Amazing closeups of insects. (Found at Reddit.com) [Tags: photos insects]

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This is one of those ineffably cool sites.

Try searching for words. For example, did you know that “squeamish” is one unit more frequently used than “hypnotist”?

The site was created by Jonathan Harris, who also did these. (Thanks to Pito for the link.) [Tags: cool words jonathan+harris]

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Believe me, I know that’s the least enticing headline ever, but, March is colonoscopy month so I’m obliged by law to talk about my colon.

If you’re 50+, you should get a colonoscopy every 5 years or so (or when your doctor tells you). They’re generally covered by insurance, if you have insurance (stupid stupid country). Having skipped my annual physical for 5 years, I finally went last month, and my doctor has had me schedule a shove ‘n’ peek for a couple of weeks from now. Since colon cancer is often detectable in pre-cancerous form, my avoidance is just plain stupid.

Here’s a piece in Salon that may motivate you. Here’s an article it references that is reassuring about the process. And here’s a picture of the pretty side of Katie Couric.

As the person who scheduled my colonoscopy told me, you have to take it with a grain of salt. [Tags: colonoscopy health]

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The last bit of snow melted from our lawn yesterday.

Today the crocuses are up, but they don’t look happy about it.

I remember this. And this. Most of all, I remember this.

Don’t let up your guard, Boston! The sucker punch is coming! [Tags: boston weather]

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After fifty years of a signature shambling walk due to the fact that my shoes always come untied, my wife has shown me that I have been tying my shoes wrong. After 30 days of empirical testing, I have concluded what I knew at the beginning: She’s right. I’d been putting the loop under the other loop, or maybe over it. I’m not very topological. But whatever the right way is, it requires bending your fingers 60 degrees backwards at the tips and spinning your shoes twice in a clockwise direction (counterclockwise in Australia).

In any case, my fingers know how to do it even though my brain can’t follow. Not only does the knot work, but I can still release my aching dogs with a single pull on the emergency cord, unlike our son who double-knots his laces and thus wastes precious time pulling twice. I keep telling him that he’s not going to get those nanoseconds back, but will he listen to the voice of experience? No, especially not when it comes from a 55-year-old adult who’s just learned how to tie his shoes.

Here’s a page with some knot-tying techniques. I believe I had been a victim of an ineptly tied Two Loop Shoelace Knot.

[Tags: shoes knots shambling adult_idiocy]

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Daniela Waschow interviewed me when I was in Hamburg. She’s posted the podcast — it’s about 15 mins long — on her site, The Big Comfy Sofa. She certainly asked some questions I’ve never been asked before… [Tags: daniela+waschow podcast]

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When you check in for a flight by going to a counter staffed by a live human being, the human does a prodigious amount of typing and the whole process takes longer than if you used one of them new-fangled automated check-in kiosks.

So why don’t they just put one of those kiosks behind the counter for the check-in people to use?

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Research fellows at Harvard are pretty removed from faculty politics, but I was nonetheless surprised that the Board voted Summers out since it meant admitting they made a mistake in hiring him.

Sure he was smart. But he was also a ham-fisted egoist with a petulant CEO’s sense of collaboration.

Bad fit. Good bye.

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Plug in your zip code and find the local gas station with the lowest prices…

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ComputerWorld has a terrific interview with Pres Eckert, one of the inventors of ENIAC, in which he busts some myths. Very interesting. The interview is from 1989; Eckert died in 1995. [Tags: computers pres_eckert eniac]

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