Idealogian

Novel News

Check out this innovative way of presenting news. Color-coded by category, sized by significance and shaded by timeliness, it's a very efficient and creative (if somewhat crowded) way to organize a whole lot of information. (The more technically-oriented among you may want to check out some of the details as to how it's done.)

Very much reminds me of this similar approach to the stock market (which my father pointed out to me a few years ago).

Neither of them are necessarily the easiest to browse through, but they're both very useful if you want to get the big picture and focus in on some details from there.

Fun Links

Trunk Monkey

Bubble Wrap - must have more!
Thanks for the link, Abby!

Seppuku - A Practical Guide

Levitated - one of the more beautiful abstract, slightly-interactive Flash art sites I've seen. There's so much there, though, that it's not particularly easy to navigate. Here's the most browseable listing, and here are some nice examples. Have fun exploring!

Don't Read This Blog Entry

Dreams Ride on Freud's Royal Road, Study Finds

"Not surprisingly, any kind of thinking about something increases the likelihood that it will show up in a dream," said Dr. Daniel M. Wegner, a professor of psychology at Harvard and the lead author of the study. "But trying to suppress something increases the chances even more, indicating that the meanings of our dreams involve things we've tried to sweep under the rug."

. . .

As a result, studies show, people who try to quit smoking have dreams about cigarettes, or an actor who is gearing up for a big show has nightmares about going blank on stage. Going to bed lifts the lid on all the thoughts that the mind keeps under wraps.

"A lot of the things we dream about tend to be negative, because they're the things we're most likely to deliberately keep out of our minds," Dr. Wegner said. "It's often the most awful things we can think about that we crowd into our dreams."

Concerted efforts to block things, experts say, give them special value and can have the unintended effect of making them more memorable.

In a study several years ago, for example, Dr. Wegner showed somewhat paradoxically that telling people not to think about a white bear made them obsessed with that very thought. In the courtroom, other researchers have found, telling a jury to disregard a witness's testimony can actually increase its influence.

"If you're suppressing thoughts about someone, you're telling your brain it's more important than the shirt you wore or what you had for lunch," said Dr. Robert A. Stickgold, an assistant professor of psychiatry at the Harvard Medical School, who was not involved in the study. "It's probably one of a hundred ways that material gets tagged for dreams."

Thanks for the link, Dad!

He-Man

J: So every superhero has some superpower, right? But what about He-Man? What was his power? Sure, he was strong, but he was pretty built even when he was only Adam.

D: I think the only thing that changed was his outfit.

J: So that's what, like, the power to suddenly become naked?

M: I think Janet Jackson has that, too.

L: "By the power of Grayskull... I have the p-- Oh, dang! Another wardrobe malfunction!"

ESP (Elephant Sensory Perception)

About a year ago, my niece approached me with her hands behind her back and a challenge:

Her: Guess what I have behind my back!

Me: I don't know. What do you have?

Her: Guess what it is!

Me: I don't know what it is - it really could be anything!

Her: Guess!

Me: OK, fine. I don't know... umm... an elephant?

Her: Right.

She then showed me the pocket-sized, plastic, pink pachyderm she had been holding in her hand, behind her back. Being only 5 and failing to see the irony of the situation, she simply walked away, unimpressed by my astounding "guess." I, however, decided that elephants must be the answer to all of life's questions. From then on, I vowed, whenever I was asked to guess anything, I would go with "elephant."

"Guess what kind of pet I have."
"An elephant?"

"Guess who I saw in the pizza shop yesterday!"
"An elephant?"

"Guess what I made for dinner."
"An elephant?"

Sadly, it's never worked for me since that first time, and I was beginning to doubt myself. That is, until this weekend, when it finally paid off. (OK, so it didn't exactly "pay off" - it's not like I won anything, other than the respect and undying admiration of my friends.)

At dinner Friday night, a friend commented that he'd seen something strange last week and asked us to guess what it had been. Everyone else took their random guesses, all wrong. I went with my standard - "an elephant" - and was pleased when my friend responded with an amazed, "Exactly!" Seems he had been on 34^th St. when the circus marched into town, including its usual pachyderm procession.

My faith in elephants has been restored! They really are the answer to everything!

Except maybe dinner.

How Do You Like Them Apples?

