Chia Pet ... Reborn!

It's cute. It's grassy. It's completely unnecessary in your life. Cha-cha-cha-chia? No, it's Nyokki. Raise a toast to progress.

White Chocolate Maggots

Take a break. Relax. And visit Strange New Products, a site that hunts down the insane and inane. It features everything from white chocolate maggots to corporate sponsored Porta Potties. Yum! Have some fun checking back often.

How close do you live to cement?

Read today on Design Observer:

If your front door opens onto a sidewalk, you're probably a Democrat.

If your front door is more than 25' from your street, you're probably a Republican.

Gasp! She Returns!

Well, it took turning a corporate monologue into dialog to get me to return to blogging. I can't resist sharing this with the few of you still diligent enough to read this (thanks Miss B!). If you've ever walked through the pedestrian tunnel north of Grand Central, you've experienced a distracting advertisement haranging you as you walk. Garble! Grawk! Yell, yell, yell!

Well, designer Ji Lee is fighting back — at least against print advertisements. He launched The Bubble Project whereupon he placed bubble stickers (the kind used in comic books) on ads throughout NYC. Passersby wrote comments in the space provided. The results, both hilarious and unpredictable, were captured in Lee's recent book Talk Back: The Bubble Project.

Now if only there were a mute button in that pedestrian tunnel.

Anybody seen Wag the Dog?

This story about the bumbling Abu Musab al-Zarqawi almost seems too ridiculous to believe. Hmmm... anyboy ever seen Wag the Dog?

Running With Diapers

Read this little tidbit today: 5-year-old runs marathons. I find this more sad than exciting. He's like Little Hercules, who ended up with an abusive dad and claims of steroid drug use before he hit his teens. The article says they're already preparing him for the 2012 Olympics. Shouldn't there be a child labor law against this?

We all scream for ice cream (ball)!

Chalk this one up as awesome but useless: today I learned about this cool ice cream ball from L.L. Bean. You put the ingredients in one end (cream, sugar), the chemistry in the other (ice, rock salt) and move the ball around for 20 minutes. Voila! You have ice cream. Totally cool, right?

Problem is, when I tried to think of someone who could use this cool gadget, I couldn't think of a single person. Sure, it'd make an entertainment group event for one party, but would the excitement last for 20 min? And what about subsequent parties? Wouldn't your friends get tired of you forcing them to work out just to get dessert? Sigh. Excitement dissipates...

Hanging Head in Shame (But Bopping to Good Tunes)

OK, I was just about ready to give this up. Things got busy at work, and I just wasn't focused on my Cool Stuff blog anymore. But then I come across something like Pandora and can't keep it to myself. Credit Dora for the link. This is the coolest music service: name one song or one artist and, using the research from the Music Genome Project, the site predicts other music you'd like and plays it for you as streaming radio.

I typed in one of my favs, Metric, and have subsequently listened to "Unsatisfied" by Nine Black Alps, "Rock & Roll Queen" by Subways, and Slip & Slide by Tiny Amps, none of which I've ever heard before.

Now all they need is a desktop widget so I can always check there to see what song I'm listening to (instead I have to figure out which web browser window it's sitting in). Nonetheless, this is brilliance of technology in its simplest form.

This appeared on the This Is Broken site, a place where people report wacky things they see that don't work. I thought this was too funny not to share. Once you understand the explanation, it becomes even funnier.

This is Not an Advertisement

So I don't go in for product recommendations, and I have unfortunately not gotten the chance to test this out, but Microsoft's new mobile PC is, at the very least, a product to watch. Looks fairly innovative anyway. Not quite the iPod of portable computing, but maybe that's iteration #2. For more details, CNet has answers.

Is Your Site Red or Yellow or Green?

When searching on Google or Yahoo or whatever, you can now get a sense of the safety of the site you’re going to visit before you go there. Site Advisor tells you how often a site will e-mail you (i.e., whether they could be a source for spam), whether downloads are clear of adware, and whether they link to other sites rated green for OK to go. I’m a huge fan since it saves me from having to guess whether a site is legit from a security/privacy standpoint. This plugin is for Firefox or Internet Explorer.

Holy Magma, Batman!

