Sometimes just a few tips can vastly improve your skills. Derrick Story's Top Ten Digital Photography Tips are going to go a long way on my next foray with the Digital Elph. But first I think I need a portable tripod. (via xBlog)
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"It's the Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown" pulled a 5.8 share on ABC last week. Not bad for a show that first aired in 1967. If you're in the mood for celebratory popcorn and toast, "A Charlie Brown Thanksgiving" will air on November 21. I have to admit, though, that it's still a little odd to be turning to ABC for Charlie Brown instead of CBS.
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Were you a fan of "Late Night with David Letterman"? Have you lost hope of ever seeing vintage "Late Night" again, beyond what you still have stashed away in your pile of scratch VCR tapes? Did you think NBC would never let go of the rights after Dave dumped them when they gave Leno the Carson spot? Well, despair not. Cable network newcomer Trio has purchased rights to a batch of the old original "Daves" and adding them to their 2003 prime-time lineup. But to whet (or perhaps deaden) your appetite, they are showing 53 hours of "Late Night" starting early Thanksgiving Day. Fifty-three hours. That's a lot of lovely beverages, Chris Elliott, Larry 'Bud' Melman, and toast on a stick.
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Wednesday, October 30, 2002

The Fire Museum Network has a directory of the almost 300 museums devoted to fire fighting in the U.S. and Canada. It also lists museums in other countries. The web pages of the San Francisco Fire Department Museum reveal the variety of material the topic has to offer: helmets, uniforms, and awards, fire alarm and extinguisher technology, and of course the evolution of the various means of bringing water and firefighters to the scene with hoses, ladders, pumps, and engines.
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"Best known to the public for his definitive investigations of the origins of Dixie, O.K., Podunk, and Rebel Yell," Allen Walker Read, etymologist, died on October 16th, aged 96. Surprisingly, "OK" is used in nearly every language. Although Americans assumed it had native origins, Europeans brought forth their own theories of its origins. But Read was certain of OK's American heritage and piled on evidence of its use in the 1830s and eventual dissemination around the world. Still, there are doubters. (via BrainLog)
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Tuesday, October 29, 2002

What sandwich will "last a minimum of three years at 80 degrees, six months at 100 degrees" while traveling "to the swampiest swamp, the highest mountain, the most arid desert?" It's the Army's latest MRE (meals ready to eat) which resemble, sort of, those pocket sandwiches that have become common in grocery stores. They don't need a spoon, don't need preparation, and are easy to eat on the run. The two available flavors are pepperoni and barbecue chicken, but what the soldier far from home really wants is peanut butter and jelly. Unfortunately, peanut butter is not stable enough to survive, and in order to imbue it with long lasting properties, food scientists have to also ruin its appealing sticky qualities. Ah well, it's enough that our Army cares enough to increase morale with "fresh" bread products.
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Reader Lynn sent in a swift update to yesterday's "purse charging" entry. Splashpower is working on a wireless charging system. Mobile devices with a SplashModule electromagnetic chip can be placed on the SplashPad charging platform to recharge. No custom plugs or docks are necessary, the SpashPad just plugs into the wall outlet. When combined with wireless syncing, this device will truly free up your wireless gadgets. The company hopes to ship a product next year.
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Monday, October 28, 2002

Since I often forget to charge my cell phone and my Palm Vx, I have decided that what I really need is a dockable purse. I can come home, stick my purse in a dock, and everything inside will magically sync and recharge. If I can't get a dock, how about a simple plug? Oh, and it can't make my purse weigh any more than it already does.
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SoBe, of the herb-spiked beverages, is launching a line of chocolates. Will this open up the market for "healthy" candy bars? These don't exactly fit into the PowerBar market; perhaps they fit the "Snickers satisfies you" type of marketing. The web site is targeted for young active types, mentioning surfing (not the web kind), skateboarding, and pulling all-nighters to finish papers. (SoBe is a subsidiary of PepsiCo and headquartered next to my hometown in Norwalk, CT.)
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There is a marriage proposal in this week's The Ethicist from the NY Times Magazine (last item). I am wondering if someone who knows the couple saw it online before the Sunday morning revelation. I read it on Saturday morning, as the online magazine is published early. I'd burst having to keep that secret! This proposal can't top the one hidden in the NY Times crossword puzzle though. That one was especially well-conceived as it meant something special to two specific people and was still a normal crossword to everyone else.
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Friday, October 25, 2002