Yesterday I had the rare experience of going clothing shopping. I went to Eddie Bauer, Gap and Timberland. Got lots of good stuff (shoes, pants, shirts, belts, socks and more), and noticed some interesting differences between the stores - which ones try to be hip, which ones try to be rugged. But Timberland offered two nice little surprises for which I'd like to commend them:

1. When I was ready to pay for the shoes I was purchasing, the salesman asked me if I wanted the boxes. At first I didn't understand what he meant - I've always gotten the shoeboxes along with the shoes. But I've never actually had a need for any of them since my elementary school diorama projects. So I passed on the boxes, and thereby did my small part to fight against the trend of overpackaging. (It could be this is a common practice - I don't buy shoes often enough to know for sure - but I was impressed regardless.)
2. After I bought the shoes, the salesman said, "Oh, and help yourself to an apple." I hadn't noticed a little basket of Red Delicious apples off to the side, which were apparently available (for free) to customers. I took one and snacked on it as I walked back through Central Park to the train. I'm sure the apples were cheap - they're only 50 cents if you buy them from a fruit cart on the sidewalk - but it still came across as very generous and considerate gesture. It was a very inexepensive and effective way for them to make sure that I left their store with a good taste in my mouth (literally and figuratively). And it was a really good apple.

P.S. Eddie Bauer was playing some mix of mostly alternative rock-type music, and one of the songs was some catchy tune by a female-led band that had the lyrics, "[something about two lovers on a] hill / For him, she would die / For her, he would kill." Google fails me on this one. Anyone know the name of the song?

Good vs. Evil; Evil Wins

One movie about bloody, mutilated resurrected beings unseats another as weekend box-office king. Strangely, from what I've heard, the one producted and directed by an ultra-conservative Christian is the gorier of the two.

Overheard

"I can't believe I drank that much and I was OK driving!"

- A co-worker, discussing his return home from a birthday party Saturday night

Judah Maccabee Goes To Hollywood

Mel Gibson May Develop Maccabees Film

The Passion of The Christ director Mel Gibson told Sean Hannity on his radio show today that his next entry in the genre may be the story of the Maccabees, the Jewish guerilla fighters who led a successful rebellion against Greek conquerors 165 years before Christ, inspiring the Jewish holiday of Hanukkah.

According to Entertainment Weekly, Gibson said the story "fired my imagination." Recounting the story, which occurred in biblical times but is not recounted in the Bible, Gibson said: "It's about Antiochus, the king who set up his religion in the Temple, and forced them all to deny the true God and worship at his feet and worship false gods. The Maccabees family stood up, and they made war, they stuck by their guns, and they came out winning. It's like a Western."

Interesting...

Dope II

Wrong Number Leads to Woman's Arrest

An Oklahoma woman dialed a wrong number and ended up under arrest after she tried to set up a drug deal with her former parole officer, police said on Tuesday.

Patricia Michel was arrested last Thursday on suspicion of the unlawful distribution of a dangerous controlled substance at her home in Durant, Oklahoma, near the Texas border.

Michel called her former parole officer, Doug Canant, on his cell phone by mistake, thinking he could help set up a deal where she could acquire methamphetamines, police said.

"I am a bit of a joker, so I was playing along," Canant said in a telephone interview. "She thought she was talking to her local drug dealer."

. . .

Michel has been released on bond but faces between two years to life in prison if convicted. If she receives parole, she may have Canant as her parole officer again.

"It is a small town and there are only three of us (parole officers). It will be the luck of the draw," Canant said.

LEGO Mania

The Brick Testament (Warning: Some of the images marked with an "S" are surprisingly graphic for LEGOs)

LEGO Death (takes a while to load)

Thriller (Looks like the video itself, linked all the way at the bottom of the page, has been temporarily removed)

Brick Films

Update:

Dad: Some of that stuff is incredible. I don't know how they do it.

Me: I know how they do it; I just don't know why they do it.

Dad: Well, why did you do some of that stuff you did? Is that any different?

Me: True. [Though, to be fair, I did a lot of that stuff because I was bored in class and had my laptop with me.]

Dope

Two officers were on routine patrol on Stillwater Avenue Wednesday morning in an unmarked vehicle known to "just about everyone" in the area, Lt. Jon Fontneau said.

The officers were driving slowly, which is what many prospective drug buyers do, when [Davaugn] Goethe [age 17] waved them down, Fontneau said.

Police said Goethe opened the back door of the police car, jumped in and asked the officers what they wanted and how much.

"He said to the two officers, 'You guys look like cops,"' Fontneau said. "Maybe it was the police raid jackets they were wearing with 'police' written in big letters on the back, on the sleeves and on the front."

Thanks for the link, Dad!

Love is Lovelier the Second Third Fourth Time Around

[Gathering in a conference room]

M: Is W coming to this meeting?

O: W's out today. I think he's on vacation.

B: W is out getting married this week.

M: Didn't he get married already?

B: This is his third wedding.

