Turning 43 Is Trivial

I turned 43 this week. 43 seems nondescript. It's not a recognized milestone of any sort. It's not even a particularly interesting number. Basically, 43 seems... trivial.

With that in mind, this year, my Facebook birthday greeting response theme was: "43 TRIVIA." For every birthday greeting on my wall, I replied with a hand-curated, randomly selected piece of trivia involving the number 43.

Initially, they all came from the 43 Wikipedia page (e.g. "43 is the 14th-smallest prime number."), which is why the first batch are math-y and not particularly interesting. That vein got tapped out quickly and I had to hit Google. Eventually, I got desperate, and started using any appearance of "43" that I could find, then "forty three."

1. Forty-three is the 14th smallest prime number.
2. The previous prime is forty-one.
3. 43 is the smallest prime that is not a Chen prime.
4. 43 degrees Centigrade is 109.4 degrees Fahrenheit, or 316.15 Kelvin.
5. In the year 43 CE, the Roman conquest of Britain began.
   
6. 41 and 43 comprise a twin prime.
7. Movie 43 (2013), is a film consisting of a series of interconnected short stories, featuring some of the biggest stars in Hollywood, which make up the insane storylines a washed-up producer is pitching to a movie company. (It has a Rotten Tomatoes score of 4, which is... bad.)
8. 43 is the maximum number of cars participating in a NASCAR race in the Cup Series, and, through the 2012 season, the Nationwide Series.
9. 43 is also the third Wagstaff prime.
10. Number 43, in Sonnets from the Portuguese (1850), is one of Elizabeth Barrett Browning's most famous poems
11. 43 is the Saros number of the lunar eclipse series which began on August 27, 1482 BCE and ended on March 15, 70 CE. The duration of Saros series 43 was 1550.5 years, and it contained 87 lunar eclipses.
12. The chemical element with the atomic number 43 is technetium. It does indeed have has the lowest atomic number of any element that does not possess stable isotopes. Also, its melting point is 2430 Kelvin (2157 degrees Celsius, 3915 degrees Fahrenheit)
13. 43 is the smallest prime number expressible as the sum of 2, 3, 4, or 5 different primes
14. +43 is the code for direct dial international phone calls to Austria.
15. The website 43(dot)com is a parked domain. Facebook deems it a security threat, and wouldn't let me include a link to it.
16. Over in Asia, during the year 43, Vietnam was designated a province of China.
17. In the US's National Football League, the number 43 was worn by Jim Norton of the Houston Oilers. The Oilers (now the Tennessee Titans) retired the number.
18. 43 is the largest natural number that is not a (original) McNugget number.
    
    
19. 43 is a centered heptagonal number.
20. Joey Savatgy will run the number 43 in the 2014 250MX and 250SX series and is sponsored by Armswag
21. 43 in binary is 101011.
22. The New General Catalogue object NGC 43, a barred spiral galaxy in the constellation Andromeda.
23. 43 is the designation of Interstate 43, a freeway in Wisconsin.
24. "43" is a song on the album Level 42 by Level 42
25. 43 was the number used by Jan Alston (ZSC Lions, Zurich, Switzerland) from 2001 to 2010
26. Messier object M43, a magnitude 7.0 H II region in the constellation of Orion, a part of the Orion Nebula, and also sometimes known as de Mairan's Nebula.
27. 1/2 oz. of Camembert cheese is 43 calories
28. The aircraft carrier U.S.S. Coral Sea was CV-43
29. Psalm 43 begins "Vindicate me, my God, and plead my cause against an unfaithful nation. Rescue me from those who are deceitful and wicked."
30. At the 43rd Grammy Awards in 2001, Steely Dan's Two Against Nature took Album of the Year.
31. Dennis the Dachshund lost 43 pounds, going from 56 to 13 pounds in January 2015.
    
