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Archive: June 14, 2010
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 And so tonight we played Dance Dance Revolution - for hours! - and I proved beyond a shadow of a doubt that I suck at it, and despite my best efforts was only able to improve marginally. At least I provided great entertainment to everyone else, and it *is* good exercise. There is a humbling effect which may also be beneficial. As a reasonably fit reasonably coordinated guy who enjoys dancing, I would have expected to be better... My downfall was an ongoing inability to be Perfect; I kept getting a kazillion Goods. Perhaps a metaphor; my timing must be off, or something. Further practice seems indicated... Anyway it was great fun :)
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 Good morning to y'all and Happy Flag Day!
As I'm fond of noting, June 14th is always quite a day for me; not only a day on which to celebrate the American Flag and all that it stands for, but my father's birthday; today he would be celebrating his 87th. Always nice to remember my Dad, a Dutch-American who truly appreciated the United States and its freedoms and opportunities.
This is also the 19th (gasp!) anniversary of my first date with Shirley. Unbelievable that so much time has passed, and so much has happened in between, and yet I can remember it clearly. Surely we must celebrate :)
And this afternoon our 16-year old daughter Alexis leaves for Uganda on a mission with her school. Amazing. Comparing the U.S. to Uganda certainly puts our life in sharp focus, wow.
Well it will be quite a day for me, I hope it is for you, too! Cheers!!
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the Maserati musical instrument
(please click to hear it played)
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Fortune magazine published an interesting article on what they call the anti-aging revolution, accompanied by this picture of a bunch of middle-aged mice on the drug rapamycin:
Somehow this just touched a nerve for me; first, the concept of "middle-aged" mice (mice typically live about two years, so these would be what, a year old?), second, the idea that their lifespans could be extended (what will they do with the extra time?), and third, the picture itself, you've got to love that little guy on the left doing pull-ups, trying to stay in shape while his friends watch. I wonder if they take up cycling?
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 And so she's off! Alex is on her way to Uganda... the emotional center of a nice day in which I got a reasonable amount done despite having a lot of distractions.
(The picture of the Mini is for Alex :)
 I keep being asked about Abby Sunderland; she's 16 and Alex is 16, she's from Westlake Village like we are; here's a nice overview of the controversy from Sail World. I've decided if it were my daughter, I probably would have let her go... 
From The Scientist: Brain Paintings. "An artist and a neuroscientist are plumbing the depths of human perception to create works of art that explore quirks in how we view the world." Whoa. I'd like to see them analyze Escher :)
 From The Oatmeal, the rather recursive Three Most Common Uses of Irony. I love it. (Irony: a deliberate discrepancy between what is said and what is meant... perfect for misinterpretation and debate :)
 This is pretty cool: a "flipper" bridge between Hong Kong (where cars drive on the left) and mainland China (where cars drive on the right). I wonder what happens inside the chunnel? Something similar, surely. You'd have to think anything like this would be accompanied by a lot of warning signs, too :)
 Google Earth: the cyclists' edition. "Today, Google Earth released a new edition of its desktop app which hikers, runners and cyclists are going to love... One of the new features allows you to recreate the path of a hike or bike ride by ingesting geo-data from one of your GPS devices. The visualizations show you the speed, elevation, and other stats from your ride, which you can see as an animation inside Google Earth." Awesome. Now I just need a Pre app to capture the data!
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