M: W's been married three times?

B: To the same girl. Third out of four.

O: Huh?

B: The first was in a courthouse. Second was in a mosque. This week he's going back to Malaysia for a big ceremony with his family and friends. And in May he's having a wedding reception in New York.

[pause]

O: Do you think he's doing it for the extra presents or for the extra weeks of vacation?

'S Marvelous

Smittens

(The original title for this post was simply "I Wanna Hold Your Hand," but I think that was a bit too obvious.)

Testing, Testing

The rest of the test can be seen here.

It reminds me of one of my favorite Calvin and Hobbes strips, which can be viewed online thanks to the blatantly-copyright-violating Calvin and Hobbes Extensive Strip Search. (The rest of the site is worth checking out as well, if you're a fan.)

(For those of you who appreciate good DHTML, it also happens to be an extremely well done site. For example, try right-clicking [at least in IE].)

All Those Hours, Wasted

For Exercise in New York Futility, Push Button

For years, at thousands of New York City intersections, well-worn push buttons have offered harried walkers a rare promise of control over their pedestrian lives. The signs mounted above explained their purpose:

To Cross Street
Push Button
Wait for Walk Signal
Dept. of Transportation

Millions of dutiful city residents and tourists have pushed them over the years, thinking it would help speed them in their journeys. Many trusting souls might have believed they actually worked. Others, more cynical, might have suspected they were broken but pushed anyway, out of habit, or in the off chance they might bring a walk sign more quickly.

As it turns out, the cynics were right.

The city deactivated most of the pedestrian buttons long ago with the emergence of computer-controlled traffic signals, even as an unwitting public continued to push on, according to city Department of Transportation officials. More than 2,500 of the 3,250 walk buttons that still exist function essentially as mechanical placebos, city figures show. Any benefit from them is only imagined.

Looks like I'll just have to resort to alternative means.

Gifted

Schools, Facing Tight Budgets, Leave Gifted Programs Behind

[I]n September, Mountain Grove, a remote rural community in the Ozarks where nearly three in four students live in poverty, eliminated all of its programs for the district's 50 or so gifted children like Audrey, who is 8 now. Struggling with shrinking revenues and new federal mandates that focus on improving the test scores of the lowest-achieving pupils, Mountain Grove and many other school districts across the country have turned to cutting programs for their most promising students.

"Rural districts like us, we've been literally bleeding to death," said Gary Tyrrell, assistant superintendent of the Mountain Grove School District, which has 1,550 students.

Mr. Tyrrell desperately needs either a dictionary or a paramedic. I would assume it's the former, though as he's the assistant superintendent of a school district, I would hope it isn't.

Also of note:

Before her second birthday, Audrey Walker recognized sequences of five colors. When she was 6, her father, Michael, overheard her telling a little boy: "No, no, no, Hunter, you don't understand. What you were seeing was a flashback."

This is very interesting from a perspective of self-awareness and -consciousness. It shows she was not only cognizant of the concept of flashbacks and able to differentiate between reality and perception, but also that she was able to make that distinction with regard to others' perceptions. What's even more interesting about that story, however, is the way I can use it to seamlessly segue into a story about my niece, who is also 6 years old and incredibly bright (and also has reddish, curly hair).

She and two friends, one boy (whom we'll call "David") and one girl (whom we'll call "Sarah"), were sitting at the same table, coloring with crayons. Sarah was looking for the red crayon and realized David had it. She asked him if she could have it, and he responded that he was still using it. She accused him of hogging it, and he insisted that he wasn't done with it yet (even though, by that time, he really was and just didn't want to give it to her). This went back and forth for a bit until my niece calmly asked, "David, can I have the red after you?"; he responded by giving it to her. She quietly handed it over to Sarah and asked, "Sarah, can I have the red after you?" And, of course, Sarah gave it to her as soon as she was done.

Swinging Voters

Sitting on the train this morning, I happened to glance at the magazine that the man sitting next to me was reading. I'm not sure which magazine it was, but the article he was reading pertained to the current political climate and contained a photograph with the caption, "Will his endorsement of a ban on gay marriage lose Bush the support of swinging voters?"

Well let me tell you, I was outraged! First, the caption clearly implies a link between gays and swingers, as if to say that everyone who isn't a heterosexual is, by their very nature, sexually promiscuous. This is simply untrue! Many gays and lesbians are committed to a single, long-term relationship that is based on trust and mutual responsibility.

