Recently in miscellany

A big box of mints arrived at my doorstep last week. But they weren't just ordinary mints. No, they were XyliChew Mints with 100% Xylitol! I've been a big fan of XyliChew and its dusty purple cousin Ricochet for a couple years now, but their great taste is only one small reason for my affection.

The thing I like most about XyliChew is its marketing. First of all, the name is brilliant because the mints aren't chewy at all (nor are they xyley). Next, they claim that the mints are "100% Xylotol" in the upper left corner on the front of the package, while on the back in fine print the ingredients are listed as "Xylitol, Gum Arabic, Magnesium Stearate, Natural Flavor, Carnauba Wax, Beeswax." Maybe they're just giving 110 percent.

My favorite example of marketing sleight of hand has to be the "DOUBLE BONUS: ORIGINAL FORMULA. MORE MINTS." Fine. I can see how getting more mints would be a bonus. But how in the world can anyone claim that not changing something is a bonus? It's like saying, "Hey, everyone, we're going to pay you the same this year as we did last year. Bonus!"

Did I mention they're made in Finland? Triple Bonus!

Ben told me yesterday that his new year's resolution was "to hope that the economics improve." It was a sweet statement, but I couldn't help notice that it involved no work on his part—unless you count as work worrying about something over which you have no control.

My resolution is less noble, and it also requires no work: I will not engage in any wingsuit base jumping. Watch this video to find out why:

[wingsuit base jumping on Vimeo]

How about you? Have you made any good new year's resolutions this year?

I'm going to go out on a limb here and guess that not one of you is wondering why I haven't been writing as often on this here website as I used to. Well, I'm going to tell you why, anyway.

It's not because I don't have enough time. Never had enough time. And it's not because I've lost interest. The sad truth is that I have too much interest—but it's the kind of interest that is easily diverted, distracted, and detained. Also, newer, smaller, nimbler online publishing mechanisms such as Twitter have jostled their way into my attention. Twitter enforces a 140-character limit on every entry, which basically ensures that no one publishes anything of consequence. Ephemera only, please. Here's an analogy: Twitter is to blog is to letter (as in "snail mail") as methamphetamine is to mojito is to single malt scotch.

But enough of this navel-gazing meta-blogging.

A couple weeks ago I set a goal for myself—to read a book in its entirety. Any book. It has been at least three months since I have done that. Bad sign. The book I'm working on now is called The Know-It-All: One Man's Humble Quest to Become the Smartest Person in the World. The title made me a little skeptical, but after reading just a few pages, I fell in love with it. The author, A.J Jacobs, is hilarious. The book chronicles his attempt to read the Encyclopædia from A to Z. Each letter of the alphabet gets its own chapter, in which Jacobs discusses a handful of the more interesting, bizarre, inspiring, or creepy entries. Throughout it all, he weaves in a personal narrative about his self-improvement plan and the reactions he gets from his wife and friends and complete strangers when he tries to regale them with anecdotes from his new storehouse of knowledge.

The book is making me realize all over again how very little I know. For example, if you asked me before yesterday what the northernmost state in the USA is, I would have been able to tell you that it is Alaska. But, if you asked what the westernmost state is, I probably would have guessed Hawaii. Easternmost? My guess would have been Maine. But the correct answer to all three questions is Alaska!

Every once in a while, he discusses an entry that I know a little bit about. And, as pathetic as it may be, I get a giddy joy from it. When he gets to the entry on John Hanson, a smile sweeps across my face, because I already know that he, not George Washington, was the first president of the United States. But after I read it, while riding on the bus to work, the smile turns to laughter.

He's sometimes referred to as the first president of the United States, thanks to his role as president of the Continental Congress in 1781. The first president wasn't George Washington—that's a good fact to mention at the bar, assuming you want to get kicked in the groin and have your glasses broken.

It's a good thing I don't have to worry about laughing uproariously in public and looking like some kind of lunatic, because half of the other people on the bus are manically rocking back and forth or talking to themselves (or unseen others) at the top of their lungs.

This book is right up my alley—light, funny, condensed. I just hope I can finish it.

Update

I forgot to mention how I knew about John Hanson being the first president of the United States. He was a Swede. By the way, so was Jonas Bronck, the guy after whom the Bronx was named.

Whenever I see something about books as objects, as opposed to books as reading material, I think of my friend Vernon Wiering. Vern is one of the most talented people I know: a masterful bookbinder, carpenter, and tailor. At a time when many people, including myself, spend an inordinate amount of time in the virtual world—for work and entertainment and communication—Vern has remained grounded in the physical world of tangible objects.

When Vern was in college, he had his own little cottage industry providing custom-made pants for all of his friends. I still consider the two pairs he made for me twenty years ago the best pants I've ever owned (though they stopped fitting me long ago). For his wedding Vern made his own suit, the bride's dress, all of the groomsmen's suits, and all of the bridesmaids' dresses.

He gave up the tailoring gig a while ago, but he has replaced it with other crafts. A walk through Vern's house is like a trip through a museum. The dining-room table, for example, is a gorgeous work of art that he built and carved with intricate floral designs on its legs. As I write this, Vern is installing a parquet floor in his garage out of wood that he has scavenged over the years.

Vern now works as an independent bookbinder, specializing in antiquarian book restoration for universities, museums, and private book collectors.

So when I read about the art of Brian Dettmer, I immediately thought of Vern. I was going to email him a link to Dettmer's "altered books," but the more I thought about it, the more I wanted others to see both of their work.

Dettmer selectively carves portions of pages to reveal astounding three-dimensional collages hidden within a book's contents. You can see more of his art installation, Altered States (explorations in media modification), at the Aron Packer Gallery web site

On the bus ride to work this morning, I was listening to the podcast of a sermon given by Rob Bell, in which he quoted Cornel West, a Princeton University religion professor. When asked in an interview by Rolling Stone magazine if he was optimistic about the future, West replied:

The categories of optimism and pessimism do not exist for me. I am a prisoner of hope. I am going to die full of hope.

Wow. That's the kind of hope I'd like.

