Nate Edel's blog
Doctors grow organs from patients’ own cells
Seven living with bladders from new process
[…]Scientists grew new bladders from the patients’ own cells, which were then transplanted back into the patients’ bodies.
Cool. Once again, the future is now… all I want to know is when they going to be able to make some lab-grown replacement arteries? The way I’m going, I may need ’em one of these days…
Porn star hits it big as wine-maker
By Daniel Trotta
Wed Mar 22, 2:06 PM ETNEW YORK (Reuters) – It seemed like the perfect gimmick: a celebrity porn star would launch her own wine, with her alluring picture on the label.
Savanna Samson did just that, but when it received a score of 90 to 91 out of 100 by wine guru Robert Parker, the project became serious. It turns out Samson, the star of “The New Devil in Miss Jones,” has produced an exceptional wine, becoming the toast of two industries: wine-making and pornography.
I have no further comment.
Via MSNBC Argentine president to country: Eat less beef
As prices rise carnivores endanger Nestor Kirchner’s anti-inflation fight
Updated: 7:28 a.m. ET March 16, 2006
BUENOS AIRES, Argentina – Argentines rank among the world’s biggest meat-eaters. But President Nestor Kirchner has told his carnivorous compatriots it’s time to consume less if beef prices continue to rise and threaten his campaign against inflation.But isn’t that like shunning the tango or telling a soccer-mad nation to skip the World Cup?
Somehow this reminds me of Shrubbo’s “addicted to oil” comment.
On an side note, I’ve wanted to visit Argentina for a while now, and the cuisine – including excellent, relatively affordable beef – is a big part of that.
From MSNBC:
Norway, where beer flows instead of water
Woman pleasantly surprised when alcohol comes through kitchen faucet
REUTERS Updated: 6:36 p.m. ET March 13, 2006OSLO, Norway – A woman thought she was in heaven when beer instead of water flowed from the faucets in her apartment in west Norway.
“I turned on the tap to clean some knives and forks and beer came out,†Haldis Gundersen told Reuters from her home in Kristiansund, in west Norway. “We thought we were in heaven.â€
[…]
It turned out that a worker in a bar two floors below had mixed up the pipes on Saturday evening, wrongly connecting a new barrel to a water pipe leading to Gundersen’s apartment. The bar got water in its beer taps.
Definitely one to file under “News of the Weird.”
I will be starting shortly at Guidewire, in San Mateo.
It won’t be for another few days (*) , but except on the level of exactly which day next week I start, plans are settled and I am looking forward to getting back to a relatively “crunchy” programming position; it seems like a very cool place. More details to follow later.
(* it’s Saturday as of when I’m writing this, and I have to go on Monday to either do Jury Duty or get it rescheduled having missed my original day due to an earlier interview somewhere else…)
AMERICAblog takes a break from political stories noting a CNN story on a “creepy” new furry lobster, and asks the question I’ve borrowed for my title.
The shortage of posts lately has basically come down to three things:
1) I’ve been busy with the job-search.
2) My home page has been getting a lot of hits from my craigslist resume, and while I’m too lazy to look through the referers, I have to assume some of them are coming here. I don’t feel comfortable blogging about my job search when prospective employers might be reading here.
3) I’ve been kind of reluctant to take up either too much fun stuff, or anything too controversial politically, because it might seem unprofessional. Now, I grant, pretty much this entire blog is “unprofessional,” and it’s unlikely I’d get hired someplace too hung up on such things. I have no idea if political opinions a “protected category,” but I suppose it’s a moot point, since I pretty well broadcast being some variety of liberal/leftist here. But in any case it’s a point of first impressions, and I’d like to avoid making a bad one.
That said, I have been having SOME fun lately, and two of them merit a quick note here.
First, I discovered Questionable Content last night via Steve Jackson’s recommendation in the Daily Illuminator a few days ago. He described it as a “a modern-day romantic comedy,” but I’d call it Soap Opera for the 20-something set. Without any spoilers, if you’re a Robotech fan, think about the Lisa-Rick-Minmei triangle sans any of the action or sci-fi elements (except a single few non-giant robots, one of them taking the obligatory talking-animal role.)
If you check it out, do yourself a favor and start from the beginning; the art does take a while to evolve, but the character development is the fun part – there aren’t nearly the same sort of random digressive plotlines or degree of geeky weirdness that Sluggy Freelance or GOATS have, so I’d imagine it would be hard to truly pick up from the middle.
