Google Reader Send To Remember the Milk Lists

This isn't perfect yet, and that makes me angry. But it's getting there, and I'm hoping someone can help me finalize it in the comments.

What this trick will do: Allow you to send articles to specific Remember the Milk lists (I set up a Mad Science Monday list, and another one to add things to my Personal to-do on RTM, and one for food-related articles, and another for work-related articles) from Google Reader.

What you'll need:

• A bookmarklet from Twitlet (follow their instructions).
• An account on Remember the Milk. Set up any lists you want to use there. Your life will be easiest if you make these lists all one word (for example, I used "msm" for my Mad Science Monday list).
• A Twitter account.
• The Remember the Milk rtm Twitter trick.
• A list of things on Google Reader that you want to sort into to-do lists.
• At least a mild case of obsessive-compulsive disorder.

Do you have all of that set up? Ok, open up your Twitlet bookmarklet (right click and Edit it, most likely, depending on your browser), and copy that mass of confusion in the URL field. All you really want out of that is the part after ?a= and before &t=, which will be a jumbled mass of letters and numbers (that's your personal code for Twitlet).

Now go to Reader, and click Settings, and then Send To. Down at the bottom, click Create a custom link. Name it something to remember it by (for example, I used MSM and To-Do for mine). For the URL field, you want this:

http://www.twitlet.com/updates/?a=YOURCODE&t=d%20rtm%20${title}%20${short-url}%20%23LISTNAME

Obviously, swap in your code for YOURCODE and the name of your list for LISTNAME. If you have spaces in the name of your list, replace them with %20's.

For the Icon URL, enter this: http://www.rememberthemilk.com/favicon.ico (that'll put a RTM icon on it).

Now save it. Make more as necessary. Enjoy.

Oh, you'll have to tell your browser to allow popups from Reader (you need to do that for any Send To), and (here's the annoying part) the window that pops up is pointless; you can close it again after it loads. It just needs to load for this to work. I guess I might be able to kill it with a user script, but that's a bit overboard. Does anyone have any suggestions?

Mad Science Monday, 8/31/2009

I live in Austin, TX. Not only do we have confirmed record-setting zombie hordes, but we also have a populace ready to warn one another of outbreaks of zombiism. So of course I'm interested in knowing whether we (or anyone else) will be able to survive an actual bout with zombies. Thankfully, a group of certified mad scientists have figured this out for us.

Mad Reference: Philip Munz, Ioan Hudea, Joe Imad, and Robert J. Smith?. (2009) "When Zombies Attack!: Mathematical Modelling of an Outbreak of Zombie Infection." Infectious Disease Modelling Research Progress. (full text available free online [PDF])

Mad Background: First off, that isn't a typo in the name of the lead researcher. His last name is "Smith?" with a question mark. In addition, from his homepage at the University of Ottawa (emphasis added), "People kept asking if I'll be getting US citizenship next and I kept laughing at that. Somewhat hysterically, it must be said." Your last name is "Smith?", and you talk about your hysterical laughter on your homepage? You are an inspiration for all would-be mad scientists, Dr. Smith?!

As far as the science, the background you need is that mathematical models are used in fields like epidemiology to help predict the spread of diseases under various conditions, and thus to plan out the best way to combat those diseases. For example, mathematical models can help predict what will happen if only a limited number of vaccine doses are available for a disease, or what will happen if people infected with a disease are quarantined. But can they predict the outcome of a hypothetical disease that follows a pattern very different from known real-world diseases?

Mad Observations: Especially in modern movies and video games, zombiism spreads like a disease. If it spreads like a disease, it should be possible to model it the same way we model diseases.

Mad Hypothesis: If a zombie outbreak occurs, mankind can survive. At least, that's what they're pretending to test. What they're really testing is whether mathematical models can be put together for a "disease" as strange as zombiism, in particular the strain of zombiism in which the dead can become "infected" with the disease and come back to terrorize the living.

Mad Experiment: The researchers built five mathematical models for zombie outbreaks: a basic model, a model with an incubation period, a model in which the unaffected attempt to quarantine the infected, a model in which a treatment for zombiism is available, and a model in which humanity fights back. They then used each model to predict the equilibrium; in other words, to predict whether humanity would survive. Each model had some assumptions in common:

• The particular form of zombiism being modeled is the "slow zombie" style. "Fast zombies," like the things in 28 Days Later, were not studied. I'd be interested to see what would change in such a model, but, alas, that will require further research.
• As I mentioned in the Mad Hypothesis section, the strain of zombiism being modeled also infects the dead (including dead zombies), allowing the dead to join the population of zombies. The whole point was to model something far from known diseases to see how the models held up, so it made sense to include the truly undead in the model.