This article from People Magazine is over a year old, but a blog I frequent just posted a link to it, so I read it for the first time tonight. It's a truly amazing story of a boy who uses echolocation, the same technique that bats and dolphins use, to "see":

Completely blind since the age of 3, after retinal cancer claimed both his eyes (he now wears two prostheses), Ben has learned to perceive and locate objects by making a steady stream of sounds with his tongue, then listening for the echoes as they bounce off the surfaces around him. About as loud as the snapping of fingers, Ben's clicks tell him what's ahead: the echoes they produce can be soft (indicating metals), dense (wood) or sharp (glass). Judging by how loud or faint they are, Ben has learned to gauge distances.

On a side note, if I didn't see his mother's name printed in such a highly respected journal, I'd think it was just another urban legend: Aquanetta. If I recall correctly, my mom used to spray that stuff in her hair.

A couple years ago I started roasting my own coffee, using an old popcorn popper and some green coffee beans I picked up online.

A year later, I graduated to a little coffee roaster especially designed for home use. It usually did a great job of dissipating the smoke, which allowed me to keep it in the basement, but when I left it unattended one night, some of the beans jammed the agitator, causing the roaster to melt down and the basement to fill with smoke. After a couple months of repeated requests to the company's customer service department, I got my money back.

My current roaster is a significant upgrade from the cute little pre-packaged roaster that nearly burned down my house. Sure, I'm back in the garage with it, but now I can roast 4 pounds at a time instead of just four ounces.

Sara found the grill for me on freecycle.org, so all I had to do was buy the big drum and the motor to spin it around like a rotisserie. For that, my buddy Steve pointed me to RK Drums.

So far I've been pleased with how quickly I can roast a large quantity of premium beans. I still haven't managed to get all the beans to roast to a consistent level within a batch, but I'm working on it. Doesn't matter anyway, because the lattes I'm able to make from those beans are heavenly — much better than anything I've tasted in any coffee house anywhere. And that makes me very happy.

Why drive a Toyota Prius when you can drive in style? For the security-conscious motorist, Amazon is offering the Badonkadonk Land Cruiser/Tank. With top speeds of 40mph, this is the perfect vehicle for city or desert driving.

According to the product description, the Badonkadonk's "interior is fully carpeted and cozy, with accent lighting and room for up to five people." Both driver and passenger can also ride on top of the tank for high visibility or star gazing. The tank comes equipped with a fully decked-out sound system with speakers inside and out for blasting your favorite propaganda.

At under $20,000, this could be the perfect transportation for your teen who is just learning to drive. You'll never have to worry about your kid getting injured in an accident or receiving a speeding ticket.

You'll need to act quickly, though; there are only two left in stock! Gas mileage information not provided. Price does not include shipping and handling.

(via Eric Meyer)

Today was an unusual day in my town. Five blocks down the street from where I live, there was a funeral for a former President of the United States. Lucy got out of school in time to walk to the Episcopal church with Sara and see the honor guard and the secret service and the hundreds of onlookers. They also caught a fleeting glimpse of Dick Cheney. Apparently Jimmy Carter was there, too.

As I was about to leave work, I heard a loud roar from above. I gathered at one of the large windows with a few of my co-workers, and we watched as 21 fighter jets soared overhead, very close to the ground. As the last of the formations flew by, a single jet peeled off from the group and shot straight up at a blistering pace. Then it stopped. It hung motionless in the air. It began to drift to the left and down, down before gathering speed once more and flying away in the opposite direction from the others. It was a moving sight to behold.

I learned tonight that the planes were flying in the "missing man" formation. Just before they did their thing, there was an artillery salute and a 21-gun rifle salute, neither of which I heard — maybe because the office has good sound insulation or maybe because I had my iPod's volume up too loud.

As I walked out the door of my office building and looked to my left, I saw a huge swell of people coming towards me like a tidal wave. I sprinted to the parking lot and hopped in my car just as the first of those who watched Ford's burial started evacuating the city. Two minutes later and there would have been little chance of my getting to karate class before it was nearly over.

An article in the New York Times got me thinking about all of the food and wine websites I come across, even though I have little interest in either food or wine — other than, of course, the ingesting of them. Food and wine led me to parenthood, which completes the three-legged stool of familial bliss. So here it goes, a list of sites to whet your appetites:

Food

• Snacskby: "Snacksby is a different, easier kind of recipe site. You tell us what you've got in your fridge, in your pantry, or just what you're looking to find in a recipe, even how much of each ingredient and wham!, we let you know what your options are."
• I Ate a Pie: "provides reviews of healthy 'diet' foods i.e. food products that are fat-free, low carb, reduced sugar, reduced calorie, and everything else marketed towards people trying to love a healthier lifestyle."

And Wine

• Cork'd: The hip new wine blog. Maybe not so new anymore, but still hip.
• Wine Spectator's 100 Most Exciting Wines of 2006: "In 2006, we reviewed nearly 13,500 wines from around the world in blind tastings. Nearly 3,000 of them earned outstanding ratings (90 points or higher on our 100-point scale). We then narrowed the list down based on four criteria: quality (represented by score); value (reflected by release price); availability (measured by case production or cases imported); and an X-factor we call excitement. But no equation determines the final selections: These choices reflect our editors' judgment and enthusiasm about the wines we tasted."

And Parenthood

• The MomAdvice.com Blog: "MomAdvice is geared towards women that are looking for ways to stay organized, stay sane, and stay within their budget. MomAdvice creator, Amy Allen Clark, was searching for information on the internet on topics such as these, but could not find a site out there that catered to everything that she was looking for. Amy decided to pool her talents with her web designer husband and create a site that offered this information for mothers and also create a safe web community where mothers could chat. With this vision and her husband’s knack for design, MomAdvice was born."
• Lucky Mom: "I realize it's a bit odd to say and at times I feel like an anomaly but I am not a stressed out, overworked, sleep-deprived, exhausted mommy … Always the stylish (I think), fast-paced, active and driven female, I quickly realized that being a mom, unshowered and in sweat pants (though admittedly somewhat stylish, again I think) more often than not, finally made sense."
• Rebel Dad: "A father puts the stay-at-home dad trend under the microscope."
• Slowlane.com: "Support for stay at-home dads, primary caregiving fathers, men and their families."
• Being Daddy: "Like being Mommy. Only hairier." Sadly, this blog is no longer being updated, but it still has lots of fun stuff in the archives.

