Bartender, Pour Me Another Cup, from the WaPo America’s largest brewing company, Anheuser-Busch, released its latest product last week – a beer that contains caffeine. It saddens me that this is Budweiser, and not actually a good beer. The January 2005 issue of National Geographic had an article about caffeine, and it mentioned that a popular club drink these days is Red Bull and vodka, so I suppose this is.. Read More
Hamlet
I was talking with Christopher Armitage last night over dinner at the Convocation on Scholarly Communication. He said that when he teaches Shakespeare these days, he doesn’t focus on Hamlet’s issues with his dead father, or his issues with his uncle, or his mother fixation, or his girlfriend problems. Instead, he focuses on the political situation – that is, Norway marching on Poland through Denmark – and how this conflicted.. Read More
Quote of the day
Speaking about theory versus practice: “I tend to get my hands dirty, rather than get my mind dirty” – John Bosley, of the BLS
Food as social statement
I was at the Daily Grind earlier today and they’ve started carrying Aceh Relief Blend. (“For every pound of Relief Blend we sell, we will donate $1.00 to the fund.”) I of course had to have it, and I’m happy to report that it’s very tasty. More important, though, it got me thinking, could you eat and drink nothing but food where a portion of the cost goes to some.. Read More
Media Lab Europe closing
MIT Media Lab’s 4-Year-Old Irish Offshoot Is Running Out of Money and Plans to Close, from the Chronicle But really, who wouldn’t want to work in an old Guinness brewery in Dublin?
Getting in touch with my elitist side
Yvonne pointed out to me that Despair, Inc. has produced some new poster designs. And since I wrote about elitism recently, I thought I’d just go with it: Here are a few other faves: Maybe we can use this one to inspire PhD students. Or undergrads. For the technological determinist in your life.
The Catalogue of Ships
A few months ago we watched Battlestar Galactica on the SciFi Channel, and I’m really looking forward to the series, which premieres tonight. I’m a sucker for space opera. And honestly, the SciFi miniseries was so way better than the show from the ’70s. It cracks me up though that the SciFi Channel has the catalogue of ships from the show, here. I will tell the captains of the ships.. Read More
Piedmont Ecoregion
Jane and Evelyn and I are working on a grant proposal in collaboration with folks from the Herbarium and the Botanical Garden. In the course of our email conversations about this project, the question came up, What are the boundaries of our local ecoregion? So one of the botanists sent this map around, from The Nature Conservancy. It’s just so cool that I had to include it here. Click image.. Read More
Overheard on the bus
“So Jen’s turning 21 today. When are you turning 21?” “The 31st. I feel old.” Oy.
Do they give lifetime memberships to the Etch A Sketch Club?
This is such a cool idea I’m actually amazed that no one did it sooner. This totally beats the Maquarium. Mouse-controlled Etch-a-Sketch, from BoingBoing And here’s the original site: Electr-O-Sketch, which was a class project for an Electrical and Computer Engineering course at Cornell. BTW, I’m not kidding about the Etch A Sketch Club.