editor-lady rides again

When did people start calling the internet the "Internet highway?" I already made fun of it once, but it appeared again here. I think I'll go ahead now and spell out my policy clearly for when I'm elected Queen of the Universe: either call it the internet or go into full dork mode and call it the Information Superhighway.

rant alert

Usually things I find on Dave Barry's blog are funny; this one just annoyed me.

Apparently Kimberly-Clark has tapped a new market: parents who think their kids don't have enough ink on their butts and want them to grow up thinking that it's normal for their bottoms to smell like watermelon.

Parents take note: synthetic dyes and fragrances marketers talked you into using are why we hold our breath around you and your children. A pregnant lady with a little boy sat down fifteen feet away from me at the bike race yesterday, and I had to pick up my lunch and move. That synthetic stuff is toxic, and little kids are exposed worse than any other group of people, with the possible exception of teenagers, many of whom can't seem to leave the house without emitting visible artificial-scent smell rays.

So everybody repeat after me: Kids don't need to wipe themselves with cartoon puppies or smell like Froot Loops. Marketers are evil. Glade plug-ins and scented candles are instruments of the Devil.

Ok, I got a little off-topic there at the end, but I do feel better now, thank you.

unloading the camera

Today I learned that we had a bunch of interesting pictures stored on the camera. (Yeah, that's sort of cheating on the 'I learned something today' thing, but maybe I'll learn something else later.)

So here's a bunch of guys riding around and around in a loop in yesterday's crit:


And here's a picture of the straightaway with no one on it:


I was going to say something about how they gracefully let some of the grass die in deference to the horrible drought, but right in the middle of the course there was this enormous pond:


This is a picture of a ten-stage water filter with an interesting bulge in the middle:


And last but not least, my first attempt at water chestnut flour crackers:


When I pulled it open, it reminded me of nothing more than one of those eggs in Alien.

lots of corners

Today I learned about the air quality at the ASU Research Park in Phoenix. So you know, it sucks.

I was going to ride in my first criterium race today, but between the car exhaust and the cut-grass smell, I was in no condition to play in the street. While I am totally annoyed that I didn't get to play with the other kids, I seem to be inordinately pleased that I got to watch the other kids.

Here are my observations:
1. If there are three guys in a breakaway, they give each other advice and cut each other some slack so no one gets too tired to keep the breakaway going.
2. In the lap after the race ends, if it's a women's race, all the riders pair up and chat. If the men chat, it's with a teammate or someone they want to yell at.
3. If some lady rides her comfort bike across the corner of the course in front of the men's 50+ pack, she gets impressively chewed out, but with surprisingly few swear words. (I don't think she's ever going to be the same.)
4. When college students arrange a race, they forget important details like bathrooms.

hammocks, milk, and corners

1. If you put a Brazillian cotton-string hammock in the dryer on 'air fluff' for six hours, the detergent residue mostly comes out, but even if you tie it up really carefully, it still escapes and tangles the heck out of itself.

2. Soaking your new mall-acquired underwear in milk for nine hours makes it less perfumy, and maybe even wearable. I've been trying to decontaminate it for over a month, so this is major progress. Malls suck. And yes, washing the milk out is a little bit of a pain, but it's a lot easier than perfume.

3. I can turn corners on my road bike at 24 miles per hour. This is new, so I hope it still works tomorrow.

warning: horribly sexist statement from girl physicist

Bake for a man, and he will eat for part of a meal. Teach a man to bake, and he'll leave flour all over the kitchen.

rocks

Today I learned to ride my bike over lots and lots of embedded rocks on hills. My friend and I started out really slow, but we could tell we improved over the two hours we were gone.

It was hard. The views were pretty. Down was much easier than up. I think I need a nap.

year-old bad news and food

Ok, so today I learned that there was a study published in December 2004 (when I was really out of it) that says microwave radiation from cell phones can alter your DNA. The article went on to say that some of the damage couldn't be repaired by the cell, but that we shouldn't worry about it. I get in trouble with amounts of chemicals that aren't supposed to bother me, and I know people with EMF sensitivity, so I don't find this assertion REMOTELY reassuring.