They All Laughed, But: We are all screwed. Unless we get infrastructure in place to quarantine zombies and zombies-to-be, or are able to quickly develop a cure when an outbreak occurs, or are able to successfully coordinate zombie-eradication attacks, zombies eventually wipe us all out. The eradication model was the only one in which we eventually won, and it seems likely to me that this would require military involvement. If you've ever seen a zombie movie, you know that involving the military is a terrible, terrible idea, so our best hope is also the one that, the "literature" shows us, is empirically shown to lead to a society in which the living envy the dead.

The treatment model was also unique in that, at equilibrium, a large zombie population survived in addition to a small human population. Note that this human population would remain at a certain size, but would not always contain the same individuals; you might become a zombie for a while, then get treated, then die, then rise as a zombie, then get treated again and rejoin the human population. This wouldn't necessarily be a fun existence, although it would definitely be interesting. This model is the only one in which pet zombies, like in Fido and Shaun of the Dead, are even slightly possible. And it looks far more likely that zombies would have pet humans (for a few minutes, before eating their brains and/or infecting them).

The quarantine model seems like our best bet, but, alas, assuming we don't have a massive infrastructure already in place for such quarantine, even then zombies eventually kill us all off.

Mad Engineering Applications: As it turns out, Dr. Smith?'s page indicates that a mad engineer has already expressed interest in this research, in that someone wrote to Dr. Smith? asking for help engineering a zombiism virus. Presumably that evil genius plans to control the treatment of his strain of zombiism, thus ensuring that he is (at least occasionally) a member of the small surviving human population. In case that nutjob is able to design such a virus, I guess the rest of us need to be ready to work with the military to make sure his plan isn't successful.

Of course, the other point of all of this was that the models seemed to work. The real application is to, essentially, not be afraid to try to model things that don't follow traditional disease models. The paper mentions the examples of allegiance to political parties or diseases with dormant infection, but there are definitely other things that can be modeled much like diseases.

It's hard to pick a favorite part of all of this, but, if you get a chance, I strongly recommend at least reading the last two pages of the PDF (the references). I couldn't stop laughing (maniacally, of course), seeing things like "Capcom, Shinji Mikami (creator), 1996-2007 Resident Evil" listed alongside "van den Driessche, P., Watmough, J. (2002) Reproduction numbers and sub-threshold endemic equilibria for compartmental models of disease transmission. Math. Biosci. 180, 29-48."

If you'd like to continue to study zombie survival tips, I recommend my friend Jon's weekly Zombie Friday! You can probably guess on which day you should check his site for said column, unless, of course, you're already safe from zombies.

The Month In Geek: July 2009

July was an interesting month for all things geeky. Here are some of my favorite stories from the last month.

Astronomy:
Jupiter got smacked by something big, probably an asteroid (because we probably would have seen it if it were a nice, bright comet). That thing left a black spot on Jupiter roughly the size of the Earth. Wow. The Bad Astronomer has been keeping me up-to-date on exactly what happened.

Entertainment:
Information came out last month about three big geek movies. First, Disney released details and clips from Tron Legacy, the sequel to Tron. I'm sure it's going to be cheesy and terrible, but it may also be awesome.

Second, the announcement came out that Sam Raimi is set to direct a World of Warcraft movie. I will cringe when they make the obligatory Leeroy Jenkins joke (those non-funny bastards were on my server, and I hated them before they made the lame movie and somehow got famous for it), but the possibility of Raimi making a videogame movie is... intriguing.

As if that wasn't enough, at the end of July it came out that Ridley Scott has signed on to direct a prequel to Alien. Ridely Scott, not just some random schmoe. Wow.

Technology/Geek Culture:

A firm in Abu Dhabi has ponied up money to Virgin Galactic. Part of the deal is to build a spaceport in Abu Dhabi (in the UAE), making it the second commercial spaceport (after the Mojave Air & Space Port in Mojave, California). I'm guessing that one will get quite a bit of use. Note to science fiction authors: Arabic will likely be spoken in space roughly as much as English, at least in the early days of space tourism.