    
32. 43 is the fourth term of Sylvester's sequence, one more than the product of the previous terms (2 × 3 × 7).
33. Now That's What I Call Music! 43! (a.k.a. Now 43) topped the Billboard 200 in August, 2012, and featured Carly Rae Jepsen's "Call Me Maybe," Justin Bieber's "Boyfriend," and Maroon 5's "Payphone."
34. Cafe 43 is the restaurant at the George W. Bush Presidential Center:
35. 43 in Morse Code is ....- ...--
36. Acetylcholinesterase, with the symbol ACHE, has a gene ID of 43. (I have no idea what anything on that page means)
37. According to Pro Football Talk, as of Tuesday, NFL teams have traded 2015 draft selections 43 times.
38. 43 million streams of “Happy” on Pandora earned Pharrell Williams $2,700 in royalties.
39. A serving of 6 medium raw oysters is 43 calories.
40. Celebrities who died at 43 include: John Candy, Natalie Wood, porn star John Holmes, and Lisa Robin Kelly of That '70s Show
41. Article 43 of the UN Charter says that member nations should make available to the Security Council armed forces, assistance, and facilities.
42. 43 is a Heegner number.
43. WPMT FOX43 is Central Pennsylvania’s FOX station serving Harrisburg, York, Lancaster, Lebanon Pennsylvania, and surrounding areas.
44. Oban 14 (a single malt scotch whiskey) is 43% alcohol (86 proof)
    
    
45. 43 is a repdigit in base 6 (111).
46. In 2009's Super Bowl XLIII (43), the Steelers defeated the Cardinals 27-23.
47. The Federalist #43 was written by James Madison and contains the only reference to the Copyright Clause in The Federalist Papers.
48. The Mark 43 Iron Man armor will appear in Avengers: Age of Ultron
49. Route 43 is a DC Metrobus route that serves the Mount Pleasant Line
50. Fairfax County does not currently have a Fire Station 43. (Its newest station is station 42, Wolftrap.)
51. 43 is the number for Richard Petty's race car when he won his seven Winston Cup Championships. He also won 200 races in his career, 95% of them in the famous #43.
52. The parallel 43° North forms most of the boundary between the State of Nebraska and the State of South Dakota.
53. 1⁄2 cup fat-free Greek yogurt with 1 tsp sugar-free strawberry jam (43 calories)
54. Windows Error Code 43: Windows has stopped this device because it has reported problems
55. At the 43rd Primetime Emmy Awards in 1991, Cheers took Best Comedy and L.A. Law took Best Drama.
    
56. 43 is the Saros number of the solar eclipse series which began on April 29, 1513 BCE and ended on June 5, 233 BCE. The duration of Saros series 43 was 1280.1 years, and it contained 72 solar eclipses.
57. 43 was used by Patrice Brisebois (Montreal Canadiens) from 1991 to 2004
58. Washington Redskin Larry Brown wore 43; the number has not been used since he retired.
59. Federalist #43 also deals with the Treason Clause of the U.S. Constitution.
60. George W. Bush was the 43rd President of the United States.
61. The Mark 43 torpedo was the first and smallest of the United States Navy light-weight anti-submarine torpedoes.
62. WASP-43b is an exoplanet discovered in 2011.
63. Idaho became the 43rd state in 1890.
64. "43" is a song by Mushroomhead on the album Mushroomhead.
65. NASA's X-43 was an unmanned experimental hypersonic aircraft using a scramjet engine.
66. Expedition 43 is the 43rd and current expedition to the International Space Station. The second part of the expedition began with the launch of Soyuz TMA-16M on Friday, March 27, 2015.
    
