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Shared Google Reader Items, 2/26/2009

It's been almost a week since I last did this! Doh! Here they finally are, my shared items from Google Reader. Enjoy!

Art:

• I love Photoshop, but I'm not as good at it as I should be after using it for... holy jeebus, about 15 years now! I want to get better, so I need to start using VunkySearch's tutorial finder thingy.

Technology:

• Researchers found a way to make solar power cheaper. Any time now solar should make sense (sadly, it usually doesn't right now; it hurts the environment enough to make solar cells that their benefit probably doesn't offset it). How long after that do you think it'll take for it to actually be used?
• I'm so in love with this key finder idea that I want to elope with it and bear its children.

Psychology:

• A couple weeks ago, I mentioned an interesting-sounding survey over at Cognitive Daily. Soon after that (but not soon enough to make it into my last update), they posted results. Turns out we're more random than at least one of their readers thought.

The Internets:

• The stimulus bill requires that each government agency report money it gives out via RSS. Neat.
• I'm using Gmail's new multiple inboxes feature, and I think I like it.
• Speaking of Gmail, attaching multiple files in Gmail is now easier. Can gDrive be far away?
• This xkcd comic notes something I noticed with my Kindle the first time I laid eyes on it; that's why I re-read the Hitchhiker's series on it, and set up this store. Took him long enough!
  

Politics:

• Legalization of marijuana is more popular than key conservative leaders.
• 538.com examines the same question I had: Was volcano monitoring really the worst thing Kenneth Jindal could find in the stimulus bill? Really? The Governor of Louisiana can't see the economic benefit in paying people to make sure people aren't killed by volcanos? Really??
• News organizations can now show photos of returning war dead, after an 18-year ban. The reason reversing this was important was so Americans could get a clear picture of what these wars are costing. I think we're already starting to get that, but better late than never on the reversal.
• The economy tanking may have a good result: states are scrapping barbarism because it's too expense. Woot.
• Obama has picked former Washington Governor Gary Locke for Commerce. Let's hope third time's a charm...
• Because I like to be fair, here's FactCheck.org's run-down on Obama's speech. I think most of those "exaggerations and factual misstatements" are what I'd call "rhetorically true," meaning that the truth fits at least one interpretation of what he said, whether that's the interpretation most people would jump to first or not... but anyway, it's good to check this sorta thing.
• The Senate has passed the DC Voting Rights Bill 61-37. The idea sounds great, but, dammit, it's illegal. You can't just change the Constitution because it sounds like a good idea. You need to ammend it. It's not that complicated: "Representatives shall be apportioned among the several states according to their respective numbers, counting the whole number of persons in each state, excluding Indians not taxed." That's quoted from the 14th Amendment, because we already realized once that the original was broken. Fixing it again wouldn't be a big thing, but you can't change the Constitution through a bill, no matter how good of an idea you think the bill is.

Science:

• Researchers are getting close to a universal flu vaccine. Neat. Someone was talking about something similar at a party recently (because that's the sort of party I attend), but they had the process all wrong.
• Learn all about nanotechnology and why it's cool through the Nano Song. Strong work.

Entertainment:

• The Oscars didn't show Don LaFontaine in their dead people montage. That's terribly lame.
• Jim Kakalios, author of the awesome The Physics of Superheroes (great read, I highly recommend it), was a consultant on The Watchmen movie, and made a video about it. Neat.
• U2's Bono and the Edge are writing music and lyrics for a Spider-Man musical, set to premier in 2010. Awesome.

Atheism:

• Teehee. (BTW, for those who think I filed the comic under the wrong heading, "atheist" and "agnostic" pretty much mean the same thing, I just prefer the taken-as-more-shocking term. If you aren't sure that you believe in something, particularly something that damns you to eternal torment for not swearing fealty to it, you don't believe in it.)
• The UN has passed a resolution trying to ban making fun of religion. The response to that is obvious: Fuck you, religion! In case that's not specific enough, I'm talking about you, Christianity, Judaism, Islam, and Hinduism. Are you such a bunch of pussies that you need special protection? Aw, what's wrong, religion? Is free speech telling you you're unnecessary? Suck it up and take it like a man.

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

The Curious Case of Jon the Stamper

It began innocently enough. I was, as is often the case, chatting with my older sister. "Any idea what this film is?" she asked, sending me to a stamping blog she frequents called Cinema Saturday. I was intrigued. I'd tried to play along before, but this time they claimed to be doing something special. I got sucked in.

The next morning, when the movie was revealed, one of the women who runs the site posted, "Jon and Libby - i love that you have made this a family affair - now Jon, we are expecting you to play along - can't wait to see your card!!!" I have no desire to work with scissors and ink, but, after some consideration, I got an idea. I could use the challenge to play with some CSS and Javascript tricks.

The result is here, with a small version to the right. Over at the site, you can click to hide/reveal each individual element of the card, to see how it's put together.

The pieces are:

• A gear cut out from this clock at The Clockworks Unlimited. Cutting out the gear was more tedious than I hoped, so I just cut out the top-left corner of the gear and the center, then duplicated the spokes to build a gear (you can tell if you note the repeating white spots). All three gears are the same image file, resized on the fly as necessary.
• Brown paper from an Australian stamping store.
• A vintage calendar that was way too hard to find, and then I closed the tab that had it, and now I can't find it again!
• A clock from the awesome Clipart, Etc project at the University of South Florida. If you are or know a student working on a school project, that site is great. I wish that had existed when I was in school.
• A plain HTML/CSS block for the text, using the Papyrus font if you have it, but defaulting to other fonts if you don't.