Politics/Morality:

The UK Quakers are going to extend marriage services to same-sex couples. If that bleeds to the US Quakers, that would mean, when a state accepts one religious marriage ceremony as valid but not another, they are denying the religious freedom of that same-sex couple. I've often wondered what would happen if that tack were taken on the gay marriage issue. We might get to find out. Of course, the consequences could be dire.

I'm sure there were a number of geek stories that I didn't cover here. Let me know in the comments if I skipped any big ones.

Have a Horrible Day!

Today is the one-year anniversary of the release of Dr. Horrible's Sing-Along Blog. If you have not yet seen it, watch it now. If you have seen it and love it like I do, show them some love in return.

Remember: It's not about making money, it's about taking money.

Shared Google Reader Items, 4/6/2009

Last time I posted my shared items from Google Reader, I said that maybe I'd get on a daily schedule. Oops.

Science:

• There may be a link between autism and vinyl floors. This is only an initial finding, but at least people switching from PVC floors won't doom their kids (and other kids) to die of measles.
• However, the correlation might not mean anything. Take, for example, this strong correlation between US highway fatalities and lemon imports from Mexico.
• What can happen when poorly characterized correlations are misidentified as causes: As of last week, Jenny McCarthy and other anti-vaxxers have killed 150 people.
• Looking to cut unhealthy foods out of your diet? It may be a bad idea to go to restaurants with healthy options, then. A new study found that having salad as an option for a side made people more likely to order a side of fries. Or for the more evil spin on that: If any of you own or plan to some day open a restaurant, take note. Put something cheap-but-healthy in the "extras" areas of your menus, and people are more likely to order one of those extras. I wonder if it'd also apply to other extras. Maybe we'll start seeing things that are actually useful in supermarket checkouts, to trick us into buying more candy bars.
• Want to boost your willpower? Lifehacker (and a Case Western study) says to brush your teeth with the wrong hand. Apparently this is also supposed to help you avoid Alzheimer's.
• Bad Astronomy included an announcement of a cool contest today: create a stick-figure cartoon that can be used to educate people about a false argument. Cool.
• I love this video of the Sun's surface. I mean, think about it for a minute. That's the surface of the Sun. When you watch that video, you're seeing the structure of that surface. People 100 years ago didn't even know if the surface of the Sun had structure, and now we can watch videos of it. Neat.

The Internets:

• PageZipper is a neat bookmarklet for stitching together long pages. It's particularly useful for The Big Picture. Now to learn user script coding, so I can make it auto-run for The Big Picture.
• I find it funny but unsurprising how many versions of the story about internet surfing increasing productivity showed up in various Google Reader shared lists.
• Worried that you might have the Conficker virus? Check this page to find out. I love how simple and clever that site is.
• If you use Gmail, I highly recommend turning on Search Autocomplete in Gmail Labs. I can't think of a downside to it, and the upside is that it can teach you some neat search tricks. For example, type "has" after you turn it on.
• I shared a story about Google being in late-stage talks to acquire Twitter, but it now has an update saying it's not true. Darn, I thought that could be interesting.
• The Associated Press is going to try to stop web aggregators from using their stories. In other words, the AP doesn't want anybody to read their stories. I'm going to try to avoid doing so going forward. Pssst, AP: try to find a model that works, rather than trying to sue the model that people want out of existence.
• Lifehacker pointed me to a cool pair of bookmarklets to tag things to read later and then pull one off your list. A friend pointed me to one that does the same sorta thing, but allows you to read the stuff you put on your list from other devices (or, I just noticed, by pulling them into an aggregator as an RSS feed). I need to search around each to find which I actually recommend, but for the moment Instapaper wins just because Lifehacker's recommendation got smashed into oblivion by click-throughs, and this is the sorta thing that might continue to tax a server.

Geek Culture:

• Thinkgeek made an awesome Tauntaun sleeping bag as an April Fools' prank. Now demand is so high that they might actually make it. Please please please please please. Also, please sell it in adult sizes.
• Two geeks in New Jersey made fools out of a lot of people with a simple UFO hoax. Strong work.

