Obama polarizing..?? Never..!!

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Question: How do you feel about President Barack Obama's performance this past year?

That poll question I recently found online. The results are what caught my attention.


Answers:

Impressed. I knew I was right to vote for him.
XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX ...38%

Satisfied. He's doing his job.
XXXXXXXXXX ...10%

Pleased. But he could definitely do better.
XXXXX ...5%

On the fence. It's too early in the term to tell.
X ...1%

Unimpressed. But I think I can expect something more from him
X ...1%

Unsatisfied. He can't seem to do his job.
XXXXXX ...6%

Annoyed. I didn't vote for him, and look what he's doing to my country
XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX ...39%


Or, just looking at a 'graphical' representation, 'great job' to 'horrible job':

XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX
XXXXXXXXXX
XXXXX
X
X
XXXXXX
XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX


No, there is no polarization there at all..!!

Two out of five peeps think he is doing a great job.
Two out of five peeps think he is doing a horrible job.

And those poor wishy-washy basterds in the middle...


...tom...
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Separated at birth..??

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Maybe it is just me. Anyone else see a resemblance..??



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SNL alumnus Jon Lovitz ... and ... Supremes nominee Elena Kagan


Am I nuts ... or do they look alike..??


...tom...

Free Hugs...

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Yes . . .I am way behind the curve on this one.

But I still like the idea, the video, the music.

Hate me if you must . . .though I would prefer a hug. ...:minism:...






...tom...

Rolling the cheese...

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Dang it. It is content like this that makes the Intertubes so valuable.





Forget science, knowledge, social justice, politics, families and friends, space, derailing global warming, h3ll ...even forget about porn ...forget about all that. The Intertubes is not about doing it smarter, faster, better, with more connections...

No, the intertubes is all about seeing grown men (and women) falling down a steep hill while chasing wheels of cheese.


As noted in the accompanying article at The Big Picture, for more than 200 years now, once a year peeps have been chasing 8 pound wheels of Double Gloucester Cheese down a steep hillside.


Here, from the official website at Cheese Rollin In Gloucestershire is a view looking down from the top of the hill.




Why this does not rank right up there with the festival of San Fermin, the running of the bulls at Pamplona, I have no idea. Perhaps it just needs a mention in a Hemingway novel...


...tom...
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Chillin' with the lettuce ladies...

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I am sure you all have your own ideas about the actions and goals of PETA, People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals.

Myself, I enjoy the meat thing: steaks, grilled hamburgers and brats, sausage pizza. All the stuff that is surely killing me. Here in Iowa, where the hogs outnumber the people, the meat-eaters definitely outnumber the vegans and vegetarian.


Today, two young PETA representatives were in town doing their part to raise awareness of the rights of farm animals. I think all the meat-lovers in Central Iowa embraced them. The animal rights ideas I mean.

To call attention to their ideas they dressed in 'lettuce wraps' (essentially a bikini with a wrap skirt) and stood on a downtown corner in Des Moines to hand out free 'tofurkey' and lettuce sandwiches. This on a day when the January temperatures in Iowa were in the twenties and the windchill temps in the teens.




From the pics here you can easily see why this 'event' caught my eye.







Unfortunately, I was not able to get downtown and grab my free, and surely tasty, 'tofurkey' sandwich. Yum.


Here is the link to a short video by the local newspaper and an mp3 link to a local talk show that had the young ladies on as guests. You can imagine the friendly reception they got from the livestock farmers of Central Iowa.


I applaud the young ladies efforts and beliefs. Not sure they or their organization are getting to the real truth of animal farming or accomplishing anything substantive . . .but such is the American way.


...tom...
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One dumb pink flamingo...

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OK, ya know you live in a small town when the escape of a bird from the city zoo makes the hourly news update:

From the Des Moines Register website:

A missing Blank Park Zoo flamingo returned home Tuesday afternoon after leading dozens of searchers on a chase through south Des Moines.

Zoo officials report Tuesday afternoon that someone spotted the flamingo at a golf course near the zoo. Crews moved in on the location and were able to capture the flamingo, after the bird too one final flight over the zoo grounds.

Later in the story a local resident tells of her encounter with the wayward bird:

"There was a pink flamingo standing in my driveway ... It just kind of looked at me and turned its head back and forth."

Now that is one dumb bird. I mean, come on; what is the first thing they teach you in flamingo school: 'If you escape, find a house with a lawn ... and don't move. They will never find you..!! And then later, under the cover of darkness, then you can make your real escape.'

Image source: -just-jen- via flickr dot com

Man, what a dumb bird. And we thought turkeys were dumb.


...tom...
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Read the label stupid..!!

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Some people think it must be hard to find stuff to 'blog about'. Well, not if you set the bar low enough.

For example, a fundraiser product my wife brought home from work today. Always nice to help the kids with ... well, whatever they are doing with our money.


This fundraiser featured assorted nuts, fruits, and candies from Terry Lynn fundraising, products that I do highly recommend.



