What Makes You Beautiful (5 Piano Guys, 1 piano):
Five guys play one piano and perform a cover of One Direction’s “What Makes You Beautifu..(Read...)
(Via Likecool)
Sunday, July 22, 2012
What Makes You Beautiful (5 Piano Guys, 1 piano)
Wednesday, July 11, 2012
The Most Expensive Edible Cupcake In The World
Camouflaged Self-Portraits by Cecilia Paredes
bookofjoe
From DeMilked:
"Peruvian artist Cecilia Paredes
has mastered the art of camouflage
and by using body paint is able to disappear
into her surroundings."
"With the help of her assistants,
she paints herself into the background of floral wallpapers."
"Her dark hair and the whites of the eyes
are often the only things
that show there's a person hiding."
[via Kay (Leah)]
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Sunday, July 8, 2012
Somehow Not 'The Onion'
Attention, criminals on the run! If you are offered a role in a romantic comedy that you did not audition for, it might just be a ploy to get you out of hiding. The more you know.
[via HyperVocal]
(Via Tosh.0 Blog)
Monday, July 2, 2012
Helpful Hints from joeeze: Spray Bottle Rack
bookofjoe
Nice hack featured by Cook's Illustrated's Shannon Friedmann Hatch writing in the July & August issue's "Quick Tips" section.
"Kitchen and household spray cleaners can take up valuable cabinet space under your kitchen sink. Rachel Paris-Lambert of East Seattle, Washington, takes her organization to the next level by installing a spring-tension curtain rod near the top of her cabinet. Spray bottles can be hung by the trigger levers, leaving plenty of room underneath for other supplies."
Think outside the kitchen space: this tip's got legs.
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Miniature Magnetic LED Lights
bookofjoe
"These miniature magnetic LED lights stick to metal surfaces and tools, have a pivoting hinge to point the light in any direction, and employ a grip dial to turn the LED on and off."
"A handy lighting solution anytime and anywhere you need someone to hold a flashlight but find yourself alone."
Apply within.
[via The Green Head]
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LED Dimmers
bookofjoe
What took so long?
"Dim or darken pesky LED indicator lights."
Package of 100 in assorted sizes and shapes: $4.99.
[via The Green Head]
Helpful hints from joeeze: Fix your insecure passwords in minutes
bookofjoe
Farhad Manjoo's Slate article, published June 17 in the Washington Post, puts paid to the impractical instructions (above) of the grand panjandrums of tech to create different, impossible-to-remember combinations of numbers and letters for each and every website you frequent.
Here are excerpts from Manjoo's piece, which is well worth reading in its entirety.
Right now you're scrambling to change all your passwords. If you're not, you should be. In the wake of a couple of massive security breaches — one at LinkedIn that nabbed 6.5 million passwords and another at eHarmony that compromised 1.5 million accounts — security experts are advising that people change their passwords at the affected sites and at every other site where you used a similar password.
By now you've probably heard the time-worn guidelines for creating strong passwords: Don't use your name or other common words. Use different passwords for different sites. Change them often. Choose security questions that don't involve information that everyone knows about you, or stuff that crooks can easily find on Facebook.
For a lot of people, myself included, these rules are too much trouble. We've all got too many online accounts, so keeping track of different, ever-changing strong passwords for each site seems like a gargantuan task.
In 2009, I stumbled upon a foolproof system to fix all your terrible, vulnerable passwords in just five minutes. My method, which I filched from a commenter at a security forum, generates very strong passwords that are also very easy to remember. This means that you can create good passwords for every site you visit.
But now I've got a better system. This new scheme generates even stronger passwords that are even easier to remember. The one disadvantage is that it doesn't work at every site. For those places where it doesn't work, you'll have to use my 2009 method, which is still really good.
The old, still very good way to fix your terrible passwords: Come up with a short phrase you're likely to remember. Just like in school, it helps to make your mnemonic really bizarre — the stranger the phrase, the easier it'll be to remember. For example, "Kim Kardashian is the most amazing woman in all 50 states," or "Mitt Romney and Barack Obama decided to make 10 waffles." Notice that my phrases use a mix of capitalized and lowercase words, and I added some numbers as well.
To make a password, just take the first letter of each word in your phrase. The sentences above would turn into KKitmawia50s and MRaBOdtm10w. Both of those passwords are extremely strong — they're long, and they're free of common English words that can be guessed by a computer.
