Holiday Misinformation Exposed!

In the most recent edition of the British Medical Journal, Rachel C. Vreeman and Aaron E. Carroll examine six common beliefs we hold about holiday health and--through a review of the research--expose them as mistakes.

Here's the straight scoop on our holiday misconceptions, with all quotations coming from the article :

Sugar causes hyperactivity in children

Regardless of what parents might believe, however, sugar is not to blame for out of control little ones. At least 12 double blind randomised controlled trials have examined how children react to diets containing different levels of sugar. None of these studies, not even studies looking specifically at children with attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder, could detect any differences in behaviour between the children who had sugar and those who did not. . . . 

Scientists have even studied how parents react to the sugar myth. When parents think their children have been given a drink containing sugar (even if it is really sugar-free), they rate their children’s behaviour as more hyperactive. The differences in the children’s behaviour were all in the parents’ minds.

Suicides increase over the holidays

While the holidays might, indeed, be a difficult time for some, there is no good scientific evidence to suggest a holiday peak in suicides. . . . Further debunking myths about suicide, people are not more likely to commit suicide during the dark winter months. Around the world, suicides peak in warmer months and are actually lowest in the winter. . . . Studies from the US reflect this pattern, with lower rates in November and December than in typically warmer months.

Poinsettia toxicity

In an analysis of 849,575 plant exposures reported to the American Association of Poison Control Centers, none of the 22,793 cases involving poinsettia resulted in considerable poisoning. No one died from exposure to or ingestion of poinsettia, and most (96%) did not even require medical treatment. In 92 of the cases, children ingested substantial quantities of poinsettias, but none needed medical treatment, and toxicologists concluded that poinsettia exposures and ingestions can be treated without referral to a healthcare facility.

Excess heat loss in the hatless

A . . . recent study confirms that there is nothing special about the head and heat loss. Any uncovered part of the body loses heat and will reduce the core body temperature proportionally. So, if it is cold outside, you should protect your body. But whether you want to keep your head covered or not is up to you.

Nocturnal feasting makes you fat

. . . just because obesity and eating more meals at night are associated, it does not mean that one causes the other. People gain weight because they take in more calories overall than they burn up. . . . Other studies found no link at all between eating at night and weight gain. 

You can cure a hangover

No scientific evidence, however, supports any cure or effective prevention for alcohol hangovers. . . . A hangover is caused by excess alcohol consumption. Thus, the most effective way to avoid a hangover is to consume alcohol only in moderation or not at all.

For more fresh air from BMJ's Vreeman and Carroll, see Medical Myths from 2007 (1288-1289).

As We Move into Finals Week . . .

As we move into finals weeks here at Northwest College, we all could use a little pick-me-up. This video is just the ticket--thanks to Matthew Belinkie, who has cut together 40 speeches from classic movies into a two-minute inspirational montage:

It's a Wonderful Life . . . the Dark Side

A. O.  Scott, film critic and editor for The New York Times, has produced a little feature on the dark side of  Frank Capra's classic in Critics' Picks: 'It's a Wonderful Life.' 

By ennumerating everything that's wrong in the world of George Bailey, Scott demonstrates why it's such a comforting film for the holidays.

Happy Birthday, Milton!

Today is the Puritan poet's 400th birthday. To honor him, we recommend a trip to the Milton Reading Room at Dartmouth College . There, you'll find a beautifully annotated version of his masterwork, Paradise Lost.

The last lines of the poem describe Adam and Eve's expulsion from the Garden of Eden, which William Blake so beautifully illustrated: "They hand in hand with wandring steps and slow, / Through Eden took thir solitarie way."

Christmas in Williamsburg | Then & Now

A little Christmas bonus we created for an early American literature class:

RSS Feeds in Plain English

A good introduction to RSS feeds from Lee LeFever, April 23, 2007:

Viral Video | Bruce Lee

Viral videos are little film clips which gain popularity exponentially by being shared through today's many multimedia means: YouTube, emails, instant messaging, blog posts, etc. Case in point: This Nokia phone ad which appeared last month in China. It features the late, great Bruce Lee playing table tennis . . . with nunchakus!

Gift Ideas for 2008 | Book Lists

Set organized, saved and shared with Agglom

Dance Your [Science] Ph.D.

The AAAS (American Association for the Advancement of Science) has sponsored its second Dance Your Ph.D. contest and the winners are in! The contest asked scholars to express their Ph.D. in dance form; the contest was open to anyone who has (or is pursuing) a Ph.D. in any scientific field or in science-related fields.

As the web site says, "the human body is an excellent medium for communicating science--perhaps not as data-rich as a peer-reviewed article, but far more exciting." You can see the winning YouTube videos and the rest of the submissions on the 2009 AAAS/Science Dance Contest web site.