Politics and Government:

• Sweden's Parliament voted last Wednesday to allow same-sex marriage (226 to 22). That's like Congress voting to allow it. That's awesome, I wish we could get to that point.
• But hey, at least Iowa's Supreme Court legalized gay marriage in Iowa. It's a start. According to 538, it might even survive.
• The US government will launch Data.gov in late May to provide a clearing house of government data. Very, very cool.
• I love Obama. "I've said before that one of the great strengths of the United States is, although as I mentioned we have a very large Christian population, we do not consider ourselves a Christian nation or a Jewish nation or a Muslim nation. We consider ourselves a nation of citizens who are bound by ideals and a set of values."

Green:

• Lifehacker had a video about a great trick to light things like workshops in sunny places: 2-liter bottles with water and a bit of bleach. Brilliant.
• Off-shore windpower might exceed US electricity demand. Holy crap. Let's get that figured out.

Technology:

• T-Mobile is going to launch an Android-powered tablet. I hope it's going to be actual touchscreen, like a G1 or iPhone, not stylus-based... but it'll be interesting to see how they solve screen-scratching potential in something as large as a laptop if that's the case.

Awesome:

• Sure, I could have put this in the Science block, but it really needed its own tag: a robot made a scientific discovery all by itself. To be clear, this wasn't a group of scientists deciding what the robot should investigate and using the device to test their hypothesis. The robot was given a pool of data, and software to analyze that data in order to make its own hypothesis. It then designed experiments to test that hypothesis, carried them out, and analyzed the results. That is unbelievably awesome. I, for one, welcome our new robot scientist overlords.

As always, leave your comments on these or anything else below.

Shared Google Reader Items, 3/8/2009

Here are my shared items from Google Reader. Enjoy!

Entertainment:

• Who watched the Watchmen? I did, and loved it. PZ Myers at Pharyngula also did, and wrote a better review than I could. Warning: some things in there might be spoilers if you don't know the story, I'm not sure.
• Judd Apatow is directing Ghostbusters 3. Will it be hilariously awesome, like Ghostbusters, or hilariously terrible, like Ghostbusters 2?
• Time Warner is offering subscriptions to its channels (such as CNN and TNT) on the interwebs. Very interesting.
• The entire Seinfeld cast will reunite on Curb Your Enthusiasm. Excellent.
• A company plans to sell an electric guitar that also works for Guitar Hero (and, I would hope, Rock Band). Sweet.

Geek Culture:

• My friend Jon sent me an interesting site, listing "What's Special About This Number" for most numbers from 0 to 9999 (well, at least many of them, I didn't check whether it's more than 50%).

Technology:

• A team at Arizona State University, working with E-Ink (the company that makes the digital ink for the Kindle and Sony Reader), have developed bendable, touch-screen e-paper. This is very, very, very interesting to me. Imagine having a reader you can roll up and put in a backpack or briefcase, but then fold out to read that day's newspaper or a new book. Neat.
• A bionic eye has given a blind man weak sight. It's a big step in an awesome direction.
• The Kepler space telescope, which will search for Earth-like extra-solar planets, launched successfully Friday night. I thought that was awesome enough, but then I found out (by crossposting my Google Reader links on Facebook) that a childhood friend-of-the-family worked on the launch as a NASA engineer. I'm so jealous.

Programming:

• I found a neat online favicon generator. If you don't know what that is, you probably don't need to know.

Science:

• Gravitational waves may have been detected in 1987. This would be very cool. I don't entirely understand gravitational waves, but they may travel faster than the speed of light, and that's very interesting. Perhaps we're listening in the wrong spectrum for ET communications, for one thing.
• Obama is reversing Bush's stem-cell research (effective) ban. Very cool, but what took him so long? That was rumored as a day 1 fix.

The Interwebs:

• PDFVue lets you edit PDF documents online. Convenient.
• Dropbox is a cool way to synchronize files between computers (for example, I use it to transfer docs from my office computer to home, and vice versa). If you sign up through that link, I get extra storage. It's win-win!
• Stephen Wolfram claims that he has a site that can answer questions (ie, when you search for "How many bones are in the human body?", it will return an answer, rather than a list of pages that might have the answer). That will be very interesting if it actually works (come May, when the site says it will be available).

Politics:

• Goddammit, John Conyers (D-MI). You have it absolutely backwards. He wants to force researchers to only publish in journals, not to any of the free sources. Stop it!