67. STS-43 was the ninth mission of the Space Shuttle Atlantis.
68. At the 43rd Academy Awards in 1971, George C. Scott became the first actor to reject an Oscar. His Best Actor Oscar was for his role in Patton, which also took Best Picture. 
69. In September 2014, 43 males students in the Mexican state of Guerrero disappeared, presumably kidnapped and killed by a crime syndicate.
70. Part 43 of the Federal Acquisition Regulations references Contract Modifications.
71. 43% of Americans identified politically as independents in 2014  
72. Here is the episode list for Sesame Street season 43
73. 43 is the number worn by Dennis Eckersley of the Oakland Athletics (MLB), and has been retired.
74. 43 is the number used by Ken Block on his rally cars. 
75. 43 calories is 179.9 joules
76. Part 43 of the Federal Aviation Regulations covers Maintenance, preventitive maintenance, rebuilding, and alteration.
77. Duke basketball player Mike Gminiski's jersey, #43, was retired.
78. The next prime after 43 is 47.
79. The most recent Washington Nationals player to use #43 was Ross Ohlendorf in 2013.
80. Licor 43 (or Cuarenta y tres) is a popular Spanish liqueur, which is distilled with 43 different herbs and spices.
81. On the Washington Capitals, number 43 is worn by right wing Tom Wilson.
82. In Mac OS X, error -43 is "The operation cannot be completed because one or more required items cannot be found." 
83. 43 was the jersey number of Brad Daugherty, ESPN NASCAR analyst and retired American basketball player. It was retired by the Cavaliers on March 1, 1997.
84. 4:3 is the standard television aspect ratio (1.33:1)
85. The Russian GM-94 grenade launcher fires a projectile 43mm in diameter.
    
86. Federalist #43 references a desire that the national government be given exclusive jurisdiction over a new national capitol and provides the rationale for what later became the District Clause of Article I of the U.S. Constitution.
87. This week, Glock announced its Model 43. The Glock 43 is a single-stack 9mm handgun.
88. Mark43 is a police records management system
89. Brad Daugherty's #43 jersey was a number he picked as a tribute to NASCAR legend Richard Petty (whom Daugherty lists as his favorite sportsman)
90. This is Edvard Grieg's Six Lyric Pieces, Opus 43
91. In the Yu-Gi-Oh! collectible card game, card number 43 is the Manipulator of Souls
92. In the South Carolina Code of Laws, Title 43 deals with Social Services.  
93. The Price Is Right is currently in its 43rd season
94. Chapter 43 of the Texas Penal Code covers public indecency, with subchapters on prostitution and obscenity  
95. Huckleberry Finn has 43 chapters  
96. The GBU-43/B is the MOAB, officially known as the Massive Ordnance Air Blast Bomb, commonly known as the "Mother Of All Bombs"
97. Title 43 of the United States Code outlines the role of Public Lands
98. On the Dublin (Ireland) bus system, bus 43 runs from Talbot St. towards Swords Business Park
99. From June to November 2014, Kim Kardashian's mobile game made $43 million
100. The 43 Bar & Grill is a sports bar in Sunnyside, NY
     
101. On the Fortune 500 2014, PepsiCo is 43
102. The Code of Virginia Title 43 deals with Mechanics' and Certain Other Liens
103. 1:43 scale is a popular size of die-cast model cars in Europe, Asia and the US.
104. The week ending February 6, 2015, the TSA discovered 43 firearms in carry-on bags. Of those, 40 were loaded and 17 had rounds chambered.  
105. The Nebraska Revised Statutes Chapter 43 deals with Infants and Juveniles
106. Property sales in Ireland rose 43% in 2014  
107. 4/3 or Fourth Thirds is a standard created by Olympus and Kodak for digital single-lens reflex camera (DSLR) and mirrorless camera design and development.
108. The world record for data transfer is 43 terabits per second, set by researchers at the Technical University of Denmark in 2014.  
109. In physical cosmology, the Planck epoch (or Planck era) is the earliest period of time in the history of the universe, from zero to approximately 10⁻⁴³ seconds (Planck time).  
110. In 2013, The Monty Python reunion performance at London's O2 Arena sold out in 43 seconds.
111. 43 Years With the Same Bird is a book written by Daily Mirror columnist Brian Reade. It documents his lifelong following of Liverpool F.C.  
112. Reportedly, Converse sells a pair of Chuck Taylors every 43 seconds.  
113. Anthony Davis of the New Orleans Pelicans has twice hit his career-high of 43 points, most recently in a March 9, 2015 game against the Milwaukee Bucks.
114. In an English Premier League game last week, Liverpool's Steven Gerrard was red-carded 43 seconds after entering the game as a second-half substitute for stamping on the leg a Manchester United player.