Below is the winning Graduate Student entry from Sue Lynn Lau for her Ph.D. dissertation "The role of vitamin D in beta cell function" from the Garvan Institute of Medical Research / University of Sydney, Australia. For an explanation of this dance, click "(more info)" to the right of the video on YouTube.

15 Second Film Festival

Did you know that the very early films of both Thomas Edison and The Lumière Brothers were 15 seconds long? That fact is part of the inspiration for the 15 Second Film Festival, a micro-movie contest created by Irish filmmaker Peter “Magic” Johnston.

So why don't you take a minute from your busy day and watch four movies or so?


W8ing4Godot from 15 Second Film Festival on Vimeo.

Milton's 400th

A group of St. Olaf faculty and students staged a marathon reading of John Milton's Paradise Lost last month to honor the poet's 400th birthday. Here's a nice feature on the event:



If you're wondering why you should care about Milton's birthday, you can read a lecture by St. Olaf Professor of English Edward DuRocher on "Why Milton Matters."

A-Bomb Babies

Robert Krulwich's segments on NPR--Krulwich on Science--always help explain the science world around us in a delightful way.

This past Sunday, Krulwich explained "How A-Bomb Testing Changed Our Trees" and changed some of us, too. The atmospheric a-bomb tests of the 1950s and '60s blew lots of neutrons in the air, some of which combined with carbon-12 to create carbon-14 atoms. The boost in carbon-14 atoms was absorbed into every tree in the world that was alive during that time, creating a spike in carbon-14 that's an indelible marker within the tree.

And that which is true for the trees is true for us, too. People ate the fruit of trees--apples, pecans, pears, oranges, etc.--and gained an internal knowledge of carbon-14 which was passed along to the children of the era (giving post-lapsarian a whole new implication). As a result, people born during the atmospheric tests have a carbon-14 spike in their DNA. As Krulwich says, we can date people with carbon-14 testing. 

You can listen to the story at NPR's webpage (4:24 min.).

Thanksgiving, 1895

As The New York Times continues to digitize its archive, the newspaper occasionally calls our attention to a noteworthy or particularly apt article from the past. So it is with this 1895 New York Times article about Thanksgiving: Thanksgiving and Eating (PDF).

The lead article is about the history of the holiday. We find the second article even more interesting: it explains how sufficient turkeys were shipped across the country over 100 years ago . . . more or less successfully!

It IS a Small World, After All

The 2008 Small World Winners are now posted on Nikon's website, where you can view a slide show of all the winners. Pictured above, Michael Stringer's  Pleurosigma (marine diatoms) photographed at 200x.

Mob Behavior and Medicine

Google Flu Trends , from Google.org ,  the philanthropic arm of Google, is a free online tool that may allow you to detect flu outbreaks in your area up to two weeks before official reports from the CDC .

Here's how it works: Millions of users enter health-related search terms in Google. During the flu season, many of these terms are flu-related. By tracking this aggregated search data, Google is able to estimate flu activity within a state earlier than the CDC's official reports appear. See the little video at Google.org for an illustration of this phenomenon.

The CDC's reports are based on information from health providers. Google searches usually occur before a person goes to a health professional, so in terms of reporting, Google's aggregated data cuts out the middle person, as it were. The graph below "shows five years of query-based flu estimates for the Mid-Atlantic region of the United States, compared against influenza surveillance data provided by CDC's U.S. Influenza Sentinel Provider Surveillance Network. As you can see, estimates based on Google search queries about flu are very closely matched to a flu activity indicator used by CDC" (Google.org):

Google warns that past behavior does not necessarily predict future success in forecasting flu trends. Google Flu Trends is still experimental, but it has a great deal of promise as Google continues to tinker with it. It may, for instance, be a useful tool as epidemiologists attempt to identify and contain flu pandemics, such as the outbreak of 1918.

You can read more about Google Flu Trends at

• The New York Times 
• The Official Google.org Blog

The Music Video as History

MTV has posted its oeuvre of music videos on the Internet where they are free and legal to watch. As Very Short List says,

You’ll see spare-no-expense epics (Michael Jackson’s “Thriller” just celebrated its 25th anniversary), bare-bones relics (e.g., Joy Division’s “Love Will Tear Us Apart”), and early work by some of today’s most interesting directors (we’re especially fond of Michel Gondry’s videos for Björk). You can also revisit Unplugged and watch classic Video Music Awards performances by Madonna, TLC, and Kanye West.

We suggest you start with the list of Top Rated Videos and then work through Most Viewed. Rick Astley's "Never Gonna Give You Up" is the top-rated video, and only yesterday MTV Europe named Rick Astley the Best Act Ever at the European Music Awards.

Rick Astley |MTV Music

Yes, this is the Rick Astley who inspired the viral internet phenomenon of Rickrolling. The meme is a bait 'n' switch where a link purportedly will lead viewers to some relevant information but actually takes them to Astley's video for "Never Gonna Give You Up."

