{"id":1945,"date":"2004-04-07T11:25:24","date_gmt":"2004-04-07T18:25:24","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.kith.org\/journals\/jed\/2004\/04\/07\/1945.html"},"modified":"2004-04-07T11:25:24","modified_gmt":"2004-04-07T18:25:24","slug":"this-and-that-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/jed\/2004\/04\/07\/this-and-that-2\/","title":{"rendered":"This and that"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p>I've got a plethora of links saved up once again; haven't had time to post much lately.  Also, not much time right now.  But briefly:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>The <a href=\"http:\/\/news.nationalgeographic.com\/news\/2004\/03\/0329_040329_cicadas.html\">17-year-cicadas<\/a> are coming.  <cite>National Geographic<\/cite> provides an <a href=\"http:\/\/news.nationalgeographic.com\/news\/2004\/03\/0330_040330_cicadafacts.html\">FAQ<\/a>, including info on why cicadas are sometimes called \"locusts\" and discussion of cicada recipes.  The U. Michigan Museum of Zoology provides a <a href=\"http:\/\/insects.ummz.lsa.umich.edu\/fauna\/michigan_cicadas\/Periodical\/BroodX.html\">map of Brood X<\/a>.  If you're looking for an alien life-cycle design, look no further: there are twelve \"broods,\" each of which consists of three different species that sing at different times of day.<\/li>\n<li>Some Harvard researchers are doing <a href=\"http:\/\/www.usatoday.com\/news\/health\/2004-03-03-acupuncture-blood-usat_x.htm\">experiments with acupuncture<\/a> that indicate that it increases blood flow in the brain.<\/li>\n<li>My word of the day a couple days ago: <a href=\"http:\/\/www.m-w.com\/cgi-bin\/dictionary?inanition\">inanition<\/a>, \"the quality or state of being empty.\"  I saw it in a story in <cite>Asimov's.<\/cite>  <a href=\"http:\/\/storyword.blogspot.com\/\">Story Word<\/a>?<\/li>\n<li>The June issue of <cite>Reason<\/cite> magazine will have <a href=\"http:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2004\/04\/05\/business\/05reason.html\">personalized covers<\/a> featuring, for each subscriber, a satellite photo of the subscriber's neighborhood, with their house circled.<\/li>\n<li>Not for the squeamish: <a href=\"http:\/\/www.theyrecoming.com\/extras\/pumpkinfest03\/\">thorax cake<\/a>, a cake that looks like the organs and ribs of a human thoracic cavity.<\/li>\n<li>I'm kinda interested in visiting the <a href=\"http:\/\/www.arc.nasa.gov\/aboutames-marscenter.cfm\">Mars Center<\/a> at NASA Ames.  3D visualization, the CMU Interactive Rover Yard, a \"trikebot\" programmed by local high school students, etc.<\/li>\n<li>Cringely notes that <a href=\"http:\/\/www.pbs.org\/cringely\/pulpit\/pulpit20040401.html\">Microsoft wins<\/a> even when it loses anti-trust battles; each time it files an appeal, it gets to continue raking in profits, and it makes more money by wrongdoing-followed-by-a-fine than by avoiding the wrongdoing in the first place.  I suspect the article was intended as an April Fool's piece, but it sounds pretty plausible to me.<\/li>\n<li>People who liked <cite>Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind<\/cite> may be interested to know that there's real-life research being done on <a href=\"http:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2004\/04\/04\/magazine\/04MEMORY.htm\">how to forget<\/a>&#8212;specifically on how to prevent post-traumatic stress disorder.<\/li>\n<li>The Museum of Hoaxes has a nice list of <a href=\"http:\/\/www.museumofhoaxes.com\/aprilfool2.html\">Top 100 April Fool's Day Hoaxes of All Time<\/a>.  I was pleased that they included my two favorites: the Hotheaded Naked Ice Borers (#9) and Internet Spring Cleaning (#40).  I was also tickled by one I hadn't heard of before: the 1977 <cite>Guardian<\/cite> hoax featuring the island nation of <a href=\"http:\/\/www.museumofhoaxes.com\/af_1977.html\">San Serriffe<\/a> (comprising the islands of Upper Caisse and Lower Caisse, and led by General Pica).<\/li>\n<li>I'm surprised not to see more attention given to SitePoint Tech Times's scoop (published April 1) letting everyone know that <a href=\"http:\/\/www.sitepoint.com\/newsletter\/viewissue.php?id=3&issue=86&format=html#6\">the &lt;html&gt; tag will be deprecated<\/a> in XHTML 2.0, 'cause it's too confusing to beginners.  It will be replaced, says the article, by a new &lt;webpage&gt; tag.  This item is so straight-faced that a co-worker of mine insisted it was serious and not a joke; but since I don't see any mention of it in the current draft XHTML 2 spec, and I haven't heard anyone else mention it either, I'm assuming it's a joke 'til I see evidence to the contrary.<\/li>\n<li>Excellent page on <a href=\"http:\/\/www.r50rd.co.uk\/research\/internal\/v2i\/engin\/\">vehicle to autonomous biped robot conversion for the Mini Cooper r50<\/a>.  Which is to say, this former Mini Cooper engineer took a bunch of Mini Cooper parts and built a giant humanoid robot out of them, and taught it to do things like stop out-of-control cars.  There are several videos of the robot in action, notably the excellent Car Stopping video.  Which was what made quite clear that the whole page is a hoax (or more specifically, part of an ad campaign for the Mini Cooper).  But very much worth watching anyway; really well done.<\/li>\n<li>Yet another <a href=\"http:\/\/flashface.ctapt.de\/\">Flash-based face builder<\/a>, this one with art that looks sort of like police-sketch art.  It seems to be mostly oriented toward male faces, though, or at least male hairstyles.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>'kay, enough for now.<\/p>\n\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>I&#8217;ve got a plethora of links saved up once again; haven&#8217;t had time to post much lately. Also, not much&#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[53,33],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1945","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-links","category-robots"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/jed\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1945","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/jed\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/jed\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/jed\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/5"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/jed\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1945"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/jed\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1945\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/jed\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1945"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/jed\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1945"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/jed\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1945"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}