Did you know a giant collapsed volcano is called a caldera (think cauldron). You know one better as Yellowstone. Here’s the Wikipedia jaw-dropper: “When Yellowstone Caldera erupted 630,000 years ago it released 1000 cubic kilometers of material, covering half of North America in up to two meters of debris.”

Understand Racism in the '60s

I find that, having not lived it, it's hard to truly understand the Civil Rights Movement and just how awful things were. For a taste of that, view these photos uncovered recently by The Birmingham News. It's time, as a nation, that we face our past and have a national dialog about how far we have left to go.

Boingboing.net has a brief summary of the photos' origins.

Two Scientific Ideas Dramatically Shift Thinking

These two discoveries blew me away. The first argues that the Black Death plague in Europe contributed to a 300 mini ice age. The theory argues that after such a huge number of people died so quickly, trees sprang up on unused farmland, lowering carbon dioxide levels.

This gives some awful sense of balance to the way global warming, cited as a possible cause of the destructiveness of recent natural disasters, has taken so many lives — some kind of tragic buffering capacity.

The second discovery also requires an adjustment in thinking. Viruses may have been part of the evolutionary origin of life. Woah. I can't describe it as well as the Discover article can. Stuff in there made me feel like we're still in the Dark Ages. But I can quote this stunning statistic:

Scientists estimate that they have discovered and documented less than 1 percent of all the living things on the planet. But for every organism in that unidentified 99 percent, at least 10 times as many unknown viruses are thought to exist—the vast majority of which are harmless to life and yet integral to it.

I'm Seeing Red! (And hearing techno.)

Based on research that humans are able to associate music with color, a student at the University of Birmingham in England has created a music player where you create playlists based solely on the color (or as he would say colour) that you've assigned to the song. Once you've assigned enough songs, a color palette up top tells you where you're collection falls in the color scheme. Eventually, he's hoping to match people's musical palettes and allow you to download color associations from other people who categorize songs the way you do. I sense a match.com / iTunes cross-sell in the future...

This is very very very beta, but it's kinda fun to download, explore and create playlists with similar songs. I think it works because colors have moods, as do songs.

Hello? What's That? Oh, just a New Yorker

Even if you're not living in the continuous loony bin that is New York, you can get a kick out of Overheard in New York. People basically report on this website the conversations they overhear. Hysterical and a tad dumb. Yay USA!

Me Talk Pretty One Day?

I just discovered this site (Engrish) that basically mocks the number of products out there with bad English (many of them Asian). Enjoy!

Keep Track of Mud Puddles' Changes

So I'll be the first to admit I'm an irregular post-ee on here. But I still love shooting out little messages of stuff I just find so ridiculous, brilliant, or novel that they must be shared. (Even if no one ever sees them, I feel TONS better).

But I'll bet it's a pain to come check here all the time, only to discover I've gone into hibernation again. I've finally got a solution for that, and it's brilliant! It's called RSS and it uses XML.

Woah, you say. What the #@*$ is RSS and XML. You're in luck, because I've recently gotten hooked and I'd love to tell you. Put simply, it's a new technology that allows you to keep track of new content on a website. Most major websites now offer this, although only 6% of web users are utilizing it.

Luckily, becoming one of the early adopters of this technology is not that hard. First you need a reader. I recommend either Bloglines or MyYahoo (you have to have a Yahoo e-mail first, I believe). Here's the best part of all: the reader you choose can tell you when all your favorite sites are updated, not just mine. That could include all the blogs you read or the news sites you keep track off. So in the instance of my site, you'll only have one place to check whether I've added anything. And that place will also tell you whether your Aunt Bertha and your cousin Ronny have updated their blogs, too. Plus get updates to the NY Times home page without having to scan their current page to see if anything is new.

These readers usually show a headline and then a summary so you can decide if you want to click to go to the site the feed is from.

Here are the steps to be the coolest kid on the block:
1. Get a reader (recommendations above). This requires signing up — not a download for the two I'm recommending here — and should take less than 5 minutes.
2. Then tell your reader you want access to this feed by copy-pasting this link in: http://wallowmuddy.blogspot.com/atom.xml

Please note that if you follow this link, you'll get a bunch of gibberish, something you'll notice on other sites offering RSS feeds. If that happens when you're trying to add other feeds, just copy- paste the address from your browser into your reader. Your reader can read what your browser thinks is an error.

