In lieu of your regularly scheduled programming (which has been preempted lately by life and napping anyway), today I present something Google-related, but less Game than Regurgitation.
Have you been on Google today? Did you notice the space theme? Did you wonder why there’s an astronaut on the page? Maybe I can help, with a couple posts I wrote for LifesLittleMysteries.com:
Click on for a quick lesson on this important day in history, when, in 1961, Yuri Gagarin became the first man in space, and then 20 years later, the Space Shuttle took off on its first mission.
I’m not entirely sure what compelled me to click on the omg! link on my Yahoo Mail homepage leading to an “article” about the Olsen twins’ recent fashion mistakes. Exhaustion, boredom and even a surprising occasional interest in Worst Dressed features doesn’t quite explain it, but anyway. It was worth it to discover that the site will run an entire slideshow exclusively on celebrities donning hideous outfits, but still include a pop-up called “Get the Look,” calling out each item of offense and where to buy it. OMG, indeed. Morons. Readers, writers: Morons.
This is the banner on Adhesive Squares' website. I don't know what "it" is, either.
This morning I received an email press release entitled INCREASE PRODUCTIVITY WITH ADHESIVE SQUARES BRAND ADHESIVES. I’d love to increase productivity, I thought, but how can Adhesive Squares brand adhesives help me? I opened the email and was greeted with a list of solutions provided by Adhesive Squares brand adhesive products. Aha, I see it now. I need to stick stuff to myself. So I made a list of my own. A list of things I could stick to myself to increase my productivity. Here’s what I came up with:
Those bills I’ve neglected and that contract I forgot to sign. Apparently acknowledgment is not a sufficient substitute for payment or signature. And that pile on my floor is not an effective “Outgoing” box.
My laundry. This one could be tricky (it’s really been a while and that bag is heavy). Fortunately, according to the email, the company will work with me to “create the right solution for [my] unique application … Adhesive Squares™ brand adhesives allows the customer to retain their own adhesive goals.” And what goals I have! They go on: “whether bonding foams, fabrics, or fibers to any substrate* we make them compatible.”
*substrate = me
A dated sign up sheet. That way people can book me for blocks of time and see what hours I have available. This should reduce scheduling mishaps due to:
my own ineptitude
my tendency to commit to something til it’s done, whether or not I reasonably have time to complete it
people’s sheer disinterest in the value of my time (This is wishful thinking. Also, the value of my time varies widely depending on who’s paying)
A pencil (see above)
One of those fake clocks that one might see hanging in the window of a hardware store that says “Will return at…”
Snacks
Here’s hoping that my Adhesive Squares brand adhesives plan for productivity improvement works. Next week we’ll look at where everyone else can stick it.
Ordinarily I wouldn’t want to have consecutive Google Games based on such similar searches, but when my brother (currently on a northeast tour with The Shake) told me he’d stumbled upon it I just had to share:
Who knew there were so many aspiring hippie lawyers online?
And wait, perms? Really? Related searches: Different types of shoulder pads.
The current issue of the Journal Nature includes a commentary on a decades-old goal to drill toward the center of the Earth:
Comment: Journey to the mantle of the Earth
This spring, researchers will mark the 50-year anniversary of an ambitious project by taking another step towards the same dream. They aim to drill through Earth’s crust under the ocean floor and down into the mantle and, for the first time ever, pull up a sample. In a Comment in Nature this week, the two co-chief scientists of that upcoming mission — Damon Teagle and Benoît Ildefonse — say that drilling into Earth’s mantle is now possible, and should hopefully begin within a decade.
The mantle makes up the bulk of our planet, stretching from the bottom of the crust — at 30–60 kilometres under the continents but just 6 kilometres under the oceans — down to the core 2,890 kilometres below. Retrieving a sample direct from the mantle would provide scientists with “a treasure trove comparable to the Apollo lunar rocks”, they write, and it would provide insight into the origins and evolution of our planet. But this goal has proven as difficult as going to the Moon: so far no one has drilled deeper than about 2 kilometres into the crust — a third of the way through.
The idea to drill into the mantle was born at a drinking club of notable earth scientists in 1957. ‘Project Mohole’ sailed in 1961. It took the first scientific core from the sea floor, and developed techniques for ocean drilling that are still used by the oil industry today. But it failed at its mission. Over the next few years, scientists will practise their deep drilling and assess three Pacific Ocean sites, looking for the best place to reawaken this dream.
Do I think this is news? Meh, maybe once they actually embark. But is it a great excuse to get you to watch the trailer for The Core? Absolutely:
If you’re wondering, yes, the trailer pretty much sums it all up. But if you haven’t seen, and don’t make a point of seeing, the whole thing, you’ll miss out on the origins of Unobtanium and the notion that the Earth’s core is, indeed, made of cheese.
You’ll also miss out on the potentially prophetic power of the film, which, eight years ago, predicted worldwide weather phenomena of apocalyptic proportions and birds falling from the sky. For all we know, San Fracisco Bay boiling and the Golden Gate Bridge befalling the fate of an ant in a young boy’s back yard might be next. Watching The Core could be our only hope of survival.
A Fox News website has picked up a hoax story about an Islamic council in Pakistan protesting the use of padded and colorful bras and presented it as fact.
The story, which is still featured on Fox News’ Fox Nation website, was illustrated with a picture of a woman’s mid-section and carried the headline “Pakistan: Islamic Clerics Protest Women Wearing Padded Bras as ‘Devil’s Cushions.'” (UPDATE 9:30: Fox has now pulled the story. See the original here.)
…[T]he whole thing is an obvious Onion-style satire — a fact first pointed out by Arif Rafiq of the Pakistan Policy Blog.
The sify.com story linked by Fox cites a “report” from yet another site called Roznama Jawani.
Roznama Jawani, in turn, appears to be a Pakistani version of the Onion, featuring such stories as “Karachi Preparing a Huge Ass Bat to Beat the Shit Out of Kamran Akmal,” “Altaf Hussain Challenges Imran Khan to a Rap Battle to Settle Differences,” and “Man From Peshawar Sues Red Bull. Says he has no wings!”
Matter of fact, in my limited experience in the Muslim world, padded, colorful bras are not only acceptable, they’re everywhere. Bazars are lined with bedazzled braziers, and women with headscarves paw unabashedly through racks of neon and lace. Even midscale shops in Syria equally supply for beauty on the inside and the outside:
For another pleasing paring, watch the okonomiyaki robot in action. Okonomiyaki, a type of Japanese omelette-pancake, roughly translates to “your favorites, grilled.” Try not to drool; he might short circuit.
No Happy Medium 