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  Announcements WHAT ARE YOU DOING HERE?

Go to the NEW Jottings From a Cluttered Mind.

 
 
  Posted by heff on Friday, April 09 @ 17:49:21 CDT (57 reads)
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  Announcements Big Changes Afoot! Jottings Moving to New Server & Platform

This is kind of big news for me since Jottings has been a semi regular part of my life since July of 2001. I'm switching servers and I'm switching blogging platforms and you, dear readers, get the easter eggs.

So, it's been a little over six years since I moved from the original Blogger (pre-google) over to PHP-Nuke and I think maybe it's time at last to move on to something more evolved.

So I've settled on WordPress (didn't need the complexity of joomla) and have managed to migrate over everything I've ever posted since this site went live in February of 2004. (I'm so psyched that the data wrangling worked!) Now the entire 2,400 post history of Jottings is up and running at the new site.

Best of all, there are some significant advantages to the new system.

  • Much easier to browse content by topic.
  • iPhone friendly version of the site runs like a native app on the phone. WAY cool.
  • One click to share with all your favorite social networks. (facebook, twitter, etc.)
The new Jottings will live on my business server which is hosted by the fabulous folks at JustHost. I don't get any money for the plug, I just think they are a ridiculously good deal.)

The bottom line is that this site will be around for a little while while I clean house and shut things down, but at this point everything has move to:

Our New Location

graphicpanacea.com/jottings
 
 
  Posted by heff on Wednesday, March 31 @ 22:06:52 CDT (64 reads)
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  Graphics Photoshop CS5 Content-Aware Fill Will Blow Your Freakin' Mind

 
 
  Posted by heff on Wednesday, March 24 @ 21:10:54 CDT (60 reads)
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  Politics Those GOPers Sure Know How to Repeat a Talking Point!

Not at all obvious, right?
 
 
  Posted by heff on Monday, March 22 @ 13:02:34 CDT (54 reads)
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  Your Rights McCain and Lieberman's Nightmarish Detention Bill

This is what happens when you push a war mentality day-in and day-out. Civil liberties, even the very basis of our democracy get thrown under the bus for the sake of expediency and a false sense of security.

This is a heinous bill and the opposite of freedom and democracy. This is something out of Soviet-era Russia.

via Open Congress

One of Congress's most notoriously hawkish duos, Sen. John McCain [R, AZ] and Sen. Joseph Lieberman [I, CT], recently introduced legislation in response to President Obama's decision to try Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, the Christmas Day airplane bomber, in a criminal court. Their proposal, which they are calling the Enemy Belligerent Interrogation, Detention and Prosecution Act, would empower the U.S. military to arrest anyone, U.S. citizen or otherwise, who is suspected of terrorist associations and detain them indefinitely, without right to a trial.
These are the folks who think the Constitution is just a 'g*d-damned piece of paper.'
 
 
  Posted by heff on Thursday, March 18 @ 08:15:43 CDT (50 reads)
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  Security Energizer Battery Charger Comes with a Software Backdoor

Word up, people!

Gizmodo

If you've bought the Energizer DUO USB battery charger, you might want to uninstall the software immediately. Why? Because it comes pre-loaded with a backdoor that can let someone remotely access your computer.
 
 
  Posted by heff on Thursday, March 18 @ 08:12:07 CDT (53 reads)
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  Movies Adam Savage's Pursuit of the Perfect Blade Runner Gun

Gizmodo
I made my first Blade Runner pistol when I was 18, while living in Hell's Kitchen, NYC. I stared at the VHS version on pause and made sketches. Put it together from toys and model kit parts. It's lovely and terrible. (Years later the internet would teach me that the six dollar plastic gun I bought on Canal Street in NYC and cannibalized for the grip was created by Edison Giacattoli, a legendary toy gun designer.)
Check out the evolution from earliest primitive version to his latest 'perfect' replica. That's some dedication!
 
 
  Posted by heff on Thursday, March 18 @ 08:10:30 CDT (53 reads)
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  Science Women Who Drink Gain Less Weight

Good news ladies!

NYTimes.com

Dieters are often advised to stop drinking alcohol to avoid the extra calories lurking in a glass of wine or a favorite cocktail. But new research suggests that women who regularly consume moderate amounts of alcohol are less likely to gain weight than nondrinkers and are at lower risk for obesity.
 
