Chatter
tfk | May 9, 2007The Lawrence Journal-Worlld is putting together a project called 24 Hours in Lawrence. Tomorrow, they'll send out reporters throughout the community, the Watkins Community Museum will be set up to take oral histories, and you can submit your own content. They'll pull all the material together in reports online, on the air and in the paper. They also hope to store everything they get in the Museum as a permanent record of a day in the city's life.
If you live here, write up an account of your day, your neighborhood, or something interesting in your life, and send that in to the Journal…
omnibrain | May 4, 2007It seems that the old fogies at ScienceBlogs have discovered Facebook and started to add their profiles. ;)
You should head over there and join some of the related groups that have popped up (and make friends with some of the old folks!) - starting with me and the ScienceBlogs fan club. If that's not enough, there's the Order of the Science Scouts of Exemplary Repute and Above Average Physique.
j7uy5 | May 3, 2007
A study has shown that the world's fastest average pedestrian pace is
in
href="http://article.wn.com/view/2007/05/02/Singapore_Worlds_fastest_walkers/"
rel="tag">Singapore. The
href="http://www.canada.com/reginaleaderpost/artsandlife/story.html?id=58d385b6-4db2-481f-97ca-d16e16deb7c9">top
ten?
1) Singapore (Singapore): 10.55
2) Copenhagen (Denmark): 10.82
3) Madrid (Spain): 10.89
4) Guangzhou (China): 10.94
5) Dublin (Ireland): 11.03
6) Curitiba (Brazil): 11.13
7) Berlin (Germany): 11.16
8) New York (United States of America): 12.00
9) Utrecht (Netherlands): 12.04
10) Vienna (…
tfk | May 1, 2007May 7 at 7:30, Randy Olson will be screening Flock of Dodos and then discussing it with a panel at Wichita State University.
Chris Mooney and Matt Nisbet, both Sciencebloggers, will be speaking at KC's Stowers Institute on May 10 at 4 pm in the auditorium at 1000 E. 50th Street, KCMO.
Be there or be lame.
tfk | April 27, 2007Via Joel Mathis, a Japanese gentleman named "Cobra" explains his dangerous hobby:
"When you get down to air sex, you've got to immerse yourself in the air sex world.
"Air sex can't be performed in half-measures," he continued. "If it is, you're only asking for trouble."
Yes, the idea is roughly the same as "air guitar." Which is apparently also now a competitive sport.
tfk | April 27, 2007When Kurt Vonnegut passed away, I pointed out that the Bokononist mantra "Busy, busy, busy" is one that I find useful in my own life, especially this week. So it goes. The Kansas Guild of Bloggers, normally put online on Monday, is thus appearing on Friday, and incorporates only submissions to the blogcarnival.com system. Heck, I'm even using their boring "instacarnival." I'm sure there's been a bunch of good stuff out there that I've missed, and I apologize.
Next Monday it's at Paul Decelles' place. Submit!
John B. presents A stretch of river XXXV: "Here comes a frame-house down on the…
omnibrain | April 19, 2007Does anyone have any suggestions for tomorrows Multimedia Friday? It can be reader request day or something like that ;)
And in thanks for your input I leave you with this completely unconfirmed set of results from a website reporting about a publication on nose picking:
* 8.7% claim that they have never picked their nose. (In other words, they are liars or they can't remember doing it as a kid.)
* 91% stated that they had picked their nose in the past and were still actively practicing this habit. Yet, only 49.2% of the respondents actually thought that nose-picking was common in…
tfk | April 18, 2007It was very cool getting to see the KC blogosphere in full effect last night. I got to meet the minds behind blogs like The Flogging of America, Dangerblog, Cubicle Gangsta, mtoast, General Blather, Sader family blog, ...JustCara, Spyder, Well Hell Michelle, and of course Death's Door.
I think I got there after Emaw and XO left, or else they were ignoring me. Excellent people, one and all, and you should read what they've got to say.
tfk | April 16, 2007Gunman killed after deadly Virginia Tech rampage:
A lone gunman is dead after police said he killed at least 21 people Monday during shootings in a dorm and a classroom at Virginia Tech -- the deadliest school attack in U.S. history.
Government officials told The Associated Press that the death toll had grown to 31, including the gunman. CNN is working to confirm the report.
It was not clear if the gunman was killed by police or if he took his own life.
If it's the latter, all I can say is that he should have gone in the opposite order.