Would you pay $6 to be able to use instant messaging for the duration of a plane flight? Sounds like a good deal to me if you've got a few folks to yak at on the other end. The new service, JetConnect, is priced at a flat fee of $5.99, which seems cheap compared to the GTE Airfone charge of $4 a minute. Unfortunately, it doesn't have "high-speed email" yet, and the service only offers news updated every 15 minutes to a central server. Of course, do you really need to check news more than every 15 minutes? Maybe I need to ask the people who trade stocks. I bet that there will also be "online" shopping. Connexion by Boeing, high-speed Internet access, is being planned for Lufthansa and British Airways. It'll probably be a while before all airlines offer high-speed surfing, but that day can't be far off.
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I often peruse old cookbooks in used bookstores. It's an entertaining glimpse into history. The following collections are almost over-the-top, though: 808 English-language Chinese cookbooks at University of California-Davis. And that is surpassed by a 2,600-book collection at Stony Brook University. I just can't imagine that many people having a book's worth of material about Chinese cooking, especially since many of these volumes are from decades ago. But it is quite impressive. Stony Brook's collection was donated by nutrition professor Jacqueline M. Newman who received her first Chinese cookbook as a wedding gift more than 50 years ago. Perusing the titles in the UC Davis catalog reveals a number of specific topics: Chopsticks, Chinese-Kosher cooking, herbs, rice, gruel, and the ever-popular dim sum.
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Thursday, October 24, 2002

Extreme marketing-speak
It's a well-known fact that statements made in advertisements usually boil down to not much of anything. If it came down to a lawsuit, there would be nothing to prove because, well, there is nothing there to prove. Nothing was actually said. I ran across a superb example while shopping for shampoo. Sauve says their shampoos "cost less than more expensive brands." Once I parsed what this really meant I couldn't stop laughing. By definition, the more expensive brands cost more. And thus their shampoo costs less. What is it really saying? Not much. It's true that their shampoos are cheaper than other brands, but they declined to actually say that and instead made a typically fluffy statement of little worth. It's an art, I tell ya.
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Mom always told me to take eye breaks
While researching remedies for nearsightedness, I ran across an article with a reference to an intriguing study. Dr. Paul Harris an optometrist at the Baltimore Academy for Behavioral Optometry did a study on orchestral musicians and "found that the shape of the eyes of musicians changed to accommodate the instruments they played." The text of the resulting paper is actually online; it was published in the Journal of the American Optometric Association in 1988. Dr. Harris studied the posture and eye positions of musicians in the Baltimore Symphony and discovered strong correlations with how their eyes adapted to their asymmetrical postures. Musicians spend many hours in one position, heads tilted this way or that to better hold their instruments, read their music and watch the conductor all at once. It's not surprising that they end up with astigmatism as their eyes adjust to the asymmetry.

The abstract of the paper also hints that "good sight readers in music use a fundamentally different eye scan pattern to read music from the pattern that they use to read written language." I know I don't read music the same way as I read a book. There are many layers of information in music, not just the notes but all the annotations regarding dynamics, speed, accents, fingerings, accidentals, exhortations to watch the conductor. I scan multiple points, back and forth, and often much further ahead than what I am actually playing. And I know a number of musicians with glasses prescribed especially for the middle-distance of an orchestra stand. I hope I can avoid that for a few more years.
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Wednesday, October 23, 2002

