I think this last one is truly amazing.

Alicia’s awesome KUNG FU track.

kungfu.mp3

(all songs copyright Alicia)

Alicia treats us to the hot rhythms of dishes.

dishes.mp3

caffeine.mp3

Short and sweet, this one’s all about Caffeine.

This next one is called Ballad. I don’t think it rocks as much as laundry. But it’s still pretty hip.

Enjoy!

ballad.mp3

The epic beats of Alicia.

The first one was done for Ryan Schenk. It’s all aboud doing laundry. Enjoy!

beatforryan.mp3

This comment is also a plug: I am drinking coffee right now and it is deeeeelicious. All you organic people listen up because flavored coffee is usually made using a solution that is bad for you. BUT, not all coffee is like that. TRUE BLUE COFFEE ROASTERS uses a different, safe method that makes your coffee drinking experience sooo much better for you, and more flavorful! It is organic, free trade, awesomeness.

Email me tdidonato at gmail dot com if you want to find out how to buy some!

Devin’s take on Ultramarathons

Ultramarathons are the fringe fringe of the sport of running, only 1% of all runners ever attempt them. The distance as well as the terrain set these races apart from every other. The utter absurdity of the distance and the camaraderie are what draw me to the sport.
The first ultras were in the early 1900s. They were 6 and 10 day races, were participants ran around a track, and whoever covered the most distance, won. Typically now most races are 50 kilometers, or 50 and 100 miles.

Overall, I like that I don’t know if I am going to finish or not. Its not a given….and I like that.

Hammerhead sharks are awesome. Ever since I was little I’ve had a fascination with them. Besides having the most badass look ever, these sharks are optimally equipped for hunting. Their eyes and nostrils are located at the tips of the “hammer” and this greatly increases the shark’s chances of finding prey by spreading out its sensory organs over a larger area.

This also allows for increased sensitivity and efficiency in hunting. They are 10 times more efficient at tracking down a meal than other species of sharks. During the day, hammerheads travel in schools, sometimes hundreds of sharks in a school. Then at night, they roam the deep alone.

Interesting fact: Instead of a blanket or a teddy bear, when I was a little kid I head a hammerhead shark stuffed animal. I named him Hammy.

This is my basic Chicago itinerary when people visit. I noticed when people come out here, especially in the summer, I tend to take them to the same places. I do mix it up, but these are some of the common and favorite places. So if you ever come visit me, expect some of these gems, or consider yourself special if you do lots of things NOT on the list.

0900: Pilates in the Park, Millennium Park
1000: Chicago River architecture tour
1100: Take a stroll or ride bikes down the lakefront path
1200: Check out the Division Street farmer’s market
1300: Goose Island Brewery in Wrigleyville during a Cubs game
1400: Walk down Michigan Ave, take a look at the Water Tower and lots of expensive stores
1500: Drinks at the top of the John Hancock
1800: Deep Dish pizza at Gino’s East or Lou Malnati’s
2000: Drinks at Finn McCool’s

Next day: Hangover brunch at 3rd Coast

I am extremely fascinated by the human genome. It started back when I was in high school biology, and we were first learning about the concepts of a genome, chromosomes and genes. Of course, at that point the knowledge presented to me was very basic, but one thing always stood out. We were taught that 99% of the genome is “junk DNA,” meaning we haven’t discovered a function for it, so it must not be important. To me, it was ridiculous that anyone could even begin to believe that this was true, but low and behold, every textbook I checked said the same thing.

Another big shocker came at the beginning of the millennium when the first human genome was sequenced, and scientists discovered that we overestimated the amount of genes we have by oh about 100,000 or so. In reality, we don’t have many more genes than say a worm or a fly. It turns out that most likely it’s the regulation and expression of said genes that makes us humans and not worms, but at first I think that news humbled everyone a little.

In just a few years we have made huge advancements in beginning to decipher the genome and how it works, however many have come to realize that we are just starting to shave ice off the tip of the iceberg. Every single one of our cells (except red blood cells, which don’t have a nucleus) contains a copy of a code (that we hardly understand) capable of producing a complete human being and controlling our entire development, life, and decline. Trying to understand such a system, to me, is incredibly fascinating. So, via graduate research, I decided to work on trying to figure out what some of that “junk DNA” does. So far, it turns out that most of it is pretty important.

On the subject of answering emails: It seems as though there are different stages an unanswered email goes through, each with different difficulty levels and layers of requirements.

Stage 1) The Quick Response
In this stage, an email has just arrived in the Inbox. You read it and quickly dash off a reply. Note that the reply needs to have some related content in it - not just a quick “I’ll get back to you soon”. “Get-back-to-you” responses do not count.
This response is easy to do, although the writer must overcome the inertia of doing something else in order to actually write the response. I’ll give it a 3 out of 10 for difficulty.