War of the Worlds

It was the night before Halloween, seventy years ago, when Orson Wells launched his famous radio drama that did more than entertain a great many people. You can read the script plus listen to the original broadcast on Radio Heard Here.

For more information about this famous broadcast, check out our earlier post "War of the Worlds": Behind the 1938 Radio Show Panic.

Tony Hillerman

May 27, 1925 - October 26, 2008

• Obituary, from the New York Times
  
• Obituary, from the Washington Post
  
• In Appreciation of Tony Hillerman, from the Christian Science Monitor
• Bibliography
  

August Strindberg & Helium

Helium is a buoyant pink balloon and his best pal Strindberg is, well . . . Strindberg. As Very Short List puts it, "Strindberg struggles with the hell of daily existence. Helium delivers kisses and cupcakes."

You can watch four short, funny animations featuring the pair at August Strindberg & Helium.

Google Mail Goggles

If your mother was doing her job, she warned you never to send off a scathing letter in the heat of passion. Sure, write it, but then tuck it away in the drawer overnight and then throw it away in the morning.

Reportedly, even Mark Twain didn't send off his angry letters, even though his are a lot funnier than ours, as witness his complaint to the Hartford Gas & Electric Co.:

Some day you will move me almost to the verge of irritation by your chuckle-headed Goddamned fashion of shutting your Goddamned gas off without giving any notice to your Goddamned parishioners. Several times you have come within an ace of smothering half of this household in their beds and blowing up the other half by this idiotic, not to say criminal, custom of yours. And it has happened again today. Haven't you a telephone?

The point is Twain didn't send that letter, and neither should you.

Sadly, email has made it even easier to send indiscreet missives. Having noticed that the email equivalent of drinking & dialing causes untold human misery, Google has come to our rescue with Mail Goggles.

Here's how it works. When enabled on Gmail (Google's email tool), Mail Goggles becomes active late at night on the weekends. When it detects late night email activity, it will test whether you really want to send that email to your, say, ex-boyfriend by asking you first to complete a few math problems. Once the program has verified that you are in your right mind, it will allow you to send the email. Otherwise, it holds it until the next morning and double-checks with you then.

You control the difficulty of the math problems. As the wits on Wait Wait . . . Don't Tell Me!  observed last week, it's too bad Google doesn't have a version for English majors, where--instead of math problems--we would be asked to name the four March sisters in 15 seconds.

“It ain’t what you don’t know that hurts you. It’s what you know that ain’t so.”

Will Rogers said, "It ain’t what you don’t know that hurts you. It’s what you know that ain’t so." Or maybe it was Mark Twain who said it? Or Sachel Paige? Josh Billings? Yogi Berra?! Whatever. The point stands as a staple of folk wisdom: firmly held and unquestioned beliefs get people into trouble because we're often wrong.

Very Short List: Science calls our attention to an addition to this discussion, Robert Burton's book On Being Certain:

Robert Burton is a neurologist (and novelist) who marshals scientific and psychological arguments and concludes that our strongest convictions can arise just as readily from prelogical processes as from rational thought. Alarmingly, Burton also suggests that our sense of certainty attaches as readily and firmly to false ideas as to true ones — and feels precisely the same whether we’re dead right or totally wrong. (our emphasis)

According to Burton, confidence in our untested beliefs may have given us an evolutionary edge by allowing us to act decisively in moments of crisis . . . but sometimes we assume too much and get ourselves in trouble.

Sorted Books | Revealed Meaning

The Sorted Book Project is a creation of Nina Katchadourian:

The Sorted Books project began in 1993 years ago and is ongoing. The project has taken place in many different places over the years, ranging form private homes to specialized public book collections. The process is the same in every case: culling through a collection of books, pulling particular titles, and eventually grouping the books into clusters so that the titles can be read in sequence, from top to bottom. The final results are shown either as photographs of the book clusters or as the actual stacks themselves, shown on the shelves of the library they were drawn from. Taken as a whole, the clusters from each sorting aim to examine that particular library's focus, idiosyncrasies, and inconsistencies — a cross-section of that library's holdings. At present, the Sorted Books project comprises more than 130 book clusters.

Lying Emails

As if email weren't already tricky enough, now a researcher at Lehigh University has demonstrated that "people using e-mail lied almost 50 percent more often than those using pen-and-paper": 

“There is a growing concern in the workplace over e-mail communications, and it comes down to trust,” says Belkin, an assistant professor of management in the College of Business and Economics. “You’re not afforded the luxury of seeing non-verbal and behavioral cues over e-mail. And in an organizational context, that leaves a lot of room for misinterpretation and, as we saw in our study, intentional deception.”

. . .  “It’s not just that e-mailers were more deceptive,” Belkin says. “It’s that the magnitude by which they lied was significantly greater.”

You can read a press release on the study here.

