Fertility phones, planting yellow plums, save as PDF
I have four things to share today. Ready, set, go: 1. Here’s some interesting technology news from Engadget Mobile: Samsung has filed a patent application for a fertility-measuring phone. The phone is capable of tracking a woman’s fertile periods. Oh, yes, it’s true . . . by measuring eardrum distance and body temperature. I enjoyed […]
Body Worlds 3 at OMSI (plus Newport dining)
The past couple of weeks have been filled with regional tennis tournaments and traveling. What’s been great is that the weather in the Willamette Valley this summer (so far) has been very cool and mild. It’s been much more pleasant than last summer (and apparently most of the rest of the country). I had family […]
Pink Martini concert (and Google wireless, obesity)
Friday night I went to see Pink Martini at the da Vinci Days festival in Corvallis on the Oregon State University campus. I also caught some of the opening act, Sneakin’ Out. It was all very good stuff. For those of you who aren’t familiar with them, Pink Martini is an adventurous multilingual lounge act […]
Roswell, kitten neutering, Epsom salt, helium balloons
Today is the 60th anniversary of the Roswell incident, the most famous UFO sighting in American history. Read more from MSNBC: The Roswell Experience. I was kind of obsessed with Area 51 conspiracy theories when I was a kid. I visited Roswell during the summer of 2001, a few months before I moved to Oregon. […]
Abraham Lincoln’s death (and Tecumseh’s Curse)
Once again I am awake at a ridiculous hour on Monday morning. What have I learned? That President Abraham Lincoln might have survived if today’s medical technology had existed when he was shot in the back of his head in 1865. Last week medical experts took on the case of Abraham Lincoln at the 13th […]
Marketing gold: Doritos X-13D Flavor Experiment
Today I was walking through the grocery store, just minding my own business, when, out of the corner of my eye, I see a plain black bag of chips with a generic sans-serif font that says “X-13D.” In this age of sophisticated, glossy, photo-rich packaging, how am I not going to look more closely to […]
Airports unleash virtual strip searches
We started to hear about this technology in the mainstream news late last year, but now it has arrived! As of this week, airline passengers in Amsterdam are now being subjected to a new “millimeter wave” full-body scanning system. This body-imaging technology uses non-ionizing electromagnetic waves to generate an image based on the energy reflected […]
Pink bats, Pink Martini, and Pink Floyd
I have three pink-related stories for you at this ridiculously early morning hour: 1. Yesterday, on Mother’s Day, over 200 Major League Baseball players used bright pink bats during their games. And many more wore pink sweatbands and wristbands. This is the second straight Mother’s Day that MLB and the Susan G. Komen foundation have […]
Paging Dr. Mario with an electrolarynx
I had to miss a couple of days of work this week because I’ve been sick since last Sunday morning. I suppose I deem this worth mentioning because I don’t get sick very often, and I certainly haven’t been this ill in a long time (maybe 15 years). This fair-weather plague started out with a […]
Conspiratorial ramblings: Fanta, Coke, Big Pharma and Monsanto
What makes for good Friday night conversation among friends? Some MSG-laden take-out Chinese and a few cans of orange Fanta. Here’s a summary of some bits of yesterday’s conversation and associated (plagiarized) Internet research: Q. Wasn’t Fanta invented by Nazis? Isn’t this a Nazi drink? A. No, but kind of. Fanta was invented in Nazi […]