perhaps I wanted a change, or maybe just because it's healthier.
Or is it??
Most people assume green tea is the healthiest of the teas, but this made me wonder how that's possible since black, green, oolong, pu-erh and white teas all come from the same plant. So then, how can the variations in the processing of these different types of tea account for such drastically different levels of health benefits?
From my wanderings around the internet, it seems that the biggest reason, is simply that green tea is almost always the focus of tea studies. Other types of teas have scarcely been studied. Tea research is definitely still in its early stages.
Having said that, I was able to find one study on black tea conducted by the Netherlands National Institute of Public Health and the Environment. About.com gives a good synopsis. Apparently black tea can do as much as green tea! (Unless, of course, you take milk in your tea.) Both black and green teas were shown to have high levels of (albeit different) antioxidants.
I guess the best thing to do, as WebMD advises, is to just drink lots of tea - at least 6 to 10 cups a day!! I reckon my elementary 3-cups-a-day routine is in need of an upgrade.

p.s. - If you're curious about what exactly the tea benefits are, then check out Wikipedia's page on the topic.

Punished Punctuality

It has been done. Evan and I signed up for Netflix. I would like to make clear that this was something I was initially firmly against, being that Netflix was a big reason Alphaville went out of business, personally a very sensitive topic. However, after exploring Netflix a bit more (seeing our options, lining up our queue, etc.) there are admittedly many added conveniences that come along with this membership.
But honestly, I still can't say I'm OK with it. It just feels... evil. Like when you go to Wal-Mart or McDonald's - it's that same feeling. I couldn't find any justification for this feeling, so I turned to Google: E-V-I-L N-E-T-F-L-I-X. Over a million results!
I found this article (which I highly recommend reading) on msnbc.com, explaining how if renters return their movies "too quickly" their accounts are "throttled", which delays movie shipments and re-queues your order! Apparently the "unlimited rentals" is a bunch of bull if you exhibit any sort of prompt character... Which I do!
We definitely watch a lot of movies in this house, considering we don't watch TV, we're students and don't have that much expendable income. So needless to say, this came as a great concern to me. We just got our first movies in the mail yesterday, so no harm has been done... yet.
I really hope this is worth it... I miss Alphaville.

Sand on Sound

Well, it's 11:30pm and I still can't find anything that interesting to post, (I call it blogger's block) so I went with a video. At least it's something right?
I watched this a few days ago, and wow! I have no idea how this works, but it's absolutely astounding. Make sure your volume isn't turned up too loud, the high pitches towards the end are a bit painful to listen to.

I Got Inland in My Brain

Last night, I had an altogether unforgettable experience: I saw Inland Empire. (Here's the Wikipedia article and a trailer if you haven't heard of it.) I'd like to say I have a wide range of tastes when it comes to film genres, however, going from seeing Happy Feet the night before to this was perhaps too drastic of a jump. Either way, I don't think there was much that could have prepared me for this film.
Wow... I'm not really sure what I can say... Well, I would like to start off by saying I thought I actually did prepare myself for this viewing: I knew it was by David Lynch (i.e., emotional rollercoaster, optional plot, occasional disturbing images), I already considered it to be an epic film (I knew it was 3 hours long) and I accepted that I most likely wouldn't understand any of it. But I tried so hard! I wanted to understand something, just one thing. My brain was working so rigorously, trying to formulate connections, conclusions, even hypotheses but... nothing. Maybe that was the point.
This morning was dedicated to searching the internet, trying to find something that would bring me some resolve. But nothing helped. Either people were quick to call it a masterpiece (probably just because they didn't get it) or say that no plot existed, it was purely emotionally based. I'm not here to give you an in depth analysis, trust me I wouldn't know where to start, but I just wanted to say these few things:

• I can't call it a masterpiece - like I said, I couldn't find one plot line in the entire 3 hours! But, the acting was amazing, I thought it was a beautiful film, and it did seem genuinely random (a truly difficult task).
• I'm glad I saw it. I don't feel like I wasted 3 hours of my life, instead I got to see something original, different, definitely something that will stay on my mind for many moons.
  

I don't like my blog to be too serious so here are some happy trees to brighten your day.

Cayenne to the Rescue!

I just read on reddit a very interesting cure for a sore throat: cayenne pepper. Apparently, if you gargle a mixture of water, cayenne and salt (optional) your sore throat will magically disappear. Instantly. I haven't tried it yet, but when I do, don't worry, I will blog about it.