You can generate different passwords for different sites by varying your phrase slightly for each one. The phrase "LinkedIn is terrible at securing its passwords so it's my 10th favorite social network" will create a password for LinkedIn (LIitasipsim10fsn) as well as for Twitter (Titasipsim9fsn), Facebook, MySpace and on and on.Note, too, that it's OK for you to keep similar passwords at similar sites. On sites where a password thief can't do much damage — say, publications like Gawker and the New York Times — you can repeat the same password. You'll want to keep your social networking accounts slightly more secure, but the passwords don't have to be extremely different; after all, if a bad guy gets into your Facebook account, he's not going to be able to do much more additional damage if he gets into your Twitter profile, too. So varying them slightly — as I did above — is perfectly OK, as long as you remember to change them after you hear about a breach like the one at LinkedIn.
You'll want to reserve the most distinct passwords for sites where breaches would cause you a lot of trouble — your financial institutions and your email accounts, which hold the keys to the rest of your online life. (If a bad guy gets into your email, he can use the password reset feature to get into lots of other accounts, too.)
The new, even better way to fix your terrible passwords (which sadly doesn't work everywhere): Start with the same method as above — choose a short, memorable phrase. And that's it. Instead of turning the phrase into a one-word password, just use the whole phrase as your password. For instance, "Mitt loves when Barack makes waffles." That's a memorable phrase. It's also an extremely strong password just by itself - stronger, even, than a password made up of that phrase's initial letters. Instead of shortening the phrase, just type the whole thing in as your password. That's easier than typing a jumble of symbols and uppercase and lowercase letters, and it's easier to remember, too.
I didn't come up with the idea of using a short phrase as a password. The credit should go to Thomas Baekdal, who runs the online magazine Baekdal, and who wrote about this method way back in 2007.
I tried this method at several of the sites I frequent most. It works at Gmail, LinkedIn, Twitter and Facebook, among others, and I encourage you to use short phrases as passwords there. But it doesn't work at my bank, nor is it allowable at the many other sites that impose a maximum length on passwords and/or don't allow spaces in passwords. Both of these requirements are pretty stupid. Limiting the number of characters in a password only makes them less secure, and a ban on spaces forces you to use special characters, which are harder to remember. I'm hoping that eventually, all sites come around to dropping their arcane password rules in favor of a much simpler password dictate: Pick a short, unique phrase.
Whatever you do, just do it — your passwords are a mess, and you should really fix them now.
Saturday, June 30, 2012
New system allows growth of fresh food for astronauts
Amazing Multiple Exposure Portraits
Sunday, June 24, 2012
Motorized Electric Skates
bookofjoe
Stylish, what?
From a website:
................................
These innovative electric skates strap onto your regular shoes and propel you around at speeds up to 8 mph for up to 5-6 miles.
They each feature an 80-watt motor that's integrated into a rugged fiber-reinforced nylon frame and smooth-rolling 6"-diameter rubber tires.
A handheld wireless remote control throttles both skates at the same time.
To stop, just let go of the throttle or lean back on the heel stopper just like a regular pair of skates.
A fun and inventive mobility solution for students to get around a campus quick more quickly, workers to zip around from cubicle to cubicle, or any time you want to lazily enjoy the outdoor scenery without too much exertion.
................................
[via The Green Head]
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Lillipad — "Squat on the loo, it's good for you!"
bookofjoe
I won't argue: billions of Asians concur.
From New Zealand comes this remarkable addition to the W.C. space, offering a whole new perspective.
From the website:
.............................
The natural squat position — the healthy way we evolved to go! Infants instinctively squat to poop and pee, as does the majority of the world's population.
The Lillipad is an ergonomic squatting platform that sits around your toilet to facilitate the squat position. The Lillipad enables a variety of squatting and squat/sitting positions to suit the flexibility of you and your family.
To ensure comfort, the footpads are adjustable and slope slightly forward and towards each other. To ensure a good fit, the Lillipad is available in two standard heights and the footpads allow width adjustment.
The Lillipad and the build-your-own squatting platform are far more comfortable and stable options than simply perching on the rim of a toilet. They also introduce the healthy and hygienic concept of squatting to others.
The step of the Lillipad provides access for children and (if they are sitting) a footrest too. While the Lillipad or the build-your-own squatting platform are in place, the toilet can still be used in the sitting position.
