The bluebird of happiness

From The Happiness Project:

I have a close friend who works for Google, and when I was in California a while ago, I went to work with her for the day. While she did her thing, I worked on my laptop in a conference room.

The Google offices were just like the articles describe. Dogs everywhere, people sitting on exercise balls instead of desk chairs, pool tables here and there, scooters to take you from building to building, and lots of free food and drink.

I was describing it to someone last night, and heard myself waxing enthusiastic: “They had healthy food, like cereal and fruit! And coffee, and different teas, and soda! All right there, you could just take it!”

Then it hit me. Cereal…fruit…coffee…Diet Coke. Just the kind of thing that’s freely available in MY OWN APARTMENT. Every day, for at least part of the day, if not the entire day, I work from home, where such a cornucopia is right at hand.

The things that seemed like such treats when I found them at Google were, in fact, the staples of my own house.

I realized yet again the peerless wisdom of Samuel Johnson, who told Boswell, “Sir, it is surprising how people will go to a distance for what they may have at home.”

Free directory assistance

From Cool Tools:

Directory assistance has always wanted to be free. Since it launched six months ago, Google’s foray into phone-based information has become the easiest, quickest, most efficient free 411 I’ve used. I’m amazed more people don’t have it programmed into their phones. Best part: there are no pre-roll ads. Another well-known option is 1-800-FREE411, but it can take 20 seconds before the “What city and state?” finally arrives.

With GOOG-411, the same prompt is delivered in 4 seconds. Time is precious, but even more so if you’re on a conservative plan with limited minutes. For that same reason (read: frugality), I’m less inclined to use SMS-based 411 or Google SMS. GOOG-411 also connects your call to the business for free, so there’s no need to jot down or memorize any digits. Dialing “411” and paying $2 is like flipping through one of Ma Bell’s analog phone books when you’ve got a connected laptop right in front of you — an easily-remedied symptom of a bygone era. — Steven Leckart

1-800-GOOG-411
Google 411

WorldCat: libraries worldwide

From Cool Tools:

WorldCat is a publicly accessible online interface to the holdings of all types of libraries throughout the world: currently 57,000 libraries in 112 countries. Tell it what book you’re looking for and your zip code or city, and it will pinpoint the nearest library that has the book. Same goes for magazines and journals, video and audio formats. The ability to locate an obscure book is invaluable; but it’s also tremendously useful for anyone living in a region with more than one nearby library. California’s Bay Area is blessed with an abundance of excellent public and academic library systems and a majority of them are represented in WorldCat, so in my case, it’s a real time saver (I do a lot of sleuthing).

The database was originally accessible only by taking a trip to the library, but in 2004, the nonprofit Online Computer Library Center (OCLC) built this interface. Beyond the core location service, WorldCat provides many other helpful services and resources, like citation exporting, list making, and text samples. I haven’t explored these options much, but you can use it to build your own private or public indexes of titles and to search public lists created by other users. You can even read and write reviews of materials – yes, you can actually write in the library catalog! And if you decide you’d actually prefer to purchase the item, there are Amazon and WorldCat purchase links (a portion of every WorldCat sale goes toward supporting a local library of your choosing or to the OCLC). You’ll need to create a WorldCat account to take advantage of these features, but account creation goes really quickly and it’s free.

You can obtain WorldCat results in your preferred search engine by appending the term “WorldCat” to your search. Preceding your query with the phrase “find in a library” also works very well in Google and Yahoo. In my own experience, I’ve found these methods to work best in conjunction with titles or author names. WorldCat also offers a number of browser toolbar extensions and plug-ins to help facilitate searches.

More Blackwater

From ThinkProgress (and more at the link, including video clip):

In a memo released today, House Oversight And Government Reform Chairman Henry Waxman (D-CA) reveals that of the 195 “escalation of force” incidents Blackwater has been involved in since 2005, Blackwater forces fired first in over 160 of them:

According to the Blackwater incident reports received by the Committee, Blackwater personnel have participated in 195 incidents in Iraq from January 1,2005, through September 12, 2007 , that involved firearms discharges by Blackwater personnel. This is an average of 1.4 incidents per week. In 32 of those incidents, Blackwater personnel were returning fire after an attack, while on 163 occasions (84% of the shooting incidents), Blackwater personnel were the first to fire.

Despite the controversy around Blackwater, the Pentagon recently awarded the firm a new contract worth $92 million. Tomorrow, Blackwater CEO Erik Prince will testify before Waxman’s committee tomorrow.

Read more highlights from Waxman’s memo here and here.

