Observe The Banana

Over at London Bananas they have a collected a surprisingly large collection of photos of banana peels spotted laying around the London cityscape.

“I see them everywhere. They’re languishing on doorsteps, hanging out in the middle of the road, dangling off street signs, peeking out of piles of garbage, reclining in the middle of the sidewalk, riding the bus for free. A great number of them are bright yellow as if they’re fresh and have just been dropped, although they appear in all states of decay.”

Two original (I believe) jokes from the mind of my son B

–

Sometimes when my old hound dog talks in his sleep he doesn’t tell the truth,
but I figure what the heck, let sleeping dogs lie!

–

My friend is sooo confused!

How confused is he?

When I got sick he sent me a bowl of rose soup . . .

. . .

and a bouquet of chickens!

I have been enjoying playing Lego Star Wars II with my son on the PC. He has a version for his Nintendo DS, but the little screen is hard on my old eyes. If you haven’t seen it, this is actually quite a fun game that lets you play out all the major story line scenes from the Star Wars movies, all as a LEGO minifigure. Whenever the Evil Emperor (Palpatine/Darth Sidious) is in play you hear this periodic evil cackling laugh sound.   The funny thing is for some reason it always reminds me of our current Vice President. Maybe it’s Jon Stewart’s impersonation of him that does it. So now we have taken to just calling him Evil Emperor Cheney in the game.

Please excuse my rather primitive graphics work, didn’t have any decent software tools on this game pc.

Todays YouTube Banana sighting - Banana Phone! Catchy tune, clever lyrics, and bananas; what’s not to love?

Update: Okay, I just learned that is a Raffi song from 1994 which has been the basis of quite a few internet videos, but I still like this sped up version more than several others I have seen. Enjoy

Q. Dear Banana, I just bought a new house and I want to replace the top floor carpet right away as it is old and ugly and dark. Looking at carpet choices. Any recommendations? You’ve had the same carpeting for years, no? Do you recall anything about what sort it is? I really liked the wool in our last place, and there’s a place here that has it for actually quite cheap. It feels nice, its a renewable resource, very durable/long-lasting…but…(big but) it stains pretty easily. There’s a new carpet from Dupont called Smartstrands made out of corn fiber, renewable…stain resistant guarantee, supposedly durable, very soft feeling… a bit more expensive…in the medium price range. Anyway, if you happen to have any recommendations, let me know!
-Confused in Colorado
A. First of all, let me say that I am glad that you asked that question. We understand that carpet is a very important issue to all Americans today, and is something we here all take very seriously. As matter of fact, and not very people know this about me, carpet is an issue very near and dear to my heart as I myself had carpet in my home when I was just a young child growing up in the great state of Indiana, the backbone of the heartland of America. I have personally pledged to form a panel of experts to select a committee to further research this issue until we get to the heart of this important matter. We will not stop until we have reached an answer that is both just and fair to all Americans, in all walks of life. No longer is the carpet issue just an issue for the working man, this issue cuts to core of what makes us all Americans, and should be addressed at the highest levels. I personally will travel to the carpet centers of this great nation to find the truth behind the plush pile. We need a strong and courageous leader who is unafraid to lift the corners of that berber mat, even to peak under that mildew resistant padding, and reveal the true flooring that supports this great nation, as it has since the time of brave founding fathers. In these troubled times we cannot afford to rest our bare feet upon a cold wooden floor, and neither can we afford to trip over the deceptive folds of a cheap polyester pile. Straw mats may have been good enough for our struggling ancestors, yet we cannot accept that for our great nation today. Today we call upon the strength of wool, the honesty of cotton and the justice of true stain resistance for all Americans. For when even one American has to suffer the injustice of a stained floor covering, are not we all lessened as a great nation? Our founding fathers suffered the chilled feet of hard wood floors, so that we today can rise, together, as the greatest nation in the world, barefoot, upon the plush pile that is our true birthright as Americans!! As a nation we have room in hearts to embrace equally all colors and fibers of quality floor coverings. Let us not turn our gaze away from the honesty of wool, while equally embracing the bravery of stain resistance! Our national carpet policy must be firm, yet fair. It must be soft, yet resilient. Brightly colored, and yet stain resistant! We can no more afford to divide this great country between those with Stainmaster, verse those those with Smartstrands, any more that we could turn away from those choosing the simple truths of cut pile verse those who walk among us on luxurious deep shag! Now is the time for all true Americans to join hands, and walk hand in hand, barefoot, on the luxurious carpet of truth, justice and the American way!

VOTE BANANA IN ‘08 !!

oh wait a second, did you say carpet? ohhhhhhhh carpet. hmmm. nope, sorry, I don’t know anything at all about carpet….

I just discovered you can get your daily dose of childhood joy with Calvin and Hobbes over at calvinandhobbes.com where everyday they re-release another days strip. They are in order so you follow the story lines, and if you are so inclined you can even order fancy reprints. Go check it out, and embrace your inner tiger.

B: Why do astronauts wear those bulky suits when they go out on an EVA?

T: Ummmm, to protect them from the extreme cold of space?

