Ask Lifehacker: Keep Google from caching my site?: Important tip for those of you who post under your real name, but plan to cleanse your online presence in time for employers. I went ahead and purged my name from this site and disconnected it from my personal website long ago to foil future employers who might google me, but I think I'll use this bit of code on my personal site so I can destroy it at will later on.

Google Maps the census: "This Google Maps mashup from AnalGIS and SRC adds census information from the 2000 census to the Google Maps interface we already know and love.
Just put in your address and you can quickly see the population, income, and housing statistics for your area in a 1, 3, and 5 mile radius of your home. "

What's really crazy is to pick a big city and see the demographics change as you pick suburbs. My grandparents live in Mountainbrook, AL: average income within 5miles= 107k. Just one click over in downtown B'ham: average income= 28k.

Hello My Name Is… Pint Glass Set: " Screw those twee little wine charms. These pint glasses let you claim your beer by autographing it with a grease pencil. "


Seriously, this is wild and so easy. Laura and Lisa may actually have things to read again (I know they're the only ones still checking).

(BTW:I had a really tough stats test this morning and anything is amusing right now.)

I just found out I can instantly blog items from my Google Reader list (there's a blogthis! option under more actions...) Crazy! I might actually start posting again!

Why you should shred credit card applications: Super-creepy experimental results. I'm glad I've got my handy-dandy $20 Target shredder, even if it is loud and scares me.

Random quote from my readings to prove I'm much too busy being academic to post here:

"Much of school is like having students practice the forehand, backhand, and serve needed for tennis, without letting them know what the game is."
-- Allan Collins on authentic tasks

"Typos are very important to all written form. It gives the reader something to look for so they aren't distracted by the total lack of content in your writing."
-Randy K. Milholland

"I have come to believe that the whole world is an enigma, a harmless enigma that is made terrible by our own mad attempt to interpret it as though it had an underlying truth."
- Umberto Eco

(google's personalized webpages really rock, I'm swimming in daily quotes from them)

Where the hell is my chiffon?

Just in time for me to be too busy to watch tv, I have discovered Project Runway. Why isn't TMFT covering it much? Luckily, TVgasm has my back. By the way, is everyone aware of TVgasm? I hope I've mentioned it before. It's crazy-hilarious. I can read their reviews in five to ten minutes and get a lot more laughs than I would out of 22 minutes of the actual show, no matter how funny (Laguna Beach is a case-in-point). Their coverage of Grey's Anatomy is pretty awesome, too (though I wouldn't give up the actual show).

I'm really hoping I find a way to work in the above quote into my real life sometime. I guess when things get hectic later in the semester, I'll try it out on my officemates.

I don't quite buy this story about the parrot who busted a cheating girlfriend. It's a little too fantastic, but it's definitely a warning to cheaters: parrots are loyal pets and they'll bust you.

Also, I have enough trouble getting into a traditional elevator-- there's no way I'd get into one that was held up by "magnetic levitation". I want proper cords and brakes and everything between me and a plummet to the basement.

Be wary of anyone who turns up at your school demanding to be called "your grace" and claiming to be in line for the British throne. He's probably a nutjob, a sex offender, or both, as in this case.

2006 World Question: What is your dangerous idea?

There are too many respondents to keep my interest, so I just looked for psychologists I knew. These were especially interesting:

Richard Nisbett
Steven Pinker
David Lykken
David Myers
Susan Blackmore

I absolutely agree with Nisbett that we can't report on the reasons for our own behavior. I was already convinced of this by Skinner's About Behaviorism. Social psychologists and Behaviorists can finally agree on something!

I also agree with Pinker- groups differences, even if they are genetic, shouldn't be important. Knowing that women score lower on spatial reasoning tests on average tells you nothing about whether you should hire a particular woman for your job that depends on strong spatial reasoning skills. I think it's a common cognitive error to apply average group differences as if all group members were the same.

I agree with Lykken to an extent about parental licensure, but I sure wouldn't say it in public! Lastly, I agree with Myers. I hope in the near future, banning gay marriages will seem as ridiculous to common sensibility as banning interracial marriages seems now.