And second, what does that even mean? Are there swingers out there who are rooting for the demise of the institution of marriage and think that gay marriage would be a step in their direction? Are they opposed to a ban because they feel it would strengthen the moral fiber of our country and thereby cast them even further beyond the pale? And would they really vote against a political candidate simply because he supported such a ban? Even after rereading the caption, I still couldn't make any sense of ...

Hold on. What's that? It says what? "Swing voters?"

Oh.

Never mind.

Stranger Than Fiction

Mom finds kidnapped daughter six years later

A fire that authorities six years ago thought killed a 10-day-old girl was a ruse to kidnap the infant, Philadelphia police said Monday.

The baby, Delimar Vera, was sleeping in the upstairs front bedroom when a fire broke out at her family's two-story row house in north Philadelphia on December 15, 1997.

Luz Cuevas, her mother, could not find Delimar when she ran into the room. She eventually ran out of the house, overcome by smoke and burned on her face. Her two other children also survived, police said.

Remains of the infant's body were never found, and police concluded they had been incinerated in the flames.

The official cause of the fire was listed as an overheated extension cord attached to a space heater.

But Cuevas never fully believed her daughter died in the fire.

In January, she attended a birthday party for the child of an acquaintance and was struck by the resemblance of a 6-year-old girl to herself and her other children.

Telling the girl she had bubble gum in her hair, Cuevas was able to take strands of her hair in hopes a DNA test would prove she was right, according to Philadelphia police Lt. Michael Boyle of the special victims unit.

Luz Cuevas never fully believed her daughter died in the fire.

A state legislator helped put Cuevas in touch with police, who launched an investigation and had DNA tests performed that confirmed the girl is her daughter.

Word of the Day

pleonasm \PLEE-uh-naz-uhm\, noun:

1. The use of more words than are necessary to express an idea; as, "I saw it with my own eyes."
2. An instance or example of pleonasm.
3. A superfluous word or expression.

Such a phrase from President Nixon's era, much favored by politicians, is "at this moment in time." Presumably these five words mean "now." That pleonasm probably does little harm except, perhaps, to the reputation of the speaker.

-Eoin McKiernan, "Last Word: Special Relationships," Irish America, August 31, 1994

Source: Dictionary.com

Cat Nap

Cat Burglar Caught Napping on Job

A Dutch cat burglar was caught napping on a couch during a nocturnal heist and arrested, police said on Saturday.

The burglar curled up on a couch for a nap in the Rotterdam home he was robbing and was found snoozing by the owners' son, who held the 26-year-old thief while his parents called police.

"It's not very smart to fall asleep in the house you are trying to burgle," a Rotterdam police spokesman said.

I don't have anything to say about this; I just couldn't resist the title.

Reuven's Recipe corneR - Hamantaschen

With Purim less than a week away, I thought it'd be appropriate to post a recipe for hamantaschen (or "oznei Haman," if you're Israeli), the Official Snack of Purim. This one's from my mother and is just perfect: soft but firm, with just the right amount of flavor.

Hamantaschen

Ingredients:
3 c. flour
2 tsp. baking powder
1/2 tsp. salt
1 stick margarine
1 c. sugar
1 large egg
1/3 c. orange juice (room temperature)
1 tsp. vanilla extract
Filling of choice^*
1/2 tsp. lemon rind - optional

Instructions:
1. Place rack in upper 1/3 of oven. Preheat to 350^o F.

2. In a small bowl, combine flour, baking powder and salt.

3. In a large bowl, with a mixer, cream butter and sugar until light and fluffy (about 2 minutes). Add egg. Mix 1 minute. Mix in orange juice and vanilla (and lemon, if using).

4. Add flour mixture.

5. Shape into flat discs. Wrap in plastic. Refrigerate until firm (at least 15 minutes, or up to 2 days).

6. Roll out dough to 1/8" thick. Use 3" cookie cutter (an empty, clean can of tuna works, or something else around the same size) to create circles. Put 1 1/2 tsp. filling inside. Pinch 3 corners up, creating a triangular pocket. (Simple diagram here.)

7. Bake 15-18 minutes, or until just starting to turn golden on the bottom. (This will leave them nice and soft.)

Makes about 36

* My favorite fillings are:

• Apricot butter
• Raspberry preserves - you've got to be careful with this, though. Fruit butter (whether it be apricot or the more prevalent prune) is thick and stays put during baking. Even the thickest of preserves (and certainly jam or jelly) still has a good amount of liquid in it, and will "melt" somewhat during baking. Make sure to pinch your corners tight to ensure that the filling doesn't leak out of your hamantaschen.
• Peanut butter and chocolate - melt equal parts semi-sweet chocolate chips and peanut butter (I like chunky), with perhaps a bit of margarine to keep it soft.