As you may remember, I had not yet gotten a new dollar coin, lamented that other loggers had, and requested that those people who are hoarding them please release them into the wild so I could hoard one of my own. Well, I joked with Seth that it would be sadly amusing if he saw one of these coins before I did. This was a joke because he’s currently a grad student in Scotland. But, thanks to the miracle of transatlantic travel, he just acquired one upon his arrival in NYC “courtesy of the NYC Metro Card vending machine”. So he wins. Not by much, though. This morning, a coin-collecting-co-worker handed me my very own Sacagawea dollar. It’s a “P”, since he had just been vacationing on the east coast. So, I’m better than my fellow west coasters who just have “D”s. I suppose Seth has a “P” too. But that’s OK, ’cause I’ve got every version of the released state quarters (yes, even Maryland). So there! :-)

Here’s a nifty name distribution mapper based on US Census data. (via Bird on a Wire)

I saw a commercial today for a, I think, “it’s not delivery, it’s DiGiorno”, pizza which comes in half pepperoni, half cheese. Why didn’t somebody think of this before? Neat.

Ahhh…there will be a third Myst game. Presto is taking on the challenge of creating Myst III scheduled to ship early next year, while Cyan, the original developers (Rand Miller is still CEO there), works on “a state-of-the-art real-time 3D graphics engine to present the original Myst saga as it was originally intended”, scheduled for this year. (thanks for the tip BrainLog)

(I just had to say this.) Aimee Mann is playing at Bimbo’s 365 Club ’til Tuesday. (go ahead, kick me.)

I enjoyed reading about the adventures and tribulations of a family with twelve kids in Cheaper By The Dozen, but it wasn’t until much later when I discovered what the parents of those kids did for a living. Frank and Lillian Gilbreth were pioneers in the use of motion study to improve the efficiency of physical tasks. I once saw photos of their motion-capture techniques, where they put tiny flashlights on people’s wrists to capture their actions with a long exposure. They were often able to greatly reduce the number of actions performed by the worker. Only recently when a Gilbreth web site popped up on Yahoo’s picks did I discover that Lillian Gilbreth was much more than just an assistant to her husband. She had a Ph.D. from Brown and continued running their business long after his death, gaining recognition as one of the world’s great industrial and management engineers. Plus there were the twelve kids to raise. It may be easier when you know how to be efficient, but it’s still mighty impressive.

I thought I had seen every cow and Holstein-patterned item imaginable, because of my friend Lisa, a cow-lunatic . Apparently not. Billy-Joe offers a collection of bathroom stoppers and kitchen strainers, some featuring a cute moo-cow.

I developed a dislike of DeBeers, the diamond company, a few years back when I saw a Frontline program that described the great myth about the scarcity of diamonds. The New York Times has done a series on “Africa’s Diamond Wars” which reveals how diamonds are fueling African wars and “are agents of terror”. It also describes the power De Beers holds over this sparkly industry. “De Beers created its cartel 110 years ago when the company’s founder, Cecil Rhodes, realized that the sheer abundance of diamonds in southern Africa would make them virtually worthless. By carefully manipulating scarcity, De Beers prospered as perhaps the most powerful cartel in the annals of modern commerce.” To their credit, DeBeers is now guaranteeing that none of its diamonds came from African rebels. Regardless of their manufactured rarity, diamonds are beautiful objects, inspiringly indestructible, and I’ll ooo and ahh over anyone’s carats. But the same consumers who demand truth in advertising and avoid sweatshop goods should take a close look at this industry and make their own decision about how romantic these gems really are.

Why is it that the statements “I agree with you 100%” and “We are 100% in agreement!” are 90% likely to be followed by a caveat when used in meetings? Make that 99% when used by a member of the executive management team.

Here’s an interesting Boston Review article about Stephen Jay Gould’s attacks on human sociobiology. It is also informative about the various scientific approaches for studying evolution. As the author notes, Gould’s criticisms of the adaptationist or selectionist approach in evolutionary biology may have little effect on scientific progress as researchers are forging on ahead with adaptationist theories. But because Stephen Jay Gould’s essays, such as those in Natural History, are widely read by the public, his views may influence popular opinion away from sociobiological perspectives on human behavior. This debate reminds me somewhat of the rather antagonist view we had of behaviorists in my cognitive science seminars. My professor would rip on Skinner like there was no tomorrow and we would wonder how Skinner’s wife felt knowing that he believed his love for her was just a set of behavorial responses with no internal mental states. (article via Feed)