Did I confuse anyone? Just holler if you want more details. Then rock this RSS Thang.

I Hate This Idea: Standardized Tests in College

Urgh! Bush is trying to put standardized testing in colleges.

I've tried three times to write this post. This idea is just so dumb that I can't seem to be clever in talking about it. I just don't see it's value, what's driving this movement for change and why why why why anyone in higher education would support it.

Are we just looking for another method that we're behind Europe in the value of our education? Are state schools' financials going to change depending on their test results? Oh no oh no oh no! Now we're just controling the professors and forcing them to create a standardized (boring) curriculum. Please no!

Coretta Scott King Wiretapped

This ABC News article offers an excellent understanding of the history of wiretapping in this country and its detrimental effects on just one person: the recently buried Coretta Scott King.

Doctor Plays God

Doctors have long been accused of playing God, which is one of the reasons why some religions don't allow its members to go to the doctor or receive certain treatments. I'd have to think those same religions would be against this: a Massachusetts doctor who suspends life then revives — at least for pigs.

Seems like pretty amazing treatment, and I'm all for it if it saves lives and doesn't revive brain damaged people. Think all people will "see the light"?

Bribing for School Attendance

I can’t decide what I think of this trend: elementary, middle and high schools across the country are now offering rewards for perfect attendance. And by rewards, I mean cash, video games, laptops, trips to Disneyworld and even cars. This NY Times article implies it’s driven by the No Child Left Behind program, which rewards schools with more funding for greater attendance.

Advocates say it works: more students attend, grades and standardized test scores go up, everyone benefits. Others say this sends the wrong message, making kids think they should get something for something they are legally required to do.

Does it encourage kids to go to school when they’re sick, thereby spreading more illness? (Adults do the same at work, a trend dubbed presenteeism.) Or are we just teaching them an important life lesson earlier: go to work, get paid; go to school, get a car?

Maybe I'm Revealing Too Much...

I love these awful faces.

One More Reason Not to Puff

In the NY Times today: “a woman who smokes has a risk of dying from heart disease equal to the risk she would have if she weighed 90 pounds more than the nonsmoker.” Damn! Slightly ironic considering people who quit tend to have weight gain afterward (partly due to the need to replace one addicition with another, I think.) Time to do anything to stop, people!

How to Meet People Where You Live

A friend of mine asked me today how to find a good organization to get involved in. I wrote a long e-mail and then I thought: what if others could use this advice. So here is some information: take it or leave it or (please) comment with your own suggestions!

Dear Friend:
You ask an interesting question. I would suggest this site for finding common interest groups: http://www.meetup.com/.

You might also try taking classes (like cooking, for instance, not classroom classes) and then just make a point of meeting people while there. Many cities have "newcomers to New York" meet and greet. I don't know exactly where you can find that, but I have a friend who attended one, so I could find out if you like.

Also, if knitting or crocheting classes interest you, I would suggest Knit NY. It's a super-cute shop with gorgeous (read: expensive) yarn. They have beginner and intermediate classes. They're a tad expensive, but could be a way to meet people of all ages at least while the class is going on. Then you could join a group more easily too! (I've thought about starting a knitting group, but I haven't figured out if/when/how. I don't want to trek out twice a month to have no one show up.)

You could also volunteer or mentor. Volunteer Match is a great site for finding stuff like that. I volunteer at a hospice, which means I meet elderly people, but there are ways I could volunteer there and meet more people (like go into the office to stuff envelopes or help out with other things), but I just don't do it.

Hmmm... that's what's coming to mind for things to do/ways to meet people. I've provided links where I could. I also am a member of a couple professional groups, but that doesn't help you. : )

Readers (all 0.5 of you): what are your thoughts?

Sponsors Apply Here

Is this true? The New York Times now has sponsors for its article tools (e-mail this, printer-friendly and single page links)? Anyone else slightly disturbed by this? Next thing you know, your umbrella will start flashing ads for peanut butter. Actually, it’d be pretty cool if your umbrella had a screen that flashed the weather report. Then you could check it every day before you leave to see if you need it. Damn, that’s awesome. Yeah! Who wants to develop this with me? Anyone want to underwrite it?

Would you like to take a survey: Do you like beans?