I had to laugh though at the packaging of their 'Colossal Natural Pistachios'. Nothing too unusual about the front:






But check out the 'warning label' on the reverse:





Ya know, ya got be sharp as a 'consumer' these days..!! And we must protect the 'food-challenged' among us. Next will be warning labels on banana peels...



...tom...
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What I Learned Today . . .two...

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'Red on Women Drives Men Wild' ...who would have thought..??

Image source: mx5tx/Michael via flickr dot com

A University of Rochester study, detailed online at LiveScience dot com, demonstrated that men found that:

...women shown framed by or wearing red were rated significantly more attractive and sexually desirable by men than the exact same women shown with other colors.

But nowhere in the article did I find mention of the color black. I have always found the classic basic black dress a 'killer' look for my mind...



...and a video by the little-known Mexican-American pop singer Marcos Hernandez.





...tom...
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latest 'sign of the end times'...

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Noted without comment: Emoticons have infested your gmail account.


...tom...
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my ebbflux capacitor is discharged...

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There is no refinement. There is only process, action, and circumstance.

In response to an offsite question about what the heck the subject of this post was about, an online friend sent me the link to yet another odd 'words' page. As I suggested to him, it is not nice to point me at another shiny online bauble that makes me lose all concentration and purpose in my life.




ebbflux dot com. When you enter the site a random sentence is loaded:

Cupid’s arrow (I’m talking about the reindeer).

One word, or repeated word, will hyperlink to a following page. In the example above 'reindeer' is linked. Following it gives us:

If that was indeed the direction of the corpus. Because I’m pretty sure information is not currently being collected. A throwback from a simpler time. It’s all throwbacks from similar times.

Following a few links produces:

It wasn’t written to anyone’s satisfaction, in particular. Cuidado con los fluidos mi amigo.

I waited between them floating in and out of perception, never sinking in, and never quite seen.

There’s more. It’s okay. I call it a click aesthetic. It comes in sideways and half the time you just swipe your card through the ceiling. Hold on.

OK . . .why..??

Following the 'Notes' link on the page leads to the statement:

ebbflux's "machine text" is an experimental fiction in a hypertext format. Story generation is non-linear but not entirely random. The reader plays an interactive role setting the tone and direction of presentation through their choice of hypertext clickthroughs.

OK.... Some pages do have multiple links, and they do lead to different 'daughter' pages. But it sure as the heck does not make for much of a story.

I suppose the individual sentences/thoughts could be used as writing prompts for writing exercises. But beyond that I am drawing a blank.


Anyway, just another weird thing found on the web. If any of you have a clue about this one ... please do clue me in.



Oh, and one 'pretty' thought I found:

Clarity, like water floating oil globs, dissipates as the soapiness of reality drips in.

Image source: ReneS via flickr.com

...tom...
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OK . . .why..??

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All Junky Pages Intentionally Illogical & Inconsistent

scepticism enjoy vote confiner playacting preferentially floodlit Neil zygotic beneficial Savoy yo amativeness Georgia unobtrusively egocentrically slyly globulous benchwarmer quadrennia cob midsummer Chiapas jeep loft caesium tonically headwind incredulously recondite grisly Passamaquoddy neonatology overspent matchwood millibar shibboleth chew Ellice spend derisiveness glutei sweeping jack indemnity miffy grantee Beerbohm misshape malted transpacific layette estimably enunciator stance sizzlingly devastator solemnization electrochemical pinnacle Lauren chauvinistically timeserver castigation Tunis marathoning pedagogics monogamy burial Alberta psychosomatic Adolph conduct unprepossessing Cronus reveler relief perishable destructible seriffed futurist mightily Cucuta voraciously oatcake manumission defector crawly eloper Odin attunement extremeness rumbler soiree compressibility voluntarily serrated unbelievingly
...

..??

Literally hundreds (if not thousands) of pages each with a couple of thousand words listed. All unrelated, all 'real' words ...not gibberish, all correctly spelled ...from a quick skim through anyway.

Image source: Daino 16 via stock.xchng

Just one of those silly things that makes me go 'hmmm..?!?'


...tom...
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Graphing your thoughts about you...

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The innertubes are full of widgets and games and 'which fill-in-the-blank are you..??' quizzes. There are countless ways to waste precious minutes to learn one more way to define just who the heck you are. What is with this 'defining ourselves' anyway..??


An 'exercise' I stumbled across recently is fun and different. Sponsored by The College Board (yes, the people who tortured you and now torture two million college-bound HS-ers each year with the SAT college exams) it is a simple way of weighing the significance of two pairs of choices on a 2D grid.














The example above pairs the choices of 'memorization vs comprehension' against 'verbal vs visualization'. (Click on any of the images for the bigger pic.) By sliding your mouse pointer across the face of the grid you can weigh your own balance between each pair of choices. The sample dot on the example above is obviously weighted much more heavily to memorization and almost as much to verbal for the styles of 'how you learn'.

Once you find your 'sweet spot' for any given graph and click to mark your place, the flash application fills in spots marking the choices of all those who have already completed that particular question grid. See the example below.













The simple flash program is found at the For Students page of the College Board site. No registration is required, you are simply given a cutesy 'user name' ( BrownCrownedMinnow here.. ) and away you go.