UPDATE: The Oversight Committee’s staff also found evidence that the State Department “helped create an environment where Blackwater guards could use deadly force with minimum reprisal.”

Price Look-Up codes tell you the type of produce

Price Look-Up (PLU) codes on those annoying stickers on your produce tell you what type of produce it is:

• 4-digit = conventional
• 5-digit beginning with 9 = organic
• 5-digit beginning with 8 = genetically modified

Mnemonic: think of the “9” as a little hand-watering can (hand-grown produce) and the “8” as a view of two twists of the DNA double-helix. An example:

• 4016 = conventionally grown Red Delicious apple, large
• 94016 = organically grown Red Delicious apple, large
• 84016 = genetically modified Red Delicious apple, large

Question (obvious): how do they signify organically grown genetically modified apples? Clearly genetically modified apples can be grown coventionally (with pesticides, etc.) or organically.

More info on PLUs here (including look-up table), here (alphabetic list), and here (Wikipedia article).

Shower shavers, take note

Kafeneio has good information on shower shaving, in two parts:

Part 1

Part 2

“Men are from Earth, but women are from Earth, too.”

No significant  psychological differences between the sexes (overall):

  I’m fed up with endless bogus stories claiming substantial differences between men and women which pass for news in the popular press. With the help of Janet Shibley Hyde of the University of Wisconsin-Madison and literally thousands of psychology studies, this myth can be banished forever (Hyde, 2005).

Hyde has reviewed evidence from studies on:

• Cognitive variables. Including reading comprehension, perceptual speed, science, mental rotation, spatial visualization, attribution of success to effort.
• Communication. Including assertive speech, self-disclosure to a stranger, smiling and understanding facial expression.
• Social and personality variables. Including aggression under provocation, helping behaviour, sexuality, leadership, agreeableness and extraversion.
• Psychological well-being. Including self-esteem, happiness, life satisfaction and coping.
• Motor behaviours. Including throw velocity, sprinting and flexibility.
• Miscellaneous. Including moral reasoning, cheating behaviour, computer use and job attribute preference.

Fully 78% of the differences between men and women are small or close to zero. There are three main areas of differences between men and women:

1. Sexuality – in particular attitudes to sex in uncommitted relationships.
2. Aggression – men are generally more aggressive.
3. Motor performance – this is where the largest differences are seen with men being better at throwing, jumping, sprinting and so on.

The bottom line is that if someone tells you men are more aggressive, have better motor performance or have different attitudes to sex than women, then you can believe them. If it’s anything else, the differences between men and women are probably very small or non-existent.

Continued overinflated reports of differences between men and women are damaging to all of us:

• If men and women are told they ‘speak a different language’, they may not bother trying to patch up their relationships.
• If women continue to believe they are the ‘nurturers’, they may be penalised in the workplace. Similarly, men who believe they cannot be nurturant may be penalised in their family and relationships.
• If girls believe they cannot achieve in maths, this affects their actual achievement. Similarly, if boys think they are poor at communicating or working together, this may be detrimental to them.

Strange days for the Christian Right

The Christian Right is facing a problem: the American public is pulling away. First, a story from the McClatchy Washington Bureau (from which comes the above graph):

Palm Sunday two years ago was a glorious day for Christian conservatives.

A president who’d proclaimed Jesus his favorite philosopher was racing back from vacation to sign a bill rushed through a compliant Congress at their bidding — a last-minute gamble to keep alive a severely brain-damaged woman in Florida.

That, however, was the peak of the Christian conservatives’ political power.

Today, their nearly three-decade-long ascendance in the Republican Party is over. Their loyalties and priorities are in flux, the organizations that gave them political muscle are in disarray, the high-profile preachers who led them to influence through the 1980s and 1990s are being replaced by a new generation that’s less interested in their agenda and their hold on politics and the 2008 Republican presidential nomination is in doubt.

“Less than four years after declarations that the Religious Right had taken over the Republican Party, these social conservatives seem almost powerless to influence its nomination process,” said W. James Antle III, an editor at the American Spectator magazine who’s written extensively about religious conservatives.

“They have the numbers. They have the capability. What they don’t have is unity or any institutional leverage.”

More at the link. And then this, from the NY Times:

New version of Foxit PDF Reader available

Free, and much better and faster than Adobe Reader. And now a new version:

Adobe may have innovated the PDF file format, but Foxit Reader is our favorite application for reading PDFs. That’s because it’s light-weight and blazing fast. You can open and close Foxit 2 or 3 times in the amount of time it takes Adobe Reader to load.

But while Foxit is light in terms of resources, it’s also been a bit feature-light when it comes to things like copying text. Foxit 2.2 has an improved text copy feature, and a few other updates that make the program a full-fledged rival to Adobe Reader.

