Linkmeister @28: Funny you should mention baths. I just got through reading Eric Talmadge's Getting Wet: Adventures in the Japanese Bath, in which he spends quite a few pages talking about being a gaijin in neighborhood bathhouses, getting funny looks.
Don't forget to toss a hand-cranked LED flashlight into that go bag. I picked up a couple of the latest model from Costco the other day: flashlight, AM/FM radio, and 5-volt USB port for recharging your cell phone, all in one.
Sorry I'm a little late into this thread, but speaking of Mormon SF...
Based on a passing recommendation, the source of which I don't remember any more, I recently picked up Elantris by Brandon Sanderson. Based on the blurbs on the book jacket, the author is a Utah resident and Orson Scott Card likes him well enough to endorse his writing. I haven't read the book yet, and this meta-information is enough to give me pause. Has anyone here read the book and developed an opinion of it?
nerdycellist @318: Real Simple suggests removing chocolate by soaking the fabric with an enzyme-based detergent, which is somewhat more convenient than using solvents. They have a nifty poster, too.
Hey, Google Images just changed back to their old presentation! It's Coke Classic vs. New Coke all over again.
Susan @192: the Sun is a more-or-less adequate substitute for dawn simulator lamps... except that since it's not user-configurable, we'd need to rejigger all our work and school schedules instead. I wonder if my family's employers and schools would all be OK with us starting our days about 90 minutes later? And it's not truly free, either. You know how much a clear view of the eastern horizon will cost you these days?
Diatryma @190, abi @194: Multiple LEDs, switching on one at a time. I like that idea.
Larry @195: How come I'm not hearing about the Daylight Savings Time adjustment messing up everybody's computers, a la Y2K? From where I'm sitting (in Honolulu), I always have to remember whether North America is 2-5 hours ahead (winter) or 3-6 hours ahead (summer) of Hawaiian Standard Time.
Aha, an Open Thread.
Lately I have been eyeing those light alarm clocks -- the ones that awaken you by slowly brightening the room over half an hour or so, rather than the traditional approach of suddenly jarring you out of REM sleep with loud noises. They generally sell for at least $100. (1) Does anyone sell clocks like this for less than $50? (2) How hard would it be to build one cheaply? (3) These lamps need to be able to cover a continuous range of brightness, which in my experience means they need to use dimmer switches, which means they need to use incandescent bulbs. Is there a way to achieve the same effect while using a more efficient light source, like LEDs?
Don't know if someone's already mentioned it, but over at Scientific American, George Musser is musing about how to phrase Einstein's Laws of Physics as elegantly and succinctly as Newton's Laws have been. Sounds to me like a task tailor-made for the Making Light community.
At work, I handle environmental cleanups. Teresa's "Arsenic and old cemeteries" particle made me recall a bureaucratic tidbit that I have always found amusing. Embalming chemicals, be they arsenic or formaldehyde, are applied in quantities large enough that the embalmed corpses, if analyzed, would probably qualify as hazardous waste. Years ago, I ran across an actual EPA regulatory interpretation on this specific issue. EPA declared that in this circumstance the chemicals have not been disposed of; they have been "used in the manner intended". They therefore cannot be classified as wastes. And if they're not wastes to begin with, then they can't be hazardous wastes, regardless of how much arsenic Great-Grandpa has in him.
Long ago, when I was tearing my hair out during my office's transition from WordPerfect (which made sense) to Word (which didn't), someone explained to me that the source of my problems was that the basic design of Word documents is entirely different from that of WordPerfect documents. But I never found out what that basic design difference was. Does anyone outside of Microsoft really know? Is there a white paper available somewhere that explains how Word documents are actually structured?
Another non-soda party beverage that I have had good luck with is Japanese tea, either green or oolong. Not the sweetened kind for the USA market, but 12 oz cans of unsweetened tea. The problem is, they're kinda pricey. But they're very refreshing.
I dunno. It feels more like a Bruce Sterling Heavy Weather future. Or maybe Distraction.
It's a more recent reference, and it's TV not books, but I've gotten good mileage out of "Curse your sudden but inevitable [blank]".
colin roald: Pshaw. You don't have *real* international eating until the Vietnamese are running the pizzeria and the Latinos are serving sushi.
Oh, definitely. The best-known Italian restaurants in Honolulu are indeed run by a Vietnamese family. And, though I don't want anyone to think that it's good fusion cuisine, the other day I saw that Honolulu's 7-Elevens sell a sloppy joe manapua.
Linkmeister: The Safeway I patronize every day has an entire 50-foot aisle of "oriental foods" and half an aisle of "hispanic foods" (regrettably mostly the mass-produced taco shells, salsa and refried beans).
On the other hand, some NYC ethnic groups are severely under-represented in Honolulu. As a kid, it took me years to figure out what "kosher food" was and who actually ate it. And it wasn't until after I'd left the islands to go to college that it occurred to me that my high school classmate Billy Cohen must have been Jewish.
Teresa found a Particle (Carl Zimmer's excellent zombie cockroach article) via my blog. Squee! I should point out that Zimmer also posted two followups, here and here.
Feh. It has come to my attention that many many battery FAQs state that storing a charged rechargeable battery in a hot car is a Very Bad Idea. Well, now I know.
Back in Open thread 61 I mentioned hand-powered LCD flashlights. I left one in the glove compartment of my car, thinking it'd eventually come in handy. The other day I was idly playing with it, and cranked it up. Nothing happened. Well, to be precise, very little happened. It took a lot more cranking than usual to generate a light, and the thing wouldn't hold a charge worth beans. Now, these gadgets have some sort of rechargeable battery inside, to hold the charge when you crank 'em. Might the heat stress of being stored in a car's glove compartment, parked in the hot sun almost every day, have somehow damaged that battery? I'm not enough of a battery geek to know the answer... but perhaps someone here does.
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