     

     Liverpool player Steven Gerrard, with a heat map showing his movements in the game where he was ejected after 43 seconds.

115. The Little Boy atomic bomb dropped on Hiroshima by the crew of the B-29 bomber Enola Gay was set to detonate 43 seconds after release
116. Section 43 of the Mormon Doctrine and Covenants ends with "Be sober. Keep all my commandments. Even so. Amen."
117. The height of a stack of 100 one-dollar bills measures .43 inches. (Presumably, a stack of 10,000 one-dollar bills would be 43 inches high.)  
118. 43 is the smallest prime that is not the sum of two palindromes
119. There is a blog, Interstate Forty-Three, dedicated to the number 43. It was last updated in 2008, and I didn't find it until this point, which probably would have made this whole exercise much easier.
120. 43 is the smallest prime formed from reverse concatenation of two consecutive numbers
121. According to the Mayo Clinic, men with a waist circumference of 43 inches were at 52 percent greater risk of death than men with a 37-inch waist.
122. 43 is the smallest prime that is not the sum of two palindromes
123. This is the translation of poem 43 of Roman poet Catullus:

     "Greetings, you girl with neither a little nose, handsome feet, black little eyes long fingers, a dry mouth, and truly tongue not exceedingly elegant. Sweetheart of a Formian debtor, does the province say that you are beautiful? Is our Lesbia compared with you? Oh insensible and coarse generation!"

124. 43 West 43rd Street in New York City houses a law firm.
125. 43 is the smallest prime whose index (14) is divisible by the sum of its digits (4+3)
126. The 43-star flag became the official United States flag on July 4th, 1890. Five stars were added for the admission of North Dakota, South Dakota, Montana, Washington, and Idaho. The flag lasted for just one year.
     
      
127. Division 43 of the American Psychological Association is the Society for Family Psychology.
128. International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers Local 43 covers the Syracuse, Utica and Oswego areas of New York.
129. When polled, 43% of Americans over the age of 18 replied "what." (Note: not an actual fact.)
     