Alton Brown is back in town. Books Inc., Palo Alto, Saturday, October 26, 11:30 am.
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Caltrain's "baby bullet" railcars were put into service this week, running passengers up to the World Series game. The locomotives aren't in yet and high speed service is still a long ways off, but this is a nice sign of progress.
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The phrase "do-it-yourself" first appeared in an October 1912 article in Suburban Life encouraging men to do their own interior painting instead of hiring professionals. So says the site accompanying the National Building Museum's exhibit "Do It Yourself: Home Improvement in 20th-Century America." How did home improvement become a hobby? Did the lure of power tools drive us to consider house makeovers as a leisure activity? In the 1870s and 1880s the treadle-driven scroll saw, "America's original leisure power tool", kicked off an interest in home improvement skills amongst the middle class which continues today. Men started taking over basements and garages for workshops. The Sears catalog catered to their tool and material needs. Eventually the entire building industry was designing products and packaging materials for do it yourselfers. Black & Decker introduced the trigger grip power drill in 1917. As American homes aged there were more improvements to be made and also historical details to preserve. Modernization co-existed with renovation. Working on the house is now an accepted hobby, and one to take pride in.
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Tuesday, October 22, 2002

Since Maud Hart Lovelace's Betsy-Tacy series was largely autobiographical, the houses that Betsy and Tacy lived in actually exist. The two Hill Street homes are actually on Center Street in the town of Mankato, not Deep Valley. The Betsy-Tacy Society has purchased these houses and intends to restore and preserve them to depict the era that Lovelace so accurately and lovingly described in her books.
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Fun with tritones
Before a performance of Camille Saint-Saens' Piano Concerto No. 4, our conductor enlightened the audience about the first interval you hear in the piece: a tritone, or diminished fifth. This dissonant interval was also used in Bernstein's "Maria" from West Side Story, and in the opening of the Simpsons' theme song by Danny Elfman. While I was shampooing my hair after the concert I also tracked it down to the "Jane, his wife" portion of the Jetson's theme composed by Hoyt Curtin. Tritones have an interesting history. The tritone was banned in medieval times as the "Diablous in musica" (the devil in music). Since then, this "Devil's interval" has often been used to signify evil; another classical example is found in Holst's "Mars, Bringer of War" from "The Planets." The tritone paradox gets you into scientific musical geekiness. Try hearing it for yourself (if you've got Flash).
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Monday, October 21, 2002

Aimee Mann is making the circuit of my favorite TV shows. Fresh from her appearance on The West Wing, she's scheduled to appear on Buffy the Vampire Slayer's November 19 episode. I think she'd be a great fit on Gilmore Girls next if they would only oblige.
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I have to thank (alas) Martha Stewart Living (on TV) for introducing me to the existence of magnetic paint and chalkboard paint. If I had known about them before we painted our office room, I wouldn't be scrounging around now for cheap art mounting and bulletin board-esque ideas.
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One simple pronoun
At the very end of this NY Times article about a change in flight time policies for pilots of unmanned Air Force planes, there's a word that should go unnoticed, but that I couldn't help but note. Without fanfare, the second to last paragraph begins: "One of the most respected Predator pilots of the Afghan war is an officer who so mastered the aircraft that she was chosen to fly the super-secret C.I.A.missions in which a new, armed Predator tracked Taliban and Qaeda leadership and then launched Hellfire anti-tank missiles." She. She flew the plane. That the writer doesn't feel it necessary to point out anything unusual about the pilot being a women is a small victory for women in the military. Combat aviation was opened to women only in 1993 and only one percent of jet fighter pilots are female. Unmanned reconnaissance planes may not have fallen into the combat category, but I think shooting missiles certainly should count.
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Friday, October 18, 2002