Happy New Year, everyone!

For everyone who loves the edge pieces, there's the new brownie pan from The Baker's Edge.

It's really a simple design, one of those things that makes me wonder why I had never thought of it. The web site lists the following features of the pan:

• Patented interior edges give each serving at least two chewy edges.
• Fits standard box mixes – no adjustments necessary.
• Heavy-gauge cast aluminum construction, with premium non-stick coating.
• Smooth, round, easy to clean corners.

Sounds good to me. You can purchase $32.50 pan from the web site. Since delivery takes 1–2 weeks, if you want to buy one for your favorite brownie-lover in time for Christmas, you ought to do it right away.

My wife is moved by beautiful things. She has a natural eye for design and can create a gorgeous living environment with effortless grace. Whether she's looking at fine art or stationery, photography or furniture, she knows what she likes, what works, and why. I on the other hand, don't really have an inherent design sense. In fact, a lot of my own taste in design comes from what I think she would like.

Some might see this deferring to my wife in aesthetic matters as a weakness or character flaw. But I like to think of it in the same way that I think of my reliance on doctors. Since I'm skilled in neither of these areas, I usually feel more satisfied with my design decisions when I base them on my wife's opinion just as I usually feel healthier when I base my medical decisions on a doctor's advice.

Well, that was a rather lengthy — and I suppose tangential — introduction to what I had originally intended to be a simple list of links to some beautiful things I've found on the web. Whenever I see things like these, though, I say to myself, "Oooh, Sara would love this!" Not sure if any of the items for sale on these sites are reasonably priced, but they sure are nice to look at.

Haute Note: "a modern take on the centuries-old tradition of personalized social stationery, offering elegant cards that reflect the distinct taste and style of the sender."

Luxe Paperie: "we specialize in letterpress stationery and offer a wide variety of distinctive greeting cards, social announcements and invitations, boxed notes, and gift wrap. typically, the extraordinary products we offer are only found in small metropolitan boutiques…we are thrilled to bring luxe paperie to you, no matter what town or city you call home"

Whimsy Press: "Wrap doesn’t just cover your presents; it makes each gift more fun while making the giver seem cooler, hipper and more interesting. Each collection contains 2 sheets of each design (a total of 8 sheets), plus stickers for each!"

See Jane Work: "offers working women, no matter what kind of work they do, the tools to manage their time efficiently, and to get and stay organized"

russell + hazel: "Personal + productive designs for home, work + school"

Bonus

This site has nothing for sale and isn't related in any way to the other links, but I thought it was cool when I saw it, and thought I'd share it:

infinite zoom: fun with photos

A while ago I wrote about an egg poacher toaster, which I thought was pretty cool at the time. But now there's a new toaster on the block, one that I think every toaster lover will want.

The Pop Art Toaster from Urban Outfitters (via FreshArrival) lets you customize your toast design. Just slip in a slice with one of the templates — a smiley face, a snowflake, a birthday cake — and your toast will be imprinted with

Or, if you're more of a religious sort, you can get the lo-fi Virgin Mary toast embosser. Press the embosser on a piece of bread before toasting, and the Holy Mother's visage will miraculously appear on the toast. I must say, the resemblance is much closer than the one in the grilled cheese sandwich that someone sold on eBay for $28,000.

For something completely unrelated, the folks at PopGadget have linked to the new Benjamin Moore Pocket Palette, a tiny spectrophotometer for immediate color matching. Just hold it up to a color, and it'll tell you which Benjamin Moore paint color it matches.

How cool is that?

Here are a few interesting things I've come across in the past few days:

Update: My wife thinks the video of Bush "singing" U2's Sunday Bloody Sunday deserves more prominent placement, so here it is.

onegoodmove.org: Sunday Bloody Sunday. Someone with a lot of editing chops and patience puts George W. Bush in the role of lead singer of U2. You simply must watch this video. Chillingly good.

gladwell.com: U.S. versus U.K. Malcolm Gladwell, writer for the New Yorker and author of The Tipping Point and Blink, writes in his blog about the great health divide between Americans and British. Who spends more money on health care? Americans. Who has much poorer health? Americans. That's what a recent report in the Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA) concludes. And that leads us to the question, Why? Why are we in such a bad physical state? Gladwell agrees with New York Times columnist Paul Krugman that "this is evidence of how much more stressful living in America is than living in England" and adds that "it is one more nail in the coffin of the notion that good health is something that can be purchased through fancy, high-tech drugs and doctors and hospitals."

google.com: Explore Shakespeare with Google. The headline on the page reads "The complete plays of Shakespeare. Now at your fingertips." Well, they've actually been at our fingertips for a long time. I don't know. Maybe there's something extra cool about Google's version, but I'm not seeing it. Besides, nothing beats a good book.

Kevin Kelly's Cool Tools blog links to a Shopper's Guide to Pesticides in Produce. Good for deciding when it's especially smart to go organic.

equasystem.com: Light Delight taps. These faucets illuminate water in three different colors, depending on the temperature: blue for cold; violet for warm, and red for hot. Could help prevent a scalding. (via popgadget.)

Last week a friend of mine who lives about four blocks away from me got mugged. Paul was by his car in the alley behind his house when four kids looking about 14 or 15 years old approached him and asked for the time. He looked at his wristwatch, and before he had a chance to look back up one of the kids had a gun pulled on him, pointed at his knees. The kids told Paul to give them his [expletive-expletive] money. When he tried to reason with them, the armed kid cocked the gun and pointed it at Paul's head.

So, Paul did what any other reasonable adult would do: he reached into his back pocket and pulled out his wallet. He tried to pull the cash out of it for the muggers, but one of the kids came up and snatched the wallet with everything in it—credit cards, driver's license, debit cards, cash.

What Paul did next, though, was not at all expected. As one of the kids approached him, Paul instinctively grabbed him and threw him to the ground. The others fled, and the stunned boy lying on the road picked himself up and ran after them. Paul reached for his phone, dialed 911, and told the operator his situation and location while pursuing the perps on foot. The operator asked if they were armed. Paul said yes. The operator said, "Then STOP CHASING THEM." So he stopped.

