Marmalade Pet Care makes curvy scratcher furniture for your cat(s) out of laminated cardboard, hardboard end-panels, and non-toxic adhesives.

Laura Beckwith, a recent PhD recipient at Oregon State University, wrote her dissertation on how men and women are impacted differently by end-user programming software (such as spreadsheet formulas, Flash programming, CAD). I’ve only had time to read about 20 pages of it, so I may comment on this more another time (for now I’m relying on the AP article for the summary of her results). Previous research which she cited in her study showed that women studying computer science are less confident in their computer skills than men — not just men studying computer science, but men in general. I’ll assume a probable corollary that women who don’t study CS are even less confident. Confidence is a crucial factor for success. More importantly, since I’ve seen people succeed despite a lack of confidence, its crucial for happiness. If you feel constantly insecure about what you’re doing, you don’t enjoy it very much. We have to keep more girls interested in computers, and it has to start at an earlier age than college. Remember that scene in the movie “Jurassic Park” when Lex (the girl who screams a lot) sits down in front of the park’s mainframe and says “It’s Unix! I know this!” and then she kicks some ass (virtually)? That’s the feeling. How do we make it happen? Is it improving already with the ubiquity of computers? We shouldn’t wait and see. (For those of you who laughed at that scene because you didn’t see how Lex knew it was Unix, it actually was a Silicon Graphics machine running a real-life 3D file navigation system on Irix.)

In Nordstrom’s flagship Seattle store, the Perkins family presides over the shoeshine stand in the men’s shoe department, practicing the dying art of making leather glossy. The operation started in 1974 on a handshake after Morgan Perkins pitched the idea to Nordstrom’s leadership. Since then he’s opened stands at several other Nordstrom locations, and his children worked their way through college shining shoes. At $2.50 the price is right, and half of what others usually charge.

From the depths of the newly available New York Times archives, May 12, 1896 at the bottom of this article (PDF) about Thomas Edison’s flouroscope exhibition at the Electrical Exposition. The exhibit allowed visitors to see an x-ray of their hands. “X Rays Aid an Operation. An interesting operation was performed yesterday at Bellevue Hospital. Patrick Lync of 303 East Thirty-first Street, during a saloon row May 4 last, was shot in the left arm. The bullet could not be located and on Saturday night last Lynch was taken by Dr. Hibbard to the electrical show where he had a cathodograph taken of the arm. The bullet was then located and was extracted yesterday.”

Beach Blanket Babylon, San Francisco’s very own cabaret show, is still going strong at 34 years. The SF Chronicle took a look at their audition process, which is thankfully not (yet) another reality TV series. 59 hopefuls belted their show tunes and pop numbers, attempting to adapt quickly when directed to be a tired Liza Minnelli, Elvis, Richard Simmons, Barbra Streisand (with crossed eyes). The group is eventually cut to nine who will be called back for a round involving the gigantic hats and wigs that are the show’s trademark.

Looks like the NeXTcube is back in style! Just in time for autumn. (larger image)

I didn’t know that the original Slinky was black, not silver (of course I knew it wasn’t made out of plastic).

As Hawaii’s new SuperFerry continues to run up against legal action keeping it from docking in Kauai and Maui, a smaller passenger ferry, TheBoat, has begun service in Honolulu. Since it’s much smaller, not interisland, and is intended to reduce the number of cars, the environmental folks haven’t been up in arms.

There’s a nostalgic post on Serious Eats that mentions “a weeklong school trip to a rustic retreat in the Catskills for some kind of environmental education and natural history program” and the pig that ate all the scraps. It brought back memories of a similar (perhaps the same) program I attended in Connecticut known as Nature’s Classroom. I remember that week of sixth grade extremely well because for some reason my parents decided not to pay for it, and in order to attend along with my friends I had to dip into my own savings (luckily my aunt gave me $50 every Christmas which I put in the bank). At a couple hundred dollars it was the first significant expense I had taken on myself. I paid for it so I could belong and not be the only kid left out. I wasn’t really thinking about any educational value. But I did experience it with a different perspective knowing that I had paid my own way. We made a geodesic dome, cared for fragile egg babies, learned sign language, took long hikes, sang campfire songs, and did skits. I didn’t leave much on my plate for the pig to eat.

Will gas prices, air travel hassles and traffic jams spur funding for high-speed rail in the United States? We’ve funneled money into cars and highways while other countries developed 200mph rail systems. Of course it will take billions to upgrade our railways to support high speeds. And that money may be better spent on research into alternative sources of power and transportation (but probably not Star Trek transporters…not yet anyway). The Acela Express route from Boston to Washington D.C. is doing well, with a 20% rise in ridership in May thanks to gas costs. And a Philadelphia to Harrisburg 110 mph route also rose 18%. California is still championing plans for a 220 mph train from San Francisco to San Diego (a mere 3 1/2 hour train ride!), but voting on the $10 billion bond issue keeps being postponed.