From Apple — iPod 101
If you’re a new iPod owner or simply need a refresher course on how to get the most out of your iPod, you’ve come to the right place. Welcome to iPod 101: Your guide to rockin’ out, gettin’ down, and boogieing with your iPod, iPod nano, iPod mini, or iPod shuffle.
… from Andrew Tobias:
I’m bearish because I think both consumers and the government have gotten too heavily in debt, and that a decline in home prices could get ugly. (And because we have three years, one month, and fifteen days to wait to get a better CEO, even though a majority of the shareholders would like to fire him now.) Then again, it is notoriously difficult to time the market. So if especially if you’re young, with a steady program of investing – keep it up!
With the football teams of Joe Paterno, 78, and Bobby Bowden, 76, set to square off in Miami on Jan. 3, Orange Bowl slogan writers have reportedly winnowed their list to “Win One For The Geezer” and “One For The Aged.”
Sideline Chatter also reminded me of this:
Oregon — only loss was to USC.
Notre Dame — lost to USC and lost to Michigan State.
Guess which one got the premier bowl game.
Exercise helps to flush a toxic molecule from the brain and causes a beneficial one to move in and protect nerve cells, research on mice shows. The discovery might help to explain why staying fit and keeping mentally active seem to fend off Alzheimer’s disease in humans.
“Our experiments support the idea that exercise is a good approach to all types of problems in the brain and that a sedentary lifestyle is a risk factor,” says Ignacio Torres-Aleman, who led the study at the Cajal Institute in Madrid.
NewMexiKen wonders if one can fool one’s own brain. Repeat after me: Surfing the web is just as athletic as surfing the Pacific.
Even if you could get more RAM for your brain, the extra storage probably wouldn’t make it easier for you to find where you left your car keys.
What may help, according to a discovery published Nov. 24 in the journal Nature, is a better bouncer — as in the type of bouncer who manages crowd control for nightclubs. The study by Edward Vogel, an assistant professor of cognitive neuroscience at the University of Oregon, is the first to demonstrate that awareness, or “visual working memory,” depends on your ability to filter out irrelevant information.
“Until now, it’s been assumed that people with high capacity visual working memory had greater storage but actually, it’s about the bouncer — a neural mechanism that controls what information gets into awareness,” Vogel said.
The findings turn upside down the popular concept that a person’s memory capacity, which is strongly related to intelligence, is solely dependent upon the amount of information you can cram into your head at one time.
Now, if I understand this finding correctly, it was right that in college instead of cramming for finals I went out to a club that had a bouncer. Is that what they’re saying? I’m so confused.
CONWAY, Ark. – A group of Arkansas college students has set the world record for the world’s largest Christmas stocking.
As official representative of Guinness World Records, Stuart Claxton of England flew in from New York to measure the stocking Saturday. And it met, and surpassed, the mark at 53 feet, 10 inches long and 26 feet, 112 inches wide from heel to toe.
The red, white, green and gold sock with the 30-foot zipper beat the previous record set in December 2004 by the community of Old Town Spring, Texas. The Texas stocking was 40 feet, 6 inches long and 15 feet 6 inches wide, Claxton said.
…They stuffed it with 600 teddy bears, 570 stuffed toys, more than 1,000 toy trucks, 423 Barbie dolls, 380 baby dolls, 682 books, some 200 board games, 163 sets of Legos, 75 footballs, 11 bicycles and thousands more toys. The toys will be distributed through charitable organizations to children around the state.
Before the measuring, workers pushed wagons and dollies loaded with toys and rode bicycles into the stocking. Promoters also reported more than 500 coats, hats and assorted clothes were donated.
AP via Yahoo! News
Just think what they could have accomplished if the liberals hadn’t ruined Christmas the Holidays.
… was ratified by the 36th state on this date 72 years ago, thereby repealing the 18th Amendment. NewMexiKen will drink to that.
… from the auto blogs. The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration has a website with ratings of all cars tested since 1990 — SaferCar.gov.
And I don’t know what this actually means, but that little shoebox looking Toyota Scion. It has an 18% chance of rollover. That can’t be good. Dodge Dakota, 19%.