To distract you from your cell phone killing you, here's a recipe for some weirdo EI comfort food: water chestnut flour gooey stuff.
Mix a cup of water chestnut flour with a cup of water and a little salt, and bake it in an 8x8 pan at 350F for about 25 minutes. The top gets dry, but the inside and the bottom get really, really sticky. Scrape it out of the pan and fold it in half and you're good to go, assuming you have a good hold on your dental work.

Last but not least, today I found a page titled "Steve, don't eat it!" and I learned that there was a cereal made in 1991 called Urkel-O's. To read Steve's description, you have to scroll down past the potted meat food product, the pickled pork rinds, and the dog treat Beggin' Strips, all of which Steve ate at one time or another.

getting lost and body counts

Today I learned how to take the local dirt roads to Saguaro National Park. So I'll remember it next time, here's how: you cross Old Spanish Trail on Melpomene, which curves around and turns into Golf Links. Then you take the first right, and when you get to top of the hill with the tanks on it, you turn left. The interesting part here is that this procedure bears no resemblance at all to anything I saw on Google maps. It took me almost an hour to get to the park and 20 minutes to get home. I still had a good time.

In more depressing news, I got to wondering how many people had been killed because of the Danish cartoons, and I suppose I would have been surprised if someone hadn't been keeping track.

black goo in LA

I first saw a report of hot black goo oozing from the sewers in Los Angeles on a website I wasn't familiar with. However, here is the same story, a little more professionally presented.

Now that it's confirmed, I have to say that 'Mystery blob eating downtown' is the superior headline.

cows and more fun with newspaper quotes

You know how dogs like dog beds? In the town where I got really sick, they did a study, and it turns out that cows like cow beds.

In other news, some kids are smart enough to recognize pedophiles on myspace, but then their parents go and say things like this:
"You wouldn't leave your kid on the side of the highway without supervision," Morano said. "You shouldn't put them on the Internet highway without the same type of supervision."

beds, juice, and cows

Today I learned that it's really easy to cut the springs out of one of those cheapy cotton/polyester futons with springs in it. Then I learned that even if your springs are double-bed sized, they do fine holding up your queen-size homemade kapok futon. The reason this is important is that the kapok futon, known here earlier as the giant pillow, really isn't giant pillow shaped anymore. Kapok packs down.

In other news, Lakewood brand 100% pure organic carrot juice has some lemon juice in it. It tastes like somebody tried to make lemonade sweetened with carrot juice, and on the yummy/disgusting food scale, it falls pretty squarely on 'undrinkable.'

And since you haven't gotten a good biking update lately, this morning I scared four cows on two different parts of the trail, and only one was far enough away that she didn't feel obligated to run the other way. I learned that the ability to read doggie expressions translates to cows; you should have seen the 'holy s---' looks on their faces.

they didn't want to say it's because people can't sing

To further their effort against social ills, Vietnam has banned alcohol at karaoke clubs.

important statuary

This is a picture of my dad's hiking buddies. What I learned here is that there's a Yoda statue in front of the old Letterman hospital at the Presidio in San Francisco.

you know you live out west when...

...there's a well-known weekly bike ride called the 'Shoot Out.'

...the rodeo grounds are closer to downtown than your house, unlike the fairgrounds.

...the rodeo starts tomorrow, and I haven't heard a thing from PETA.

born yesterday

A middle school gym teacher took bribes to let kids sit out of class.

This can't be a widespread problem, but this being America, where we legislate everything, maybe we should add a question to the teacher certification exam:
Is it ok to take bribes from students?
a. yes, but only if it's worth the risk, ie, you make enough to retire and leave the state before anyone finds out
b. no
c. sure, kids that age never talk to their parents anyway.

crackers

For those of you who can eat amaranth flour, today I figured out how to make crackers:
3/4 cup amaranth flour
1/4 cup water
1 tablespoon oil
Roll the dough out on a well-floured counter/flat spot as thin as you can (use lots of flour) and cut it into squares. Scrape the squares off the counter and put them on a cookie sheet. Bake at 400 F for 10 to 15 minutes. Oh, and you can put salt in there if you want.

Pretty soon I'll figure out starch crackers (water chestnut or tapioca), so stay tuned.

artificial sweeteners

Artificial sweeteners will kill you! The article doesn't actually say that, but look what happened when I made a remark about prescription drugs.

rats!