• Search for text either in a single PDF file or in multiple PDF files.
• Minimize to system tray
• View the actual size of PDF pages
• Better command line support
• Bug fixes

The basic version of Foxit Reader is free. If you want to edit or annotate documents, you’ll have to update to the Foxit Reader Pro pack.

Can Blackwater look any worse? Can the State Department?

Condi Rice is running a criminal enterprise, it seems:

Guards working in Iraq for Blackwater USA have shot innocent Iraqi civilians and have sought to cover up the incidents, sometimes with the help of the State Department, a report to a Congressional committee said today.

The report, based largely on internal Blackwater e-mail messages and State Department documents, depicts the security contractor as being staffed with reckless, shoot-first guards who were not always sober and did not always stop to see who or what was hit by their bullets.

In one incident, the State Department and Blackwater agreed to pay $15,000 to the family of a man killed by “a drunken Blackwater contractor,” the report said. As a State Department official wrote, “We would like to help them resolve this so we can continue with our protective mission.”

Good idea—banks are fighting it, of course

Law to require banks to notify you if using your ATM card would cause an overdraft (and overdraft fee). This is particularly important if two people (a husband and a wife, for example) have ATM cards on the same account, which could readily create an unsuspected overdraft.

Should your bank warn you of potential overdrafts when you use an ATM or debit card?

Congress is considering a bill, HR 946, that would require banks to give consumers a chance to back out of transactions that might cause them to overdraw their checking accounts.

The bill is sponsored by Rep. Carolyn Maloney, a New York Democrat. Rep. Emanuel Cleaver, a Kansas City Democrat, is listed as one of several co-sponsors.

Consumer groups support the bill, contending that banks are lulling consumers into a false sense of security and then nailing them with fees of $30 or more for each overdraft, even if for just a pack of gum.

“We think that consumers should be allowed an informed choice,” said Jean Ann Fox, a spokeswoman for Consumer Federation of America, one of the consumer groups supporting the bill.

The groups say consumers are surprised by the growing practice and often aren’t told they can be hit by the fees when they sign up for an ATM or debit card. They also say banks make it too easy for cash-strapped consumers to use their debit cards almost like payday loans.

Archbishop: “Condoms are infected with AIDS virus”

Wow. This is sad and shocking. And note that he says it’s not just condoms that are deliberately infected with the AIDS virus, but also the anti-viral cocktail used to treat AIDS.

The head of the Catholic Church in Mozambique has told the BBC he believes some European-made condoms are infected with HIV deliberately. Maputo Archbishop Francisco Chimoio claimed some anti-retroviral drugs were also infected “in order to finish quickly the African people”. The Catholic Church formally opposes any use of condoms, advising fidelity within marriage or sexual abstinence.

More information on the Marseilles cube

I’ve blogged a couple of times about the Marseilles cube of olive-oil soap, and the Frenchy Bee just sent me a link to the complete history of this soap. Fascinating stuff:

It was in the Middle Ages however, that soap manufacturing came to Provence. This was due in large part to the fact that the principal ingredients of soap, olive oil, salt and soda ashes fom the Camargue- were produced in the region.

As a result, in the XVIth century Marseille became the first official soap manufacturer in France, followed closely by Salon-de-Provence and Toulon.

In 1688, under Louis XIV (also known as the Count of Provence), the official “Edict of Colbert” was proclaimed which forbid the use of any animal fat in the production of Marseille soap and allowed only the use of pure olive oil. The law goes on to state that violation of this vital production rule could put one out of business and run out of Provence !

The golden period for Marseille soap was during the French Revolution when it competed for top soap honors with yellow colored palm oil soaps from Great Britain and sesame and peanut oil soap from Paris.

As these “new oils”, such as coconut and palm, made their way to Marseille on ships from French Colonies, the Marseilles soap factories began to make new formulations using these pure vegetable oils.

At the link, you’ll find a translation of the “Edit du Roi” (called the Edict of Colbert), dated 5 October 1688 (hey! the 319th anniversary is Friday! Party!), that specifies soap manufacture, along with the story (and photos) of modern manufacture.

Jack ver 4.0 has arrived

Just installed the current bridge computer program world champion, Jack 4.0. And I have printed from the Internet the ACBL Standard American Yellow Card bidding conventions—an important development with bridge play on the Web, since you and your partner probably have never played together and you need to be using the same bidding conventions.

And man, have those conventions changed. In my day an opening bid of, say 2 Spades was forcing to game. Now it’s a weak bid. <sigh> Change is difficult.

