I love deliberately misinterpreting English:

All buyers expect a garbage disposal, a dishwasher, and a ventilation system over the stove.

Personally, I prefer my garbage disposal in the sink and my dishwasher a tad lower. (From another Google alert find.)

A brief, incomplete, and mostly wrong history of programming languages via jcreed.

As seen on an ebay auction:

I DO NOT SHIP INTERNATIONALLY OR TO CANADA.

Tee hee.

Yay for a garden on the White House lawn! It has little practical importance, but is symbolically spiffy.

But that's not the real reason I am linking the article. I am really linking it for the first picture. At first glance, I thought the President looked like he was on a presidential scooter.

I think my Google alert found an auto generated blog post whose only point is to get you to click on ads. I present a sample:

There are theories on understanding linking environmental and behaviour, environmental perception (such in pop of Gestalt psych etc. it is NOT a book related to settled sociological issues on intercontinental warm, nuclear fritter away disposal, environmental strike and call aware etc. ,)

It looks like the auto generator pulled the table of contents, some random descriptive sentences (probably from the book description), plus some descriptive keywords. I bet given that information I could write a better book review generator. Maybe next time I'm bored.

In today's edition of bad statistics, I recently came across this:

The study consisted of occupied homes that were previously on the market an average of 57 days as un-staged properties that had not sold. Those same homes were taken off the market and staged and re-listed. Those properties on average were sold 6 days on market after they were professionally staged, which is 89% less time on market.

Umm, I don't think you can treat a home that has been relisted as independent of the original listing.

You should go visit big_bad_al because lenses are awesome.

Via Cheap Healthy Good, a recipe for salted water for boiling. (Hint: look at the reviews.)

A video on food security in Japan. I find it noteworthy because it reminds me of Katamari visually. =)

Via WorldChanging.

Silly phrase of the day, from the otherwise good video on walkable communities at WorldChanging: "future generations yet to come"

In Fremont, someone had a huge spider decoration on the deck of their apartment.



I was impressed.

I am amused by an article about today's LA earthquake which spends ~700 words saying nothing too bad happened.

I just modified my personal calendar so that my work calendar can see details of events on my work calendar. In response to this, I received the following entertaining email:

Hello Erika Rice Scherpelz,

We are writing to let you know that Erika Rice Scherpelz has given you access to edit events on the Google Calendar called "Erika Rice Scherpelz".

We have automatically added this calendar to your Google Calendar account. You can hide or completely remove this calendar at any time.
- The Google Calendar Team

I dropped a Reese's Piece on the floor and picked it up to throw it away. When I reached the compost, recycling, garbage bins I had to stop and think "Are Reese's Pieces compostable?" That such a thought should even occur to me disturbs me slightly. (But oh! Peanut buttery high fructose corn syrup!)

Okay, I get the whole general point about cleanliness/uncleanliness in Matthew 15, but did you ever notice how Jesus sidesteps the whole issue of his disciples not washing his hands before eating. Ewww! =)

(And yes, I am reading it again because any work as influential as the Bible ought to be read more than once, even if I do not value it in the same way as Christians do.)

The Fremont Google office had its official "we exist!" open house yesterday. One particularly fluffy article to come out of the event was in the Seattle PI (the puppy really is as precious a ball of fluff as he looks). I have been amusing myself throughout the day reading the comments on the article. There is an anti-dog thing, which I do not get, but the sentiment that amuses me the most can be summed up "I would rather not have things like dogs in the office and game rooms and massages and free food and instead have more pay and a good 401K program." To which I reply, "ummm.... yes?".

Today's amusing Bible quote, from Revelation 8:1 "When he opened the seventh seal, there was silence in heaven for about half an hour."

Half an hour? Weird...

I was reading A General Introduction to the Bible (almost done!) and it mentioned the Wicked Bible (and the Vinegar Bible and Killing Bible). I knew I had heard of the Wicked Bible before. I knew I had heard of it recently. I looked in the index and it wasn't mentioned earlier in the book. However, I remembered and the Internet confirms that the Wicked Bible comes up in Good Omens which I finished last weekend. I am amused that those two books overlap.