Banned Book Week Display

We're shame-faced to say we missed Banned Books Week this year (September 27 - October 4). Luckily Boing Boing caught wind of how the event was celebrated at Twin Hickory Area Library in Glen Allen, Virginia. The library created a window display (above) and enlisted volunteers to sit there and read banned and challenged books.

For more on Banned Books Week, see the American Library Association .

"Why can't a woman be more like a man?" . . . and Vice Versa?

In My Fair Lady, Professor Higgins asks, "Why can't a woman be more like a man?"

The BBC's Science & Nature web page says, "Some researchers say that men can have 'women's brains' and that women can think more like men." And the BBC invites you to learn more about brain sex differences by taking their online Sex ID test, designed to test whether your brain is more typically male or female.

We scored a zero on the quiz. No, that score doesn't mean we failed the Sex ID test; it just means our brain is exactly halfway between male and female.

Everything You Need to Know . . .

The Money Meltdown
. . . is a web site put together by an online journalist to provide "useful, authoritative, and comprehensive information about our current financial crisis in an accessible way." Think of it as a crib sheet for understanding what happened, how it happened, how it compares to bailouts of the past, and how to visualize $700 billion.

On a single webpage , you'll find a link of the day and a collection of useful links pertaining to

1. Background
2. Key Facts
3. What's Next
4. Your Money
5. Catharsis (the Jon Stewart clip is especially good!)
   

Umbrella Today?

Just enter your zip code at umbrellatoday.com and get the world's simplest weather report. The nifty part is that you can sign up for Umbrella Today? alerts to your cell phone, thus making sure that you're never caught unawares when you leave the house.

48 Years of Presidential Debates: "The visual medium of television shades reality"

Debating our Destiny is "A look at the pivotal moments from the last 48 years of presidential debates through the eyes of those who were there. . . . On this website, visitors can take a closer look behind the past 48 years of presidential debates by reading background essays, viewing video clips of these meetings, and also by watching the documentary in its entirety."

Think you're up on your presidential debate history? Try the fun Debate Quotes quiz on the site's homepage.

Science Tattoo Emporium

Who knew that science geeks had tatts? Well, they do. Representations of uranium atoms on ribcages, molecular structures on arms, dinosaurs creeping up legs, the web of life covering backs, and Darwin's influence everywhere. Below are a few samples, but you should look at all the inspired tattoos at the Science Tattoo Emporium.

Einstein v. Newton, on the arms of a physics major:

 

A carbon tattoo with Jetsons-inspired coloration celebrates graduate work in organic chemistry:

The owner of a double helix (received on the occasion of the submission of his PhD thesis) poses with James Watson, co-discoverer of the structure of DNA:

University of Wyoming's Digital Initiative

From the UW Digital Iniitiative web site:

Since 2002 the Initiative has collaborated to build digital collections of scholarly and general interest with other partners from across campus, the state of Wyoming, and the region. The Initiative is a member of the Collaborative Digitization Program and is a member of several CDP working groups to establish best practices and projects, including Western Trails, the Rocky Mountain Online Archive (RMOA), and Sound Model. Other Initiative projects include establishing the Wyoming Memory Portal, a gateway to Wyoming’s primary resources; and a collaborative digitization project with the Rocky Mountain Herbarium.

Sticks and Stones . . . and Sweetie-Pie

OAP - Old Angry Person
Originally uploaded by Jack.ed

Turns out that "elderspeak" irritates many older people so much that it can actually make them sick.

Elderspeak describes the belittling form of address to older people which includes sprinkling in pseudo-endearments ("Sweetie," "Dear"), speaking in a louder than normal voice, and assuming the person is not competent (about computers, to order food, etc.). Today's New York Times reports that "Those little insults can lead to more negative images of aging . . .. And those who have more negative images of aging have worse functional health over time, including lower rates of survival.”

Health care workers, apparently, are the worse offenders, putting people in nursing homes in a precarious situation. Tolerate the elderspeak, and they may fume. Speak out against it aggressively, and they may receive less care.

You can read the whole article at "In ‘Sweetie’ and ‘Dear,’ a Hurt for the Elderly."

Basic Computer Tips | Clip 'n' Save!

On his blog Pogue'sPosts , David Pogue of The New York Times's has posted the most useful Tech Tips for the Basic Computer User. We reproduce the tips the most useful for word processing here:

• You can double-click a word to highlight it in any document, e-mail or Web page.
• When you get an e-mail message from eBay or your bank, claiming that you have an account problem or a question from a buyer, it’s probably a “phishing scam” intended to trick you into typing your password. Don’t click the link in the message. If in doubt, go into your browser and type “www.ebay.com” (or whatever) manually.
• Nobody, but nobody, is going to give you half of $80 million to help them liberate the funds of a deceased millionaire…from Nigeria or anywhere else.
• You can hide all windows, revealing only what’s on the computer desktop, with one keystroke: hit the Windows key and “D” simultaneously in Windows, or press F11 on Macs (on recent Mac laptops, Command+F3; Command is the key with the cloverleaf logo). That’s great when you want examine or delete something you’ve just downloaded to the desktop, for example. Press the keystroke again to return to what you were doing.
• You can enlarge the text on any Web page. In Windows, press Ctrl and the plus or minus keys (for bigger or smaller fonts); on the Mac, it’s the Command key and plus or minus.
• You can also enlarge the entire Web page or document by pressing the Control key as you turn the wheel on top of your mouse. On the Mac, this enlarges the entire screen image.

