rebecca's pocket

» In the first mass-participation experiment of its kind, Professor Richard Wiseman at the University of Hertfordshire in the UK is seeking to enroll 10,000 people in an online experiment on making—and keeping—New Year's Resolutions. / (4) Comments / [ 01.01.07 ]

» The Seldovia Public Library has compiled a list of list of the best reading from 2006. (via wl)  [ 01.01.07 ]

» Eye of Science is an online gallery of microscopic photography, ranging from crystals (I love the snowflakes—Image 5), botany, medicine, technology, and more. Click on the image links and then wait a moment. Many of the images cycle through a series of the same substance. (via dbdw)  [ 01.02.07 ]

» Dalia Lithwick: The 10 most outrageous civil liberties violations of 2006. What will our children think when they look back on our complacency during this time? / (3) Comments / [ 01.02.07 ]

» The electric car and the inconvenient truth.  [ 01.03.07 ]

» The word gets bandied around a lot, but this, in my opinion, is a hero. / (2) Comments / [ 01.03.07 ]

» To welcome delegates and media to the NATO Summit in Riga last November, regional knitters knitted 4,500 pairs of traditional hand-made Latvians mittens. You knitters will be inspired by looking through the photo galleries and reading about the rich folklore surrounding mittens in Latvia. The color patterns are unbelievable. / (1) Comments / [ 01.04.07 ]

» As a public service announcement: If you were thinking of having your dentist whiten your teeth using the Zoom System—don't do it! No one told me about the risk of SHARP SHOOTING PAINS inside your teeth during and after your procedure. It doesn't happen to everyone, they tell me (NOW they tell me) but it happened to both me and my husband. Let me be clear: this is a pain of short duration (though the sealant hurt—BAD—until they wiped it off) but it is more intense than any mouth pain I can remember, including my toothache. It continued to occur for the rest of the day ("perfectly normal"). My teeth are whiter, but it was not worth it. I would never do this procedure again. / (361) Comments / [ 01.05.07 ]

» The Cosmetics Restriction Diet. Throw away those expensive skin care products and replace them with these three basic items.  [ 01.05.07 ]

» Ask Metafilter: Please suggest great books for girls. A lot of great suggestions here, though I used to (and still do) read books starring boys/men, and I thoroughly enjoyed them (and identified with the male protagonist). / (1) Comments / [ 01.08.07 ]

» Oh, fabulous. Things Girls Like to Do, by Elizabeth Hale Gilman, published 1917. Why, housekeeping and needlecraft, of course! I think I could learn to hand-sew from this book. (via maki's fabulous del.icio.us feed) / (1) Comments / [ 01.09.07 ]

» National Geographic reports that new research shows that over 200 earthquakes, mostly in the last 60 years, were caused by human activity. Christian D. Klose of Columbia University has identified mining, oil and gas production, and reservoir construction as the culprits. (via rc3oi) / (3) Comments / [ 01.09.07 ]

» Destination: Gypsy Europe. Despite their historical distrust of the written word, Europe's Gypsies have a growing -- and captivating -- literary tradition.  [ 01.10.07 ]

» What George W. Bush could learn from Steve Jobs. (via rc3oi) / (2) Comments / [ 01.10.07 ]

» The Guardian tells us that the blow-dry is back. And don't you wish there were pictures to accompany the text?  [ 01.11.07 ]

» Heisman contenders, it seems, crochet. / (1) Comments / [ 01.11.07 ]

» A Stocking in Rhyme, circa 1885. [pdf] Be my guest. / (1) Comments / [ 01.16.07 ]

» Procrastination has been reduced to a mathematical equation: U = E x V / I x D, where U is the desire to complete the task; E, the expectation of success; V, the value of completion; I, the immediacy of task; and D, the personal sensitivity to delay. For some types of tasks, my biggest stumbling block would be E—what if I'm no good? For others, it would be I—what, really, is the consequence of not cleaning the house for one more hour, or day? You can measure your own level of procrastination here. (via 43f) / (2) Comments / [ 01.16.07 ]

» Streets running in blood—it's biblical in scale. This is why the American people no longer support the war in Iraq. It has nothing, I'm sad to say, to do with principle.

And poor CNN. The header on this story is "Iraq: Transition of Power". They were so, so with the program when it all began, and now they're stuck with this lamentable endorsement of Administration spin, while events spin completely out of control on the ground. At what point will the editors decide it's time to change the title of this particular "Special Report"? / (5) Comments / [ 01.16.07 ]

» A candy re-enactment of the Battle of Helm's Deep. 7 feet long, 3 feet deep, and 2 feet tall. Awesome. (via c&d)  [ 01.17.07 ]

» When is your personal Martin Luther King Day?