It's no surprise that the popularity of foodie books on cooking, running restaurants, eating in foreign countries, and so on has created a market for books about waiting on tables. I recently read "Waiting: The True Confessions of a Waitress" by Debra Ginsberg (not bad), and now there's "Hey Waitress! The U.S.A From the Other Side of the Tray" by Alison Owing. In a lengthy Salon review Suzy Hansen recounts her own tales of waitressing woe and theorizes on the unique relationship between waitress and customer. There's power mongering, class struggles, harassment, greed, and hunger! No wonder the interaction has so much potential to go sour. You don't have to treat your waitperson like your best buddy, but you should give them the same respect you'd expect from any business transaction.
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Your fast food burger may one day come in an algae container. Alginsulate is a packaging and insulating foam created by puffing up dried brown algae. It is biodegradable and not appetizing to mice and insects, which is a problem for packaging made from corn and potatoes. Alginates are the same seaweed derivatives that are used to thicken ice cream. There's a pilot plant now in operation to produce Alginsulate and more applications are being considered.
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Yeah, I know, it's another cat in distress story. I'm just a sucker for 'em. This time, though, the cat isn't stuck up in a tree. This one got stuck in a puddle of asphalt. Ouch! Two jars of mayonnaise and one container of dishwashing detergent helped to pry off two pounds of asphalt from the little kitten. I don't think this cutie will have to wait long for an owner with an "awwww" inspiring rescue story like this. (thanks Jen!)
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Thursday, October 17, 2002

There are new Best of Bowie CDs coming out this month, but Bowie compilations with past releases aren't that exciting for me (except for that snazzily packaged Sound+Vision set). However, there is also a Best of Bowie DVD coming out in November. DVD means videos! 47 songs, 2 discs. Everything from old "Top Of The Pops" performances to the requisite Ziggy Stardust movie bit, to that embarrassing butt-bumping "Dancing In The Street" video with Mick Jagger, and of course all the new stuff that isn't classic yet. This totally makes up for all the MTV I didn't get to watch in the 1980s (we didn't have cable). Like, totally.
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The Bibliotheca Alexandrina has opened in Egypt, after years of effort to bring it to fruition. The original Library of Alexandria, founded in the fourth century BC, had in the neighborhood of 700,000 papyrus manuscripts by the middle of the first century BC. These were all catalogued and shelved alphabetically by author. It was an unbelievable collection, unlike anything known at the time. Alas, the library was eventually destroyed by fire. A "daughter library" that had been built for additional storage was deemed "pagan" by Christian rulers in early 400 AD and was also lost. It wasn't until 1974 that the University of Alexandria began planning a replacement library. UNESCO got involved in 1986. Snohetta was awarded the architecture contract after an open competition and their design is certainly fitting for a monument to knowledge. It currently houses 240,000 volumes, so it has a ways to go to catch up, but it is also counting on the Internet Archive to boost its electronic holdings. Their website is available in Arabic, French, and English.
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Wednesday, October 16, 2002

Cracking toast, Gromit! Steve linked to a set of info from BBC News on the new Wallace & Gromit shorts. Here's the press release with AtomFilms. The first episode is available for free. The package of ten episodes plus a "making of" video will be released on October 22nd for a one-time fee of $9.95, exclusively in the Windows Media video format. Don't despair Mac folks, despite what you may think, there is actually a Windows Media player for MacOS (Solaris too!).
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The Washington Post offers a look into the economics of college financial aid. According to this article, top tier colleges who attract the top students only offer discounts to those who can not afford the sizeable tuition. The schools below the top tier used to behave similarly, but over the last 15 years have caught onto the ideas taught in their Econ 101 courses. Instead of using financial aid merely in a charitable capicity, colleges are employing it as a tool for attracting better students to their schools. Desirable applicants get preferred packages with more grants than loans, and marginal applicants may be accepted if they agree to pay full price. The resulting offers make it difficult for parents and students to determine what the best value is for their situation. Is the school with the bigger reputation that is offering not much aid worth it over the not so bad school that's offering a hefty discount? Schools may employ help from "student enrollment management" experts to package their deals. I suspect parents are calling financial advisers for help on their side. (bonus links: Harvard's financial aid information; many top schools continue with "need-blind" admissions, despite the financial hurdles; Brown, the only Ivy without need-blind admissions has plans to change)
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Tuesday, October 15, 2002