Please click through to see how it's all put together. I'm really happy with how it all came out.

Name This Food

Updated with info from Cindy + pointing out something I missed in the instructions.

Today my coworker Cindy and I made something delicious. The idea was all hers; all I added was the banana peppers to mine. Are these a thing? If so, what are they? If not, how did nobody think of this before?

Ingredients:

• Buttery croissant dough stuff (I'm trying to find out exactly what it was from Cindy, will update when I hear) Update: Pillsbury crescent rolls, extra large style. Update 2: Pillsbury Crescent Rolls, Big and Buttery 50% Bigger style, to be more specific. And the butteriness is vital.
• Maple-honey-baked ham
• Provolone cheese
• Horseradish mustard
• Banana peppers (optional)

Stretch out 2 of the croissant dough pieces. Pierce each with fork. Lay one down on a sheet, and layer on ham, cheese, and peppers. Update: Spread mustard on the other piece. Place that piece over the top, and seal the edges (and crimp with a fork). Bake at 350 F for 15 minutes. Eat, and be contented.

They weren't quite pierogis. Were they a thing? Note: If you make this a thing, you can use virtually any sandwich ingredients. For that reason, I am temporarily calling them "dumpling sandwiches," although I guess "Cindy's Dumpling Sandwiches" (or whatever else she might decide to call them) would be more fitting.

Shared Google Reader Items, 2/20/2009

It's time again to discuss some shared items from Google Reader. Enjoy!

Astronomy:

• This is at least the second article I've seen about liquid water at or near the site of one of our landers on Mars. Given the helpful diagram at the right (edited from a NASA image), can anyone tell me what I'm missing?
• It looks like part of the fireball seen over Austin last weekend has been found. Neat! Bad joke/question: It's a meteor in the sky, and a meteorite on the ground. If you throw it or take it on a plane, is it a meteor again?
• The good news: Europa was selected as the target for a big NASA mission. The bad news: we won't get there until 2025 or 2026. The worse news: ALL THESE WORLDS ARE YOURS EXCEPT EUROPA. ATTEMPT NO LANDINGS THERE.
• Given that the Hubble repair mission was one of the first things I blogged about on here, news that Hubble might not get repaired due to the debris from the colliding satellites has made me sad.
• Luckily, I have this Flickr tagger thingy to make me happy again. You post an image of the sky to Flickr, a server analyzes it and tells you what's in it, and the people running the server get another shot to analyze to see if it has any info they missed. Awesome.

Technology:

• I was in love with this G1 Android-controlled robotic blimp the first time I saw it, but I think I've accepted that it isn't worth the $600 or so it'd take to put it together.
• I. Want. So. Bad.
• A new company is working on commercial, space-based solar power within a decade. Sweet. There's a cool Asimov story about that in I think it was I, Robot (the collection of short stories that has zero relation to the movie, if for no other reason than that the short stories are entertaining).
• Ok, bear with me. DARPA's remote-controlled insects are absolutely awesome, and not at all creepy. But I understand that it probably sounds like they're creepy. Here's the thing: Imagine a spy camera, tiny speaker, microphone, and transmitter on these things. Now imagine a rescue crew at the other end of the remote control, searching through rubble for earthquaker survivors or whatnot. Now imagine a cockroach crawling up to someone's ear and whispering, "Stay calm, we're coming for you." Ok, you're right. That's creepy. But it's still freaking awesome.

Politics:

• Governor Kathleen Sebelius of Kansas is likely to be the Secretary of Health and Human Services. I had heard her name when I wrote my picks, but I thought Daschle was a lock. Oops.
• This comparison of diagramming an Obama sentence to diagramming a Palin sentence is high geekery, and thus awesome.
• Teehee. The Obama Administration is setting the right-wing loonies up as foils. I love this strategy. "Look how crazy our opponents are." Giggle. Getting the right wing to either say, "These people don't speak for us!" or "Yes, we're crazy!" (leaving pretty much no other choice) is just beautiful.

Entertainment:

• Nate Silver has figured out who's going to win Oscars this weekend. Why bother having the ceremony? Ah, I see; we need to find out who wins Best Supporting Actress (apparently Kate Winslet won it in all the other awards, but she got nominated for Best Actress for the same role at the Oscars, and that threw his model off).

Atheism:

• Something is rotten in the state of Washington.

Art:

• Layer Tennis sounds absolutely awesome. I may have to try something similar (but on a non-competitive level) with McCarron.
• Every frame in this movie is a painting. Over 6000 paintings for a five-minute film. Beautiful, but I really wish the artist had chosen different music to set it to.

Science:

• Very briefly: One of Einstein's problems with quantum mechanics was that it allowed for entanglement of particles, leading to "spooky action at a distance," where things done to one particle happen to the other one, too. It turns out the human eye may be sensitive enough to detect it. If so, the people detecting it would briefly become entangled with one another. This is leading me to visions of the precogs in Minority Report or perhaps the pilots in Dune. Very strange, very potentially cool.
• Damn you, YouTube! How can you not have a clip of "Your Komodo Dragon" from The Freshman? Is it because only about six of us actually saw that movie, and nobody bought the DVD to rip it? My comments about this story of a thought-to-be-extinct bird being photographed and then promptly sold as food would now only make sense to the six of us. But seriously, isn't that tragically hilarious, fellow Freshman-viewers?
• I am absolutely going to have to buy one of these posters to frame and hang.

The Internets:

• Shaquille O'Neal Tweets, and is a bit of a tech junky. Neat.

Jeebus, this post has 26 links in it. As always, leave your comments on these or anything else (but seriously, you could probably keep it to these this time) below.