If the email languishes more than a day, it progresses to….

Stage 2) The Delayed Response
In this stage, the writer of the response has a couple of options. They can: pretend they didn’t see the email earlier and respond appropriately; respond without any explanation of the delay (which takes a sort of boorish pragmatism); or respond with an apology for the delay. A little harder to put together - we’ll give it a 6 out of 10 for difficulty.

If the email languishes more than 3 or 4 days, it moves to….

Stage 3) Embarrassment
In this stage, a responder must admit wrongdoing, or forego a response altogether. This one is especially awkward if the reason for the email has already passed by. Responders to an email this late must perform complex ablutions to explain the lack of response. Difficulty: 9 out of 10.

If the email languishes more than 2 weeks, we see….

Stage 4) Null response
In this stage, it is socially impossible to respond to the email. The recipient simply MUST ignore the email entirely. Difficulty of response: Divide-By-Zero. Usually the email is deleted.

If the email isn’t deleted, and a year or so passes, we move to the final stage….

Stage 5) Remember when….
In this stage, the recipient stumbles across the email when looking for something else or cleaning out the mailbox. At this point, responding to the email is frankly ridiculous and often humorous. A snicker or a chuckle may result from a response, especially a deadpan actual answer to the original inquiry ( e.g. “Yes, let’s do lunch” several years after the request). May be difficult to pull off if the original email was serious in nature. Difficulty: 4 out of 10.

Some of you may think that if you’re going to get injured, the time to do it is when you’re surrounded by people. Problem is, that’s not what you want. The bystander effect is such that the more people who are present, the LESS likely you are to get help. Pluralistic ignorance and diffusion of responsibility take place and people will a) think because no one else is helping its not really an emergency and b) think other people will help you. SO, if you’re going to get hurt and need help, do it when only one person is around.

I was in the car letting it warm up this morning (had to go somewhere). The radio was blastin’ some sweet rock tunes, and I
pushed the gas pedal while in neutral. I don’t know why I did it, but I did. Miraculously, the motor was running right at 2200 RPM, spot on. As a strange coincidence, the song was in “A”. It made the whole car tingle with music… 5 octaves above the song. Now, whenever I want to know what key a song is in, I can just run the car through RPMs that are easily divisible by standard frequencies. I tried it on the highway. Totally identified something at roughly 2600 RPM, which I checked and is C. It works. Try it.

In general, quilting is not, for me, “intellectually stimulating” although the chess problem quilt featured in the blog did generate some enthusiasm among the Mike D readership. That quilt, by the way, is not up to my usual standards. It was a first attempt at “paper piecing” which uses iron-on paper patterns supposedly allowing accurate cutting and piecing. As you can see from the photo, the piecing was FAR from accurate, as many corners do not meet or even come close to meeting. There was also a lot of waste involved with this method, and if you know Mike, you know he is a frugal lad (that’s putting it mildly, I know) and that frugality came from somewhere (read: his parents) so the waste really annoyed me. When the piecing went poorly, I decided that this method really is not for me.

One type of piece I’d recommend to all of you who have a ton of tee shirts with excellent logos or a wealth of sentimental value is the Tee Shirt Comforter. You just back the design side of the tee shirt with iron-on interfacing, carefully cut the best part of the tee shirt out, leaving a decent seam allowance and making sure the cutouts all conform to a predetermined size. Sew a border onto each panel, and then sew them together and voila! A comforter top that has good feelings attached to it! Get some batting (the warm middle part) and use a sheet as a backing and if you get this far, email me and I’ll guide you through the rest, if needed. It’s easy and quick.

Hello, my name is Ryan Schenk, and I work at the Marine Biological Laboratory in Woods Hole. What’s cool about my work is that, aside from the secret underground tunnels and dolphins that have been trained to talk, every building at MBL has a huge tank full of seawater on the roof! That’s right, they pump sea water up into these tanks, and use them to provide sea water for all the various experiments going on underneath!

Get this, last week, the Janitorial staff had to careen the inside of the tanks. For those of you who are so lame, and don’t know what careening is, it is the process of removing barnacles and seaweed from the bottom of a ship. Or in this case the inside of a tank. I felt sorry for the janitors, because that seems like a wicked crappy job, but then I talked to one of them and she said it was so much fun!

Awesome!

One of the songs that comes up fairly often on my iPod on the way to work has the following lyrics:

“It’s not a matter of luck - it’s just a matter of time.”

I like this idea. The thought that steady, constant progress towards a goal will eventually reap rewards. It’s a nice thought.

And at the same time, I’m forced to look back over my life and realize that certain points, certain decisions I’ve made…they were made with incomplete data, and based solely on what I knew at the decision point. Some would be different given a different perspective, a different data set, increased experience, and hence, I have to conclude that points such as those, where a decision nexus swirls with grey uncertainty, are made more by luck than by skill and steady progress towards a goal.