. . . .

• When someone sends you some shocking e-mail and suggests that you pass it on, don’t. At least not until you’ve first confirmed its truth at snopes.com, the Internet’s authority on e-mailed myths. This includes get-rich schemes, Microsoft/AOL cash giveaways, and–especially lately–nutty scare-tactic messages about our Presidential candidates.
• You can tap the Space bar to scroll down on a Web page one screenful. Add the Shift key to scroll back up.
• When you’re filling in the boxes on a Web page (like City, State, Zip), you can press the Tab key to jump from box to box, rather than clicking. Add the Shift key to jump through the boxes backwards.

. . . . .

• When you’re searching for something on the Web using, say, Google, put quotes around phrases that must be searched together. For example, if you put quotes around “electric curtains,” Google won’t waste your time finding one set of Web pages containing the word “electric” and another set containing the word “curtains.”
• You can use Google to do math for you. Just type the equation, like 23*7+15/3=, and hit Enter.
• Oh, yeah: on the computer,* means “times” and / means “divided by.”
• If you can’t find some obvious command, like Delete in a photo program, try clicking using the right-side mouse button. (On the Mac, you can Control-click instead.)
• Google is also a units-of-measurement and currency converter. Type “teaspoons in 1.3 gallons,” for example, or “euros in 17 dollars.” Click Search to see the answer.
• You can open the Start menu by tapping the key with the Windows logo on it.
• You can switch from one open program to the next by pressing Alt+Tab (Windows) or Command-Tab (Mac).
• You generally can’t send someone more than a couple of full-size digital photos as an e-mail attachment; those files are too big, and they’ll bounce back to you. (Instead, use iPhoto or Picasa–photo-organizing programs that can automatically scale down photos in the process of e-mailing them.)

. . . . .

• Just putting something into the Trash or the Recycle Bin doesn’t actually delete it. You then have to *empty* the Trash or Recycle Bin. (Once a year, I hear about somebody whose hard drive is full, despite having practically no files. It’s because over the years, they’ve put 79 gigabytes’ worth of stuff in the Recycle Bin and never emptied it.)
• You don’t have to type “http://www” into your Web browser. Just type the remainder: “nytimes.com” or “dilbert.com,” for example. (In the Safari browser, you can even leave off the “.com” part.)

. . . . .

• Come up with an automated backup system for your computer. There’s no misery quite like the sick feeling of having lost chunks of your life because you didn’t have a safety copy.

Beauty Surrounds Us

National Museum of the American Indian presents an online version of the exhibit Beauty Surrounds Us which presents a range of objects and activities divided into categories such as "Nurturing Identity," "Elegance of Presentation," and "Power of Transformation." The beautiful objects originate with Native peoples of both North and South America and include traditional materials and contemporary media.

Picture below, Kayapó  man's headdress (Gorotire, Brazil, Cordage, feathers, wool yarn, cotton twine, 25/4894):

Colors of the Night

"It often seems to me that the night is much more alive and richly coloured than the day." (Vincent van Gogh, Arles, 8 September 1888)

 

Van Gogh and the Colors of the Night is a beautiful online exhibit from MoMA featuring works depicting night and twilight. (Above, The Sower, 1888, a twilight picture.) The exhibit includes commentary, audio clips, sketches, pages from Van Gogh's journals, and gorgeous web representations of the paintings.

Getting Out the Vote: 1840-2008

We love the graphical representation of data . . . such as the beautiful, interactive maps at Voting America: United States Politics, 1840-2008, created by the Digital Scholarship Lab at the University of Richmond.

Pictured below, state-level popular voting in the 1860 presidential race:

Anathem, by Neal Stephenson

One of our favorite authors--Neal Stephenson--has published a new book: Anathem.

How Does One Say "Oink" in Korean?

"A cow says Moo. A sheep says Baa. Three singing pigs say La La La!" At least, that's what Sandra Boynton would give us to understand in Moo, Baa, La La La!

For an alternate explanation, we suggest bzzzspeek.com, which is an absolutely charming web site with a "collection of 'onomatopoeia' from around the world using sound recordings from native speakers imitating the sounds of mainly animals and vehicles."

One clicks, for instance, on the British flag-cow to hear what cows say in UK English, on the French flag-cow to hear it in French, and so on. The native speakers seem to be mostly children, making their charming animal sounds.