Is it silly of me to wonder about public opinion polls (PDF)? Every Gallup poll is conducted by telephone. This makes sense since in 1997, 95% of households had a telephone. Gallup had actually gone so far as to randomly match an area code with 7 other digits. That means even unlisted numbers can be called.

But the Gallup document I link to above was written in 1997 — before the deluge of cell phone usage. My burning questions remain unanswered and they are as follows:

1. Can cell phones be called for polls or do privacy laws protect that? What about the people who only have cell phones? Is their opinion missed?

2. How do they avoid calling businesses?

3. Part of the Gallup process in 1997 was to estimate how many people could be attributed to specific area codes. Are they taking into account that many cell phone users move (sometimes across country) yet keep their old number, and consequently their old area code.

So, can anyone out there report an instance (or, ideally, two) where their cell phone was called for a poll? I know this is headier than most of my recent posts, but anyone care to comment, even if just to say “This is boring. Go back to tell us about cool T-shirt sites”? P.S. At the very least can someone unearth the reference in this post's title?

Humans Make the Strangest Sounds

Check out this amazing Honda ad in the UK with all humans making the noise of a car driving. It's just ... well, just go see. Click on "Watch."

Drunken Monkey

Zookeepers in Moscow are giving wine to monkeys three times a day during one of the coldest periods in 25 years. Temperatures have reached as low as -31 degrees Celsius and dozens have died. But the monkeys are happy! Hope it's not a grand cru...

This Surprised Me

Supreme Court upholds physician-assisted suicide in Oregon.
Britain to allow 2-women brothels for safety.

Flying Coffins: Poetically Morbid

Africa accounts for only 4% of global air traffic but 27% of all air crashes.

Drag & Drop Shopping

Have fun with this drag & drog shopping cart. Love the poof when you drag something out. Doesn't hurt that the T-shirts are cool, too. I just wish they came in women's sizes...

A la Mode

OK, this made me laugh (quietly but out loud), so I thought I’d share. First, a tiny bit of background. A mode is when you hit the Caps Lock key or the insert key on your computer and start typing in all caps or typing over your text. Modes are not recommended in interface design because people forget they are on, which can lead to frustration.

Here’s the funny part (from Wikipedia if you look up “mode”): Interface guru Jef Raskin, in his book The Humane Interface, came out strongly against modes, writing,

“Modes are a significant source of errors, confusion, unnecessary restrictions, and complexity in interfaces.” Later he notes, “‘It is no accident that swearing is denoted by #&%!#$&,’ writes my colleague, Dr. James Winter; it is ‘what a typewriter used to do when you typed numbers when the Caps Lock was engaged.’”

OK, perhaps just funny to me, but ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha!

Mac users suck ...

... Because you get the coolest apps. Here are a few:
LaunchBar, the god of quickkeys
kGTD, an allegedly cool proj mgmt tool (though I wouldn’t know because: no Mac)

And now a step back for Apple (you knew this was coming):
An anti-Ipod rant. I call it a rant though I agree with parts, particuarly the wheel, which I’ve complained about frequently to the two friends who will listen (and really they’re just nodding off to sleep, not nodding in agreement)

Word choice, people! Word choice!

Somehow I doubt that birth defect advocacy groups are “celebrating” higher rates of birth defects. Word choice — so key, my friends!

Mooooooo!

Cows milk themselves while farmers monitor from afar. Cool.

Something to Ponder

How happy is the blameless vestal's lot!
The world forgetting, by the world forgot.
Eternal sunshine of the spotless mind!
Each pray'r accepted, and each wish resign'd;

- Alexander Pope

You mean talking to a computer isn't fun?

Could companies be learning that customer service is still cool? I recently saw a TV ad where one financial services company (forgive me for forgetting which one) tells us that it’s easy to reach a person when you call. “Just press zero” the voiceover intones.

Interestingly, I just came across a Cheat Sheet that reveals how easy or difficult it is to reach a human when calling many customer service lines. One of my favorites is Time Magazine: “0,0,0,0 (ignore “invalid entry” messages).” Or when you call 1-800-MEDICARE: “RE: info for part “D” Medicare Prescription Drug Plans- When recording begins say “Agent” 5+ times.”

Um... yeah... good luck!