February 14 this year is my "personal MLK day." That is the holiday I dreamed up on which a person has lived 14324 days so far, the number of days that King lived in total. The personal MLK day may be used as a time of reflection on what you have accomplished and want to accomplish.

/ (2) Comments / [ 01.17.07 ]

» It sounds like the title of an Agatha Christie mystery, but this is no joke: Death on the high seas.

Last year the cruise industry reported that 24 passengers had disappeared between 2003 and last March. The information emerged after a US Congressional subcommittee found itself with an unlikely task: to examine the threat posed to citizens by booking a cruise holiday. Since then, at least 10 more passengers and two crew have been reported missing or overboard, including one Scottish pensioner lost in the Atlantic last November. These figures do not include known suicides and those who, for one or reason or another - a drunken argument, perhaps, or misplaced bravado - are known to have deliberately jumped. Of those who have gone mysteriously missing, some may have killed themselves; other incidents may be alcohol-related mishaps; but in at least one case, the death of a 52-year-old woman on the Island Escape in Italy, something more sinister may have gone on.

/ (2) Comments / [ 01.18.07 ]

» A 78-year-old Melbourne woman may be Australia's best water-saver, using less than a tenth of the water an average consumer in her area consumes. Her tricks include a roofwater converter that she invented, but is willing to share with the world.

Even her trips to the toilet are eco-friendly, although she declined to spell out the specifics. "I have a system, but I won't go into details," she said. "People aren't ready for that yet."

/ (4) Comments / [ 01.19.07 ]

» Have you read 1491 yet? Here's an article about a new archeological find of a previously unknown city of the Chachapoya, the Cloud Warriors, high in the mountains of Peru. The picture of the mummy with its hands over its face is unlike anything I've seen before. "[A]ll the walls have a slight bulge to them like the side of a barrel, which I think is a fault in their engineering that they adopted and made a feature — an aesthetic choice resulted from engineering accident." Keith Muscutt, a researcher with the University of California Santa Cruz.  [ 01.22.07 ]

» In response to the ruckus surrounding Super Columbine Massacre RPG!, Clive Thompson has played the game and he finds it surprisingly thoughtful.

What strikes you...is Ledonne's attention to narrative detail. He painstakingly researched the killers' life stories using publicly released police investigations of the pair, and the game thus includes all manner of detail I never knew. When I started off in Harris' house, I found a box of Luvox, an antidepressant he was on that prevented him getting into the Marines. When I met up with Klebold in a basement, we sat down in front of the VCR to watch the "I've seen the horror" speech from Apocalypse Now, a movie they apparently loved.

The gamemaker's statement is online.  [ 01.23.07 ]

» In The Merits of Nitpicking: A Doctor Diagnoses House, Henry Jenkins explains how popular culture can excite interest in obscure subjects, and muses on the ways that "nitpicking" might be incorporated into the educational system.  [ 01.23.07 ]

» Neat. A college professor at Hamline University in St. Paul, Minnesota sent his World Prehistory class out into the snow to "explore the labor and leadership requirements of monumental architecture" by building a mound. (via afarensis)  [ 01.24.07 ]

» Bruce Schneier: In Praise of Security Theatre.  [ 01.25.07 ]

» The Good Housekeeping Institute offers 10 things to do with your microwave besides cook. Rejuvenate mascara! / (1) Comments / [ 01.25.07 ]

» A Practical Man's Guide to Romantic Giving. If you've always been in the dark about romantic gift-giving, print this one out and laminate it. / (3) Comments / [ 01.26.07 ]

» Are Americans saving too much for their retirement? I will agree that our financial planner's after-retirement spending calculations, based on what and how we spend now, have tended to be unrealistically high. "There is risk in saving too much. You could end up squandering your youth rather than your money." Laurence J. Kotlikoff, Boston University economics professor.  [ 01.29.07 ]

» "Annie's Homegrown Macaroni & Cheese is the pantry staple of harried, organo-hipster parents everywhere. But is it any healthier than the day-glo noodles of our white-bread childhoods?" / (7) Comments / [ 01.30.07 ]

» I'm very pleased to present the latest in my Bloggers on Blogging series, an interview with author, cryptologist, and security expert Bruce Schneier. In it, we discuss the uses of the Internet, the synergies of public performance, and the danger of being mobbed by your readers.

One of the properties of the Internet is that it takes interactions out of their normal social context. If I were at a gathering and I saw someone who I wanted to talk to, I would see him in context. [...] The Internet lacks this context. When you send someone an e-mail, you send it into the void.

/ (3) Comments / [ 01.31.07 ]