A Rational Girl in Irrational Times
Internet
Links via the iPad
Jun 7th
Some posts from the iPad:
Need a Mary Sue fix? Metafilter has a fun discussion.
How many already existing services did Apple challenge yesterday? A lot.
I’ve been playing with a beta app called Show Me – make your own videos in just minutes:
Pancakes on a Thursday! Sw33t!
Oct 28th
I have some links to post from my RSS feeds in Google Reader, but I’m having some technical difficulties on the Mac front of the “screen no longer feels like working” variety. Good thing Jean Marie found yet another awesome pancake blog: The Pancake Project.
So are there a lot of pancake blogs, I wondered? A quick Google search found the Illinois Pancake Blog, searching the state for the best of the best, and one blog about a celebrity named Sw33t Pancake, but I have no idea who she is.
For Muppet Experts Only?
Oct 17th
Boing Boing recently tested readers’ knowledge of Henson creations in Obscure Muppets: The Quiz. I was surprised to get 70%, but I’m sure some of you will do much better.
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?