How can you pass up a headline like: "Spacewoman Stuck in Orbit with Too Much Shrimp"? Peggy Whitson, an American astronaut on the space station planned to have 40 shrimp meals during her stay (she's just had her 130th day in orbit), but found that she didn't care for shrimp in space as much as she did back on the ground. Her Russian cosmonaut friends are happily helping her out with this dilemma. In related news, Pamela Melroy and the rest of the space shuttle crew, were awakened Friday by a song recognizeable by many a Wellesley alum (of which Melroy is one): "Oh Thou Tupelo," performed by the Wellesley College Choir. Ahhh.
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A couple years ago I read about Anna Morris who works as a hotel concierge at the Westin Santa Clara. I'm not sure why I did not link to her story then, but I ran across it again today and I'm not letting it go this time. Anna Morris provides the usual concierge services, making restaurant reservations, getting theater tickets, recommending sights. But she does this all from the convenience of her own home, 75 miles away in Antioch. The Westin did not want to lose her abilities when she went on maternity leave so they agreed to a plan she concocted to do her job via video conferencing technology. She works a split shift, which allows her to be available during the two chunks of time her services are most needed. When she steps away, she displays a PowerPoint slide on the flat plasma monitor. And she likes to wear slippers while she works.
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Monday, October 14, 2002

With a clientele of "a number of three-letter agencies," Virage is poised to capitalize on their video indexing and searching technology. They wouldn't mind if their products were also popularized in the public sector. Imagine being able to search television programming for keywords, or videotaped conference proceedings for relevant topics. I would be surprised if Google soon added a "TV/Radio" tab. At the very least it would be great to have automatically generated transcripts of specific programs that could then be keyword searched like any text document. Imagine having all the information broadcast on NPR shows also available for searching.
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There is a purveyor of psychic readings not far from our house, and we noticed that there has been no shortage of cars in the parking lot recently. When the economy goes down, business goes up for psychics. San Francisco area psychics are getting more requests to reveal their customers' futures in business instead of love. A spokesman for The Committee for the Scientific Investigation of Claims of the Paranormal says "People turn to irrational beliefs in times of uncertainty -- when pressure is on financially for people they're attracted to paranormal and irrational beliefs." It would seem that survival in bad times would benefit more from rational behavior, but perhaps anything that may spur creative energies is helpful when you've had little luck.
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Friday, October 11, 2002

How did I miss this news? The U.S. Treasury is planning to add "subtle background colors" to our currency, starting with the $20 bill in fall 2003. The news was announced on June 20th and I found a news article as old as March 13 about it. I am so amazed by this enhancement. We've been the boring green money country for so long as other nations moved onto rainbow bills with lovely printing and designs. Well, we have the counterfeiters to thank for this change, but I'm not going to complain, although I think it will still be a while before we get truly beautiful paper money. People will want to stick with the traditional look and history is not going to change who our prominent dead leaders are. (via Now This)
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In this really nifty educational site about the Origins of Writing, there's an essay on the evolution of the Cinderella story. You are probably aware of variations on the Cinderella story from various sources, fairy tale books, Disney, opera, it was also used in the Broadway musical "Into the Woods". One study examined the passing of the story between geographical areas by comparing the different versions in various cultures. The researcher concluded that folktales did not necessary travel between areas through merchants and travelers, but "through a very slow and systematic diffusion from culture to culture." The story we know as Cinderella was adapted to each culture, to teach morals and values, some of which were the same from place to place, some of which were a little different. And as the tale became a written one, we lost the cultural shifts from oral storytelling. But there are still variations on the theme. And now we can record them all with a variety of media. (via xBlog)

Note: if you are looking for a huge, mind-boggling variety of Cinderella stories, take a look at Shen's Books (run by my friend Renee). Shen's specializes in multicultural children's books and they have Cinderellas from every culture and lifestyle you can imagine (even a penguin!).
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Thursday, October 10, 2002