One more example of a fun one found there:

Love is: 'cruel vs wonderful' against 'attainable vs a myth'



I guess we should be encouraged that young people are finding love both 'wonderful' and 'attainable'. Though I suppose we should fear for that cluster hugging the 'cruel' line...






Anyway . . .a fun diversion for a few minutes during your day. Gawd knows we could all use a 'fun diversion' these days.

Click the links, check it out a bit, have some fun.


...tom...
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'Beer goggles' and 'looking good..!! '

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We have all heard the term 'beer goggles'. Indeed some of us kept a pair of 'em handy all through our college days.



Turns out that the effect is real, at even lower levels of alcohol than previously suspected. Certainly at levels much less than those required at the college bar:

I am not taking her home ...she has a mustache..!!

British scientists gave small, measured doses of an alcoholic drink or a placebo drink to the subjects. They then measured the subjects ratings of the 'attractiveness' of photos of males and females.




They found the effect of finding the faces more attractive was consistently higher for those who had consumed the equivalent of a large glass of wine or a pint-and-a-half of beer. It was also noted that the increase was not related to a general increase in a 'happy' mood.

Chelsea Cooley, Miss USA, 2005
Shelley Henning, Miss Teen USA, 2004
Some lucky military stiff
Source: Wikipedia Commons

Published earlier this month in the Oxford Journals Alcohol and Alcoholism, the abstract (available here) of the published article notes that the 'he/she looks great..!!' effect is not only at work for the opposite sex but also has a measurable effect on . . .hey, quit looking at your buddy like that..!! ...the perception of same-sex faces.

Perhaps even better (or worse, depending on your point of view) the study noted the 'increased attractiveness' effect lasted up to 24 hours ...but only for the males in the study.

So, when you wake up in the morning ...well, just remember guys, she probably looks better to you than your ugly mug does to her..!!


Cheers..!!



...tom...
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Peeking through your window...

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OK. I confess. I am an online voyuerist.

(Is that a real word..?? The Firefox spellchecker tells me it is not. Harrumph..!!)

Anyway . . .where was I..?? Oh yeah.


I love to surf the web randomly, seeing what I can find. The world of users like me and you randomly noting and marking our passage through this vale of tears has made this 'hobby' even more interesting recently. As the number of people out here blogging increases so does the opportunity to find new and interesting stuff.

At the top of all the main pages of these 'blogger' pages is a link to go to the 'Next Blog' What the..?? What exactly defines 'the next blog'..?? Apparently it is a random selection, a roll of the dice. You never know what is going to come up next.


Some are pretty tame. For instance, you will find a lot of family blogs. Mom and Dad creating memory records for themselves and for their kids. What better way to record Jake's first haircut..?? Mom is obviously happy and proud...







Others have grand plans for their blog. Perhaps it will be the cornerstone of their online entrepreneurial empire...

Hmmm. Jennifer has the original template for the post, with dummy text and links, and one additional post ten days later of her kid, I assume. Both in May, 2008.

I am sure it is just a temporary hiatus.



Then there are the just 'strange' blogs.

This one for example, barefoothoof, that is a collection of a hundred-and-some pics of ...horse hooves..??

Horse porn maybe..?? Hey, I am still puzzling that one out...










Others use the internet for more serious purpose. Here is a group of Japanese students, of unknown age, apparently blogging about their experiences while on a study (..??) trip to Canada. I am impressed by their blogging efforts.


Others are a bit risque . . .and still others just a bit strange.



But always there is the beauty that can be found on the net. The beauty of nature, as the sun drops to meet the distant horizon at sea...


The beauty of a young smiling face...



















Or simply the beauty of a flower staring you down.


So if you are ever bored of hitting all your 'regular sites', places you feel you must go visit while online . . .stop, take a break from that 'job', and just surf around a while appreciating the value and the beauty of the precious moments and small things that so many others dare to share with you, with me, and with the world.


...tom...
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Filtering search results by color..?!?

OK, this is one of the weirder things I have happened upon while surfing the net. I know, given some of the weird and disturbing stuff out here . . .that is saying a lot.

But filtering search results by color..?? I mean, I can see that if you are looking for bath towels or dishes or paint of a particular color. But just random objects..?!?


Here is a Yahoo.Shopping search result page that I somehow landed on. Notice the block of color swatches at the left. You may have to scroll down just a wee bit.


This particular page is tagged at the top as:

Shopping > Home & Garden > All Home & Garden > Light Pink


Notice the various articles displayed there for the shopper: a pink toy box bench, a pink bean bag chair, pinks sheets, pink security blanket, pink muffin pan, pink toaster..?!?

Clicking on the different color boxes brings up a new set of products, all with that color in common.

Well, I suppose if you are nuts about a particular color and want to pimp your pad out in that color ...I suppose that 'color search' function might be useful.


You can 'click back' on the URL string at the top at keep the color option visible. But I could not figure out how to 'call it' from the main Yahoo:Shopping page.


Anyway . . .I thought it was very, what did I call it earlier..? ...I thought it very weird.
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