As always, leave your comments on these or anything else below.

Today's Shared Google Reader Items, 12/1

I'm going to try to get back up to daily (or more) posts, at least 'til Newtonmas or so. So, without further ado, here are today's shared Google Reader items.

Life:

• Lifehacker has a guide to pronouncing names correctly. If you're bad at this, read it now. I'll personally be using the other links in that article, about how to find out a name you've forgotten and how to remember names in the first place.

The Internets:

• In case you didn't see it, Cartoon Network Rick Roll'd the Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade. Good stuff. In case you haven't been exposed to it, "Rick Rolling" is the internet meme of sending a link to the Rick Astley video "Never Gonna Give You Up" and telling the recipient it's something else, like a movie trailer.
• The FCC is considering a plan to provide free wireless internet for the US. I hope this works out.
• Woot, Chrome's about to get extensions. I love its stability and javascript speed. Making it extensible would keep me permanently off Firefox (except for work, where I need Firefox for some things, and even IE for a few things. Grrrr).

Biology:

• A diet of fat, sugar, and cholesterol may increase the risk of ALzheimer's. I had something witty to say about this, but I can't remember what it was.
• This quote from Creationist Ray Comfort is dumbfoundingly idiotic. It's even more moronic than his banana argument, in which he merely didn't understand that bananas had been selected by humans. This new one is just... wow.
  
• Geologists are finding evidence that the early Earth cooled long before we used to think it did. That makes some things make more sense; chemical evolution would have more time to ramp up from simple chemistry to life. But, darnit, it means we can't say "Life showed up on Earth just about at the moment that it was possible for it to do so" as an argument for why finding water on another planet would be super, super awesome.

Today's Shared Google Reader Items, 11/20

I'm going to try something new in my shared items today, mostly to allow my sister to skip the "Programming" block. Let me know what you think.

Programming:

• Adobe released a C/C++ to Flash compiler. This is potentially very awesome, depending how well it does. It could result in a ton of programs migrating to the web, for one. But not to the iPhone, of course.

Politics:

• The Texas State Board of Education has voted to allow students to receive four years of credit for high school organized sports, rather than two. At first I thought this was a silly idea, but I got four years of credit for playing drums, and I can't really argue that playing drums is somehow more worthy of credit than is playing a sport.
• Jimmy Carter and others are going to visit Zimbabwe, despite warnings from Mugabe. Mugabe would be crazy to do anything bad, but, well, Mugabe is crazy. Kudos to Carter for (not all that surprisingly surprisingly) risking his life to do what he thinks is right, but eek!
• Somehow the first place I saw that Obama is likely to name Governor Janet Napolitano (D-AZ) as Secretary of Homeland Security was Indecision 2008. I know she's a very popular governor, but, well, that doesn't necessarily mean much. I really don't know anything else about her, so I have no opinion on this (possible) appointment just yet.
• I do know things I don't like about Larry Summers, but I didn't know he assured Gray Davis in CA that market manipulation wasn't an important factor in the CA energy crisis. Oops. Please, Obama. You can do better for the Secretary of the Treasury, and that position is even more important right now than it usually is.

Science:

• A spider has gone missing on the International Space Station. There are so many possibilities here, but one way or the other I'm pretty sure this is happening within the first 15 minutes of some sort of movie.
• A study recommends online gaming and social networking for kids. Geek kids do better. I just love that thought.
• Scientists have found the tomb of Copernicus. Mostly this doesn't seem like that important of a thing to do, since it's not like we're going to go worship at it or anything, but I like the idea of facial reconstruction to verify what he looked like. Cool stuff.

As always, comment on these or other shared items (or, really, anything you want) below.

Today's Shared Google Reader Items, 11/19

Hey, it's tomorrow already! That means it's time for more of my shared Google Reader items:

• Us hardcore Obama supporters are feeling kinda lost. As we vamp waiting for Bush to get the heck out of Obama's chair, we don't have much to do. But someone came up with something for us to do while we wait: the Yes We Cans! food drive. It's a cheesy pun and Obama-related, and it's for charity! Perfection!
• A European group used stem cells to reline a transplanted trachea, so the recipient's body would see it as self and not reject it. That's awesome. Of course it happened in Paris, though; US stem cell research took a hit in 2001. To be fair, these weren't embryonic stem cells, but the research as a whole is hampered here.
• Monty Python has an official channel on YouTube. Whoot.
• Tom Daschle will be the next Secretary of Health and Human Services. Somehow I missed it back in June when he basically said he was aiming for HHS, so I wasn't expecting this announcement. There's certainly nothing wrong with it, I just didn't know it was pretty much sewn up already.
• A US-Russian team has pieced together most of the genome of a woolly mammoth! Mammoths very likely went extinct at least in part due to the actions of humans. It'd be so awesomely awesome if we could bring them back.
• There's now a service to passive-aggressively teach your friends to answer their own damn questions. If it worked on cell phones, I imagine I'd be texting the results around quite a bit.