Cutting taxes + increased earmarks + fighting war = not working

We’re closing in on $10 trillion in national debt. Great management skills, GOP:

“For the fifth time since 2001, Congress is raising the debt limit, increasing it by $850 billion to $9.815 trillion. The Senate approved the plan on a 53-42 vote Thursday night. The House of Representatives has already signed off on the plan, without a direct vote.”

Tax farming

Farming out tax collection and thus funneling taxpayer money to private industry. Krugman:

My reference in last Friday’s column, “Hired Gun Fetish,” apparently puzzled many people. My bad – I forgot that not everyone follows Bush-era privatization stories as obsessively as I do.

Anyway, it was a reference to a David Cay Johnston story from last year, “I.R.S. Enlists Help in Collecting Delinquent Taxes,” on how the IRS is turning to private collection agencies to collect taxes, even though they will keep more than 20 percent of the proceeds (compared with 3 percent overhead costs if the work was done by the I.R.S.). It’s both a stark example of privatization gone mad, and a throwback to the days of the Ancien Regime.

Getting ready for the winter rains

We get rain in the winter, rather than snow. (You don’t have to shovel rain.) So today I ordered the fall application of Clarity Defender, which is how we batten down the hatches. It goes on the Prius, since I use my car sparingly, and it seems to last the entire winter. Through experience, I know to get the car washed before applying it, and then I use a little Windex to polish the windows before it goes on.

Red wine health benefits

Another good finding:

In a crossover study involving 40 subjects (20 subjects between the ages of 18-30 years, and 20 subjects aged 50 or older), in which half of the subjects in each age group consumed 400 ml/day of red wine for a period of 2 weeks while the other half served as a control and consumed no alcohol, consumption of red wine was found to significantly increase plasma antioxidant status and significantly decrease levels of plasma MDA (malondialdehyde) and GSH (whole blood glutathione). The authors state, “The results produced from this study suggest that the potent antioxidant properties provided by red wine and potential protection from developing CVD highlight the relationship between red wine consumption and health.”

 “Red wine consumption increases antioxidant status and decreases oxidative stress in the circulation of both young and old humans,” Micallef MA, Lexis LA, Lewandowski PA, Nutrition Journal, 2007; 6(1): 27. (Address: E-mail: Paul A. Lewandowski, paul.lewandowski@deakin.edu.au ).

Vinegar for type 2 diabetes

Interesting finding. I’m certainly going to give it a go.

 In a randomized, crossover, pilot study involving 11 subjects with non-insulin dependent type 2 diabetes (7 women, 4 men), consumption of 2 tablespoons of apple cider vinegar at bedtime was found to reduce morning fasting blood glucose concentrations. For three consecutive days, subjects kept track of their diets and measured their fasting glucose at 7:00am. Subjects were then randomized to receive either apple cider vinegar (2 tablespoons) and 1 ounce of cheese or water and 1 ounce of cheese, at bedtime. This was followed by a 3-5 day washout period after which subjects were crossed over to receive the other treatment. Subjects continued to take their usual prescription medications during the course of the intervention and they followed a standardized meal plan designed to reflect the individual’s typical diet. Results found that after consuming vinegar the night before, morning fasting blood glucose levels decreased by 0.15 mmol/L (2%) in the placebo group, compared to 0.26 mmol/L (4%) in the vinegar group. When the data was further analyzed, it was found that the beneficial effects of the vinegar were most effective for subjects with typical fasting glucose levels greater than 7.2 mmol/L, in which the reduction in FG was 6%. The results of this study suggest that, “vinegar ingestion at bedtime may favorably impact waking glucose concentrations in type 2 diabetics.” The authors conclude, “Investigations are needed to study the mechanisms by which vinegar alters postprandial glycemia and FG, and to examine the efficacy of vinegar ingestion in individuals with inadequately controlled diabetes.”

 “Vinegar Ingestion at Bedtime Moderates Waking Glucose Concentrations in Adults with Well-Controlled Type 2 Diabetes,” White AM, Johnston CS, et al, Diabetes Care, published ahead of print, published online August 21, 2007. (Address: Carol S. Johnston, PhD, 7001 East Williams Field Road, Mesa, AZ 85212, USA. E-mail: carol.johnston@asu.edu ).

Pumpkin soup with smoked paprika

This recipe looks and sounds wonderful. It’s amply illustrated with photos, so take a look. Recall also that pumpkin is a superfood, as are pumpkin seeds. (I regularly add 2 Tbs of raw pumpkin seeds to my cooked hot cereal, along with 2 Tbs of chia seed, 1/2 oz English walnuts, and 1 Tbs of blackstrap molasses.)