History of the Lillipad
The Lillipad* squatting platform was conceived in 1991 when I was confronted with a sit-down toilet after having adapted to squat toilets throughout India and South East Asia.
Perched on the rim of a toilet, I realized resting my feet on some timber would make things more comfortable and stable.
Today, many years on, the Lillipad packs down into a small box and has been shipped to over 20 countries.
What's kept me producing Lillipads all these years is a passion to create a beneficial, environmentally friendly, and affordable product — and a certainty that squatting is the way to go!
We also offer plans to build-your-own squatting platform for just US$10 (customize your squatting position).
*For all of you who thought Lillipad was spelt Lilypad, Lillypad, Lily Pad or Lilipad — good on you for finding us!
FunFact
Squat toilets are also known as Arabic, Chinese, French, Hole in the ground, Indian, Iranian, Japanese, Korean, Natural-Position, Nile pan, and Turkish toilets.
.............................
$169 at http://lillipad.co.nz
Full disclosure: Mine's en route.
Can't hardly wait. Erm....
[via a reader whose name I've forgotten — please advise so I can credit you.]
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BehindTheMedspeak: Snakebite — Everything you were taught is (dead) wrong
bookofjoe
That goes for me as well, though it's only dimly — if at all — that I remember the subject from 2nd year med school pharmacology and various rotations on the medicine wards.
David Maurer's first-person account of being bitten by a copperhead while working in his garden appeared in the June 18, 2012 Charlottesville Daily Progress; excerpts below.
Caption for the photo by Sabrina Schaeffer (above), which accompanied the Progress story: "Dave Maurer's left arm on May 14, two days after the snakebite, still shows significant swelling. Emergency medical personnel made a series of marks on his arm to track the progress of the swelling."
Don't be confused as I was by Maurer's right arm being closer to the camera.
Encounter with a Copperhead
I recently had the good fortune to be bitten by a copperhead snake.
Of course, I wasn't seeing it that way as I lay in Martha Jefferson Hospital with CroFab antivenin coursing through my veins and my left arm swelling to Popeye-esque proportions.
It was only after the considerable pain, bruising and swelling had subsided that I started to have a more enlightened take on my experience with envenomation. My awakening came as I learned fascinating facts about the poisonous snakes indigenous to Virginia — copperhead, cottonmouth and timber rattlers — and the blessings of modern medicine.
My encounter with the copperhead occurred around 9 a.m. May 12. That Saturday morning, I was topping a stand of bamboo that grows under the power lines leading to my Albemarle County home.
I was using short-handled clippers and had reached into a clump of bamboo to lop off a long shoot. I felt an unusual pain on the inside of my left wrist that made me think I had stabbed myself on a sharp piece of bamboo.
My second thought was that I had somehow gotten a cramp in my wrist. I quickly changed that assessment when I saw the two small puncture marks just above my work gloves.
In one of those remarkable displays of the brain's recall ability, I immediately pictured the U.S. Army Special Forces instructor who had given my class a lesson on poisonous snakes during my training in the mid-1960s. His first remark on what to do if bitten: "Don't panic. You're probably not going to die, but get medical attention as soon as possible."
I took him at his word. Being dirty and sweaty, I showered, changed clothes and made sure my dog had plenty of food and water.
All this took about 10 minutes, and in that time the swelling above the red bite marks had become noticeable. The pain was also increasing, but nothing I would term excruciating.
I called my primary physician, Dr. John Lanham, who told me to come right in. He has had experience with snakebites from his time practicing medicine in a remote area of Sudan. It took him about 10 seconds to assess the situation and send me off to MJH's emergency room.
"The nature of the venom is hemorrhagic, and that's why you had the bruising," Lanham said. "Some of the venom ruptures red blood cells and some of it lets the blood leak out, which causes the swelling.
"Then there's also certain types of enzymes that cause local tissue necrosis. It was primarily the pain you were experiencing and the local swelling that had already occurred that got you out of here and to the emergency room pretty fast."It looked like there was more going on than just the pain from the strike."
Aside from the pain, which had escalated to a burning sensation along the length of my left arm, I felt fine. I had no problem driving the few miles to the hospital.
At this juncture, I already had learned two valuable lessons.
The first: During warm weather, never put your hands or feet into grass or bushes where you can't see where they're going.