That's it for now. As always, comment on these or any other shared items below. Or, ya know, really anything. I'm not picky.

Today's Shared Google Reader Items, 11/18, part II

Holy crap, I cleared my Google Reader list! I shared another half dozen or so stories in doing so, though, so let's go ahead and get those ones posted, too:

• Wired has a piece on why Apple won't ever allow Flash on the iPhone, and their reasoning is sound. In short: allowing Flash would remove Apple's control of apps, since there are already a bazillion apps in Flash and more could easily follow, posted out there on the "real internet" for iPhone users to access without downloading them from the store.
• I've wanted a Roomba for a while, mostly because I want to own a robot, and it couldn't hurt. But now, apparently, I also need a cat:
• Burnt Orange Report dug up Obama's announcement from 1/16/2007 that he was going to form an exploratory committee and think about maybe running for President. That got me wondering, so I dug up the text of Bush's announcement on 3/7/1999. It's interesting to compare what Bush said back then to how things turned out. I'll have to remember to virtuablog or whatever we're calling it in 8 years, comparing Obama's speech to how things turned out. He's done a good job so far of sticking with the same message, but who knows what might happen over the next 8 years. I mean, who other than James Dobson.
• Indecision 2008 over at Comedy Central has discovered Time magazine's pressing question for this year: Who will be Time Magazine's Barack Obama of the Year?
• Finally, this photo that PZ Myers found at Scientific American is simply stunning. Number 15 is also pretty cool, but I share PZ's enthusiasm for #4.

Comment here or back at the first part of tonight's shared items.

Edited to add: This was my 42nd post this year. Arrrrrr!

Today's Shared Google Reader Items, 11/14

We'll see if I can get through this on craptastic hotel internet here in New Windsor, New York (I'm going to a wedding at West Point tomorrow). Can anyone tell me why hotel wifi always seems like they're piping it through a dial-up modem?? Anyhoo, here are the shared items:

• I love the idea of powerline broadband (using existing powerlines to carry high-speed internet, as I understand essentially by using the "noise" in the powerlines). I hope this plan to resurrect it pans out.
• Ok, it looks like the Palin Africa thing was BS. Phew. That's what I get for trusting Fox News commenting talking about comments from an anonymous McCain staffer.
• I love, love, love this story that's kinda sorta almost about the Monty Python parrot joke being 1600 years old.
• Huh, the NY Times has picked up the HIV cure story. I'm still not holding my breath, but this might not be BS.
• I still think there are worse things Bush could do to secure his place in history as all-time worst US President, but this is a good start.
• Flying cars are coming! Flying cars are coming!
• I want to love RFK, Jr (it seems like the right thing to do as a left-wing nutjob), but his anti-vax stuff means I can't support him for anything related to science, and head of the EPA falls squarely in that category. Phil Plait, the Bad Astronomer, has more (or at least links to more).

Oh, btw, with this post I pass my one-month post record for this blog (set in October, when I figured out this "post what I shared so people can comment" trick). Woohoo!

And yes, I shared a ton during the "driving way too far" phase of my trip, and am now blogging from the hotel. That's because, duh, I forgot to get text message blogging set up here; on the drive back, I should be able to blog from the road. Woohoo again!

Today's Shared Google Reader Items, 11/11

Happy Veteran's Day! Now on to the shared items:

• I love this recipe for a coffee-cup chocolate cake. Yum!
• Ok, most of you might use one browser on one machine, but for me (Google Chrome by preference, Firefox for some work stuff, IE for other work stuff that doesn't play with Firefox) this is awesome.
• Is anyone surprised to learn yet another way Barack and Michelle are awesome?
• I'm always interested to learn new, better ways to kill wasps. The gasoline we poured into their nests on the golf course when I was working the greens probably was neither safe nor environmentally friendly.
• Phew. The new Obama voters didn't pass Prop 8 in CA. As expected, it was hateful old people. Note: I'm pretty sure at this point Nate Silver could claim something like, "If you analyze the exit polls properly, you can see that 97% of Kentucky residents have alien parasites eating their brains," and I'd believe him. Especially if it's about Kentucky and brain parasites.