 
  Posted by heff on Thursday, March 18 @ 08:06:31 CDT (62 reads)
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  Science Liberalism, atheism, male sexual exclusivity linked to IQ

via CNN.com
Political, religious and sexual behaviors may be reflections of intelligence, a new study finds.

Evolutionary psychologist Satoshi Kanazawa at the the London School of Economics and Political Science correlated data on these behaviors with IQ from a large national U.S. sample and found that, on average, people who identified as liberal and atheist had higher IQs. This applied also to sexual exclusivity in men, but not in women. The findings will be published in the March 2010 issue of Social Psychology Quarterly.

The IQ differences, while statistically significant, are not stunning -- on the order of 6 to 11 points -- and the data should not be used to stereotype or make assumptions about people, experts say. But they show how certain patterns of identifying with particular ideologies develop, and how some people's behaviors come to be.

Shocking!
 
 
  Posted by heff on Thursday, March 18 @ 08:05:12 CDT (52 reads)
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  Science 'Fairness' Center found in Human Brain

via LiveScience
At some point in our lives, we've all cried "It's not fair!" In fact, it's human nature for us to dislike unequal situations, and we often try to avoid or remedy them. Now, scientists have identified the first evidence of this behavior's neurological underpinnings in the human brain.

The results show that the brain's reward center responds to unequal situations involving money in a way that indicates people prefer a level playing field, and may suggest why we care about the circumstances of others in the first place.

"Our study shows that the brain doesn't just reflect self-interested goals, but instead, these basic reward processing regions of the brain seem to be affected by social information," said study author Elizabeth Tricomi, a professor of psychology at Rutgers University in New Jersey. "That might explain why what happens to other people seems to matter so much to us, even when it might not actually directly affect our own situation."

And maybe those who lack a sense of fairness actually have something wrong with their brains!
 
 
  Posted by heff on Thursday, March 18 @ 08:02:50 CDT (59 reads)
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  Television Charlie Brooker on the American News Media

More goodness from across the pond.

 
 
  Posted by heff on Thursday, March 04 @ 09:54:41 CST (60 reads)
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  Television How To Report The News

 
 
  Posted by heff on Thursday, March 04 @ 09:50:53 CST (56 reads)
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  Movies Lost Leno Film Re-Appears - Unending Stream of Racist Stereotpyes

 
 
  Posted by heff on Sunday, February 28 @ 09:51:56 CST (61 reads)
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  Television Happy 89th Birthday, Abe Vigoda!

He doesn't look a day over a thousand.
 
 
  Posted by heff on Thursday, February 25 @ 07:52:00 CST (63 reads)
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  Humor Windows 7 Parody

 
 
  Posted by heff on Wednesday, February 24 @ 07:56:47 CST (61 reads)
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  OpEd Stunning and Beautiful 'Buckle Up' PSA

 
 
  Posted by heff on Friday, February 19 @ 07:55:31 CST (62 reads)
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  Music Salt of the Earth Returning to The Sheldon in November!

For those of you who may have missed their recent "Notes from Home" concert at the Sheldon, local talent Salt of the Earth will be making their triumphant return in November along with previous cohorts Prairie Soul.

I can't emphasize enough what an amazing sound they had at their last performance in the acoustic perfection of the Sheldon Concert Hall. Here's your chance to make up for missing the last one.

And hey, maybe they'll even be able to slip 'Face of the Earth' into the setlist this time. (wink, wink)

Here are the details:

TUESDAY, NOVEMBER 9TH

The Sheldon Concert Hall – Notes From Home Concert Series
3648 Washington Blvd. (right behind the Fox Theatre)
314-533-9900

Sheldon Website

Show Time: 7:30 – 9:30pm
Cover charge: $6.00 at the door only!

Don't miss this one, sucka-chumps.
 
 
  Posted by heff on Thursday, February 18 @ 00:39:34 CST (77 reads)
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  Science Willpower and The 'Slacker' Brain

So why do so many New Year's Resolutions fail? It may be because your brain is exhausted from too much decision making.

Check out this report from NPR's Radiolab.

In his book How We Decide, and in a recent Wall Street Journal article, Jonah writes about an experiment by Stanford University professor Baba Shiv, who collected several dozen undergraduates and divided them into two groups.