Despite Paul's gutsy attempt to track the kids and find out where they were going, the police never did catch them. A couple days later, similarly described kids tried to break into another neighbor's house. Fortunately, however, they were foiled by the woman from across the street, who came at them wielding a kitchen knife.

I'm amazed by the courage of my neighbors, and I'm grateful that people like Paul and Pat are a part of my community.

Coincidentally, David Copperfield (the magician, not the Dickens character) was also robbed at gunpoint by four kids recently. But Copperfield was in Palm Beach, and the kids didn't get his money. After snatching the purses of two of Copperfield's friends, one of the robbers, Riley, demanded Copperfield's money. Instead of giving it to him, Copperfield used a little of his trademark legerdemain: "He pulled out all of his pockets for Riley to see he had nothing, even though he had a cellphone, passport and wallet stuffed in them." As the kids sped away in a Chevy Malibu, Copperfield noted the license plate and called the police, who managed to apprehend the kids within 10 minutes. Read the article in the Palm Beach Post.

During my long absence from the blog, I've gathered up a few things from other blogs and magazines that I think are unusual or useful or interesting in some way. Here they are:

Unusual

Electroluminescent decor at loop.ph. These fabrics will display lighted patterns in response to various environmental cues, such as heat, light, sound, motion, and pressure. My wife thinks this is decor for men, but I think women would love it, too. Sold by commission only. (via Wired Magazine)

A video of fingers breakdancing at YouTube. This one serves no purpose whatsoever, and the production quality isn't very good. Even though I've never been attracted to those "Funniest Home Video" programs on TV, this video is unexpectedly mesmerizing.

The Toilet Lid Sink: "With each flush of your commode, clean water that would otherwise go straight down the toilet is first routed up through a chrome gooseneck spigot to dispense pure water for hand washing." (via Kevin Kelly Cool Tools)

Useful

Biodegradable Food Containers from ecoproducts.com. These little tupperware™-like containers are made out of corn. When you're finished with them, just throw them into your compost pile, and they'll dissolve within a couple months.

Re-surfacing CDs so they work again (via LifeHacker)

Sleep Tips: Advice for the weary. Nothing earth-shattering here, but good reminders still.

Interesting

The folks at the MAKE blog dug up a cool tutorial on using superglue to save a snowflake for decades

Bert Monroy makes impossibly detailed photo-realistic illustrations using Adobe Illustrator and Photoshop. His latest took 2,000 hours to create. (via Veerle)

An article in the Toronto Star reports on How to spot a baby conservative: "Remember the whiny, insecure kid in nursery school, the one who always thought everyone was out to get him, and was always running to the teacher with complaints? Chances are he grew up to be a conservative."

U.S. Troop Deaths in Iraq: An Analysis: "If recent short-term trends continue, the number of U.S. troops killed as a result of George Bush’s order to invade Iraq will exceed the number of people killed as a result of Osama bin Laden’s order to attack the United States in February 2007." (via kottke.org)

Northwest Airlines sent a mass email yesterday touting a new "feature" that they're testing: "Coach Choice^SM Seating." Here is how they describe it:

Northwest has begun saving some preferred seats (including aisle and exit row seats) in coach class until check-in, which is available 24 hours prior to departure. You can confirm these preferred seat assignments for only $15 per flight.

Call me cynical, but hasn't this product been avaiable already for free? Maybe this airline is trying to model itself after the bank—that most beloved institution that gave us the ATM, a customer convenience to be sure, but also a way for the bank to reduce its payroll and extort more fees at the same time.

The fine folks at Northwest Airlines must figure that if people want to stretch their legs out into the aisle, they ought to pay for the privilege. You know, if I didn't have frequent flyer miles to use, I'd boycott Northwest right now. We can't let them get away with this! Oh, my blood is boiling! The indignity of it all!

This video was making the rounds among bloggers a couple weeks ago. It's an actual news report from Rochester, New York, of an autistic teenager who, after years of serving as the team manager, gets put in the last game of the season by his coach. You won't believe his performance. When Sara and I watched it, we both got all choked up. And two weeks later, it still brings a smile to my face. Beautiful. Absolutely beautiful.

Watch it at Google Video.

While you're at it, check out this amazing video of hundreds of thousands of super balls bouncing down a San Francisco street. (thanks for the link, B.)

Well, that was an interesting little experiment. Thanks to all of my family members who took pity on me and offered to buy the camcorder. Even my mother, bless her heart, put in a bid. Thankfully, though, she succumbed to reason and retracted the offer when I asked her when she would ever actually use the thing.

A friend at work who had heard from someone else there that I was selling the camcorder said she wanted it, and we agreed on a price. So, it's going to her as soon as she can rustle up the cash.

I probably could have gotten more for it if I had done the big, scary eBay thing, but I much prefer selling it to someone I know. Oh, and by the way, I mentioned in a comment but I should probably repeat it here that, yes, I did overstate my fear of eBay. I'm not really afraid of it. I just prefer to sell locally. Never before has a statement I've made here been met with such incredulity. Thanks for keeping me honest.

Now, for something completely unrelated, here are a couple designs I recently made in my wife's morning latte:

I had a nice, tiny Sony DV camcorder for a while, but last summer it mysteriously disappeared. I searched all over, waited for it to rematerialize, and after months of missing the chance to record my cute kids doing cute things, gave up and bought a new one, the Panasonic PV-GS65 Digital Video Camcorder. Two months after it arrived in the mail, I found the first one deep inside an old backpack that I don't use very much—just one more example of what my wife lovingly refers to as my male-patterned blindness.

So now we're in the embarrassing position of having two digital camcorders. Sara suggested we sell the new one on eBay, since it's too late to return it to amazon.com, but eBay is too big and scary and bewildering for me. Instead, I'm going to conduct a little experiment and see if I can sell the camcorder right here.

We've only used the Panasonic PV-GS65 two or three times, and we still have the original box and everything that came along with it. It has some fancy features, including a 3-CCD sensor, whatever that means. I bought it from amazon.com on October 26, 2005, for $522.94. There's only one for sale there now, a refurbished model going for $421. I'd be happy to sell ours for less.