That's it for today. I may have to subscribe to a new feed or two now that my politics feeds are relatively quiet....

Today's Shared Google Reader Items, 11/8

I missed yesterday, but usually not much comes in during the weekend, so this should give you stuff to read over the weekend. Here are my favorite shared things from the last day or so:

• Obama's election night Flickr set makes me teary.
• I like the Pharyngula take on the purple maps, but be sure to check out the site that made them (with more, higher resolution version) at U of M.
• Apparently we're all exercising wrong. Well, those of us who exercise. By which I mean more you than us, really.
• The Mormon church campaigned hard to get California's hate amendment passed. That's the set up you need to make this campaign funny.
• Child's Play 2008 has begun. Donate a few dollars, Obama-campaign style. Yes we can make kids happy on Christmas.
• Obama may be a geek. I've always liked that he's a Constitution geek and an open government geek, but I don't think I'd seen the Superman photo. BTW, his first name is spelled "Barack." That doesn't directly relate to the article, but I've been seeing a lot of "Barak." Stop that.

As always, comment below.

This Weekend's Shared Items

My Google Reader is clean! It's been a while since I completely emptied out my feeds; this feels surprisingly and geekily good. That means it looks like it's time for a round-up of what I've shared recently:

• Lots of stuff on Lifehacker. Lifehacker is a great site, but it's almost too active. I may have to cut it out of my feeds, unless I can learn to speed read my feeds.
• Right-wingers are spreading this around because they think it makes Biden look bad. I'm very excited that the guy interviewed in this is going to be my VP. Imagine how Caribou Barbie would do with a similar questioner for comparison. This is "gotcha journalism," Sarah; asking you WTF you meant about the "I can see Russsia!" nonsense isn't: (video at the end while I figure out how/if I can get YouTube an bullets to play nice).
  
• My friend Flip is a talented guy. His map of newspaper endorsements is spreading through the blogosphere. Next he wants to flashify this thing about Palin's wardrobe malfunctions. More power to him, but I suspect they'll have some new ridiculous story for us to focus on before we can get that app put together.

And... two stories have come in on Reader in the time it took my to type this up. I really should look into that speed-reading thing...

Happy Mole Day!

Today is Mole Day. My high school chemistry teacher was very, very, very into Mole Day (even getting it officially recognized by my hometown, and he's also the guy who maintains the official National Mole Day Foundation website, currently down from traffic flood, always in need of some attention... where was I (note: I literally got lost in that sentence and didn't finish it when I first published, oops)? My high school chemistry teacher was way into Mole Day, and it rubbed off on me.

How to celebrate (by level of chemistry geekiness):

• Beginner: Learn about the scientific method, the defining process common to all science.


• Intermediate: Read this timeline of chemistry. Chances are you'll find something you didn't know. My personal favorite is Hermes Trismegistus, semi-mythical god-king and inventor of alchemy.


• Advanced: Solve one of these.

Note: In this context, I consider myself "intermediate."

I ALMOST FORGOT TO MENTION!!

TODAY IS INTERNATIONAL CAPS LOCK DAY!!! ENJOY!!!

EVEN BETTER, TOMORROW IS INTERNATIONAL MOLE DAY!! LEARN SOMETHING ABOUT CHEMISTRY!!

The Question

Bear with me. This combines almost all geekery into one thing.

I just noticed that, in leet, "42" is "AR". As anyone who would be likely to actually read this probably knows, 42 is the answer to the ultimate question of life, the universe, and everything. Since the question was answered by an advanced computer, it isn't unthinkable that it would answer in leet. So let's take it that the answer is "AR."

There are a couple possibilities for the sorts of questions that could lead to that. While the self-referential "From what state did the 42nd President of the United States hale?" makes me giggle a little, I prefer the idea that the true creator is a fan of Talk Like a Pirate Day, and, therefore, the question is virtually every pirate joke ever!