One warning: there is some minor profanity at times, so depending on your sense of propriety it may not be work safe.
Second, the link I’ve had for a while for the Space Moose mirror seems to have died; fortunately, there are now several findable on google, one of which at “spacemoose.almostdead.net” had a cool URL and appears to have dropped the substitution of the author’s name with a weird one that the old DrunkAndDisorderly site did. While Space Moose uses quite a bit of profanity (and very frequent attempts to be offensive, with or without profanity), it’s really funny most of the time. Do consider yourself warned before following the link, though.
The character of Lazlo Hollyfeld in the film Real Genius may have been loosely based on a real person:
Chuck claims to be a fairly normal inventor at a large audio equipment manufacturer. But in 1972, Chuck lived in the tunnels beneath Caltech’s student dormitories. Soon thereafter, he moved into the misty realm of Caltech legend, where he apparently still lives today.
His legend played a central role in a recent movie about Caltech, called “Real Genius”. The movie was directed by Martha Coolidge and starred Val Kilmer. In the movie, a burned-out misfit named Lazlo Hollyfeld lives in the tunnels beneath a student dorm, easily recognized as Dabney House.
Found via google, looking for something else entirely.
Sometimes I get reminded that being in a fraternity in college was not just about having a supportive bunch of guys around to look after me when I was drinking, and a nice spot to crash on the couch and watch a very large TV set.
Sometimes, like Peter’s wedding, it involves genuinely being reminded of the strength of the friendships I developed there. And sometimes, it involves REALLY funny emails that I’d never have gotten if I’d just hung out with other geeks and Comp. Sci. majors.
I got forwarded a series of emails which apparantly are the legal community’s next answer to Craig Shergold. And apparantly, they’re real.:
The email that roared
The strange tale of a much-forwarded email chain describing “Lawyers behaving badly.”
By David L. Yas
Sadly, when Abdala typed those three syllables of gibberish, she made an electronic record of her own impetuousness, a record that may haunt her for quite some time.
How do I know? Because I was one of roughly seven zillion people who received a copy of the email this week. Thanks to an unstoppable phalanx of forwarders, the brief exchange has made its way to a countless number of attorneys after Korman shared it with a friend and allowed him to share it with a few others.
Fueled by attorneys’ curiosity that a young attorney would fire away at a would-be employee with so much vigor, the email chain made its way from firm to firm with the speed and recklessness of Apolo Ohno after six caffe lattes. It went to Rindler Morgan and Gadsby Hannah, to Mintz Levin and Sally & Fitch, to Nixon Peabody and Wilmer Hale.
It’s been across the state and out of state. And to Europe. Seriously.
And now to my house alumni mailing list, and likely heading to an inbox near you.
I have no idea if it’s legitimate to repost the email forward in its entirety, and to be on the safe side I’m not going to do so here. I am surprised to see that it’s NOT readily available on google yet. Suffice it to say that once someone DOES put it on the web, you’ve got all the keywords you need to find it in the Mass law article. And it’s funny as heck, and funnier still with the context the article provides.
Not that techies are immune to our own brand of idiocy, but I do like to think that the BOFH is fiction.
As of Friday, February 10th, I am no longer working at my old position at USF.
I was am actively looking for a new position – preferably in the San Francisco Bay Area – and appreciate any leads. My resume is available as a pdf
document or as html.
There are more versions available here, and further information on my job search and professional interests will be available in a few
days.
This post will remain “sticky” until I’ve gotten a job. In any case, to all friends reading here, please wish me luck, and I will probably keep you all posted about my job search in this space.
Update as of 3/11/2006: This is no longer sticky, as I’ve gotten and accepted a job offer. The resumes are about to be updated but I’ll leave a version up for the curious.
Sounds like a bad comic book, right?
But via BoingBoing.net, we find that they’re stars of the NSA children’s outreach site.
They have comments on changes to the site, but in general, I’m just baffled and astounded(*); that they HAVE a ridiculous comicky children’s site to begin with.
(* I was going to say “hornswoggled” but I’m informed that means “fooled.”)
…and 51% of this country really voted to let this guy be second in line to the (metaphorical) big red button?
Cheney Accidentally Shoots Fellow Hunter
WASHINGTON – Vice President Dick Cheney accidentally shot and injured a man during a weekend quail hunting trip in Texas, his spokeswoman said Sunday.