Interested? Name a price. Send me an email (you may use the contact form, if you wish). I'll keep the offer open for five days. Then the highest bidder will get it. If that bidder flakes out, it'll go to the next highest, and so on.

If nobody bids, well, then I guess I'll just have to muster up some courage and head over to eBayland.

A recent Make : Blog entry points to this strangely fascinating website with pictures of pennies stacked in cantilevered fashion to produce the most amazing structures. The pictures start with the simple designs and progress to the impossibly complex. If nothing else, it's a fun diversion. But who has the time to create them?

View Pictures of Pennies

Here's one for the why-didn't-I-think-of-that category: the Laundry Rug Bag, which sells at ParamountZone.com (via PopGadget) for only £14.95.

Now we can throw our clothes on the floor and feel good about it. When you're ready to do the laundry, you just grab the drawstrings that run around the perimeter of the rug, and it cinches up into a bag. Soon we'll all be wondering how we ever got along without one.

If you're one of those last-minute gift wrappers, you might find this set of gift-wrapping instructions from eHow helpful (via Lifehacker). They describe the conventional wrapping method as well as ways to wrap oversized and unboxed gifts and some funky alternative wrapping ideas.

And while you're looking through the useful household tips, you might want to check out the glue advice at the This to That site. Choose two things that you want to attach to each other, and the site will tell you which glue to use.

McSweeney's Internet Tendency is one of my favorite things to check out on the web every now and then for a little oddball humor. It's a perfect site to visit in times like these, when I'm busy, busy, busy with work and family and side projects and various distractions. McSweeney's is a tiny distraction that doesn't take a lot of my time. I don't really know anything about the site or the people who publish the lists, and I'm trying to keep it that way, because some things are better left unknown, and I want this distraction to remain tiny. I do like the lists very much. Two of my favorites are E-mail Addresses It Would Be Really Annoying to Give Out Over the Phone by Michael Ward and the recent The names of the president and the presidential cabinet according to the etymological backgrounds of their first and last names, and of their middle names when available by Jorgen G. Cleeman.

Here are a couple of my favorites from the list of annoying e-mail addresses to give out over the phone:

• MikeAtYahooDotCom@hotmail.com
• One1TheFirstJustTheNumberTheSecondSpelledOut@hotmail.com

Aren't they funny? You can read the others at the McSweeney's website.

And here are a couple of my favorite names of presidential cabinet members according to etymological backgrounds:

• The Bathhouse Builder Who Has Been Heard by God, Secretary of Energy
• The Pious and Humble Man From the Beloved Gate That Lies in the Land of Many Yokes, Secretary of Health and Human Services
• The Pious and Humble Man Who Is Descended From the Devil, Secretary of Homeland Security

I didn't make these up. Jorgen Cleeman might have, but I didn't. With a name like Jorgen, though, he must be trustworthy. If you want to know the real names of these cabineteers, you'll have to go to whitehouse.gov and find out for yourself, but I'll tell you up front that their real names aren't as interesting as their etymological backgrounds.

Like I said, a tiny distraction. No harm done. Now everybody get back to work!

The timing on this entry couldn't be dumber, since the major travel season just ended a couple weeks ago, but—who knows?—maybe some people are starting to plan their Thanksgiving and Christmas (or Hannukah or Kwanzaa) vacations.

Here are a few websites that might make your travel planning a little easier—or maybe just a bit more fun.

• The Universal Packing List: This is a very cool little site for people like me who remember what they need to bring after they've already left. Fortunately for me, my wife is the organization queen, but I might use the packing-list generator next time we go somewhere anyway, just to ease her burden a touch.
• One Bag: "All about packing, luggage, and travelling light." The site tells you what to pack, what to put it in, and how to stuff it all in there. They even have a nice diagram of the bundle wrapping technique.
• Kayak: Searches "551 airlines from 100+ sites," and it has a slick interface that lets you see the search results list change on the fly while you move the sliders back and forth. Check it out. It's cool!
• Mobissimo: Search "129 travel sites" to get you the lowest available prices on airline tickets, hotel accommodations, and car rentals. Back in the day, I loved Travelocity, and then I was a big Expedia fan, until I switched to Orbitz. Now I mostly use Mobissimo, even though Kayak is more fun.
• RoadsideAmerica.com: "Your online guide to offbeat tourist attractions." A friend at work introduced me to this site by pointing me to their review of Dinosaur Kingdom, a bizarre set of life-size sculptures depicting dinosaurs battling Civil War soldiers—and usually eating them.
• Gas Buddy: If you're driving somewhere, even just around town, this site could come in quite handy. Type in the location, and it will show you the lowest and highest gas prices in the area.
• The Budget Traveller's Guide to Sleeping in Airports: Here's one for my student friends and other thrifty types. In case you were wondering, Singapore, Amsterdam, and Auckland are considered the best airports for sleeping, and Port Moresby, Boston, and Bombay the worst.

As I was flipping through a couple of my old Thomas Merton books the other day, I came across this prayer that he wrote. I remember printing it out a couple years ago and giving it to my students who were about to graduate from high school (it was a parochial school, so no separation of church and state issues there). It seemed especially relevant to their situation in life, but it also seems relevant to just about every situation in my life so far:

from Thoughts in Solitude

Merton's prayer is at once the most disturbing and most comforting prayer I have ever read or heard. His insights into the human condition have a searing honesty, the kind I spend most of my time avoiding out of fear. Paradoxically, only someone so firmly grounded, so deeply rooted, could acknowledge how adrift he is. It's just a hunch, but I'm guessing that what grounded Merton lies somewhere in those last three lines.

Caveat

This entry is a radical departure for me, as I rarely discuss matters of personal faith with close friends, let alone the whole worldwide internetworking public, so I'm posting it with a fair amount of trepidation. In case you were wondering, my intention here is neither to proselytize to those who aren't like-minded nor to ingratiate myself with those who are. I'm just putting it all out here on this website because it's the only best way I have at the moment to engage my mind in any kind of sustained reflection.

