Although I admit I was half serious when I claimed to be leaving my hair long because Sarah Michelle Gellar was too, it is the complete and total truth that I had no idea when I chopped 9 inches off last week that she had taken scissors to hers also. While my hair length is, of course, not newsworthy, tales of the Buffster’s new hairstyle have popped up on all the fluff news sites. Creating controversy out of thin (h)air, these “news” writers are doing compare/contrast exercises between Buffy’s chop and Felicity’s surprise crop that almost killed that show. Silly people. It was more news that Sarah had grown hers out and I didn’t see any commentary on that. Her hair is nowhere near shorn. However, this new cut may bring back the plentiful requests for Buffy-like hairdos from the 1998 era. (P.S. Minor spoiler: Joss says a certain ex-boyfriend is coming back.)

Fun butter facts abound in this article about butter’s big comeback. Americans consume 4.3 pounds of butter per person a year, and the rate has been growing at 6% a year since our lean, mean 1980’s. But years ago, when we actually worked it off in the fields, it was 16 pounds per person, which is one pound less than New Zealanders consume nowadays. Land O Lakes is the only national butter brand. We’re eating more cheese, cream cheese, and ice cream. And butter prices are rising with the demand.

Stefan Landsberger has a thorough collection of Chinese Propaganda Posters which cover diverse topics, some that are of surprising concern their government, such as hygiene and the environment. Taken as a whole, these are fascinating visual aids to chronicle a country that has had to mobilize a huge population to create forward movement. From the People’s Republic founding in 1949 to the Cultural Revolution, Mao, and more recent less homogenized campaigns, the rocky history of a nation’s hopes can be read through the rose-colored lenses of its propaganda artists. (via Kathryn)

Two fatal auto accidents I’ve read about recently (one yesterday) included good samaritans who pulled over to assist the original victims and were then hit by cars themselves. Consider assessing your own safety and perhaps setting up road flares before helping victims. Since there was already an accident, other drivers are likely to have the same problems (poor visibility, road conditions) that caused the first one. Taking precautions to reduce further damage may be more helpful than rushing to assist someone who should not be moved anyway. Of course, situations vary and lives can be saved by speedy first aid, but I will keep this in mind (and hopefully never have to make use of it). On a related note: are matches and warning flares bad things to have in your car if it is searched at airports, government parking lots, etc? I suppose they can simply confiscate them.

Paganini left his Guarneri violin to the city of Genoa and they have since guarded “Paganini’s Cannon” as a royal family would the crown jewels. The violin is only allowed to come out and play with top soloists and winners of the Paganini competition and, until the other day, only for a classical repertoire. But, as a gesture of friendship between Genoa and New York City, jazz violinist Regina Carter gave a concert on the instrument (NY Times link), despite criticism from certain elitists who complained that “jazz profanation would ‘debase the image of the instrument.'” Carter‘s response: “Paganini was an extraordinary improviser and an innovator. If he were alive today he probably would have said, ‘About time!’ “

My holidays in a roasted chestnut shell:

Books read: Half Magic and Magic by the Lake by Edward Eager, The Golden Compass, The Subtle Knife, and The Amber Spyglass by Philip Pullman, Waiting: The True Confessions of a Waitress by Debra Ginsberg, Iron and Silk by Mark Salzman. All good.

Corning Museum of Glass, an excellent balance of the creation, science, and art of glass.

Making pot stickers by hand from scratch… semi-cheating on half of them and dragging out the hand-crank pasta roller.

Gifts: Holly Yashi earrings, chef’s coat, mandolin slicer, mortar & pestle, kitty cat coasters.

I’m enjoying the holidays and I hope you are too. Updates will be intermittent until 2002. Have a peaceful New Year.

After hearing about the court ruling that Palm infringed on Xerox’s handwriting recognition patent, I decided to search through Ye Olde Patent Database to see what Palm has for leverage. As the higher-ups are always fond of telling me when I start spouting my philosophical views about software patents, patents are like chits that companies trade off with each other, so you have to get some to counter your competition’s claims of infringement (see Xerox vs HP). If Palm had had a patent to use against Xerox, I assume they would have pulled it out by now. The problem is, Xerox doesn’t actually compete with Palm, so Palm can’t say “well, your PDA uses xyz which infringes on our patent for abc.” Instead, Xerox is cashing in on something they happened to have patented but do not use commercially. Well, they missed the boat with GUIs (Apple) and who knows what else, so this is a long awaited win for their research teams (ie PARC).

Palm owns a few patents on methods for synchronizing computer systems, their “cradle with combined status indicator light and stylus holder” (I’m looking at mine right now) is patented, their “method for securely transmitting a message between a wireless client and a proxy server” could be useful against other wireless device companies, an early patent is for their original backlight dispay, and it appears that the way a user moves the antenna to the up position on a Palm VII in order to start wireless connectivity is patented. One broad patent they have covers the separate alpha and numeric input areas on the Palm. It is phrased generically enough to cover any handwriting recognition areas that are designed to recognize specific character sets. But there isn’t anything useful against Xerox, which has pretty much stuck to printers and scanners. (Note: the suit was also filed against Palm’s former parent, 3Com whose 572 patents I assume were also no help.) (Disclaimer: I am not a patent attorney, nor do I play one on TV. But I did just break a company rule against not looking at patents in case I accidentally infringe one in the future. Whoops.)

It is extremely handy when I’m too busy (or sniffly) to find unique things on the wonderful Internet and instead nice friends send links to me. Jen & Mark discovered the Flo Control Box from Quantum Picture. This computer controlled cat door was designed to prevent Flo (a cat) from bringing her captured prey inside (where she would then chase them for hours). A camera captures a profile of the creature at the entryway and an image-recognition algorithm decides if it looks like a cat without anything dangling from its mouth. Within a fraction of a second the door is unlocked for a prey-free cat. Nowadays, the device is doing its work for new cats Squirrel & Ellipse and a record of each day’s camera snaps is saved for your viewing pleasure.

I have two excuses: I’m getting over a cold so my brain is at low ebb and I am tired from watching the three hour “Fellowship of the Ring”. Therefore I am going to amuse myself (and hopefully you) by quoting from the NY Times review of the movie (you may choose to skip this; I don’t read reviews before seeing movies): “evil — a word from which British stage actors can extract at least three syllables.” and “Mr. Jackson apparently feels that the way to keep each of the fighting groups separate in the audience’s minds is to provide them with hairstyles reminiscent of 1970’s bands.” He then goes on to describe which group goes with which 70’s band and that “Gimli could be a roadie for any of them”. This from the staid NY Times. I kid you not. My one word review of the movie: “Excellent.”