The design for Alabama's state quarter has been unveiled and it's one for the record and trivia books. Not only does feature a woman (PA and NY have female statues but not of real women) but it is the first U.S. coin to have a Braille inscription. That may give you a clue as to which woman has the honor of representing Alabama: Helen Keller. The theme for the design competition, open to Alabama schools, was "Education: Link to the Past, Gateway to the Future." "A number" of the 450 designs included Keller, who fits the quarter's actual theme "Spirit of Courage."
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It has been five years since the "gray lady" started dressing up in colored inks, and Carl Schlesinger, retired print-room operator, wants to celebrate the occasion, reports the New York Observer. So on October 16th a five-piece band will stand outside the New York Times' building and play "The New York Times Color March", words and music by Schlesinger (with a little help from an old advertising jingle and a big tip of the hat to John Philip Sousa). The Times has no official connection to this event, but Schlesinger is keeping the paper informed of his activities. He hopes to have the song performed all over the country eventually. This newspaper march isn't unprecedented. Sousa was commissioned to write "The Washington Post March" to promote an essay contest sponsored by the paper in 1889. (via MediaNews)
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Wednesday, October 09, 2002

We have plenty of devices availabe to supplement our long-term memory: PDAs, computers, pen & paper. How about something to help with your short-term memory while you are continually interrupted? The Cook's Collage, a research project at Georgia Tech, helps you through a recipe by photographing and displaying your last few steps. Test subjects (college students of course), were asked to make oatmeal raisin cookies while being interrupted by a group of people watching football or conversing about a doctoral thesis. They found the digital reminder very helpful when they tried to remember what point they were at in their task. We'd all like to keep our short-term memories sharp, and I'd like cooking to be an absorbing and relaxing task, but the realities of home life and entertaining may be well served with this helpful device.
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As I'm still peeved about Caltrain's two year shutdown of weekend train service, I thought I'd take a look at what the high speed rail plans are. Someone decided the project would be better marketed as the "baby bullet train" and indeed it was funded successfully. But I ran across an article about the critics of the "baby bullet", not the project, but the name. It quotes two members of Caltrain's citizens' advisory committee who believe the name is too violent. One says "The Baby Bullet name is a loaded gun. We live in a world of violence right now -- why have a bullet?" Another thinks the name sounds too much like a toy, and besides it's not a bullet train, it'll only go 79 mph. But Caltrain's executive director thinks the name will continue to market well and plans to let it stick. I don't think someone who considers the name "baby bullet" violent should be throwing terms around like "loaded gun."
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Tuesday, October 08, 2002

The NY Times headline is promising: "Prime Time Gets Real With a Plump Heroine." As Sara Rue, star of the sitcom "Less Than Perfect" says "I consider myself normal. I get annoyed at the business when a size 0 actress is cast as the `every gal' gal. It's just not true." The President of ABC Entertainment claims that they actually had trouble finding an actress larger than size 4 to play the role. There must be a lot of starving women and wealthy personal trainers in Hollywood.
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Fleet Week is returning to San Francisco this year, run by the Air Show Network. It's actually "Fleet Week San Francisco, Presented by AT&T" but no one's paying me to say that (actually, as an AT&T Universal Card holder, AT&T Broadband Internet customer, AT&T Broadband Cable subscriber, and AT&T Long Distance caller, I'm probably contributing some miniscule chunk of this sponsorship). The Blue Angels arrive on Thursday and the ships will include the Sea Slice, "the experimental Small Waterplane Area Twin Hull (SWATH) ship." It appears that tickets need to be ordered in advance for ship tours (last time we just waited in a big line), so some advance planning is necessary.
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After I learn new words they tend to pop up frequently, making me wonder if I've been overlooking them in ignorance or if they are clustering in popularity. In July I wrote about my discovery of the words tellurian and orrery. This week they appeared in Burke and Wells' chronicles of Paris. The two stumbled across The Galerie J.Kugel's exhibit of fifty celestial globes and spheres. And all these beautiful mechanical devices are for sale, but I probably don't want to know the prices. I'll just enjoy the photos.
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Monday, October 07, 2002