It's been a while since I last dumped a bunch of links on me olde blogge, so I thought now would be a good time to share. Here are a few things I've come across:

• Virtual Street Reality: Impossibly cool 3D effects with sidewalk chalk.
• Photo Fakery from OE Magazine: "Identifying falsified images can be straightforward if you know a few tricks."
• Google Moon: The lunatics at Google have mapped the moon. Zoom in all the way for a little chuckle.
• Pedestrian Hacker Group Releases Crosswalk Button Hacks: "A shadowy group of pedestrian hackers called Cross Anytime announced their discovery of several back doors or 'cheats' using crosswalk buttons at many intersections.… The most popular hack, which works on most models, is the 'Instant Walk.' Three short clicks, followed by two long, one short, two long, and three short; turn any crosswalk signal from 'don't walk' to 'walk' with a matching change in the traffic signals." I don't know if this is for real or not, and I'm too lazy to find out for myself, so if anyone else wants to see if any of these hacks work and post a comment, I'd appreciate it. But then, why should I believe you any more than the person who put together that site? Hmmm.
• Phone Spell: "What does your phone number spell?" Find out.
• I Park Like An Idiot: "You suck at parking! Let the world know it!" Very funny bumper stickers, though I don't necessarily condone putting them on vehicles that don't belong to you.

A couple weeks ago my daughter put on for the first time a beautiful dress that friends of ours had given her. I loved the pattern, and I loved the colors—blue and green. In fact, I decided to redesign my website using the dress as a color palette. Bright greens. Bright blues. Maybe a dash of yellow. All very spring-like. Fresh, youthful, fun.

But then something strange started to happen to me that made me question my decision. Everything I saw, it seemed, turned blue and green. A new cup appeared in the kitchen, a clear plastic cup with blue and green flowers on it. Our neighbors' boy walked outside wearing a brand new blue and green shirt. A row of stores up the street from where I work got a set of new blue and green signs. Sara went to Target and came back with bath toys for the kids, rubber squirty shapes in blue and green and yellow.

Was it just me? Was I just seeing blue and green everywhere because I was thinking about it so much? Probably. But the other night when I looked over Sara's shoulder and saw the housewares catalog she was leafing through, I recoiled in horror. On the page were plates and cups and forks and spoons, all in blue and green!

Later that same night, I showed Sara the new look for my website. I was still feeling a little shaken, and her reaction did nothing to dispel my fear. "Too trendy," she said.

So much for the new look.

A friend recently asked how I find so many cool websites. I'd like to be able to take credit for sniffing them out myself, but almost all of them come from other bloggers who do all the legwork. I just track some of these blogs and keep an eye out for interesting things that they link to. So, here's my latest installment, gathered from the four corners of the blogosphere.

Virtual

• YaGoohoo!gle: search for keywords, and this search engine mod will display Yahoo! results on one side and Google results on the other. Fun little widget.
• Zoomquilt: click on the link for the Flash file format to view a cool expanding universe. (hat tip: A Whole Lotta Nothing)
• Acronym Finder: Have you been wondering what those kids are writing in their Instant Messages? Now you can find out. Type in an acronym—ROTFL, TTYL—and the Acronym Finder will spell it out for you.

Real

• Rite in the Rain: notepads and pens that repel water
• ALUMA Designs: perforated aluminum picture frames.
• Write-On Perforated Poly Static Cling Sheets: movable, reusable whiteboards. Place on wall, write, wipe, peel off wall, repeat. (hat tip: Kevin Kelly Cool Tools
• You Grow Girl: lots of gardening tips and techniques
• Tape Kitchen Timer: cool design, visually appealing, and functional to boot. (hat tip: gizmodo)

Enjoy!

I haven't been in much of a blogging mood lately, so I thought I'd just dump these links into a single entry rather than writing about anything in particular.

• Slacker Manager - The unspoken language of..., wherein the writer provides a number of humorous non-verbal cues for ending a conversation in the workplace.
• How to Cut, wherein the writer presents images and instructions for cutting a variety of foods.
• Cliché Finder, wherein a visitor can enter a word and find clichés that include the word.
• Unhappy Birthday, wherein the author describes a bizarre twist on an old song.
• Filing a Complaint with the FCC, wherein the government allows citizens like you and me to complain about junk mail, obscenity, phone slamming, and other telecommunications practices that bother us
• Latte art at Flickr, wherein baristas show off their latte-making prowess with gorgeous designs and thereby put my little latte hearts to shame.

One of these days I'll get around to writing something again. Hope this tides you over until I can think of something to say.

Since I finally started chipping away at my list of things left undone, I thought I'd take a look at some other ways to spruce up the house a bit.

My wife had heard about magnetic paint a while ago, but she couldn't find it at any of the hardware stores she tried—even the big boxes. So, I was geeked to see that Edmund Scientifics is selling Liquid Magic Wall Magnetic Paint, even though it does seem a little pricey. For best results, use more than one coat. [hat tip: Make:Blog]

If you want to stop a draft from sneaking underneath a closed door, the Twin Draft Stopper looks like it will do the trick. It "seals" both sides of the door and moves along with the door when you open it. [hat tip: Kevin Kelly]

While I'm afraid the Hip & Cool Projection Clock is neither hip nor cool, it sure would be nice to have a clock that automatically synchronizes with the U.S. Atomic Clock and adjusts for Daylight Savings Time. With the included AC adapter, this clock projects the time in soft-glowing numbers onto wall or ceiling of darkened room.

Here's one that I don't think I'll be buying any time soon: The Electric Shock Game from C. Crane Company. Here's their description of it, with my emphasis added:

It's shocking how much fun you can have with this game of nerves and reflexes. Here's how it starts: two to four players, each takes a handle, someone presses the white button, and when the music stops and the button goes green, the last one to squeeze their trigger gets a shock of electricity. Sounds like a sinister form of musical chairs ... well it is, but it's also some of the most fun adults can have without going to Vegas. Not recommended for children or anyone with Epilepsy or a pacemaker.

Also not recommended for anyone with a brain.

The Tumi Cliff Three-Way Computer Carrier looks like a beauty. More of an out-of-the-home improvement, but I couldn't resist putting it in here after seeing that Steve Rubel gave it a nod.

Here's the latest installment of links for your viewing pleasure. Just so you know, all links go to 100% genuine things. I don't peddle that artificial stuff.