This cure comes from Earth Clinic, a website with an eclectic mix of folk remedies and holistic cures. The layout of the website is nice, since readers/patients of these remedies can post comments about their personal experiences with the treatment, in a yea or nay fashion. It looks like the cayenne pepper remedy is by far the best received, with well over 100 yeas.
I just got over a cold, (damn!) so I have no need to experiment with this as of now... however I do have a slightly stuffy nose...

Here is a supposedly good recipe I got from this blog:

• 1 standard drinking glass of hot to warm water
• 1 teaspoon of cayenne powder
• a couple pinches of salt for good measure (most people say its not necessary but it won’t hurt)

Please, if you try this, let me know how it goes, I am so curious!

Edamame Eaters: Beware

The point of this post is to warn all edamame eaters. This is the second time this has happened to me so I assume it could be a common occurrence and I don't want anyone else to have to experience what I had to twice. And if it does happen to you, I want you to be prepared.

It is twice now that I have found a worm, yes a worm, a dead one, inside an edamame pod I was eating. It almost made me gag, which is saying something because it takes A LOT to gross me out.

Both times, I went to pop the seed out, and as I popped it out, I noticed the seed looked a bit brown, nothing that unusual, since occasionally there are little brown spots on edamame seeds. However, my quick glance at this seed turned into a longer inspection as I noticed this seemed to have a bit more brown than normal. As I opened the pod to get a better look, I realized the entire inside of half the pod was covered with a brown substance, and there, on top of the seed I was so anxiously awaiting to eat, was a dead worm. Ughhhhh.... now as I write this I'm getting the same churning feeling in my stomach as when I found that horrid creature... From my research on the subject, I haven't found much, only a few other bloggers telling a similar story. But I was able to conclude that it was most likely a soybean podworm, also known as a corn earworm.

However, I am such a fan of edamame, that I haven't let this experience turn me away. Instead, I have learned a valuable lesson:

DON'T pop the seeds out of the pod using your mouth, causing the seed to pop directly from the pod into your mouth, since this technique doesn't allow you to see the seed at all.

DO pop open the pod using your fingers, quickly glance at the seed and then eat it. This quick glance is all that is needed, since you will be able to tell immediately if closer inspection is required.

I hope you all continue to enjoy edamame, but do so with a more educated approach.

Proof that Nature Enjoys Treats Too

This is an article from the Washington State Department of Transportation's (WSDOT) blog, describing their newest discovery (I'm inclined to think they don't make too many discoveries). Truly amazing though. I'll take my snow doughnut with a small coffee please.

When I first got these pictures from our maintenance crews on the North Cascades Pass (SR 2o), I assumed they had used Photoshop and were pulling my chain. I called to verify the validity of the pictures. The crews promised that these were indeed real, and that snow doughnuts are a naturally occurring phenomenon. I had never seen this type of thing before, so I asked around the office and it appears no one else has either. I decided to send the pictures to the media, who also thought we used Photoshop.
According to Mike Stanford from our WSDOT avalanche team, snow doughnuts are a natural occurrence in nature. We do not build them. They form when there is a hard layer in the snow and is then covered by several inches of dense snow. Then you add a steep slope and a trigger, such as a clump of snow falling out of a tree or off of a rock face, and voila you have snow doughnuts.
As gravity pulls the clump down, the snow rolls down the hill, and 99.9% of the time the center of the rolling snowball collapses in on itself and creates what we call a "pinwheel". If it doesn’t roll down the hill, then it will just slide, which is actually one of the mechanisms of a loose snow avalanche. But,
if the snow is the perfect density and temperature, it rolls around onto itself leaving the hole in the center, creating the doughnut-looking shape.

Stanford says he’s rarely seen it happen. The temperatures and snow conditions have to be just right. In 30-plus years of playing and working in the snow, this was the second time he had ever seen them. Snow doughnuts seemingly could grow very big if conditions permitted. The one seen in the photograph is about 24" in diameter.

A Clutter of Collective Nouns

After writing my post yesterday, I realized how much I enjoyed it! Linguistics is so riveting... so here's another one!
Collective nouns are words such as group or team, a singular word that identifies more than one of a certain animal, plant, person, anything. You're probably familiar with the collective nouns used to identify different groups of animals, such as a flock of birds, a school of fish, a pride of lions. I recently discovered that HUNDREDS of these collective nouns exist. Check out Wikipedia's article on all the known collective nouns in English, but I wanted to provide you with my absolute favorites, I hope you get a thrill out of it too.