B: Then why don’t they just bring a space heater?

bidumpbump

Lately I find myself wondering, if I was going to time travel back to the year 1800 in North America, what could I take with me to use in the place of currency to trade for goods? The tricky part is, ideally I would like to take advantage of inflation to increase the value of my money. For instance, $1 in the year 1800 had the purchasing power of around $14 in the year 2000 (http://www.measuringworth.com/uscompare/). So if I could bring back currency from the year 2000, it would greatly increase in purchasing power from its face value. The problem is of course, I can not bring back modern currency because it is, well, modern. What I need is something that I can bring back that will not stand out as inappropriate and draw attention to me as a time traveler.
The choice of some basic precious metal like gold immediately comes to mind, and while it would work, it unfortunately loses its modern higher value when brought into the past, effectively undoing the advantage. The price of an ounce of gold in December 2000 was around $275 (http://www.finfacts.ie/Private/curency/goldmarketprice.htm), in 1800 that same ounce of gold would sell for about $19. That $19 of 1800 money had the purchasing power of about $170 of 2000 money, so you come out behind.
So perhaps what I should be looking for instead is some basic commodity that is cheap and plentiful in modern times, but was more scarce and valuable in 1800. Maybe even something that can more easily made to a high quality today, like perhaps iron or steel. I am not sure of the current and past prices of steel, and while there might be an advantage to be had on industrial scales, it is not something that could be easily carried and traded at the general store for basic supplies (is it?). Another possible contender would be salt. I have heard that it was sometimes used as a currency in the past. Let’s see, according to http://www.clarkemuseum.com/html/salt_works.html before refrigeration salt was used for preserving meat, and during the early parts of the Civil War the north blockaded salt shipments from England from reaching the south, forcing the the creation of new and expensive means of harvesting salt from springs. It states “Salt prices escalated so high, that workers were paid in salt rather than money. Prices rose from $1.25 per bushel of 50 pounds in 1861 to $50 by the end of the war.” These time periods are a little later target than my 1800, but may still be relevant. I see that a 50lb bag of fine sea salt goes for about $11 wholesale currently, so that might be a reasonable option, if not a little bulky. (As an aside, a good history of salt can be found at http://www.saltinstitute.org/38.html)
So other that salt, what other good options might there be that have not thought of? Maybe something more compact? How about modern metal hand tools? I think they are relatively cheap and high quality, if you chose carefully to avoid items that would be out of place in the past. You can buy some nice knives pretty cheap these days, but stainless steel wasn’t invent until the 1900’s. I wonder how a 1800 merchant would react to stainless steel? Blue Jeans were not invented until the 1870’s, maybe some other clothing items, or even just some good unbleached cotton fabric? I poked around http://minerals.usgs.gov/ds/2005/140/ at other mineral price histories (thought they only go back to 1900) and although I didn’t read every one (there are lots) it looks like most have only gone up in value.
Please let me know your ideas. Something that has dropped in value significantly, that would not be out of place in 1800. I chose 1800 somewhat randomly and I think that the answers would change dramatically for other time periods, or geographic locations.

OK, this is weird, this guy not only built a cool machine to shoot 3.5″ floppy disks (which isn’t really so weird), but then made a wacky bizarre video about it. “…transfer files effortlessly to your computer, with extreme prejudice”. “Also effective against squirrels, vegans, clowns, hippies, street urchins, girl scouts, and more!” And I never knew that using a CD to transfer data could be so hazardous.
Enjoy!

I know people have been hacking together small video transmitter systems into RC planes for years now, but here is a prepackaged system that puts together all the parts and pieces you need into one nice bundle. It has a small color camera with integrated transmitter, video receiver and video goggles with light blocking screen around the edge. At $549 it is not cheap, but could be loads of fun, especially if you fly over any dramatic scenery. Seems like a good thing for a RC club or group to buy and share. One of the most excited parts is the soon to be available options for a OSD (On Screen Display) module which adds things like  altitude, heading, speed and direction to home to your display. An even fancier “DragonOSD” will add a scrolling compass and autopilot functions. There will even be a pan/tilt unit available which will allow you to look around in different directions. That should provide a much greater flying experience by allowing you to look out the side to keep the horizon in view during high banking turns.

Heck, one of these would even be fun on RC cars and boats too!

Follow the link through to the Hobby Lobby product page for a fun video demonstration.

Pilot View FPV 2400 First Person Video from Hobby Lobby

Today is March 14, or 3/14 which is international Pi day. How will you celebrate it? We have settled on the old standby and made a pie. B made her amazing Kaluha cream pie actually - yum (Basically a dream whip and chocolate pudding pie with a splash of Kaluha for added flavor). There are lots of fun pi day things on the web, a good place to start is http://www.piday.org/ . Interestingly, March 14 also happens to be Albert Einstein’s birthday.
In our household, the number pi will always somehow be linked to the expression of perfection by our favorite robot in love:

Last week I pulled out a box of my old college class notes. I was looking for my notes from a introduction to digital logic class to use to teach B about basic logic gates, boolean algebra and TTL logic chips. Along with the material I was looking for we also discovered the ‘doodle sheets’ I had interspersed throughout my class notes. B was very amused by all my little faces, creatures and celtic inspired tangled snakes and such, but the one gem (which I have no memory of writing), ever so neatly printed on the page, reduced him to uncontrollable laughter for a long time and will no doubt become a part of our family lexicon for some time to come.