In the WSJ article, Jonah writes:

"One group was given a two-digit number to remember, while the second group was given a seven-digit number. Then they were told to walk down the hall, where they were presented with two different snack options: a slice of chocolate cake or a bowl of fruit salad."
And then he writes:
"Here's where the results get weird. The students with seven digits to remember were nearly twice as likely to choose the cake as students given two digits. The reason, according to Professor Shiv, is that those extra numbers took up valuable space in the brain — they were a "cognitive load" — making it that much harder to resist a decadent dessert. In other words, willpower is so weak, and the prefrontal cortex is so overtaxed, that all it takes is five extra bits of information before the brain starts to give in to temptation."
It turns out, Jonah explains, that the part of our brain that is most reasonable, rational and do-the-right-thing is easily toppled by the pull of raw sensual appetite, the lure of sweet. Knowing something is the right thing to do takes work — brain work — and our brains aren't always up to that. The experiment, after all, tells us brains can't even hold more than seven numbers at a time. Add five extra digits, and good sense tiptoes out of your head, and in comes the cake. "This helps explain why, after a long day at the office, we're more likely to indulge in a pint of ice cream, or eat one too many slices of leftover pizza," Lehrer writes.
 
 
  Posted by heff on Tuesday, February 16 @ 07:43:44 CST (84 reads)
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  News How to Hide An Airplane Factory

via think or thwim
During World War II the Army Corps of Engineers needed to hide the Lockheed Burbank Aircraft Plant to protect it from a Japanese air attack. They covered it with camouflage netting and trompe l'oeil to make it look like a rural subdivision from the air.
Follow the link for some amazing pictures.
 
 
  Posted by heff on Tuesday, February 16 @ 07:35:06 CST (65 reads)
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  Television AMC Streaming Original Prisoner Series for Free

Well, I can't say I exactly enjoyed AMC's recent remake of the classic BBC mind-fuck TV series 'The Prisoner', but I can say I'm thrilled that they are streaming the entire original series from their website for free.

Your adventure begins with Episode 1: "Arrival" in which our hero, a retired spook, wakes to find himself upon a mysterious island.

 
 
  Posted by heff on Tuesday, February 16 @ 07:19:50 CST (68 reads)
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War Clock

 
 


  Old Articles

Tuesday, February 16
· iGrow - The WalMart of Weed
· Research Study Shows Love Gets Stronger With Age
· A Brief History of Pretty Much Everything
Wednesday, February 03
· Jon Stewart Covers Obama's Q&A with the GOP
· Scientology 'Touch Healers' in Haiti - FAIL!
· Quiz: Are These Comments About the 2001 iPod or 2010 iPad?
Tuesday, February 02
· List of Nations the U.S. Has Bombed Since 1950
· Hanson Covers Radiohead
· Jaron Lanier on The Serfdom of Crowds
Thursday, January 14
· Can't...stop...laughing/crying...
· Olbermann on Rush and Robertson's Haiti Responses
Wednesday, January 13
· Conan O'Brien's Statement
Saturday, January 09
· 60-lb Duffle Bag of Pot Returned to Rightful Owner
Thursday, January 07
· Reality? You're soaking in it!
· WTF?!? Jay Leno to Take Back 11:30 (10:30 CST) Time Slot
Friday, December 25
· From the annals of food anthropology...
Monday, December 21
· R.I.P. Dan O'Bannon
Tuesday, December 15
· Keith O. at His Best
· Al Franken Schools Rep. Thune on Health Care
Tuesday, December 08
· Google Chief Fails to Address Privacy Concerns
Friday, December 04
· Happy in Paraguay
Tuesday, December 01
· Quote of the Day: 'War Sucks' edition
· What is the difference between an SUV and a golf ball?
Friday, November 27
· Hey Rush? It's Called Sedition!
Monday, November 23
· ATTENTION OLD MEDIA: Your Distribution Model Has Officially Jumped the Shark
· 90 Accomplishments of Pres. Obama Which The Media Fails to Report....
· This Is Not a Photoshop
· Website Teaches Proper Use of Apostrophe
· 3D Fractals!
· What kind of person shows up for a Sarah Palin book signing?

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