According to a guy on Dirty Jobs, rodents are incontinent (pdf) (the military agrees with the guy on Dirty Jobs).

In other news, former Connecticut Governor Rowland, who went to jail for almost a year for corruption, when asked if he would run for office again, said he wouldn't. Can you believe somebody asked?

I'm sorry this isn't more of a surprise to me

If you read the magazine article review column in the Washington Post today, on the second page, down below the long description of naked celebrity pictures in Vanity Fair, there is a summary of a disturbing article about synthetic chemicals in On Earth magazine. Here's the part that helped me get past my prejudice against magazines published by environmentalists:

On Earth is published by the Natural Resources Defense Council, a prominent environmental group, so you can say they're just a bunch of crazy tree-huggers and ignore the story if you're so inclined.

But Daly, a former editor at the science magazine Discover, has written an article that is painstaking researched, carefully written and not sensationalized. It's also scarier than hunting with Dick Cheney, particularly if you happen to be one of those sentimental fools who wants the human race to go on propagating itself.

So here's the link to the article itself. It's all about plasticizers and pesticides in tiny doses, which I believe I've mentioned here, here (indirectly), and here. For good measure, I'll throw in herbicides and stinky synthetic fragrances, too.

slowish day

Prompted by yet another hot-wired car on tv, I learned that it is not that easy to find directions for hot-wiring a car on the internet. I guess that's one of those apprentice-type skills as opposed to something you learn on your own.

I also learned that getting a valentine from your parents makes the world a better place, even when you're a grown-up.

mountain bikes and cacti (but no collisions)

Today I went to a mountain bike course and learned, among other things, that using your front brake when you're going really slowly makes your bike handle badly. Who knew?

In other news, I was pulling a few residual prickly pear spines out of my jersey this afternoon before a friend and I headed out to the trails, and when I said that the encounter hadn't hurt much, her comment was, "Yeah, those are the time-consuming ones." It turns out that she hangs laundry near some inconveniently placed cacti, and the chollas are the kind you'd really better stay out of.

laundry fumes and mountain bikes

Today I learned that if you ride your mountain bike through laundry fumes, and your reaction to laundry fumes is to get stupid and/or dizzy, you should stay the heck away from the cacti.

exit exams, bottled water, and Biosphere 2

Ok, it's time for some California High School Exit Exam outrage. Sue to get out of high school! Apparently, you can still fail the state exit exam despite meeting local requirements for graduation. I looked at sample math questions, and for once, some of them are practical and useful. So not that anyone asked me, but if you can't pass that, study harder.

Onward to bottled water. We are pretty sure PET bottles don't cause cancer, but we do know that the chemically sensitive community gets in bad trouble with the plasticizers, and it appears that the whole world gets in trouble with the recycling problem, not to mention the artificial drought problem.

And last but not least, Biosphere 2 is not up to code if you want to use it for housing.

that's not funny

You remember a while back I learned that if you see prescription medication advertised on tv, it'll kill you? I thought I was kidding. Add ADHD medication to the list.

hurtin' for entertainment

I'm kinda hurtin' in a couple ways today, so bear with me. I'll be better tomorrow.

1. Today I had a nice discussion with a man from my cell phone company who was trying sell me things I didn't want. With phones, I always know exactly what I want, so he was doomed from the start. I think he knew it, too, but he gamely went ahead anyway. He was a good guy. It was entertaining.

2. Dogs don't do menopause. They just go into heat farther apart when they get old.

3. The Black Death was caused by UFOs. I learned that when I went looking for more information on chemtrails because I have a chemically sensitive friend who has trouble on days the trails appear, and we want to know if there is any mildly credible explanation for it. The most popular I've come up with so far is the aerosol designed to eliminate the sick and elderly (mentioned here by Latvians with a sense of humor), which is better than UFOs, but not nearly as compelling as a pilot's discussion of contrails on the New Mexicans for Science and Reason chemtrail page. The pilot mentions something about jet exhaust in the atmosphere, but as much as I like jet exhaust for causing problems, it's being released probably seven miles up. I keep thinking the problem is coming from something with the wind direction or something, so days the wind comes from someplace yucky the flight pattern at the airport changes, but I got nothin'.

whatever works

Tourists will give you money to bang on buckets taken from construction sites.

you kids knock it off!