Autopia, Wired’s auto blog, has a report that you can now get your car’s GPS system to talk to you in the voice of various stars. Or, as they say, B-list stars, such as Burt Reynolds, Dennis Hopper and Mr. T. Or Jerry Lewis: “Hey, look out for that laaaaady!”
Assuming all celebrity voices were readily available, whom would you chose to talk to you in your car?
Car paints changing with temperature by ZDNet‘s Roland Piquepaille:
It’s now common to build materials which can change colors depending on their surrounding environment because of progresses made in colloid chemistry. But now, German researchers have gone a step further. They’ve used ion bombardment and gold metallisation to produce new particles whose bonding behavior can be chemically tailored. This could lead to new shimmering car finishes which can change with temperature or humidity, new cosmetics,….
… of Richard Wayne Penniman. Rock and Roll Hall of Fame inductee Little Richard is 73.
… of Jose Carreras. The tenor is 59.
… of Jim Messina. The one-time member of Buffalo Springfield (with Dewey Martin, Neil Young, Richie Furay and Steven Stills), and Poco, and Loggins & Messina, is 58.
… of Frankie Muniz. Malcolm is 20.
On December 5, 1776, Phi Beta Kappa, America’s most prestigious undergraduate honor society, was founded at the College of William and Mary in Williamsburg, Virginia. Membership in the organization is based on outstanding achievement in the liberal arts and sciences and typically limited to students in the upper tenth of their graduating class.
Organized by a group of enterprising undergraduates, Phi Beta Kappa was the nation’s first Greek letter society. From 1776 to 1780, members met regularly at William and Mary to write, debate, and socialize. They also planned the organization’s expansion and established the characteristics typical of American fraternities and sororities: an oath of secrecy, a code of laws, mottoes in Greek and Latin, and an elaborate initiation ritual. When the Revolutionary War forced William and Mary to close in 1780, newly-formed chapters at Harvard and Yale directed Phi Beta Kappa’s growth and development.
By the time the William and Mary chapter reopened in 1851, Phi Beta Kappa was represented at colleges throughout New England. By the end of the nineteenth century, the once secretive, exclusively male social group had dropped its oath of secrecy, opened its doors to women, and transformed itself into a national honor society dedicated to fostering and recognizing excellence in the liberal arts and sciences.
Today, Phi Beta Kappa has over 250 chapters and over half a million living members, including six of the current Supreme Court justices and presidents George Bush and Bill Clinton. In addition to sponsoring scholarships and campus activities, Phi Beta Kappa grants book and essay awards, and publishes The American Scholar, a quarterly journal named after Ralph Waldo Emerson’s 1937 Harvard lecture warning against pedantry, imitation, traditionalism, and scholarship unrelated to life.
The Writer’s Almanac tells us about Joan Didion, winner of this year’s National Book Award for nonfiction. Or you can listen to Garrison Keillor recite this and more [RealAudio].
It’s the birthday of the essayist and novelist Joan Didion, born in Sacramento, California (1934). She grew up as a nervous, preoccupied child. She said, “I was one of those children who always thought the bridge would fall in if you walked across it… I thought about the atomic bomb a lot… after there was one.”
She began keeping a notebook when she was five years old, and she later wrote, “Keepers of notebooks are a different breed altogether, lonely and resistant rearrangers of things, anxious malcontents, children afflicted apparently at birth with a sense of loss.” At one point in her childhood, she lived near a mental hospital, and she would wander around the hospital grounds with a notebook, writing down all the most interesting snippets of conversation.
Didion became associated with the so-called New Journalism, because she often made herself a character in whatever she was covering, and she went much further than most journalists in revealing her own states of mind. The title essay of her collection The White Album (1979) includes notes from a psychiatrist’s evaluation after she suffered a nervous breakdown.
Her memoir The Year of Magical Thinking, about her husband’s recent death from a heart attack at the dinner table, came out this year.
Joan Didion said, “My only advantage as a reporter is that I am so physically small, so temperamentally unobtrusive, and so neurotically inarticulate that people tend to forget that my presence runs counter to their best interests. And it always does. . . . Writers are always selling somebody out.”
“For him, the game combines the appeal of chess with the joy of a demolition derby.”
Michael Lewis describing Texas Tech football coach Mike Leach. The article by Lewis about Leach in Sunday’s New York Times Magazine is delightful. See also previous entry.
