Regruntled.com

So I’m digging through the Sunday paper for the comics and I see the Office Depot insert… Jeez, I can’t even read an ad for one thing without seeing an ad for something else?  I can understand when McDonald’s does a promotion like this… the same kids who eat Happy Meals, watch cartoons.  But Office Depot?  Aren’t they diluting their brand?

Or maybe they’re being squeezed by the recession, and can’t afford the flyers without a little help from Dreamworks and Hewlett Packard.

Here’s a juvenile Laysan Albatross, almost as big as an adult, but still with the spiky feathers. Reminds me of Snoopy’s pal Woodstock.

This is an adult, presumably one of the parents.

This is the family group.

See also:

• Latch-key albatross
• Brave new albatross
• Albatrosses caucus for Obama
• TTB’s blog: Blogospherical Ruminations

OK, so “hover” is an exaggeration.  It only works on artificially smooth surfaces like gym floors, where you could have almost as much fun skating in your socks.  Less effort, less noise.

I’ve seen a number of feel-good news stories with the same theme: a good-hearted local businessperson gives free haircuts (or free drycleanings, etc.) to unemployed people so they can go to job interviews.  The reporter shows a before and after, interviews someone choked up with gratitude, and concludes that people are coming together in adversity.  What a country!

This is all style and no substance.  No new jobs have been created.  The same people are going to the same interviews for the same jobs.  At best, Mr. Fresh Haircut gets the job instead of Ms. Split Ends.  There is zero net effect on the economy.  There is something pathological about congratulating ourselves for making a difference while doing something that doesn’t make a difference.

On the other hand, if the same business donated the price of a paid haircut to the local food bank, for example, there might actually be a net gain to society.  It wouldn’t make as good a story, though.

This piece by Susan Goldstine at the 2009 Juried Mathematical Fiber Arts Exhibit, illustrates the fact that

32 * 33 = 1² + 4² + 7² + 8² + 9^{2 +} 10² + 14² + 15² + 18²

The intersection of math and fiber arts seems to be a recent thing, and perhaps a result of more women going into math.

More experiments with Paint.net.

Sometimes it’s hard to blend in.  Just having a little fun with JavaScript, multiple images and variable opacity.  Transparency may yet be evaded.

More fun with paint programs, just because I can. Background from Hubble telescope.

It occurs to me that bacon is the porn of meats.  Bacon is not kosher or halal, and with good reason.  Pigs wallow in the mud, they eat like you-know-whats, and they carry some really disgusting parasites.  Cholesterol is baaad, m’kay?  Fat is worse than lean meat, everybody knows that.  That’s why the bacon companies line up the strips under the plastic window so the bacon looks mostly lean.

We know that eating meat is bad for the planet.  Vegetarians feel superior to meat eaters, and vegans feel superior to vegetarians.  Even I, an unrepentant meat eater, feel better if I don’t eat too much meat.

Bacon is the perfect storm of everything that’s wrong with meat.  And chicken-fried bacon… I found it by googling “bacon porn”.  ‘Nuff said.

Sun and reptile by Paint.Net, platform by Aviary.  Lyrics by TTB.