Secondly, never assume the snake is going to be on the ground. The copperhead that bit me was at least 5 feet up in the bamboo.
I never saw the snake, but it had to have been small in order for the bamboo to support it.
Victoria Brianna Hovey was bitten twice by a young copperhead on May 22. It was the day before her 12th birthday, and she was visiting her sister in Stanardsville."I was in the driveway getting ready to get in the car when I startled the snake, and it bit me," Victoria said recently as she recovered in her Greene County home. "I screamed, and when I jumped back, I stepped on its tail and it bit me again [on the other leg].
"It felt weird, like a pinch. My sister's boyfriend tore his shirt in two and tied it around my ankles so the poison wouldn't go up my leg, and then he called [emergency].
"They told him to take the shirt off [the ankles] and get me to the hospital."
Dr. Christopher P. Holstege, director of the Blue Ridge Poison Center at the University of Virginia, said applying a tourniquet is an absolute no-no. So are other widely believed practices.
"There's so much misinformation about first aid for snakebites, even from somewhat reliable sources," Holstege said. "I've seen probably more harm done by cutting and tourniquets than from the snakes themselves.
"Before we had good studies on this, people would do some very crazy things. They would put tourniquets on with the thought it would keep the venom in one place, but this does more damage than good.
"People would cut open the site of the bite and try to suck out the venom. We know suction doesn't work at all, and, in fact, studies have shown it does more harm.
"Many of the snakebites we see are on the feet and hands. If you cut in those areas, there's a good chance you'll cut tendons, nerves or other structures."
Cutting the proverbial "X" at the site of the bite only creates a more serious wound and greatly inhibits healing. And not only is it impossible to suck the venom out, but the attempt can deliver bacteria from the mouth into the wound or venom into the mouth.
"The venom goes into the subcutaneous tissues, so you're not going to get it out by sucking; you're just not," Holstege said. "There's a number of snakebite kits on the market, and I'm absolutely appalled they're allowed to sell them.
"In the kits are a suction device, scalpel and a shoestring you can use for a tourniquet. All the things we know that cause harm and don't work.
"We now know that even applying ice to the swelling does more harm then good. You think because there's swelling, ice would be a benefit, but studies show that's not the case."
Mendoza said another danger of a snakebite kit is that it gives a false sense of security to the user.
"You think your snakebite has been treated and it hasn't," Mendoza said. "The best snakebite kits are car keys and the nearest hospital."
Below, a sidebar that accompanied Maurer's story.
An aside: Maurer is, in my opinion, the best writer on the Daily Progress staff, good enough to fit right in on the New York Times, Washington Post, Wall Street Journal, or any English-language publication in the world.
Why he's stayed with my Podunk town's paper for decades is a mystery to me.
Full disclosure: Maurer came to my house in January, 1993 to interview me for a story on my first book, "Baby."
The article appeared in the Daily Progress on February 25, 1993.
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BehindTheMedspeak: Last Minute Robot — End of Life Care Machine
bookofjoe
From LikeCool: "The Last Minute Robot consists of a padded caressing arm and a mechanical recorded voice designed to guide and comfort dying patients with a carefully scripted message. It was created by Dan Chen, an artist, designer, and engineer who just graduated from the Rhode Island School of Design with an MFA in Digital + Media. He built the machine as one of a series of functional robots capable of reenacting human social behaviors."
"The device is activated and an LED screen reads 'Detecting end of life.' At this point, the doctor exits the room, leaving the patient alone by him or herself. Within moments the LED reads 'End of life detected' and the robotic arm begins its caressing action, moving back and forth, stimulating the sense of comfort during the dying process. Simultaneously, the robot annunciates the patient's name using a script, while stroking the patient through death."
Sounds good to me: I'll take one.
One thing, though: Is there battery backup for end of days?
[via TC_Chu's Point and
BehindTheMedspeak: "The body carries two to five pounds of bacteria"
bookofjoe
That was the single most astounding fact — among many contenders — in Gina Kolata's June 13 New York Times story about the Human Microbiome Project; excerpts from the article follow.
For years, bacteria have had a bad name. They are the cause of infections, of diseases. They are something to be scrubbed away, things to be avoided.
But now researchers have taken a detailed look at another set of bacteria that may play even bigger roles in health and disease: the 100 trillion good bacteria that live in or on the human body.