What does all this mean? Well, for me, I’d say that it’s not JUST a matter of luck, and it’s not JUST a matter of time, but instead, my forward progress in life (insofar as we can define progress as “forward”) is both a matter of luck and a matter of time.

From a purely aesthetic, appreciation-for-good-looks-in-any-gender kinda way, who from your gender is best-looking to you?
I’ve recently noticed that Matt Damon has been voted sexiest man alive by People magazine. This is totally bogus. First of all, the manliest, best looking guy ever is Burt Reynolds (go see Smokey and the Bandit). Secondly, even if you want someone more current, Clive Owen is pretty smokin - go find BMW’s “The Hire” series of films on You Tube. And then go rent “Shoot Em Up” and thank me later.

I also enjoy the masculine stylings of Brad Pitt (Fight Club era), Josh Duhamel, and Mike D.

The sun is a mass of incandescent gas
A gigantic nuclear furnace
where hydrogen is built into helium
at a temperature of millions of degrees

Yo ho it’s hot
The Sun is not
a place where we could live
but here on earth there’d be no life without the light it gives

We need it’s light
We need it’s heat
We need it’s energy

Without the sun
Without a doubt
There’d be no you and me

The sun is a mass of incandescent gas
A gigantic nuclear furnace
where hydrogen is built into helium
at a temperature of millions of degrees

The sun is hot

It is so hot that everything on it is a gas
Iron
Copper
Aluminum
and many others

The sun is large

If the sun were hollow a million earths could fit inside
and yet the sun is only a middle-sized star

The sun is far away

About 93 million miles away!
and that’s why it looks so small

And even when it’s out of sight
the sun shines night and day

The sun gives heat
The sun gives light
The sunlight that we see
The sunlight comes from our own sun’s atomic energy

Scientists have found that the sun is a huge atom-smashing machine
The heat and light of the sun come from the nuclear reactions of
Hydrogen
Carbon
Nitrogen
and Helium

The sun is a mass of incandescent gas
A gigantic nuclear furnace
where hydrogen is built into helium
at a temperature of millions of degrees

Tim found this gem.

Enjoy!!

Chicken-cordon-awesome:

Prep:
Smash flat some chicken breasts that had been cut in half the long way.
Cut up some chedder cheese
chop some garlic.
Get your thyme and salt ready and your chicken boullion.
Have some milk (or half and half) and flour available.
Chop some sage if you have some.
Get your deli ham slices ready for action.

Put the chedder cheese (and sage) in a ham slice and wrap it up. Put the magic ham wraps in the raw chicken and roll the raw chicken over it. Salt the chicken just a touch.

Cooking:
Put some olive oil in a pan on the stove and heat it up. Add garlic. Heat and add your chicken wraps. Keep ‘em in there until the cooking seals it shut. Flip that baby. Cook a couple minutes. Add some water and a boulion. Cook. In a bowl mix some flour (1/4 cup?) with some milk (1/2 cup?). Add it to the chicken fun. Add your thyme. Cook it up. Make sure the chicken is all cooked through before serving.

Serve with mashed potatos.

Jesse made this.

it’s Santa Pez comedy.

Alicia (of Jesse and Alicia) found this link. It contains a video of linked images… 7 years worth… that a guy took of himself every day. It’s pretty interesting. Even over the 7 year span, he doesn’t change too much… but still there are slight differences.

Enjoy!

In the last 100 years, with the advent of widespread consumer product advertising, a plethora of hard-fought rivalries have sprung up. Harley vs. Indian, Pepsi vs. Coke, Nintendo vs. Sega, Bic vs. Papermate, Mac vs. PC. I think out of all of these, the most important has got to be whether or not folks should buy Miracle Whip or regular mayonnaise. The winner here is always Miracle Whip in my book - beyond the obvious health benefits, it’s crisp, tangy taste is perfect for turkey sandwiches, vegetables, or just eating it right out of the jar with a spoon. I can eat regular mayo, and don’t mind it, but why settle for less?

So it’s January ninth. The month is rolling along and with it, 720 posts. At this point we’ve gone through 193 posts. Soon I’ll start running out of content. But first, let’s get some interesting facts on the table.

Today is going to start with a handful of interesting facts… I think. I can’t remember if I strayed from the interesting facts to put up some random stuff that people sent me. I’m not sure.

Either way, there are some good things to learn today. I think my favorite might be Irene’s contribution (1pm EST) or Theresa’s contribution (11am EST).

The end of today will be a bunch of songs that Alicia put together. They are totally intense and extremely awesome. These songs will be a perfect prefix to tomorrow which is a day that has had my laughing for weeks.