I explained that college freshmen frequently do not get enough sleep.

p.s. He also had fun repeating “NAND!” -giggle- -giggle- “NAND!” -giggle- -giggle- “NAND!” -giggle- -giggle-

My son B and I were trading creative insults the other day for laughs. We had some good ones like, “you are the little hole in the ground you don’t see until you twist your ankle”, or “you are that little piece of plastic wrap that you can’t throw away because the static cling keeps is stuck to your finger.” In the end he won hands down with “You lackluster automobile.” I may be a biased parent, but I think that was a brilliant way to sum up so many subtle ideas and feelings in two short words.

Over at Extremepumpkins.com they have lots of examples of fantastic pumpkin carving, but I am particularly fond of the “World’s Fastest Pumpkin Carver” video. This guy welded up a set up blades shaped like a classic jack-o-lantern face and attached them to a long pipe handle. With one swing at a pumpkin he produces a basic jack-o-lantern (or a smashed pumpkin when it goes wrong.) Nice.

[Link]

Wow, now this is a banana worth observing.

Argentine-born, Montreal-based artist Cesar Saez’s latest project is an ambitious one: at the cost of approximately one million dollars, he plans to inflate a gigantic banana with helium and float it over Texas—specifically, 20-30 miles above the Earth. He and his team of scientists, engineers and volunteers have been at work for years and plan to float the massive fruit sometime next summer.

The project is called “Geostationary Banana Over Texas”
This makes me happy.

Read more and watch video via [Boing Boing]

In his book, Fit Or Fat, Covert Bailey suggests a diet low in fat for overall health, but excludes ice cream from his lists of foods to avoid because he considers it a drug instead of a food. As someone with a rather high daily intake of ice cream, I could not agree more. He offered the example of how ice cream could be used to “cure” a child after a bump or bruise, and indeed I do seem to remember my parents administering an ice cream cone to me when, as a small child, my fingers were accidentally shut in a car door (causing more shock and fear than actual injury).

Apparently Demitrios Kargotis has taken this theory one step further with his Mr Whippy machine which doles out servings of frozen custard in serving sizes controlled by the amount of misery it detects in a voice stress analysis.

I wonder if it would give me a nice big serving because I am so unhappy about not having had any ice cream for the last 2 hours?

As I always say, “Every meal deserves a dessert doesn’t it? Well, breakfast is a meal!
and, “Life is uncertain, eat dessert first!”

whew, I better go for a bike ride and burn some calories….

From [We make money not art] via [Boing Boing]

I was curious if a tracked vehicle could ever be fast enough to compete in an extreme off road rally like the Dakar, so I googled “fastest tracked vehicle” and came up with the Ripsaw vehicle created by Howe & Howe productions.

At 80mph it beats the M1, but is probably still to slow to win a rally. Still very impressive creation with 450hp blown 427 and 14 in of suspension travel. Autoblog has a nice description and video, and the makers have a less useful site with some pictures and broken video link.

Read [via Autoblog}

This looks like it could be a comfortable alternative in hot weather, I wonder how quiet it is? They also have a shirt with built in fan.

Read more [via Engadget]

I was struck by the nice design of this clever little folding spoon found in the lid of single serving Skyr (a wonderful Icelandic dairy product similar to yogurt). It clicks into a locked open position to make a very functional spoon, and can be re-folded.

I have always encouraged make believe play and an active imagination in my son, but sometimes I find he is too absorbed in his make believe and has to come back to reality for something. I once told him, “sometimes you get lost in your own little world” and his answer was, “sometimes it isn’t so little”, which I thought was a pretty good answer.
Recently he asked me, “What universe do you want to be in?”.
Choices included Harry Potter, Pokemon, Star Trek, Dungeons and Dragons, Runescape and others.
Wanting to perhaps talk about something in real life for a change, I said, “how about this one?”
His answer, “That is like having a time machine and always setting the date for today!”
huh. . . okay, that one gave me something to think about. Here we have the amazing power of imagination, why not use it.
I told him what an excellent answer that was, and we proceeded to compare and contrast many aspects of our home planets including flora, fauna, family stuctures, diets and more.

This steam powered R2-D2 by I-Wei (CrabFu) is too cool.

Link

So those little aliens from Space Invaders decided that the reason everyone is always shooting at them must be an image problem. The name “Invaders” just seems to invoke all kinds of negative images. So they got together with the PR department and made a focus group to see what they could do to solve the problem. Hmmm what should it be? Travelers? not positive enough, Heroes? not not quite right, how about Protectors! yea, thats the ticket! Space Protectors! Now there is name, get it down to the boys in marketing and have them whip up some new product to get the name out, how about a nice line of mouse pads to start…

B was very patient trying on every hat I could find in the house (what…you don’t have a hat trunk in your house?) while I took pictures. Music by Barenaked Ladies. Enjoy!