Why We Buy: The Science of Shopping looks to be a fascinating read. The author, Paco Underhill, and his team have conducted field research at malls, department stores, drugstores, etc., observing shoppers interacting with their consumer habitats. Their research and recommendations often result in increased sales for their clients. Now I know why I sometimes have that “I’m being watched” feeling when I’m shopping. Maybe I am. I know I’m being subtly manipulated.

It’s always nice to see environmentally responsible actions being taken by a huge corporation (or one of any size, actually). 3M is phasing out production of many of its Scotchguard products. The perfluorooctanyl chemistry used in the production of these repellents has stuck around in the environment. This “persistent compound, like other materials in the environment, can be detected broadly at extremely low levels in the enviroment and in people.” While they claim there is no current risk, continued production of these products would certainly raise the amount of this compound in the environment. They are working on a sustainable replacement.

The most common question I got today (my first day of voluntary unemployment) was “What did you do today?” or “What are you going to do today?” (depending on what time of day it was). The smart-aleck answer was “My nails.” But the real answer is “Think of smart-ass answers for ‘What did you do today?'”. I actually did my nails yesterday.

Before I had my own weblog, I ran across the Traffic Cone Preservation Society website which had me laughing so hard that I emailed the link to tons o’ friends. Today, I ran across the Orange Cones of Washington D.C. on the browse0tron. Yes, the random spirit of the web is alive and kicking.

Flutist Jean-Pierre Rampal died over the weekend. I saw him perform on his gold flute in the late 1980s in Stamford, Connecticut. I also have a vague recollection of him as a guest on the Muppet Show, but it is so vague it may have just been a Sesame Street sketch (the Muppet Show episode guide reveals he was on in 1980). Perhaps this will give me the kickstart to spend some money to see solo artists whom I’ve always figured I would
get around to eventually. Some of them may not be around much longer.

DSL update (yes, you know you’re going to have to hear all about the trials and tribulations of my DSL installation, dontcha?): PacBell was here to get the line into the building and it turns out my loop is actually 16,900 feet. Ouch. Next up, Covad gets to tell me if this little piggy is going to fly or not. Cross fingers.

I very much appreciate when a news article about a scientific study takes the time to link to the study itself. Of course that happens most frequently at primarily online media. And those tend to be the articles that don’t distill the truth of the study into some eye-grabbing or sound-bite-worthy nutshell.

This study, covered by Wired, concluded that the proportion of women earning bachelor’s degrees in computer science at universities with Ph.D. degrees in computing should increase slightly in the next few years, but will continue to lag behind the male number. Women are earning scientific degrees in greater numbers, but not in the CS discipline. The Wired article discusses high school programs designed to encourage girls to learn coding. Some of them focus on training the teachers, which is an excellent root cause solution. Unfortunately what keeps many girls away from programming is negative cultural perceptions and those can take a long time to shift. I disliked my initial exposures to programming because it was taught as part of our math curriculum, and I do not enjoy math. So when my first computer assignments involved creating mathematical equations in lines of BASIC, I was completely turned off. To hit the broadest range of potential coders, you’ve got to show them the vast range of what programming can allow you to do. I’ve used mathematical formulas (more complex than simple arithmetic) directly only a few times in my career (for graphics calculations mostly). Coding is an art and a pleasure for me, not a mathematical chore. But I almost missed out completely.

I finally saw Dogma last night on DVD. Funny. Not as rip-roaring funny as Clerks because it actually made me use my brain a lot, but very clever. The behind-the-scenes images from the website are fun, especially since they were taken by Kevin Smith himself (you know what happens when someone gets a digital camera for the first time).

“Lehrer agrees to interviews only when he has a product to sell.” And since he’s got a new box set from Rhino out on Tuesday (“The Remains of Tom Lehrer”), Tom Lehrer granted David L. Beck of the Mercury News an interview at a Santa Cruz coffee shop. The resulting article does the genius of Lehrer justice, describing what he’s been up to with his other career teaching college students about math and musicals. This 1997 chat transcript off of the Rhino site, wherein Lehrer claims co-inventorship of the Jell-o vodka shot, is also very amusing.