130. 43 is the smallest non-palindromic prime which on subtracting its reverse gives a perfect square (i.e., 43 - 34 = 32)
131. The 3M Steri-Drape Fluoroscope Drape 1012 measures 35 inches x 43 inches
132. The 43rd Infantry Division of the U.S. Army was active from 1925-2967.
133. Forty Three Seconds is a song by the band Swing Kids
134. 43 in German is "dreiundvierzig"
135. The top-rated Urban Dictionary entry for 43 claims that the number stands for "LOVE YOU", representing the numbers in each word. A competing definition claims it stands for a similarly structured but less polite two-word phrase.
136. Latitude 43 is a full-service restaurant and bar located on the harbor in Gloucester, Cape Ann, Massachusetts.
137. In February 2015, the UK's Daily Mail tabloid reported on model Robert Paulat, who has had 43 cosmetic surgery procedures.
138. Atkin Guitars' "The Forty Three" is an acoustic guitar designed to pay homage to Buddy Holly's 1943 J-45 guitar.
139. The Urban Dictionary entry for "forty three" would seem to be of incredibly limited usage.
140. The Gewehr 43 or Karabiner 43 (abbreviated G43, K43, Gew 43, Kar 43) is a 7.92×57mm Mauser caliber semi-automatic rifle developed by Nazi Germany during World War II.
141. The USS S-43 was an US Navy S-class submarine used in World War II. Its designation was SS-154, not to be confused with SS-43, which was the USS L-4.
142. The Circle Jerks' song Live Fast Die Young has the lyric, "I don't want to live / to be forty-three / I don't like / What I see going on around me." The song is 93 seconds long:
143. This is the Vocabulary.com entry for "forty-three": adj. being three more than forty
144. A Metafilter post from 2014 lists 43 Werner Herzog films available for streaming.
145. This is a book: Cop - Forty-Three Years in the Royal Canadian Mounted Police
146. US Supreme Court case 108 U.S. 491 is UNITED STATES  v.  FORTY-THREE GALLONS OF WHISKY
147. 43 in French is quarante-trois
148. According to this indubitably authoritative web site, forty-three would represent trial and testing with some divine goal in mind.
149. The World Socialist Web Site says that more than 43 million US households pay excessive shares of income for housing according to The State of the Nation’s Housing 2013, released last week by Harvard University’s Center for Housing Studies.
150. 43 Brown Street is a sensational boutique development positioned on the northern side of Brown Street, Ponsonby, Auckland, New Zealand
151. Forty-three patients who had been managed with rotationplasty for the treatment of a femoral or tibial bone tumor were evaluated clinically and functionally.
152. Forty Three is a poem by Wayne Visser.
153. The 43 Assembly of God Church is in Van Buren, Arkansas
154. If you want to know how to make the Coffee Forty-Three mixed drink, you should click this link
155. This is the Unicode Character for "Circled Number Forty Three":  ㊸
156. Table Forty Three is a restaurant in Darwin, Northern Territory, Australia
157. Here's the Pandora page for the band Cold Forty Three
158. FDNY Fireboat Three Forty Three (Marine 1) was completed in late 2009.
159. Tibetan Folks Tales: Forty-Three is "The Wily Poor Man."
160. This is the Shutterstock image search results page for "43"
161. Here is Confessions Forty Three from the blog Diary of a Zulu Girl
162. This is how you say 43 in American Sign Language. (It's pretty straightforward):
     
163. The First-Person Narratives of the American South project includes the full text of the book The Experience of Thomas H. Jones, Who Was a Slave for Forty-Three Years, printed in 1862 
164. "Why the Average American Dies at Forty-three" is an article in Scientific American, Volume 116, Issue 14, published April 7, 1917
165. American Airlines Flight 43 flies between Detroit Metro Wayne County (KDTW) and Dallas/Forth Worth International (KDFW). Flight time is 2 hours, 15 minutes. 
166. In 1876, the US Supreme Court tried a case, United States v. Forty-three Gallons of Whiskey (I accidentally included two references to this case.)
167. Ernest Hemingway's For Whom the Bell Tolls has 43 chapters
168. Wesley Lee Fox, a recipient of the Medal of Honor, retired from the US Marine Corps as a colonel after 43 years of service. (Also, he was born in Herndon).
169. The Web site at http://www.fortythree.com is a gallery of stencil work
170. 170 is the limit of how many bits of 43 trivia I'll dig up.

Why are we so fat? An updated list

The data and my photogenic memory show that we are much fatter than we used to be. Why? Taking the blame this week... emulsifiers:

 What else is making us fat? I did exhaustive research:

Emulsifiers join a long and distinguished list, which also includes:

Antibiotics in people.

Antibiotics in animal feed.

BPA.

Gluten.

Salt.

Sugar.

Fat.

Salt Sugar Fat.

Suburbs.

Television.

Diet soda.

Regular soda.

Screen time.

This.

Smartphones.

Note: Not actually smartphones.

Bread.

Marketing.

Cars.

Lowfat food.

Portion sizes.

Yes, this is a shoop.

Cheap food.

Roof pudding.

Identifying Saboteurs in Your Organization: OSS Simple Sabotage Field Manual

Back in 2012, I was at the Tech@State conference listening to the CIA's Sean Dennehy give a presentation about using Intellipedia (a set of wikis for the US intelligence community) to help knowledge-sharing across organizations.