Neiman-Marcus' Christmas book is out. Commission an action figure of yourself, or a cameo brooch. Or both.
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MIT Media Lab researchers have created a new type of ID tag which is tamper-resistant and difficult to forge. The little tokens are composed of plastic embedded with hundreds of tiny glass spheres. The patterns created when a laser shines through are the key to the uniqueness of these devices. The patterns are captured by a digital camera and converted into a binary number. Recreating the spheres that results in that number is difficult and the uniqueness of the tokens comes from comparing patterns created by shining the lasers at specific angles. They are working on making the system practical, creating readers and viable applications. (via Wired News)
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Friday, October 04, 2002

In a sad NY Times article about the westernization of Nigeria's standards of beauty, there is this wonderful passage: "Among the Calabari people in southeastern Nigeria, fat has traditionally held a cherished place. Before their weddings, brides are sent to fattening farms, where their caretakers feed them huge amounts of food and massage them into rounder shapes. After weeks inside the fattening farms, the big brides are finally let out and paraded in the village square." While this ritual bears a disturbing resemblance to fattening up a prize cow for market, it's a comfortable change from our U.S. "starve to fit in the dress" syndrome. The seamstress who altered my wedding gown was surprised that I didn't want my dress taken in more. "Are you sure? Most girls wants me to make it really tight!" "Well, no, I actually want to be able to breathe on my wedding day, thanks."
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Booksfree.com is like Netflix for books. You pay a monthly fee to have a certain number of books out at a time and you mail them back in a postage paid mailer when you're done. They only have paperbacks though, and most of the books I want and can't get at the library are the new hardbacks that are immediately reserved and out for months. And for the lowest monthly fee ($6.99 for 2 books out at a time), I could buy 3-4 used paperbacks a month. I really enjoy browsing at the public library and used bookstores, so this concept, though I like it, doesn't fulfill a need for me. (Washington Post article) (and don't forget about booklend.net)
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Thursday, October 03, 2002

Collectively design a typeface with Typophile and be a part of a hive mind. (via memepool, which is it's own kind of hive mind)
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The biohazard symbol had to be "memorable but meaningless" says its creator, Charles Baldwin. He was working on containment systems for the Cancer Institute at the National Institutes of Health in 1966. The symbol was developed with the help of Dow Chemical's marketing folks who surveyed people's reactions and remembrances for various symbols. I always thought it looked like something out of a sci-fi TV show.
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If mouse gestures do become the next big thing in user interfaces, I'd like mine to be customizable. Mozilla's Optimoz has gestures and pie menus (which boil down to gestures) and the promise of Easter egg gestures (imagine that!). StrokeIt, a gesture recognition system for Windows, does have a learning mode. There's an obvious junction between gestures and handwriting recognition and I hope it will be a seamless one.
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Wednesday, October 02, 2002

Busy busy, so just this today: Nifty educational pieces on color: Causes of Color and Pigments through the Ages.
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Tuesday, October 01, 2002

I noted here in January that Princess had started running an Alaskan cruise from San Francisco's port. Now other cruise companies have seen the potential for attracting passengers who want to drive instead of fly to embark on their cruise. Cruises to Mexico are being planned and these will be winter trips, so you can take off on a cruise year-round from the city by the bay.
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Stanford's Iris & B. Gerald Cantor Center for Visual Arts has opened an exhibit of Venetian glass. These works of art were gifts to Leland and Jane Stanford from the Salviati and Company glassblowers. The Stanfords visited the Salviati shop in 1884 and struck up a friendship with employee Maurizio Camerino. He helped the family as a translator when Leland Jr died in Florence. Jane called on him to design mosaics for Memorial Church. Over time, Camerino sent Jane Stanford some 450 glass pieces. Sadly, many were broken in the 1906 earthquake. Some were sold to pay for museum restoration work. 245 are still owned by the museum and 120 will be on display in the exhibit.
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Laquetta Shepard stands in silent defiance amid Ku Klux Klan members praying for white supremacy in Bowling Green, Ky. This photo had me stunned for many minutes. (news item with more details)
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