http://www.philonoist.net Ramblings. Wonderings. Musings. Mon, 07 Jul 2008 15:55:28 +0000 http://backend.userland.com/rss092 en Toyota, the undisputed champion of the hybrid-world, is contemplating adding solar panels to the next generation of Prius cars even though they know they'll get a scant amount of electricity from it. It's already being called a "symbolic" gesture. Dear Toyota: really? You want to have Prius owners excommunicated from the ... http://www.philonoist.net/2008/07/07/toyota-makes-a-silly/ Remind me never to be a test subject of Dr. David Pritchard. The good doctor, an immunologist-biologist at the University of Nottingham, is researching whether or not hookworm parasites in the human bloodstream can be beneficial. By lowering the body's immune response mechanisms (thus making the hookworms' new home a ... http://www.philonoist.net/2008/07/06/the-creepy-side-of-science/ I was first exposed to Neil deGrasse Tyson a couple of weeks ago via this video on "stupid" design in which he argues that there can't be a Creator if a Creator existed, it would have "unintelligent" among other attributes (see his comment below), since there's a load of stuff ... http://www.philonoist.net/2008/06/28/i-think-we-need-a-recount/ From Geekologie: Isn't that Harrison Ford on the left there? Can't we just ask him and settle this once and for all? http://www.philonoist.net/2008/06/28/han-shot-first/ Like many a New Englander, I usually get my iced coffee from Dunkin Donuts. I know, I know, it's a a chain, and I agree it's not the best (which, by the way, is at Sarah's Market at Huron+Concord in Cambridge.) My commute takes me by a Brugger's Bagels, Au ... http://www.philonoist.net/2008/06/17/bases-loaded/ Oliners past and present are good at many a thing: we've built K'Nex Computers, travelled to Antarctica, and started companies. But if there's one thing we're terrible at, it's blogging, at least from the point of view of Planet Olin. In its heyday, PO was damn near close to required ... http://www.philonoist.net/2008/06/07/the-death-of-planet-olin/ Yesterday I baked a cake from scratch (no lie) and as I was pulling the pans out of the oven, I realized I didn't have a cooling rack. Now, I understand it's not the most elegant solution, but with 8 cans of soup and an old wire storage system you ... http://www.philonoist.net/2008/06/01/engineering-a-quick-cooling-rack/ I'm probably late to the party, but I LOVE the debut album by Vampire Weekend. Echoes of Paul Simon's "Graceland", both superficially (borrowing heavily from the themes of African music) and at a deeper level, as something ties each album's tracks together, some sort of (gasp!) musical forethought. Maybe I love ... http://www.philonoist.net/2008/04/27/vampire-weekend/ Something ironic happened on the way home last night. I came home late last night after spending an evening with a friend having dinner and, as always, checked my e-mail (one habit I'll never break.): "i find reddit to pose a quandary for myself also. i dont have time or patience to dig ... http://www.philonoist.net/2008/03/15/aftermath/ I went to an extreme this week: I force quitted myself of the reddit habit. Reddit, if you're somehow unfamiliar, is a social news aggregation website: members can rank user-submitted headlines that correspond to stories, images, and the like. In theory, the top 25 articles at any moment, the newspaper ... http://www.philonoist.net/2008/03/14/im-done-with-reddit-alt/