From the always amusing Go Fug Yourself, surely one of the indispensable websites:
Why are you doing this? You are beautiful at age 58 — your skin looks flawless up there — and you are a respected stage and screen actress. It is all about accentuating the positives, and you have so many positives. So why in the name of Britney are you downplaying your assets by letting that shirt balloon around you? Why are dressed like some sort of priest-genie? Do you know who you are? You are CLAIR effing HUXTABLE, lady.
There’s more with the photo.
“President Bush proudly proclaims himself a Christian and tells us that his faith has changed his heart. Perhaps one day his faith will change his policies.”
West Wing’s Bradley Whitford writing about his congregation at The Huffington Post.
A woman took her parrot to the veternarian and the veternarian said, “That will be $30.”
The woman said, “You didn’t do any tests!”
The veternarian sent in a cat and the cat sniffed the parrot on the table and shook his head no. And then the veternarian sent in a dog and the dog did the same thing.
The veternarian said “That will be $330.”
The woman reacted, “You said it would be only $30!”
The doctor said, “That was before the cat scan and the lab work.”
Don’t know why I got on such a geography kick, but NewMexiKen thought of one more trivia question.
Assume you are in a canoe on the Mississippi River at New Orleans. Disallowing for any man-made obstacles like dams, or low water, but without leaving the water, through or past how many cities could you paddle that have an NFL franchise?
Don’t count the New Orleans Saints, who aren’t playing in New Orleans this season.
Answer in comments. No peeking.
Fort Lewis College of Durango, Colorado, has won the NCAA Division II men’s national championship, defeating Franklin Pierce College (New Hampshire) 3-1 at Wichita Falls, Texas, today.
And Portland State (Oregon) has won the NCAA Division I women’s national championship, defeating UCLA 4-0 at College Station, Texas.
Freakonomics author Steven D. Levitt has already gotten to the cover article in today’s NY Times Magazine:
Michael Lewis writes in today’s New York Times Sunday Magazine about Mike Leach, the innovative coach of the Texas Tech football team. As Lewis describes it, Leach takes a totally different view of football and is on the cusp of revolutionizing the game.
It is a very interesting article, and beautifully written. …
Like Moneyball, even though I am suspicious of parts of the argument, it is a thoroughly enjoyable read.
NewMexiKen hasn’t read Lewis’ article yet but one wonders if Leach is all that much of an offensive innovator, to wit: Texas 70-3, USC 66-19.
… of Jeff Bridges. The four-time Oscar nominee is 56 today (three times for supporting, once for leading (Starman).
… of twice nominated and one-time winner of the best supporting actress Oscar, Marisa Tomei. She’s 41 today.
What is the name of the star closest to us?
“President Bush getting tough. In his speech at the Naval Academy he said we will not leave Iraq until we have achieved our goal. He calls this plan ‘leave no oil barrel behind.'”
Jay Leno
(But shouldn’t it be “no oil barrel left behind”?)
… we thought you just wanted it shorter.
Video of botched demolition in Sioux Falls, South Dakota.
Anyone can look these up. How well can you do from knowledge you already have? Answers are in comments (no peeking).
1. Of the 50 states, 24 meet the sea (or tidewater); that is, their lowest elevation is sea level (well, actually Louisiana (minus 8 feet) and California (minus 282 feet) go below sea level, but that’s irrelevant here). Of the remaining 26 states that do not meet sea level, which has the lowest elevation?
Special bonus question: Which has second lowest elevation?
2. Of the 50 states, the 13 westernmost states have elevations above 11,000 feet. Texas has the next highest elevation (8,749) followed by South Dakota (7,242). The next highest elevation is in a state east of the Mississippi River. Which state is it?
3. As we all know since Katrina, New Orleans has sections of the city that are below sea level (minus 8 feet is the lowest). Which of the 50 largest cities (by population) has the highest elevation? (As a point of reference, the 50th largest city is Wichita, Kansas, population 354,000.)
4. The mnemonic for remembering the Great Lakes is HOMES. Arrange the letters by the size of the lakes.
Special bonus question: Four of the lakes are within 32 feet of the same elevation. The other is 326 feet lower. What comes in between the lowest lake and the next one upstream?
5. Of the 50 states, which is the easternmost, southernmost, westernmost and northernmost?