• A woop of gorillas
• A kettle of hawks
• A trip of hares
• A crash of hippopotami
• A morning of hammers
• A storytelling of crows
• A murder of crows
• A drunken ship of cobblers (I think that's a fish)
• A colony of chinchillas
• A spoonful of caribou
• A caravan of camels
• A stumble of drunks
• A charm of hummingbirds
• A fluther of jellyfish
• A neverthriving of jugglers
• A leap of leopards
• A mischief of mice
• A superfluity of nuns
• A yoke of oxen
• A huddle of penguins
• A waltz of piglets
• An aurora of polar bears
• A conspiracy of ravens
• A swerd of stem cells
• An ugly of walruses

And I wanted to save my favorite for last:

• A vomit of goblins

The Great Myth

Being that I am verging on having a degree in Linguistics, I realized it would be best to touch on the subject from time to time, simply for the benefit of sharing (and clarifying for myself) a few of the interesting topics the subject has to offer.
So I elected to begin with one of the most popular topics in Linguistics: the myth of the number of words for snow in Inuit (Eskimo) languages. It seems like everyone has heard it, and loves to quote it. According to the myth, Inuit languages have anywhere between 20 and 100 words for snow, depending on who's telling the story. Sounds cool, but, sorry to break it to ya, it's simply not true.
First, just to clarify, there are a number of Eskimo-Aluet languages, the family of languages to which Inuit belongs. So depending on which specific language you look at, the explanation will vary. But, since this forum is reasonably informal, I will generalize.
So, to begin with, Inuit languages are polysynthetic languages. Simply put, this means they can say in one word what English speakers would say in one sentence. They start with a root word, and then stick other lexical or grammatical items onto it, making one long word. This is from where the misunderstanding stems.
Many Inuit languages have several root words for snow, just like English: slush, blizzard, drift. (Whenever this myth is being told, the fact that English itself has several different words for snow is usually left out.) Then, to these roots, through suffixation, different adjectives/nouns can be attached.
Language Log gives a good conclusion:
"That does not mean there are huge numbers of unrelated basic terms for huge numbers of finely differentiated snow types. It means that the notion of fixing a number of snow words, or even a definition of what a word for snow would be, is meaningless for these languages. You could write down not just thousands but millions of words built from roots that refer to snow if you had the time. But they would all be derivatives of a fairly small number of roots."
The Wikipedia article is a good continuation of the topic, Eskimo Words for Snow, if you're interested.
The moral of the story? Don't think that languages are purely based on words!

Forced Abnegation of Blogging (plus a few vocab words)

Here I am, finally back in the 505. It's good to be back, especially after my 12-hour day of traveling yesterday. Considering how much free time I had yesterday, sitting for hours on end in one of the most standoffish, sterile settings, you would think that would've been ideal time for blogging. However, I was absolutely shocked to discover that in both Fort Worth and O'Hare airports, the internet wasn't free! I would like to add that, indeed, the Sunport provides free WiFi.
So, being that I didn't want to support such a feckless system, as well as due to the maladroit ownership which I would have preferred simply to defenestrate, I elected to abstain.

Moments from Chicagoland

My last night in Chicago...(actually Evanston but don't worry about the details) and it's been a great trip. On my arrival I expected to feel overwhelmed with Chicago, as I have felt towards other big cities I've visited (definitely less than 5, again, just details). But Chicago felt different, a little easier to deal with, "livable" you might say: understandable downtown layout, actual fun things to do, surprisingly easy-to-learn transit system, reasonable prices (on food and shopping that is, don't get me started on housing prices) and overall nice people. I even felt like I fit right in with my North Face coat, being that every-other person I saw was wearing something North Face.

So here is a list of the best moments in Chicago:

~Seeing myself as a giant mercury jellybean would

~Looking behind Gerhy's Pavillion

~Having the urge to slide down the side of a bridge

~Watching geese walk on ice/pretending I was in Antarctica

~Being on Davis street in Evanston

~Being able to say I've seen a Puffin

~And, the best moment during my trip? Having dinner and cocktails with my wonderful mom.

Atention, Atention

I'm in Chicago right now, visiting my mom. I feel like I've been traveling all day - I'm such a wuss - so I don't have much energy to entertain ya'll. But I would like to share that I really enjoyed reddit today... so here ya go:

• An Introvert Stands Up for the Right to Stand Alone, an article that almost brought a tear of joy to my little shy eye...
• The Best Toilet Ever, simply that, and yes I would do it
• One of the Coolest Business Cards
• Incredible Graffiti-Covered Building, I wanna add to it!

