Todd Oldham, that Target stylemeister, designed the cutest reconfigurable sofa for the folks over at La-Z-Boy! I MUST have it for my ladies' lounge.
MedlinePlus has well-organized and reliable information on illnesses and medications, but you need to buy something like this to really annoy your doctor. Does anyone have good tips on social engineering in the doctor's office? I need tips on how to gently guide a doctor so they don't think you're a loony.
Here's the UN's rundown on estimated current rates of infant mortality per 1000 births. The US's similar rundown by state is a little hard to read, so I turned to the book State Rankings 2003: A Statistical View of the 50 United States. There are lists ranking the states by various statistical measures, one being infant mortality. The premise here is that one could compare the mortality rate of each state to other countries, since the rate in the US varies quite a bit state to state. Well, it looks like the range in the US is like the range in Europe. Some states are Germany, while others are Hungary.
Infant Mortality Rate in 2000, top & bottom 5
Mississippi 10.7
Alabama 9.4
Delaware 9.2
Tennessee 9.1
Louisiana 9.0
California 5.4
Utah 5.2
Washington 5.2
Maine 4.9
Massachusetts 4.6
Turn that annoying talking fish into almost any talking fishlike thing you want with the power of Linux. I'd be happy to find one or more for anyone who'd like to take on this project.
The BBC headline that caught my eye was "Me and My Parasite." One of the anecdotes involves a waiter fleeing in horror from a customer: "Broughton chased him down the street urging him to tell him what was wrong. But the boy would only point, wordlessly, at his nose." Don't say I didn't warn you.
Apparently the piece is a teaser for a programme called "Invasion of the Body Snatchers." Here's hoping it hops the pond to BBCA so I can be revulsed in my own home.
In our continuing series of mocking the afflicted, we bring you this: stroke victim goes cockney (apparently "a mixture of English cockney and West Country").
Woooooo, more nerdly government document fun: BOPCRIS: Official British Government publications from 1688-1995!
From 1909:
Apart from a small number of persons who use moveable dwellings as a pastime, van-dwellers are of two classes, showmen and the gypsy class. For showmen no legislation was required. Mr Horne, the chaplain of their guild, stated that there were 4,000 vans and 12,000 souls. The trade was perfectly honest and respectable and its members were well-to-do and in some cases even thriving. There was no complaint against them, but the showmen sometimes complained that localities used existing restrictions to prevent shows.
The gypsy class should be distinguished from tramps- the large nomad population coming from the cities to do hop-picking, pea-picking, etc., who sleep under hedges, in barns and casual wards, and not in vans, and who are a ' terror to the neighbourhood'. Gypsies were cleaner than the East End hop-pickers, but had primitive views as to the rights of property, especially in respect of what grows and moves on the earth in a more or less wild state, and were given to petty pilfering. Where they congregated in numbers, e.g. the commons in Surrey, problems of sanitation might arise. The case for further legislation had been made out.
Book review sources often review two or more books on the same subject in a single review. When those reviews are attatched to the records of the books they are reviewing by our vendor, the title is trimmed off, so sometimes you'll see the review of the book you're looking at, plus one or more mystery books. Here's one that sounded fascinating:
"Schilling lets the reader in on his unusual life as an international artist and a dentist. His work for the Holland America Cruise Line takes him to places like Venice and Stockholm while, as a dental missionary, he has found himself sketching in rural Kenya and in Nunligran, Russia. Schilling's tales of journaling on the road are entertaining, and his tips on dealing with rain and insect attacks are useful. "
Insect attacks!
You'll need to print this out, so you'll be able to use it in the event that the unthinkable (a loss of net connectivity) happens. Of course, it's foolish to think that surviving such a cataclysm is possible, but such guidelines should serve to calm the ignorant masses.
One of the librarians' choices was the Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report. Take a look at the Notifiable Diseases/Deaths section. There sure is more Hansen's Disease about than I would have thought. A coworker told me today that American FactFinder is new and improved. Woo Hoo!
There was a discussion in a seminar I went to as a part of my continuing education as a librarian where the presenter pointed out that we didn't get into the profession we're in by being the popular kids. In response to ALA's popular Read posters, where celebrities pose with their favorite book (or perhaps their publicist's favorite book), librarians pose with their favorite government document. I, however, cannot easily pose with my favorite govdocs, since I am of the digital age. But even before I joined the librarian cult, I loved the FDA's regulatory fish encyclopedia.