• LivePlasma: This site allows you to visually search for movies and music, much like the Visual Thesaurus (see my earlier entry) does for synonyms. It's great for discovering new musicians or movies that are similar to ones that you already know and enjoy.
• Baby Name Wizard: Great for expecting parents.
• Ice Hotel: It can't be real. It can't be. But it is.
• Questions Frequently Asked About TiVo, Answered by Someone Who Loves TiVo Too Much
• English Cut: Thomas Mahon, bespoke Savile Row tailor, does the blog thing. Although he's based in London, he'll fly to New York or Tokyo or any other major city and set you up with a custom suit. If you have the cash. Don't know "bespoke" means? Neither did I. But now I do.
• FutureMail: For those of you who check your email a lot, FutureMail lets you send messages to yourself and have them delivered on any date you choose. Nice for reminders, notes, etc.
• Google Fight: Lots of fun. Pit two words or phrases against each other and see which one gets more Google hits.
• Glarkware - Swedish Mafia T-Shirt: I must have one of these! Hilarious. And their description of the shirt is priceless. Here's a snippet: They fill their homes with what appear to be pricey electronics but which are, upon closer inspection, merely lightweight props. They'll map out a criminal job for you, complete with helpful pictograms, but you'll have to assemble it yourself. (warning: other shirt slogans on this site may not be suitable for sensitive palates)
• Doing kottke.org as a full-time job: Mega-blogger Jason Kottke has quit his web design job to devote a full year to his blog. Pretty gutsy. He's trying to fund it through donations. Go, Jason!

• Nendo Drawer House: You really have to see this one to believe it. Everything from kitchen to bedroom, living room to stairs is hidden from view until you "open" the drawers that line the walls. Designed by a Japanese architecture and design firm. [hat tip: MoCo Loco]
• 10x10: An interactive exploration of the words and pictures that define the time. Every hour, 10x10 collects the 100 words and pictures that matter most on a global scale, and presents them as a single image, taken to encapsulate that moment in time.
• Google Maps: Here's yet another cool new Google tool, one I'll be using from now on instead of MapQuest. One of the great things about it is that it incorporates Google's local search feature, so if you search for, say, coffee houses in Grand Rapids, MI, you'll get a map of the city with little flags representing all the coffee houses. Click on a flag, and you'll get the street address, the web address, and options for driving directions. I promise I'm not being paid by Google to trumpet their products. (Note: apparently it's a little buggy in Safari.) [hat tip: A Whole Lotta Nothing]
• Timbuk2: Very cool bags
• All Songs Considered: This is my not-so-secret source of great new music. Each week, All Songs Considered features an eclectic group of musicians from different style and different countries. Start clicking through the archives, and you'll wonder where the time went.
• MasterViews: The site says it has the Best resources, ideas and tools for creating, managing and delivering effective PowerPoint presentations, and it might be true.

While some people are fed up with shoelaces altogether, at least one man, Ian Fieggen, is enamored with them.

Mr. Fieggen has dedicated a website to shoelaces, a site that includes 22 lacing methods. It may seem a bit daffy, but you have to admire the guy's passion. He's even meticulous enough to make sure everyone can share the love:

My lacing diagrams are all colour-coded to make it easier to follow where the lace runs. Generally, the grey section is the start of the lacing, whilst the blue end of the lace starts on the left side and the yellow end starts on the right side. The colours were chosen to make it relatively easy even for colour-blind visitors, as blue is darker than yellow.
[visit Ian's Shoelace Site]

A friend at work showed me this map that MSN generated based on a request for directions from one city in Norway to another. MSN has him going from Haugesund (Rogaland, Norway) to England on a ferry, down to London and across to Dover, through the "chunnel," out into France and up to Belgium, into The Netherlands and across to Germany, then over to Denmark and Sweden, before he returns to his originating country and arrives in Trondheim, Sr-Trndelag, Norway.

Total Distance: 1685.9 Miles
Estimated Total Time: 47 hours, 31 minutes

Maybe more direct routes were under construction.

Here's a funny, bizarre little game you can play online: Guess the Dictator and/or Sitcom Character. You just think of a dictator or television sitcom character and answer a series of yes or no questions about the person. The web site will figure out who it is every time.

I love amazon.com as much as the next surfaholic, but sometimes the clutter and the noise and the enormous number of choices can seem overwhelming. That's when I like to turn to simpler shops on the web, sites that offer fewer items but more compelling options, sites with elegant design and beautiful presentation. It hardly matters that most of the products they sell are way out of my price range. I just like to look at the sites for their visual appeal. Call it online window shopping, if you will.

• Mighty Goods: A shopping weblog. When the authors find items they like, they write up a little description of them and post a link to the store. This is the site where I learned about these very cool nesting boxes, which I bought for my very cool wife.
• kid o: They only have a few toys, but you probably won't find them anywhere else.
• MoMA Online Store: The Museum of Modern Art's online store has a lot of cool artsy kind of stuff. Imagine that.
• moss: Lovely. Mostly home decor, but some fun gadgets, too.

On the other hand, if a shop is going to try for variety, they should go all out. That's why I love Lee Valley Tools and McMaster-Carr Hardware. They have everything!

So, those are some of my favorite sites for online shopping. What are yours?

The first snow of the season fell just in time for Thanksgiving this year. Holland, Michigan, as you can see in the picture below, got about 10 inches, while Grand Rapids seemed to get a little less.

For those of you living in Florida or California, please don't envy us here. You may miss the snow and the "traditional" winter holidays with snow and sleds and hot cocoa, but what this snow really means here is the beginning of five dreary, monochromatic months. It also meant having to wait an extra hour in the freezing cold waiting for my bus to arrive after work on Wednesday. Not fun.

Scanning through the New York Times Books section, I came across an article about the death of one of my grad school professors, Douglas Day:

Douglas Day, a biographer and critic who won a National Book Award in 1974 for his life of the English novelist Malcolm Lowry, died on Oct. 10 in his home in Charlottesville, Va. He was 72.

Dr. Day, who had a debilitating stroke in February, committed suicide, his daughter, Emily Day Whitworth, said....

