Miscellanea #25

A continuing series of noteworthy tidbits gleaned from all over.

The Rising Cost of Food
I was stunned last week when I went in the grocery store, to find that the same cheese I paid $2 for, the same ground beef I paid $1.49 a pound for only a week or so earlier had doubled in price. Looks like we’re going to be seeking out bargains this summer!… (Food Basics)

The Brini Maxwell Show
Do you have the Style Network on your cable package? If so then maybe you’ve spotted ‘The Brini Maxwell Show.’ It’s like a mix of Mr. Rogers, Martha Stewart, and Donna Reed, with a whole lotta camp tossed in for good measure…. (Tobias S. Buckell Online)

Russian artist makes icons for blind
A Russian wood carver discovers a new mission in life - to create icons for the blind. (BBC News | Monitoring | Media reports | UK Edition)

1st Bike Bridge In San Francisco to be dedicated
From a report on the San Francisco Bicycle Coalition website: Wed, May 19, 3pm: Cesar Chavez underneath the Hwy 101 overpass, near Potrero. An official dedication ceremony for San Francisco’s first bicycle bridge is scheduled… (The Cycling Dude)

Three Months on a Red Planet
What’s it like to spend three months on another world? Ask the Mars rovers. NASA has created movies of the activities of both Spirit and Opportunity… (WorldChanging)

Human Robotics
Halley on WorthWhile: Robotics.  Not what you might think, but interesting; Halley is proposing that ‘we’ work too hard: ‘I do think our human working culture has turned into a robotic working culture without us noticing. The statistics on how little time Americans take for vacation, how many hours we work, how productive we are, all this points to one thing — we stopped being humans with flaws and turned into shiny silver worker robots somewhere along the line….’ (Critical Section)

A Tribute to Fats Waller
Guitarist and singer Marty Grosz (pronounced ‘gross’), and cornet player Randy Reinhart join us for a special in-studio performance in honor of the 100th birthday of Thomas ‘Fats’ Waller. He would have been 100 on May 21. Grosz and Reinhart will perform songs composed by the great pianist and vocalist. Waller wrote many hit songs, appeared in films in the 1930s and 1940s, and wrote Broadway musicals. Some of his best-loved songs include Ain’t Misbehavin’, Honeysuckle Rose and The Joint is Jumpin’. There’s a new CD/DVD set called Fats Waller: The Centennial Collection on Bluebird Records. (Fresh Air)

Increase Safari’s page loading speed
Dave Hyatt made a post on his blog that describes a timer that Safari uses before it starts displaying any content. Supposedly the algorithm will be changed with the next release of Safari, but for now, you can still decrease the timer by setting a variable in Safari’s preferences file…. (macosxhints)

bigger; but more trivial novels
Contemporary novelists treat their pages like flypaper, ready for any floating bits of cultural debris: it makes for bigger, but more trivial novels… (Arts and Letters Daily - ideas, criticism, debate)

Dogs have a life too
Sure, Jon Katz wanted a dog that would brave miles of snowdrifts to save him. He got one that would make it the nearest deli and stay there. Dogs have a life too… (Arts and Letters Daily - ideas, criticism, debate)

Tongue-Controlled Gameboy Advance SP Launched
Simmunity Corporation and newAbilities Systems Inc. is going to introduce a specially modified tongue-controlled Gameboy Advance SP for young people with quadriplegia. They say ‘We retrofit the Gameboy Advance SP with an internal PIC microcontroller to decode the wireless tongue transmitter signals and activate the GBA buttons. Games which do not require multiple simultaneous button presses can be played. We also offer custom games and special programs for augmented communication.’ (Slashdot)

At no period in its history has…
‘At no period in its history has the Oxford English Dictionary been profitable commercially for Oxford University Press.’… (Overheard)