To illustrate what makes inefficient, overly bureaucratic organizations inefficient and overly bureaucratic, he highlighted excerpts from the Office of Strategic Services' Simple Sabotage Field Manual [PDF]. (The OSS was the WWII-era precursor of the CIA. The manual has been declassified and you can also get it from Project Gutenberg):

The manual is a guide for showing how regular people in enemy-occupied nations can commit "simple sabotage." And since it's for regular people, there's no blowing up bridges with high explosives or rappelling down ropes.

Instead, the weapons are the stuff in your pockets... and the tactics are super passive-aggressive.

There's some hands-on stuff -- light arson, slashing tires, sugar in the gas tank. But much of it is indistinguishable from simply being a lazy worker who's doing a bad job: leaving a messy workspace, carelessly breaking tools, and generally being surly, stupid, and non-cooperative.

The amusing bit Dennehy highlighted starts on page 28, where the manual shows the types of behaviors white-collar saboteurs would use to cripple an organization. In your next workplace meeting, and see how many saboteurs you can spot in the room (and if you do spot one, don't bother calling the FBI -- they won't care):

(11) General Interference with Organisations and Production

(a) Organizations and Conferences

(1) Insist on doing everything through "channels." Never permit short-cuts to be taken in order to expedite decisions.

(2) Make "speeches." Talk as frequently as possible and at great length. Illustrate your "points" by long anecdotes and accounts of per­sonal experiences. Never hesitate to make a few appropriate "patriotic" comments.


(3) When possible, refer all matters to committees, for "further study and considera­tion." Attempt to make the committees as large as possible — never less than five.


(4) Bring up irrelevant issues as frequently as possible.
 
(5) Haggle over precise wordings of com­munications, minutes, resolutions.
 
(6) Refer back to matters decided upon at the last meeting and attempt to re-open the question of the advisability of that decision.
 
(7) Advocate "caution." Be "reasonable" and urge your fellow-conferees to be "reason­able" and avoid haste which might result in embarrassments or difficulties later on.
 
(8) Be worried about the propriety of any decision — raise the question of whether such action as is contemplated lies within the juris­diction of the group or whether it might conflict with the policy of some higher echelon.

Nuking My Blog Topic Slushpile

I haven't blogged too much over the past few... years. But I never stopped thinking about ideas for new blog posts. When I got ideas, they would make it into my drafts folder, and then die. 

Today, while procrastinating about something else (remember, the key to beating procrastination is to find something you want to do even less), I decided to clean out said drafts folder, which had grown to 129 entries dating back to 2006.

(No doubt, the recent post, The 2014 That Almost Was: Gawker's Abandoned Draft Posts, helped prompt me, but I've written similarly themed posts at conveniently defunct blogs)

Image by Flickr user Pierre J.. Used under Creative Commons: BY-NC-SA.

As of this writing, my Drafts folder is down to 45 entries; outside of a few I'm archiving as painful, never-to-be-published reminders, most should see the light of day.

Recent

• Failure to Render Aid and Leaving the Scene of an Accident [No clue.]
• Untitled entry about the 2014 death of Rob the Bouncer [I was trying to tie it to a bigger entry about the period of blog history c. 2006 when it seemed that every single-issue blogger around* was getting a book deal. (*meaning "bloggers living and working in New York City with readers in the publishing industry")]
• Tips for Conspiracy Theorists on How to Read Government Contract Notices [Saving this. It'll come up again.]
• Flooding Helmet [About the ISS astronaut who nearly drowned on a spacewalk. I forget the angle.]
• Short Men's Shorts Will Return Some Day and Things That I Never Thought Would Come Back [Two different drafts about unnecessary comebacks from the 80s. Consolidated into a single draft, most likely to be abandoned again.]
• Recent Dumbness

2012

• Dumb Things on Gun Control/Gun Rights
• I Miss USENET Sometimes
• Untitled [Inspired by Real Steel, looking at limitations of gesture-based controls. Boiled down to four words: Your arms get tired.]
• [Numerous career updates]
• Voter ID, Gun Registration, and the Always/Never Problem
• Comparing Stop SOPA (2012) to Stop the CDA (1996)
• Losing My Names [Run-of-the-mill complaint about forgetting the names of people and things. In this case, having to google "hedging religion" to remember Pascal's Wager.]
• [A few very personal items I'm very, very glad I never finished and will never, ever, ever be published.]