JAMA to FDA: "BPA Not Safe"

Many students travel the campus with their own refillable water bottles in hand--as a matter of going green or of global justice. Now a JAMA editorial urges using the right kind of water bottle as a matter of better health.

The 17 September 2008 editorial--"Bisphenol A and Risk of Metabolic Disorders"--points to a study which suggests "a significant relationship between urine concentrations of BPA and cardiovascular disease, type 2 diabetes, and liver-enzyme abnormalities in a representative sample of the adult US population." BPA, or Bisphenol A, is a chemical commonly used as a base in polycarbonate plastic food and beverage containers.

The editorial urges the FDA and other regulatory agencies to follow the lead of Canada and declare "BPA a 'toxic chemical' requiring aggressive action to limit human and environmental exposures." It also urges follow-up studies to establish biological causality between BPA and major human metabolic diseases beyond the shadow of a doubt.

What does this mean to you?

Well, first of all, make sure you are using a BPA-free water bottle. National Geographic's Green Guide lists safe water bottles:

• Kleen Kanteen stainless steel water bottle w/ cap, 27 fluid ounces ($17.95; www.kleankanteen.com)

• MLS Stainless Steel Thermos Bottle, 1 liter ($22.16; www.mls-group.com)

• Nissan Thermos FBB500 Briefcase Bottle, 1pt ($35; www.coffee-makers-espresso-machines.com)

• Sigg resin coated aluminum sport bottle, 25 ounces ($19.99; www.mysigg.com)

• Platypus #5 polypropylene 2+collapsible water bottle, 2.4 liters ($9.95; www.rei.com)

• Nalgene HDPE Loop-Top Bottle, 16 ounces ($4.53; www.nalgene-outdoor.com)

Pencils, Not for Writing Alone

As it happens, we aren't the only pencil-lovers in the world. The fellows at JAD Projectcreated beautiful hand-carved pencil sculptures years ago:

Artist Jennifer Maestre produces eerily beautiful creature forms using colored pencils which she's cut and strung like beads:

To help celebrate its centenary, Faber Castell commissioned all kinds of pencil sculptures from German artist Kerstin Schulz, using thousands of sharpened ‘Castell 9000’ pencils:

Finally, here's a slightly more comfortable looking bench, from 3D Creative Solutions:

Free Movies . . . Online

How often have you sat around on a Saturday night, wishing you could go to a movie but--darn it!--you're a poor student, so it wouldn't be prudent?

No need to be culturally deprived! Free resources on the internet come to the rescue once again:

PublicDomainFlicks.com provides free downloads of full-length feature films that are in the public domain. When we visited the site, the newest additions to the collection ranged from from Little Lord Fauntleroy (1936, dir. John Cromwell) to Terror in the Midnight Sun (1959, dir. Virgil W. Vogel -- "Aliens release a furry critter in the wilds of Lapland where it takes a woman captive and threatens a group of scientists.")

The Moving Image Archive of the Internet Archive also features films that are within the public domain, conveniently categorized according to type, such as Animation & Cartoons, Arts & Music, Ephemeral Films, Movies, etc. One can view classic films here, such as D.O.A. (1950, dir. Rudolph Maté), The Little Shop Of Horrors (1960, dir. Rodger Corman), Topper Returns (1941, dir. Hal Roach), or the Charlie Chaplin films. It was in the web site's Prelinger Archives that we found Alaska: A Modern Frontier (rev. ed., 1948), a useful introduction to the Republican veep candidate's home state.

Of course, some current movies are available, too, on internet sites. We like the following site:

• imdb.com--a selection of full-length movies and full-length TV episodes
• hulu.com--free content shown with commercial interuptions
• Fancast
  

And how to decide what's worth watching? Take a look at Film Resources on the Web: An Introduction from the Association of Colleges & Research Libraries.

---

See also our previous post on Historic Video Footage from NARA.

Souvenirs

 

Michael Hughes, a photographer based in Berlin, has covered the globe since 1999 taking pictures of the world's most famous tourist destinations . . . and holding toy or miniature replicates in front of them. (Above, the Eiffel Tower covered by an "inflated polyeurothane, coloured, model kit from which the lowest storey fell off.")

The result, oddly enough, isn't particularly kitschy; instead, it leads to interesting ruminations upon the nature of monuments and memory. You can view the delightful photo set on Flickr.

Creepy Ads of Yesteryear

Weirdomatic.com, which is "A resource for most interesting, funny and weird pictures gathered from around the web," has a strangely disturbing feature on creepy old ads. Seriously, doesn't that little girl pictured above worry you?

Other ads are equally troubling, such as the one which pictures the line-drawing of an enormous-eyed waif with the blurb: "There is a form of short-acting Nembutal to serve every need in barbituate therapy."

You can view the gallery at Weirdomatic.com.

