are you f%&@ing kidding me!!

Dunkin Donuts is pulling one of its ads featuring Rachael Ray because
"She was wearing a black-and-white checked scarf around her neck that resembled a traditional Arab keffiyeh." and according to a conservative idoit blogger it "evoked extremist videos"

Of course! the second I saw the scarf I thought she was about to run around taking hostages and beheading people. And of course all Arabs are terrorists.

On Failing Successfully

A surprisingly uplifting program on the need to accept failure in order to succeed and innovate Link to transcript/ download audio. A little long to read but quite interesting, did you know that the name WD40 stands for 'water displacement' and the 40 for the fact that it was the 40th formulation that finally worked. I'm a big fan of this podcast Ockham's Razor, though it can be a little off the wall sometimes.

There's a paragraph in this one on the increasing fear and intolerance of failure in scientific institutions due to the competition for funding.

And a couple of quotes that may become a new signature for me...

"Henry Ford put it, 'Failure is only the opportunity to begin again more intelligently'."

and "Edison who said, 'I have never failed. I've just found 10,000 ways that won't work.'"

Now I just have to keep this in mind when everything goes horribly wrong during my experiment tomorrow.

Life imitates Art: X-men edition

A group of African frogs have picked up a trick or two from reading x-men comics - these Wolverine-like frogs have claws that must pierce through the skin on their toes in order to be deployed when threatened. Makes you wonder what other kinds of mutant powers frogs have picked up from comic books - perhaps a frog that can stop a speeding locomotive? Or maybe a mind-reading frog that shoots lasers from its eyes and can call upon weather phenomena to defeat its predators.

Fortune Cookies

XKCD

Music 'can enhance wine taste'

Interesting article on the influence of different music styles on how the tastes of various wines were described. Their music recommendations are 'interesting', I don't think I would choose to play Blondie while drinking Chardonnay.

"Previously, Professor North conducted supermarket research which suggested people were five times more likely to buy French wine than German wine if accordion music was played in the background.

If an oompah band was played, the German product outsold the French by two to one."

Is this why I always end up with Reislings from the wine store? They must play a lot of oompah.

Birding from my office

This lovely fellow (or several like him) has been visiting me for the last week or so. He was nice enough to sit right on the window ledge about 2 feet away while I tried to figure out what he was today. At first I thought goldfinch, but then I found this picture. He seemed quite interested when I was playing the sounds off the All About Birds: Baltimore Oriole" website

Price check on reality, aisle 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue.

Polls just released say that Bush's approval ratings are at an all time low - only 31 percent of the country approves of his job. In fact, this month marks the 38th consecutive month in which his approval rating has been below the halfway mark. Some back of the envelope math means that Bush has spent 97.4% of his second term with less than half of the country behind him. In other words he spent exactly one month of his second term enjoying an approval rating greater than 50 percent. And with the way things are headed, I can't quite imagine him getting another month with that high of an approval rating.

And still this man thinks he's the cat's pajamas.

Sometimes I just don't understand this country.

LOLcats

This one just kills me for some reason.

Interesting combinations

What happens when you combine a volcanic eruption and an electrical storm?

You get some pretty awesome pictures, that's what.

Check them out HERE. I swear, some of them look like something out of Lord of the Rings.

Good Luck Wacked!!!

picture courtesy www.kronka.com

They're Here!

The invasion of the evil paratrooper worms has begun. I hates them so!

Although their techinical name is apparently cankerworms

finally time...

toothpastefordinner.com

could anyone possibly dispute this?

nataliedee.com


the question is, what is it about the "mix" that makes it better than just a plain old box of chex? i think it's the salt. and the fact that it's all the kinds of chex mixed together.

oh my god, who knew? so many choices?

Happy Beltane!!

Or May Day if you prefer.

Tea Rap

I'm not normally one for rap music, but this is a great song about tea.

I seem to be on a food and drink minded internet perusal today.

Cooking for Scientists

The physics of chocolate is an interesting article that talks about the different crystalline patterns of chocolate (or really the cocoa butter). I always wondered why melting chocolate and letting it cool doesn't produce the same texture that it started with. Now I know!

The article also links to an interesting site called Cooking for Engineers which looks like an interesting approach to cooking. (The same spirit of approach that Sheyl and I took in trying to figure out what exactly about our bathroom is leaking).