Link courtesy of Lifehacker

I was going to post a summary of my horror-story travels yesterday, but I don't feel like reliving it to tell it. Suffice to say, my 11am flight was canceled, I was put on the 8pm flight, which took off at 11pm, getting me to Moline about 12 hours late. Oh, and Daniel's car wouldn't start when we got to Moline, so we had to track down a starter kit at 2:00 in the morning. I don't want to fly ever again.

More pleasant, random aside: I'm so hooked on "What can I say" by Brandi Carlile. I need more friends hooked on Grey's Anatomy (where I first heard it). I think it's my new 50-times-in-a-row, relaxing study song. Previous such songs have been "Chariots Rise" (Lizzie West), "Maps" (Yeah Yeah Yeahs), "It's my life" (No Doubt), and "Selah" (Lauryn Hill). I have listened to each of these songs for upwards of 2-5 hours straight. "Chariots Rise" has been played 723 times in my windows media. Why do I do this? Crazy.

I should've mentioned this a week or two ago, but I don't think it's too late. I'm answering two letters to Santa from kids in Chicago through the Sun-Times. I'd heard about Operation Santa Claus in New York, but I'm too cynical to answer random letters at the post office. I went with the Sun-Times since they vet all of the letters so you know they're a real kid and really needy. Anyway, if you're in the midwest and looking for an excuse to drop up to $25 on toys, you should check out the Sun-Times program. You can still probably get the letters with enough time to ship the toys. If you're not in the midwest, there are obviously a million programs doing the same thing. I'm just psyched I get to shop for a Dora the Explorer doll.
(Daniel actually did some browsing for me and got heckled by a Walmart employee, poor thing, hahaha).

Oh, the horrors. I've become a regular Today show watcher this year, and I've often wondered how stable the anchoring lineup was. Now I see this news, and all I can say is ---Please, please, please NBC, don't let Ann Curry take over. She is the worst interviewer and I won't hesitate to go back to Spongebob Squarepants in the morning if I don't like the new anchor.

Hmm, maybe Katie could take Ann with her?

It's a week before finals, and once again this means more blogging and more websurfing than could possibly be healthy. Anyway, AHSers-- have you seen the AHS wikipedia entry? Who knew our school was so progressive in educating women and integrating races? It's probably a lot of PC-spin, but it still makes you feel a little proud.

Jump down, turn around, pick a bale of cotton

I'm bummed to find out that one of my favorite music class songs from elementary school is so objectionable. It's so darn catchy; I had it in my head all last night after reading this article. I always assumed the song was something that cotton-pickers sang, not something sung about them. Isn't that celebrating cultural heritage rather than glorifying slavery? It's all in the spin.

Freakin' ridiculous.
I watched The Lady Vanishes tonight and it didn't take long to realize that I've seen a movie of identical plot very recently. Two travelers on a closed vehicle, one falls asleep and wakes to find the companion missing. There's a psychologist on the vehicle to convince the remaining traveler that she imagined her companion. One traveler writes in the steam of a window which later reappears to freak out the other traveler. That's not all, but it's enough to show that Flight Plan is such a rip-off of the Hitchcock classic and they should list the movie as a remake, not a reference to the original on IMDB. And to think, I believed Hollywood still had some original ideas in them!

Yay, my mom was the star interviewee for the OA News's article on the Fall Festival. What Auburnite doesn't have fond memories of the Fall Festival? Apparently my fond memories start from '83 when I assisted my mother at the duck pond. Good times.

Lisa, were you aware that your alma mater's student president has declared himself supreme ruler and declared war on Washington U? Why didn't Emory do something normal and attack one of the dozens of colleges in Atlanta? Georgia Tech, for example, has mostly unrequited hate for UGA (see lyrics to "To Hell With Georgia", "Ramblin Wreck", and "White and Gold"). I'm sure they could spare some hate and some t.p. for Emory.

Fabulous and informative site: Charity Navigator. I used a much less fancy site to pick Doctors Without Borders as my charity of choice earlier this year. This site is much cooler, and confirmed my choice. How can you go wrong when they give a star-rating instead of making you decide how much administrative spending is too much?
I know gas prices have everyone freaked, but maybe some people will get the charity-donating bug from donating to Katrina victims (the red cross got my pity money this time) and will start donating regularly. I'm living off a grad student assistantship, and I can afford a little something every month. I'm just saying...