A Rational Girl in Irrational Times
Internet
Random Link Day
Jul 15th
Found some fun things in my Google Reader:
- “Losing Our Cool” – a look at how AC is affecting our environment.
- American Idol, Survivor, The Bachelor: Is Winning Worth It? – what really happens when you win a reality show?
- The Price of Animals – in case you were wondering how much you’d have to save up for an elephant.
- Superhuman: the Incredible Savant Brain- minds are amazing!
Don’t call me Shirely!
Jul 2nd
Dana doesn’t like my tech tweets so much, but I bet she’ll like this Airplane quiz in honor of the movie’s 30th birthday.
On Time Travel
Jun 10th
Not sure how time travel works? These kids will tell you all about it. Special bonus appearances from Stephen Hawking and Albert Einstein.
Virtual memorials
May 31st
Mashable has a nice piece covering 6 Websites for Remembering and Honoring Veterans, including the Veterans History Project from the Library of Congress.
A bad egg?
May 16th
I had some eggs that were going to expire, so I decided to boil them before they went bad. When I put them in the water, however, I noticed they were were standing big-end up. Weird!
Had they gone bad? I checked Google and learned they were still edible. According to this article on Why do eggs float?:
Old eggs float in fresh cold water because of a large air cell that forms as the egg cools after being laid. As the egg ages, air enters the egg and the air cell becomes larger and this acts as a buoyancy aid.
Sounded good to me, but as another reader pointed out, this explanation isn’t quite right:
You are partially correct, however, it is not the fact that air is getting into the egg that makes it float. It is the fact that mass is leaving the egg.
So the moral of this tale is don’t eat eggs which are completely floating and remember density determines whether something will float.
The separation of the Free
May 13th
I don’t have a Kindle, but I often read ebooks with the Kindle app for the iPhone/iPad. I’ve bought a few books from the Kindle store, but most of what I’ve downloaded was free. And most of the free stuff I found on the Kindle Best Seller List, where it seems like the free books outnumber paid books. Now Amazon plans to drop free books from the list. Instead, there will be a separate list for free books. It looks like the idea is to draw more attention to paid books but I wonder if that will work. Maybe the new list will make interesting free books easier to find?
Vending Machine Blues
May 10th
Ever wanted to see if you could challenge yourself to eat everything in your office snack machine? Me neither, but Matt Baldwin of Defective Yeti decided that he’s going to try every single item in his office vending machine — and blog about it. Discover the good, the bad, and the barely edible at Vending Spree – Talkin’ Snack. Matt’s pretty excited about it:
KitKat Crisp? Famous Amos Cookies? Beef Jerky?! HAVE I DIED AND GONE TO HEAVEN OR AT LEAST PURGATORY WHICH AS I UNDERSTAND IT IS ESSENTIALLY HEAVEN’S RECEPTION AREA AND WOULD THEREFORE BE MORE LIKELY TO HAVE SUN CHIPS FOR SALE?!
What color is red?
May 6th
XKCD has published his Color Survey Results, where he asked people to name thousands of colors to see which names were most popular for which hues. Among other things, he found:
- If you ask people to name colors long enough, they go totally crazy.
- Indigo was totally just added to the rainbow so it would have 7 colors and make that “ROY G. BIV” acronym work.
- Nobody can spell “fuchsia”.
He also found that men and women generally agreed on color names, but some names like “Dusky Rose” are more popular with women, while names like “WTF” are more popular among men.
Other good color names:
- Velociraptor cloaca
- we are a collaborative icecream cone!!!!!
- i considered rickrolling you, because I have a strong feeling no ones ever rickrolled someone with their own scientific data
- gosh, that’s blue
It’s too late to add any new data to the experiment, but you can still play around with the original survey if you want.
May the 4th
May 4th
It’s Star Wars day! Ever want to be in a Star Wars movie? Thanks to JibJab, you – or anyone you have a photo of -can now star in Empire Strikes Back, or at least a version of it. Below the fold is my take, starring kids and cats.
After the volcano
May 3rd
A nice visualization of what happened when European airspace rebooted last month.
