Jello Tetris, yum!

I thought this was an appropriate Memorial Day dessert for a geek: Jello that looks like little Tetris pieces. It makes me quiver with joy!

Really sexist advertising from days gone by

25 Horribly Sexist Vintage Ads | I Can Has Internets: "Since the 50’s, a lot has changed in way of women’s rights and their duties in and out of the house. I highly doubt any company could get away with phrases like “The Chef [mixer] does everything but cook – that’s what wives are for!” nowadays. Or how about an ad agency pitching a company an idea of a wife bent over her husband’s knee as he prepares to spank her."

Comment -- Wow, the ad pictured here is so wrong in so many ways!

Click over to see the entire list and you'll cringe at what advertisers got away with. Unfortunately they only reflected societal attitudes at the time. It does make you wonder, however, what people 50 years from now will think about our current advertising.

Gaming the system

Saving the world, one hit point at a time - tech - 25 May 2010 - New Scientist: "Another popular online game is Farmville, a Facebook application with more than 80 million players. Participants manage a virtual farm, cultivating crops and livestock and selling them for 'farm coins' which can be invested back in the farm. Edward Castronova, an economist at Indiana University Bloomington, explores why people play such games. There are several powerful motivators, he says, including immediate positive feedback from completing missions, a sense of empowerment and significance, adventure, the connection to others - and the taste of victory."

Comment -- I regularly play two computer games: Combat Mission: Shock Force, which I play-by-email with my pal Scottie in St. Louis, MO; and CIV-IV.

CMSF lets me move soldiers and tanks around and fight, much like I did when I was a little kid -- only with more verisimilitude.

CIV-IV is more cerebral, but just like in CMSF, I like the fighting parts the most.

By the way, CIV V is coming out in the fall and so far it looks awesome!

Pretty posies? Well, some kind of flower in downtown Lansing...

The City of Lansing planted these in front of our building. The downtown is looking pretty snazzy this summer!

Astonishing new pictures from Saturn

Checking in on Saturn - The Big Picture - Boston.com: "While we humans carry on with our daily lives down here on Earth, perhaps stuck in traffic or reading blogs, or just enjoying a Springtime stroll, a school-bus-sized spacecraft called Cassini continues to gather data and images for us - 1.4 billion kilometers (870 million miles) away. Over the past months, NASA's Cassini spacecraft has made several close flybys of Saturn's moons, caught the Sun's reflection glinting off a lake on Titan, and has brought us even more tantalizing images of ongoing cryovolcanism on Enceladus. Collected here are a handful of recent images from the Saturnian system. (30 photos total)"

Comment -- I guarantee these 30 photos will blow your mind. But as exciting as they are, I'm also discouraged to realize that humans won't be traveling to the Saturn system in my lifetime. We can't even get our act together to get to Mars, let alone Saturn. Maybe we'll be motivated to get out there if we spot some fish jumping out of those methane lakes on Titan...

Big meteor smackdown!

Australian scientists find Timor Sea meteorite crater: "Australian National University archaeologist Andrew Glikson said seismic activity led experts to the Mount Ashmore 1B site, and a study of fragments showed a large meteorite hit just before the Earth's temperatures plunged.

'The identification of microstructural and chemical features in drill fragments taken from the Mount Ashmore drill hole revealed evidence of a significant impact,' Glikson said, adding it was at least 50 kilometres (31 miles) wide and about 35 million years old.

A meteorite 100 kilometres wide hit Siberia at the same time, along with an 85 km one in Chesapeake Bay, off the US coast of Virginia, followed by a large field of molten rock fragments over northeast America, he said.

'This defined a major impact cluster across the planet,' said Glikson."

Comment -- That's three titanic meteor impacts at the same time about 35 million years ago. Yet, it does not appear that it caused mass extinctions.

I ran across an article that suggested that geologists can't really say all three hit "at the same time." The strikes may have been separated by a million years, which gave the biosphere some time to recover.

Big improvements in City Market

This is what the Lansing City Market looks like with me standing by the river and looking east.

The City Market seems to be really getting its act together. Much improved building, better hours and interesting vendors (like an on-site baker.)

Ketchup with the news!

New Heinz Ketchup recipe shakes up fans of the condiment - NYPOST.com: "Heinz will change the recipe for its flagship ketchup product this summer, sparking outrage among some lovers of the condiment Thursday. The Pittsburgh Post-Gazette reported Thursday that the salt content of the condiment will drop by 15 percent, saying it was the most significant change in the ketchup recipe in nearly 40 years. Under the new formula the average serving will have 160mg of sodium, down from 190mg.