The Greatest Trips in History

Good Magazine has posted an interactive map feature called Wanderlust: GOOD traces the most famous trips in history. Just launch interactive graphic, choose a route from Magellan to Kerouac, and start exploring. [via Boing Boing]

Extreme Ironing

According to the Extreme Ironing Bureau's FAQs,

The sport that is 'extreme ironing' is an outdoor activity that combines the danger and excitement of an 'extreme' sport with the satisfaction of a well pressed shirt. It involves taking an iron and board (if possible) to remote locations and ironing a few items of laundry. This can involve ironing on a mountainside, preferably on a difficult climb, or taking an iron skiing, snowboarding or canoeing. . . . It all started in the city of Leicester in the UK, in the summer of 1997. When mild mannered Steam, returned home after a long day in the knitwear factory, the last thing he wanted to do was start on a pile of ironing. The sun was shining and Phil preferred the idea of an evening out pursuing his (somewhat unsuccessful) hobby of rock climbing. Then it occurred to him to combine these activities into an extreme sport - the result: extreme ironing.

PSA: Arts Education

See Americans for the Arts for more information.

100-Year-Old Photos

"Shorpy.com is a photoblog featuring high-definition images from the first half of the 20th century." Pictured above: "Coney Island circa 1903. 'Luna Park at night.' Time exposure on an 8x10 glass negative. Detroit Publishing Company, Library of Congress."

How Wired.com Produces a Story

Storyboard is a limited, one-time only blog from Wired.com that shows the sausage-making process of producing a story for Wired Magazine, in this case, a profile of Charlie Kaufman.

The editors say the blog is

An almost-real-time, behind-the-scenes look at the assigning, writing, editing, and designing of a Wired feature. You can see more about the design process on Wired creative director Scott Dadich's SPD blog, The Process. This is a one-time experiment, tied solely to the Charlie Kaufman profile scheduled to run in our November 08 issue.

Strange & Wonderful Fences

Dark Roasted Blend has a wonderful post with pictures of Some of the World's Strangest Fences. (via BoingBoing)

Memorable Blog Titles

We recommend Barf Blog, a seriously (and seriously interesting) blog hosted by Kansas State University and published by the International Food Safety Network. Where else, we ask, can you run across a feature called Yuck factor or read of musing of guest barfbloggers.

Warning: You may wish to read it on an empty stomach.

Handy-Dandy Propaganda Detector

Writing for Poynter.org, Roy Peter Clark preps for the election season by offering "seven of my favorite propaganda detection tools." In the hope that "reason and critical thinking can help balance emotion and passion," Clark lists the seven with reference to the current political races:

1. Name calling. Bad names are the most prolific forms of propaganda, especially when you are trying to diminish an opponent as "liberal" or "most liberal" or "ultra-conservative" or "extremist" or "hypocritical." McCain is "out of touch" because he owns seven homes. Obama is merely a "celebrity" with a "rock star complex," but no real experience.
2. Glittering Generalities. This device requires "virtue words" that describe ideals that no one could argue against, a strategy often referred to as "motherhood and apple pie." Here is Michelle Obama: "It was the greatest gift a child can receive: never doubting for a single minute that you're loved, and cherished, and have a place in this world. And thanks to their faith and hard work, we both were able to go to college. So I know firsthand from their lives – and mine – that the American dream endures."
3. The Transfer. Used both for and against causes, this strategy transfers the authority or status of one person or institution onto another. When Obama invokes the names of Abraham Lincoln, or FDR, or JFK, or MLK, he tries to transfer some of their charisma onto him. When Republicans made fun of the Corinthian columns that served as a backdrop for Obama's speech as "too Roman," they tied Obama to imperial ambition.
4. The Testimonial. In politics these are often called "endorsements." These come not just from politicians, but from celebrities – athletes and entertainers – who shed their blessings on a candidate or a cause. Oprah Winfrey has testified on behalf of Barack Obama; Joe Lieberman on behalf of John McCain.
5. Plain Folks. Crucial in political propaganda, the supporter of a candidate or a cause must persuade the audience that the chosen one, no matter how wealthy, is a man of the people, or a loving mother, or the kind of person you'd want to share a beer with. Look for homey words like "town," "village," "farm," "diner," "bar," "train," "folks," "coal mine," "kitchen table."
6. Card Stacking. Think of this as a full-court press of persuasion, the kind that the Bush administration undertook in support of the war in Iraq. List the accumulated justifications for war: weapons of mass destruction, destroying a dictator, regime change, establishing democracy, fighting terrorism, securing the flow of Middle Eastern oil. Those for the war would support such card stacking; those against would argue those justifications fell like a house of cards.
7. The Band Wagon. This is the "everyone is doing it" technique. Look for a candidate staging a speech in a stadium. Look for words like "journey" and "battle" and "movement" and "march" and "mandate for change." Tyrants are especially good at this: Hitler used cinema to capture and romanticize huge rallies in support of the Third Reich.