If I didn't post a pointer to The Shakespearean Insulter in July when it was first brought to my attention, I should have. I'm just a foul defacer of God's handiwork, after all.
"Oh, darling, you're causing an increase in activity in my right caudate nucleus and right ventral tegmental areadopamine!" One gets the feeling we're all just bags of chemicals or something.
Hey-ho! A display company that sells to regular folks! Acrylic stands! Slatwall accessories! But best of all: Riker mounts! I'm going to mount all sorts of stuff now! (Insert your own filthy joke here.)
Conventional wisdom is the idea is "too far ahead of its time," but isn't it long overdue to bring back the automat? Instead, McDonald's is axing their Redbox automated food outlets (sadly, they were far more like giant vending machines than they were like automats).
In other McNews, McDonald's doesn't like the word McJob.
Everybody loves antique soft-core. And many people love pointers to all sorts of fleshy web sites.
Crows are, in fact, devils and demons. (Yeah, I know, it's "screamin'"; I just always expect it to be "schemin'")
Yep, it's Monday again, and the mind turns to chucking it all and wandering the globe. Check out the legal requirements at the State Department's Travel Advisory page. Or pretend you're already an ex-pat by listening to radio in other languages while you work and browse the Foreign Groceries Museum.
I'm not linking to it, because that would be tantamount to signing it, but Adam Kalsey has posted a manifesto regarding blog-comment spam at http://kalsey.com/2003/11/comment_spam_manifesto/. He seems to overestimate the power of bloggers, or maybe I'm overestimating the power of postmasters and large corporations. I believe ISPs are doing as much as they're going to do to control ill-behaved clients, and that there will continue to be more open relays and proxies created (in some cases using worms) than can be shut down by any group of right-thinking geeks.
There's also the issue that there are some relatively clever people on the dark side, helping propagate spam. I'd love to be wrong on this, but Mr Kalsey's bluster just looks like an invitation to be taken out of the game, as happened to relays.osirusoft.com, which used to provide extremely valuable spam-fighting information, and has now been DoS-attacked off the net. Best of luck to us all.
And lest anybody think I know nothing of what I'm talking about, fighting spam takes up a substantial portion of my work day. I know the patterns of delivery; I've just recently gained an appreciation for the vast number of outfits benefiting from it; and I know better than most just exactly how hard it is to stop a determined spammer, even with the legal resources of a large corporation and some fairly smart people on my side. Fortunately, a surprisingly small percentage of spammers are truly determined. Unfortunately, that percentage will inevitably rise as blocking tools get more sophisticated.
The esteemed Harald Seiwert confirms that his piece "Chicken" (as previously linked in FP) is Photoshop-assisted. As he points out, Photoshop would have been necessary to get the colors matched, even if he did have time to play with extreme depth of field (which he doesn't, what with his book deadlines hard upon him -- keep your eyes open next year).
Ooh, take a look at the new Prius- it's got back seats and covered storage in back. The storage demonstration reminds me of a Flash game. It also has a DVD based mapping gizmo, but you have to pay extra for updates.
In the name of equal time, here's the Insight.
Where are you on the political compass (actually, the political graph)? I'm at (-6.0,-4.82), in the neighborhood of Nelson Mandela and the Dalai Lama, though I think I'm farther down and left than they are. The quiz lacks useful answers like "I agree with the statement, but not with what I think you mean," and "I reject the premise".
Wearable meets cellphone: the finger whisper phone (actually a wrist phone). More info here.
Cornell's archive of Home Economics information gives you a peek into the practical courses students could take, including Practice Apartments, complete with Apartment Babies.
In one of the great shockers of the young millennium, U of Chicago scientists discover guys are horny.
A startling discovery in Target: Fertilmarq brand male fertility tests. And I always thought that sort of situation was your best excuse to buy a microscope.
My actual Target purchase: edible notepaper.
Though relatively straightforward for the most part, some of those clothing care symbols can be tricky.
It's a bummer everybody I know is pretty booked up travel-wise, since Travelocity is offering a 3-day sale: $205 round-trip ($265 if you want to fly near a weekend) to London. Must travel between now and 4 April 2004.
If you decorate with weapons, or just wish you did, Swords Online is your friend.
The theme of this year's ACM SIGGRAPH conference gallery is synaesthesia.