Comment -- This article says that people on Facebook are upset that Heinz is lowering the salt content.

Seems to me that if you think the new ketchup formula is not salty enough -- get out the salt shaker and add a little.

Sometimes I wonder about people and their lack of problem solving skills...

Hot iron in downtown Lansing

This blacksmith was doing a demonstration in downtown Lansing today in front of the Lansing Art Gallery. On a table out-of-frame were displayed a number of artistic knives that he had made. Pretty interesting.

Now where did I put that stripe?

Jupiter loses a stripe - space - 11 May 2010 - New Scientist: "Jupiter has lost one of its prominent stripes, leaving its southern half looking unusually blank. Scientists are not sure what triggered the disappearance of the band."
The bands may normally appear dark simply because pale, high-altitude clouds prevalent in other regions of the planet are missing there, revealing darker clouds below, says Glenn Orton of the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California. "You're looking into different layers of the cloud structures of the planet," he told New Scientist.
The disappearance of the belt comes at a time of widespread – but mysterious – change on Jupiter, which has seen changes to the colour of other bands and spots in its atmosphere. "There has been a lot going on," Orton says.

Comment -- I haven't seen Jupiter through my scope for quite a while. I'll look soon to see if I notice the lack of a stripe.

For thousands of years, humans thought the heavens were perfect and unchangeable. The invention of the telescope changed that notion.

By the way, did you know that Jupiter is 1,331 times bigger than the Earth?

A heck of a grand river

This scene is me looking south, about a half mile from my office. Obviously, I shot it on a nice sunny day, not during today's Michigan monsoon

Lansing has a very nice riverwalk in the downtown area. You can stroll many miles if you have the time and ambition.

Until I read this historical information sign, I did not realize that the Grand River is Michigan's longest river and it was formed 12,000 years ago after the last Ice Age.

How to survive a tornado

NOVA | Hunt for the Supertwister | Shelter From the Storm | PBS: "NOVA: What if you're not in your house? Where should you go?

Marshall: Well, a couple of things have cropped up in the last few years that have alarmed me. One is that a ditch or an open depression is a good place to be. It's not, because that's a debris accumulation zone. We see more ditches filled with cars and boards and everything else. Another is that somehow underpasses are shelters. Drivers stop at a highway overpass, climb up underneath a girder, and think that's a safe place. Ninety-five percent of the time it's not."

Comment -- Interesting interview with engineer and tornado expert Tim Marshall. He says if you are in your car, drive away from the tornado -- you will likely outrun it.

If you are in your house, get to an inside bathroom -- the plumbing will keep the room from flying away. He does not mention basements, maybe because few houses outside the Midwest have basements.

Also, it's not usually the wind that kills people, it's the debris that's flying around in the wind.

A nicer photo from the Michigan Celebrates Small Business event last week

This was shot by one of the people at our table. It's much nicer quality than my camera phone photo.

Keep on truckin' at LCC

Spotted this truck parked on the Lansing Community College campus today.

Preschoolers and TV watching: correlation is not causation...again!

The Research Report: A Look at Studies on MS, Mosquitoes and Sugar's Effect on Cholesterol - WSJ.com: Each additional hour of weekly preschool TV corresponded to a 10% increase in 'victimization'—how often the child was teased, insulted and physically harassed by other students. And preschool television was also linked to poorer health in fourth grade: Children who watched the most also ate the fewest fruits and vegetables and the most soft drinks, and were more likely to be overweight."

Comment -- It seems to me that it's more logical to conclude that children who are teased, insulted and harassed by other students are likely to react by watching more TV -- rather than the other way around.

(photo by MelvinSchlubman http://www.flickr.com/photos/pauldineen/)

Country of Chile will host world's largest telescope

SkyandTelescope.com - News Blog - Peak Picked for World's Largest Scope: "With a billion-euro price tag and a construction timetable projecting 'first light' by 2018, the world's largest optical telescope will be a monster. Its primary's mosaic of 1,000 hexagonal mirrors will create an aperture 138 feet (42 meters) across. That's a huge engineering leap: four times the diameter of the largest single-aperture optical telescopes today. To put the optics in perspective, the E-ELT's secondary mirror will be bigger than the venerable Hale Telescope's 200-inch primary."

Comment -- I have a 5-inch telescope. The ELT will be a 1,656-inch scope. They should rename it the Big Old Honkin' Scope (BOSH).

You would think that space-based telescopes would be the wave of the future, but available technology doesn't exist to put a 138-feet-in-diameter scope in orbit.