Pencil, Paper, & Glue

Peter Callesen takes a flat piece of A4 paper and turns it into a witty, 3-D sculpture, using nothing more than pencil, scissors, and glue. Visit his gallery and marvel.

Oh, when I die,
you just bury me
Away out west,
where the wind blows free.
Let cattle rab my tombstone down,
Let coyotes mourn their kin.
Let horses come and paw the mound,
But please, don't fence me in.

Buckaroos in Paradise: Ranching Culture in Northern Nevada, 1945-1982 is an online exhibit from the Library of Congress. Here's what the Internet Scout Report says about the exhibit:

In the life and cultural landscape of northern Nevada in the 20th century, the Ninety-Six Ranch looms large. It seems quite appropriate that the ranch forms the core of this very fine online collection from the Library of Congress' American Memory project. The collection includes 41 motion pictures and 28 sound recordings that tell the story of life and work on the Ninety-Six Ranch from the 1940s to the 1960s. Additionally, visitors can also browse through 2,400 still photographs, which portray the sites, traditions, and people of other ranches in the area. Visitors will also want to read some of the thematic essays here, which include "Buckaroo: Views of a Western Way of Life" and "Haying, Irrigation and Branding: Tradition and Innovation". Overall, the collection is one that will intrigue and delight not only those who have a curiosity about ranching, but also those with an interest in the myths and realities of the American West.

Dirty [Flower] Pictures

The artist's statement from Herbarium Amoris: A Tribute to Carl Linnaeus:

Since 1999, I have collected pictures of plants. It has become a kind of photograhic herbarium. The inspiration comes from Carl Linnaeus writings about the reproduction of plants and I have tried to approach the subject with the same curiosity and eagerness as he clearly had.

Linnaeus was free and poetic in both his speech and his text. He compared the sexuality of plants and humans as a pedagogic tool and he certainly was not shy! My aim has been to make pictures as Linnaeus himself would have done if he had access to our time's photographic techniques and to give Linnaeus insights into plant's sexuality a present-day shape.

Edvard Koinberg (Trans. Brian Ashley)

You can visit the exhibit online at Swedish Institute.

Chuck Palahniuk on How to Stop Shoplifting

Political Fact Checkers

With American politics surging out of the Democratic and Republican national conventions toward the General Election pull out, you may find yourself dizzy from the spin. That's where political fact checkers enter in. These non-partisan web sites attempt to track down the truth about the outrageous claims candidates make about each other and ferret out the uncomfortable reality candidates may attempt to hide about themselves.

We recommend three:

1. PolitiFact, home of the Truth-o-meter (pictured above) and the Flip-o-meter;
   
2. FactCheck.org; and
3. OnTheIssues.org, a web site which tracks the voting, speech, and interview record of "Every Political Leader on Every Issue."

Great Web Apps for Students

You're a student on a tight budget who can't afford to buy the student version of Microsoft Office Suite (now available to students for about $60 for the Ultimate edition . . . which is hard to beat). What to do? Easy! Use a free web application.

Last year, ReadWriteWeb posted a long list of handy online tools titled Web 2.0 Backpack: Web Apps for Students. It's a great list that they've updated this year with Back to School: 10 Great Web Apps for College Students.

Get Your Grammar Geek On

We recommend Sentence Diagrams, by Eugene R. Moutoux, for delightful visualizations of how English works. One fun section diagrams sentences taken from famous documents, such as the opening of the Gettysburg Address (above). Another section features sentences from contemporary journalists.

Helium and Celluloid

Helium and Celluloid is a six-minute clip reel created by Jerry Rees which seamlessly, perfectly, and brilliantly inserts a gently bobbling balloon into classic film scenes. The result inspires. We guffawed aloud during Rick's gin joint speech and are gratified to learn the inspiration behind La Femme Nikita's laundry chute dive.

Best of the Web

PC Magazine has listed its Top Web Sites of 2008, including the The Top 100 Classic Web Sites and The Top 100 Undiscovered Web Sites. The list is a great place to pick up useful tools and information.

Extend Firefox 3 Contest Winners

One of the beauties of using Mozilla's Firefox 3 as one's internet browser is the ability to customize it as one wishes by adding extensions. Hundreds of extensions are available--some of which we would have trouble living without.

To encourage the development of new nifty extensions, Mozilla Labs periodically holds a contest and the winners of the Extend Firefox 3 winners are now available in categories such as Best Add-ons, Best Updated Add-on, and Best Music Add-on:

• Best Add-ons: Pencil by Dương Thành An; Tagmarks by Felipe Tassario Gomes; and HandyTag by Rémi Szymkowiak
• Best Updated Add-on: Read it Later by Nate Weiner
  
• Best Music Add-on: Fire.fm from Jorge Villalobos and Jose Enrique Bolaños.

You mean you still aren't using Firefox??! Download it now!