All of the Thoughts from Kansas are with the Virginia…
j7uy5 | April 16, 2007It is
not often that I write about music. In fact, it is not
often that I even think about music. But this little item
caught my eye, if not my ear, if only because it is perplexing to try
to imagine Balkan-Techno fusion:
href="http://www.geocities.com/emmo_dj/home.html">DJ EMMO
Biography
DJ Emmo has a Ph.D. degree in Biochemistry and Human Genetics. He is
Research Scientist in a private Biotechnology company in Ann Arbor,
Michigan, involved in discovery of new markers for Cancer Diagnostics (
href="http://www.rubicongenomics.com/">www.rubicongenomics
com). Music is his…
tfk | April 15, 2007Many, many moons ago, KC's bloggers would get together now and again, but the practice died out. Thankfully, there is a new blogger meet up:
The details are Tuesday, April 17th Happy Hour until ????
Harry's Country Club in the River Market,
112 Missouri Ave, Kansas City, MO 64106
(NOT Harry's in Westport)
Be there …
or don't.
tfk | April 11, 2007"All of the true things that I am about to tell you are shameless lies." Thus began Kurt Vonnegut's fictional Book of Bokonon, within his novel Cat's Cradle.
The novelist, who, in 1997, told the New Yorker "People are sentimental about me now. I'm not waving my hands in the air looking for attention," passed away last night. So it goes.
His greatest impact on me probably comes from Cat's Cradle, and Bokononism. Many times I find myself whispering "Busy, busy, busy" "whenever I think about how complicated and unpredictable the machinery of life really is." We live in an age of…
tfk | April 8, 2007Bora asks a bunch of people why they blog. Since various and sundry other people have asked me the same question over the years, I may as well answer and be done with it.
I blog to be part of what Brad Delong calls the Invisible College:
I am greedy. I want more. I would like a larger college, an invisible college, of more people to talk to, pointing me to more interesting things. People whose views and opinions I can react to, and who will react to my reasoned and well-thought-out opinions, and to my unreasoned and off-the-cuff ones as well. It would be really nice to have Paul Krugman…
tfk | April 8, 2007While working on an unrelated project, I came across two fascinating passages, the first by John Burroughs, the second by Richard Jefferies, both from the excellent Norton Book of Nature Writing. If nothing else, it is a reminder that people have been presenting sensible arguments against the design intuition for a very long time.
John Burroughs was a great nature writer and a student of Walt Whitman. Here is a passage from his essay "The Gospel of Nature." After explaining his view that "Nature-love … has a distinctly religious value. It does not come to a man or woman who is wholly…
j7uy5 | April 5, 2007This
is the meme of the moment here, as started by
face="Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif">
href="http://scienceblogs.com/clock/2007/04/why_do_you_blog_meme.php">Blog
Around the Clock
face="Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif">;
href="http://scienceblogs.com/deepseanews/2007/04/why_do_you_blog_meme.php">Deep
Sea News,
href="http://scienceblogs.com/aardvarchaeology/2007/04/why_blog.php">Aardvarchaeology,
and
href="http://scienceblogs.com/signout/2007/04/why_do_i_blog.php">Signout
href="http://scienceblogs.com/clock/2007/04/why_do_you_blog_meme.php">have
joined in.
Of…
tfk | April 4, 2007Sometime today I had my 100,000th visitor at the new TfK. Thank you to all my readers for making this possible.
tfk | April 2, 2007The University of Chicago's Randy Picker discusses the implications:
Apple and EMI announced today that they would start selling higher-quality DRM-free music on iTunes at a price of $1.29 per track, 30 cents more than iTunes’s standard 99 cents price. This is an outgrowth of Steve Jobs’s Thoughts on Music (my post on that here). The press conference slides indicate that 84% of surveyed European consumers would like to be able to move their music files between devices and this will make that possible. This is an interesting expansion of the iTunes business model, and one that should further…
tfk | April 2, 2007Every week, a secret cabal of bloggers gather, and quietly select the finest blog posts from and about Kansas.
emaw has a message for the resident of cube 1B963, "well, er, sorry 'bout that." It isn't his banana.
It probably isn't Ed Humes's, though Humes is the author of Monkey Girl. Paul, of The force that through…, sends a review of a talk Humes gave. Red State Rabble was there, too.
Blog Meridian's John B is excited that his favorite author will be coming to a television set near him. Cormac McCarthy's The Road is Oprah's next selection for her book club.
John also has an…