No one really knew much about them. They are essential for human life, needed to digest food, to synthesize certain vitamins, to form a barricade against disease-causing bacteria. But what do they look like in healthy people, and how much do they vary from person to person?
In a new five-year federal endeavor, the Human Microbiome Project, which has been compared to the Human Genome Project, 200 scientists at 80 institutions sequenced the genetic material of bacteria taken from nearly 250 healthy people.
They discovered more strains than they had ever imagined — as many as a thousand bacterial strains on each person. And each person's collection of microbes, the microbiome, was different from the next person's. To the scientists' surprise, they also found genetic signatures of disease-causing bacteria lurking in everyone's microbiome. But instead of making people ill, or even infectious, these disease-causing microbes simply live peacefully among their neighbors.
The results, published on Wednesday in Nature and three PLoS journals, are expected to change the research landscape.
Until recently the bacteria in the microbiome were thought to be just "passive riders." They were barely studied, microbiologists explained, because it was hard to know much about them. They are so adapted to living on body surfaces and in body cavities, surrounded by other bacteria, that many could not be cultured and grown in the lab. Even if they did survive in the lab, they often behaved differently in this alien environment. It was only with the advent of relatively cheap and fast gene sequencing methods that investigators were able to ask what bacteria were present.
Examinations of DNA sequences served as the equivalent of an old-time microscope. They allowed investigators to see — through their unique DNA sequences — footprints of otherwise elusive bacteria.
The work also helps establish criteria for a healthy microbiome, which can help in studies of how antibiotics perturb a person's microbiome and how long it takes the microbiome to recover.
In recent years, as investigators began to probe the microbiome in small studies, they began to appreciate its importance. Not only do the bacteria help keep people healthy, but they also are thought to help explain why individuals react differently to various drugs and why some are susceptible to certain infectious diseases while others are impervious. When they go awry they are thought to contribute to chronic diseases and conditions like irritable bowel syndrome, asthma, even, possibly, obesity.
Humans, said Dr. David Relman, a Stanford microbiologist, are like coral, "an assemblage of life-forms living together."
Dr. Barnett Kramer, director of the division of cancer prevention at the National Cancer Institute, had another image. Humans, he said, in some sense are made mostly of microbes. From the standpoint of our microbiome, he added, "we may just serve as packaging."
The microbiome starts to grow at birth, said Lita Proctor, program director for the Human Microbiome Project. As babies pass through the birth canal, they pick up bacteria from the mother's vaginal microbiome.
"Babies are microbe magnets," Dr. Proctor said. Over the next two to three years, the babies' microbiomes mature and grow while their immune systems develop in concert, learning not to attack the bacteria, recognizing them as friendly.
Babies born by Caesarean section, Dr. Proctor added, start out with different microbiomes, but it is not yet known whether their microbiomes remain different after they mature. In adults, the body carries two to five pounds of bacteria, even though these cells are minuscule — one-tenth to one-hundredth the size of a human cell. The gut, in particular, is stuffed with them.
"The gut is not jam-packed with food; it is jam-packed with microbes," Dr. Proctor said. "Half of your stool is not leftover food. It is microbial biomass." But bacteria multiply so quickly that they replenish their numbers as fast as they are excreted.
The first problem was finding completely healthy people for the study. The investigators recruited 600 subjects, ages 18 to 40, poking and prodding them. They brought in dentists to probe their gums, looking for gum disease, and pick at their teeth, looking for cavities. They brought in gynecologists to examine the women to see if they had yeast infections. They examined skin and tonsils and nasal cavities. They made sure the subjects were not too fat and not too thin. Even though those who volunteered thought they filled the bill, half were rejected because they were not completely healthy. And 80 percent of those who were eventually accepted first had to have gum disease or cavities treated by a dentist.
When they had their subjects — 242 men and women deemed free of disease in the nose, skin, mouth, gastrointestinal tract and, for the women, vagina — the investigators collected stool samples and saliva, and scraped the subjects' gums and teeth and nostrils and their palates and tonsils and throats. They took samples from the crook of the elbow and the folds of the ear. The investigators resampled subjects three times during the course of the study to see if the bacterial composition of their bodies was stable.
Unflattering Portraits
bookofjoe
From Laughing Squid:
"The Unflattering Portraits project
by Reverend Aitor of The Misanthrope Specialty Company
aims 'to lovingly commit everyone's oft-ignored flaws to paper.'"
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