Notable closing credit from A.I.: art glass by Dale Chihuly. I don’t remember seeing any, but I am not surprised.

Don’t you want a Star Trek helm in your living room? It was made for the Deep Space 9 episode that fit itself into the original series’ “Trouble with Tribbles” episode. I wonder who got the captain’s chair (not included)?

A Mercury News reporter (Mike Cassidy) actually had the gall (well, maybe it didn’t take that much chutzpah) to ask John McCarthy to go see A.I. with him. The John McCarthy. As in, the guy who named artificial intelligence “artificial intelligence”. As in, the guy who invented LISP. OK, so maybe I’m just jealous that I didn’t think of taking him myself. Not that he’d go with little ol’ me. But he did go with the reporter. And I think he liked the movie. I didn’t read the article too closely because I haven’t seen A.I. yet and the less I know, the better.

This site had technical difficulties for most of Monday. My email is starting to trickle in now. It’s so nice of those mail servers to keep on trying for so many hours.

A study showed that cows produced more milk when they listened (were subjected!) to slow music. They produced less milk when they heard upbeat tunes. It appears that cows are less stressed when they hear slow Beethoven and REM so they let down more milk, an average of 0.73 liters more per day. “Moooo” is slow, isn’t it?

Alton Brown of Food TV’s Good Eats says that aluminum foil is dull on one side because it is rolled out in double sheets. And I always thought there was some useful reason it was that way. Want to know more about metal foil, or, more officially, “thin gauge metals”? There’s a website, of course, and this one’s called FoilCenter.com. Find out all about aluminum foil and how it’s made.

The California DMV must be drowning in a sea of angry drivers with their new name cross checking policy for drivers licenses. It’s spilling over. I renewed my car registration (not license) and sent in a copy of my insurance card as they now require. I got a response back saying that I did not include proof of insurance, so I had to send it in again. I wasn’t too upset, maybe I forgot to enclose it, maybe they lost it, no big deal. But then the same thing happened to my fiance. Now I’m wondering what system they are using over there that keeps failing? I have a feeling we’re not the only ones.

If you’ve driven along Highway 101 in Mountain View recently, you may have noticed the monstrosity of the new Shoreline Ampitheatre signs. These are not billboards, but they may as well be. In the usual green signage used for highway markers, the new additions read “Shoreline Ampitheatre at Mountain View, Presented by The Chronicle, Next 2 Exits.” It could’ve been worse, I suppose. The worst case would’ve been “Shoreline Ampitheatre at Mountain View, Presented by The San Francisco Chronicle and Bill Graham Presents, Next 2 Exits.” So I’m not going to complain. Really, I’m not.

Another silly wedding news item, a bridesmaid is told to lose 20 pounds by her seamstress. It was supposed to be a joke, so says the store owner, who makes sure to mention that the seamstress has her own separate business, though she does some tailoring for his shop. The bridesmaid was upset enough to publicize her public humiliation even more by telling the press; I guess that’s her revenge. It’s unclear whether she was getting fitted for a dress order or if she was being fitted into a dress she had already ordered. For some reason the bridal industry didn’t shift along with other clothing manufacturers when size designations were adjusted downwards (“yesterday’s size 16 is now a size 10 or 12“). So a woman going into a bridal salon unprepared for the old style sizing is usually in for a shock. Since I’d been fitted for bridesmaid dresses several times, I was prepared to hear my wedding gown size as “just a number”. But anyone who doesn’t know about the difference or refuses to acknowledge it (it happens!), may be in danger of provoking a scene like the one the aforementioned bridesmaid went through. Was the seamstress out of line or was the bridesmaid too sensitive? It’s impossible to make the call from the outside. (via Obscure Store)

Ahhh, the B&B; journal. That voyeuristic peek into the lives of those who stayed in your bed and breakfast room before you. I’ve always read through them, as the article’s author does. It’s like reading sections of online diaries where people you may never meet let you in on a bit of their lives. People hint about the fun of the Jacuzzi, are candid about same sex partners, gush about their honeymoons, recommend restaurants, and warn about the possibility of tripping on the fireplace corner (that was me). Perhaps this is an idea for a novel with a plotline that’d be an interesting challenge to develop.