Knowing You Don't Know

What an interesting day... full of stress, boredom, a bit of excitement, realization of ignorance and topped off with a dollop of fun.
Today marked my most intense day of midterms, my focus being on my Medicina tradicional de México examen parcial (midterm), one I got up at 7:00 AM to study for. As it turned out, it wasn't nearly as bad as I had imagined it to be, however I have yet to receive my grade, so I'll let you know if my opinion turns out to be true.
Then after that, in my Identity Through Discourse class, we had a guest teacher lecturing on performed identities online, via emails, IMs, social networks (i.e., myspace) and blogs. At first, I thought "Oh, internet? Ha! I know plenty about that, what does this lady have to tell ME about the internet??" It was a short lecture, but, as it turned out, caused some personal mixed feelings to arise.
For the last "while" (I'm not clear on how long it's been) I've been consciously trying to discover new things on the internet, searching and educating myself on current, modern technologies, popular sites, and general "things to know". And honestly I feel I've been quite successful, considering that my friends and family have been able to use me as a source for learning about online popular culture. However, this lecture - given by an obviously huge internet geek - made me feel so...superficial. There is clearly so much that I know absolutely nothing about!
So here, here is a list of 5 things that I knew nada about. Educate yourself, stay in the know. I don't want you to feel like I did.

• L33t - that is "Leet Speak", an online writing system used in games or, more and more, in popular online forums.
• /b/-Random - I'm not quite sure yet why this site is so big, but apparently it is. The link here is to the main page, but /b/, the random imageboard is what all the hoopla is about. If you figure anything out, please, fill me in.
• Cat Macros - also know as Kittah, this is just something really odd. What else can I say? People take pictures of cats, photoshop some random text onto it, and think it's funny. Again, I don't really get it, but I guess I'm supposed to know about it. Check out this link to see some good examples.
• Memes - if you find one, please share it.
• And I guess HTML is just something that people should know. This I did know, and I'm working on it, even though I have no desire to. It's for the sake of knowledge people, teh knowledge.

If you know of anything else I should bother educating myself with, feel free to let me know. No offense taken. I'd rather feel stupid when I ask for it, instead of when I'm put on the spot.

Battle of the Brews

Returning to my argument first brought up last week on the Superiority of Tea, I would like to add to the ever-
growing demise of "the bean" beverage. My post last week definitely stirred some deep feelings readers had regarding their stance on the topic. I had a whopping 4 responses! Indeed, is appears the tea/coffee debate is a black and white subject: you're either a tea person or a coffee person, just like you're either a Beatles person or an Elvis person. Maybe there is no clear right or wrong side to take... but when there's evidence at hand, there's no sense in leaving it unexploited!
Again, my ally, the BBC has produced more evidence against the dreaded bean. A new study shows that regular coffee drinkers are not actually gaining any heightened alertness by having their morning cup. Instead, their morning fix of caffeine simply returns their bodies to normal alertness, no more than your average non-coffee drinker, or even tea drinker for that matter. Interesting! So what does that make me think...Well, at least tea drinkers don't rely on a placebo to get through their day. Muah haha!

Sunday Treat

One of the best Daily Show clips out there. Enjoy a nice Sunday treat.

Don't Punch That Wall!!

A few days ago, I read this article on Null Hypothesis about anger. It argues against the idea that venting anger is the best solution. Instead they suggest just trying to calm down and taking a few deep breaths should solve the problem more successfully. This got me thinking...
I'm not much of a "venting anger" kind of girl, but the few times I've let myself explode and do something emotionally rash, the feeling I had afterwards was not one of satisfaction, but of embarrassment and guilt for what I just did. So, needless to say, I was happy to read this news. During the past few days, I've consciously tried to test this hypothesis, and I have to say, I like it. At least with little things. I mean, I haven't really had anything ridiculously anger provoking occur in the last couple of days, just the standard items of frustration: being late, traffic, not being able to find that other sock, birthday presents, you know. But through all that, by simply trying to relax I've stopped myself at frustration, and not moved on to actual anger. Plus I actually feel like those feelings dissipate. So like the author of the article writes, "Next time I'm ready to explode I'll hug that pillow instead of beating the living daylights out of it."

Haiku on the Carrot

I lack a sweet treat
So crunch your orange with glee
Annoyance has come