He was a kind man and an enjoyable professor. Unlike many of my UVa professors, he patiently discussed my work with me and didn't seem the least perturbed when I stopped by his office to ask him a question or two. How terribly sad that his life had to end in such an abrupt and violent way.

A couple people at work tipped me off to a new product that CostCo is selling through its web site: caskets. Priced from $924.99 to $4,699.99, these caskets come in a variety of styles. The names are a little disconcerting—Michael ($1,499.99), Charles ($4,699.99), Mother ($924.99)—but at least they don't have one with my name on it. For a while longer I can continue laboring under the illusion that I won't die.

The best thing about these coffins, though, is that they're in the Hardware & Outdoor Living section of the web site. How is that for unintended irony?

Here's another story to make my life seem mundane. A group of guys quit their jobs and decide to travel across the country. On their Segways. At 10 miles per hour. Oh, and they have a film crew tagging along to create a feature-length documentary about their trip. They have all sorts of events planned along the way and are attracting media attention wherever they go.

Read all about them and see photos of their journey on their web site, www.10mph.com. Also, if you donate to their cause (if you can call it a cause), they'll send you a cool t-shirt. Don't know what a Segway is? Wondering what to get me for Christmas? Find out at www.segway.com.

As I was putting on a fairly new pair of pants today, I wondered why the clothing company had decided to use a button fly instead of a zipper fly. Three of my four newest pairs of pants have button flies on them, and while I like the pants for other reasons, I can't stand having to button them up. What exactly do people find so compelling about button flies, anyway?

The way I see it, zippers have several advantages:

• They are easier to use: Grab the tab and pull vs. find the slot, hold the button just right, insert the button through the slot, repeat.
• They are quicker: They take less than a second to use, compared to five or more fumbling seconds with the button fly.
• They are less visible: One simple flap easily covers the zipper, as opposed to a second flap that bulks up the fly area and can be seen from the right side.

Now, I suppose some may view the third bullet point as an advantage for the button fly, but I'm guessing most are with me on that one.

So why would anyone prefer button flies? Do they last longer? Are they less likely to come undone? Are they part of a larger trend toward 19th-century style?

Can somebody enlighten me on this one? If anyone out there prefers the button fly, please post a comment explaining your rationale.

File this one under the there's-a-journal-about-everything-under-the-sun category: International Journal of Impotence. Makes me wonder if there's a national one as well.

But it's all in your head. Check out this optical illusion for a fun yet dizzying experience.

The Chicago Tribune reports that the USDA has finally come to their senses and declared that french fries are fresh vegetables. According to the article:

The Frozen Potato Products Institute appealed to the USDA in 2000 to change its definition of fresh produce under the law to include batter-coated, frozen french fries, arguing that rolling potato slices in a starch coating, frying them and freezing them is the equivalent of waxing a cucumber or sweetening a strawberry.

So, remember kids, eat plenty of fruits and french fries!

On a related note, I wonder if this ruling means the terrorists win.

Seems I'm quite late in discovering that Google has confirmed my suspicions about our current President. Others have noted the Bush - miserable failure connection as far back as December 2003.

Here's what to do:

1. Go to Google
2. In the search field, type: miserable failure
3. Press the "I'm Feeling Lucky" button

A BBC News Story explains how, with a little pluck, some Google, and a whole lot of angry constituents, anything is possible:

The trick is possible because Google searches more than just the contents of web pages—it also counts how often a site is linked to, and with what words. Thus, members of an online community can affect the results of Google searches—called "Google bombing"—by linking their sites to a chosen one.

Update: According to the Urban Legends Reference Pages, the Bush Miserable Failure "Google Bomb" originated in October 2003 at the Old Fashioned Patriot blog.

Okay, I am not making this up. I was looking up an album by Rosie Thomas on amazon.com the other day when I noticed the strangest thing. Where the page typically would have a section called "Our Customers' Advice," it instead suggested that "Customers who wear clothes also shop for:...Clean Underwear from Amazon's Target Store." You see, with all the market segmentation amazon.com does, they've discovered that the really valuable distinction is between the clothes-wearing type and the nudist. I find that refreshing. It's also gratifying to see Target making the bold move to advertise its underwear as "clean." Hey, sometimes it's hard to know what you're going to get when you buy online.

As hard as we try to avoid it, we seem to be coming up with more and more ways to ruin our kids' lives.

First we give them ADHD by letting them watch TV: "Study: TV may cause attention deficit."

Then we compound the problem by trying to manage it: "Research finds ADHD drugs could hinder growth."

Children who took stimulants during the two-year study grew more than half an inch less and gained more than eight pounds less than those who weren't medicated.

So, does this mean that kids with ADHD have a lower risk of obesity? Parents need to have something to be optimistic about.

The New York Times Magazine from a couple weeks back ran a story about an economist named Steven Levitt. He's one of these guys that somehow manage to have accolades rained on them while they tell everyone how unworthy they are. He says he's no good at math or theory, and he humbly admits that his professional interests are trivial, yet many leading academic economists think he is the most brilliant young economist in the world. He's gotten his reputation by taking unusual approaches to economic riddles and by asking questions that nobody else seems to consider. Rather than take on macroeconomic issues and relate them to public policy, what many consider a noble economic pursuit, he examines the probability that teachers have cheated for their students, that horse racing is corrupt, and that abortion has led to a declining crime rate.

Steven Levitt is the kind of person I aspire to be—an iconoclast who contributes positively and significantly to his field by drawing from a range of other interests. He's a kind of hero to me, along with Neil Postman and Thomas Merton. Neil Postman never gives up asking the tough questions about education or the media. He refuses to take either at face value. And he approaches every subject he critiques with the underlying question, "To what problem is this the solution?" Thomas Merton's terrain was the religious life. He was a paradoxical rebel, a renegade through obedience. He battled against the empty dreams of the world by striving for perfect obedience to God. And he sought a vital connection to the world by separating himself from it. Only when he placed himself outside of the grip of secular life could he see it for what it truly was, the God-glorious and sin-soaked life of the lost and the wandering, the desperate and the disillusioned.

Update 4/13/05: Steven Levitt, along with journalist Stephen J. Dubner, has just published FREAKONOMICS: A Rogue Economist Explores the Hidden Side of Everything. Read my review.