I can just see it in the history books: WWIII caused by cartoons.

fake high schools, grocery cards, the stinky house, and football

1. Sunnydale High in Buffy the Vampire Slayer was played by Torrance High. It has also played the high school in Beverly Hills 90210, the one in She's All That, and probably a lot more I've never heard of.

2. Some people really object to grocery clerks being required to thank them by name, and they solve the problem by signing up for grocery store cards under false names, like the man at the end of this article.

3. There are two ways to get out of my subdivision. To take one of them, you have to go uphill past the extremely fragrant house, so if you're on a bike and chemically sensitive, there's really only one way out of the subdivision. However, if you make it out and ride onto the dirt roads nearby after Super Bowl kickoff, you have all the roads to yourself.

4. Sportscasters' chatter is much, much more tolerable if you run sporting events 1.5 times normal speed.

bike events

People we know went to this (pdf), and on the way home, they discovered a lot of traffic from this.

hemming jeans

I read this interesting article about very expensive designer jeans that only come in one length, unlike people's legs. One solution is to buy $200 British jeans, which come with little cufflinks that'll hold your turned-up cuff, and that way you can wear the same jeans with spiky heels or flats. (I'm assuming here you won't be wearing sneakers unless they're $200 sneakers.)

But it seems that many people just want one-length jeans, and the appropriate way to get the hem to look right is essentially to take a tuck all the way around each leg and sew it down slightly above the hem. I can't really see how that would look good, but people aren't paying me $20 to hem their jeans.

I suspect that most of us have already solved this problem by not buying $200 jeans that only come in one length, but that just goes to show what we know.

more and better quotes that make you go 'huh?'

From an article about the potential for carousing in Windsor, just over the Canadian border from Detroit (and tomorrow's Super Bowl):

"I'm angry that they call us Sin City, because I'm envious of our position," said Mark Boscariol, who owns five bars and restaurants in Windsor. "Because if you want to tempt your gluttony, you can do it at our restaurants. If you want to tempt your lust, you can do it at our nightclubs and strip joints. If you want to tempt your greed, you can try your luck at the casino. If you're feeling a little bit of sloth, you can hang out in one of our lounges. Our entertainment industry is something we have as a natural resource, and it's a fit, and we're hoping to promote it."

Moving on to a completely clueless-sounding quote from a man unaffected by craiglist's new fees for very specific markets, and keep in mind new postings on craigslist always go on top:

Though he posts his listings there now, he might reconsider if there were a charge. "If it's really going down at the bottom of the list, it may be throwing money away," he said.

So I have a few questions for the journalism community:
1. Do you really need quotes so badly that you had to use these?
2. Was it too much work to insert a few extra characters [in brackets like this] to keep these people from sounding like morons?
or,
3. Is this the kind of thing you do on Friday afternoon for entertainment value, and if so, we did have some fun with it, thank you.

conventional medicine and wackos

Today I learned that articles like this one about people losing faith in conventional medicine and turning to alternative therapies annoy me because people like me get lumped in with the 'if it's natural it must be better' crowd that would eat rocks if a suitably spiritual-looking type told them to.

Maybe this was not the point of the article, but it appears that I may be a total nutball, so why are you reading this?

if a tree falls in the woods...

... it just doesn't matter until somebody notices.

Blogging about your job is fine if your boss never figures out what you've said, those Danish cartoons that we're hearing about now were flying mostly under the radar since the end of September, and it was years before the ease of picking a U-lock with a ballpoint pen became well-known. It makes you wonder what else is out there.

more things to disbelieve

Today on Dave Barry's blog, Dave's lovely assistant, Judi, posted a link to an interesting new method for cooking eggs. Before you read it, you need some background information: normal cell phones put out something like a quarter of a watt when transmitting and much less when receiving, and if you touch the antenna of your cell phone, your fingers do not get hot. Ok, now you can have the link.

The reason I bring this up is that I intend to watch carefully to see how long this particular piece of literature takes to show up on Snopes, the urban legend site.

And in case you were curious, you can't recycle a pinata.