2011 [I must have been better at deleting my dead drafts that year.]

• It's Better to Know Something Than to Know How to Look Up Something [Just another "Is Google making us dumber?" piece. (See 2009)]

2010

• One-Handed Food
• Darmok and Jalad at Wikiquote [Based on the Tamarian language debate that recurs periodically. Abandoned when one Fark commenter summed up by argument in five sentences and two pictures.]
• The Impending Death of Social Media [On social media as a stand-alone discipline, and the fairly evident idea that "all media is social media." Repeat of myself.]
• funny, true, mean
• Readin [Mostly notes from a book I was reading.]

2009

• I'm kind of hoping the asteroid hits soon
• Why I Am a Shit Consultant [Relevant, but unnecessary.]
• I think I peaked in the mid-90s. [Same as above.]
• If There Was a Blogger Lager, What Would It Taste Like? [Grew out of a Twitter/FB post. One-note joke.]
• Shaving With Expanding Foam [Idea for a video. Never followed through, thankfully.]
• I Think I Screwed Myself Out My Yahoo Account [Couldn't get back into an old Yahoo account because I'd given a fake birth year and they thought I was under 13. Seemed important at the time.]
• Lint, Rewinding, Norms [On merging and cleaning lint traps in shared laundry room dryers.]
• On Sharing and Being an Extroverted Introvert
• Infomercials in Church [Misnamed; mostly about how to spot Protestants at Catholic Church services (especially wedding masses and holiday relative visitations). Hint: It's the Lord's Prayer.]
• Stumbling Into Employment: A Confession
• Social Linksharing Sites: Blog-like Behavior Detected and Fark, PostSecret, and Core Community Features [Two articles about how, if you don't offer community features that users want (e.g. commenting, private messaging, and forums) users will use other services outside of your view and control.]
• Foreign Domestics [CSB in its entirety: "At McFaddens' for the eDemocracy Camp 2 post-event Happy Hour. I ordered a beer. Blue Moon. Bartender said it would be 2 drink tickets, for imports. I said Blue Moon is from Colorado. Bartender says he should have said domestics, but not Blue Moon. Okay, I said, how about a Sam Adams.*sigh* Okay, fine, just give me a Miller Lite."]
• A Dramatic Sea Change in My Dental Hygiene Regimen [Totally unnecessary entry about changing from "brush first, floss second" to "floss first, brush second" on March 25, 2009.]
• Sounds Like Madness [Time Warner job posting for some pop culture position. Key requirement: "We expect you'll not only know who the woman on the cover of Elle is, but who the last 3 people she dated are and what her last 3 haircuts looked like, too... As we program to a massive audience, an interest in lifestyle-oriented shows like Today, Oprah and The View is a great indicator that you'll be a good fit for this job."]
• House Party [Recap, in Tweets, of a few bands playing at the now-gone Kansas House in Arlington. Highlight: "My hair goal in life is to maintain a length where you can't see that the old poseur is wearing earplugs- tinnitus is a bitch"]
• A Hack Writer's Guide to Getting Fark Greenlights
• Why I Carry a Knife 
• On Silicon Alley Insider and Stealing Images
• Will Barack Obama Be FDR, or LBJ?
• I Couldn't Give My Dad What He Wanted for Christmas [Pretty sure it was for me to go to church more often. Or at all.]
• The Difference Between Knowing Things and Knowing Where to Find Things

2008

• I Blame the Internet [How "Om-nom-nom" had become an indispensable part of language. Clearly one for the ages.]
• A Surge for DC Crime [Looking at the suitability of COIN (counterinsurgency) tactics in domestic policing.]
• More Things Women Don't Know About Men's Urinals: Spitting. [...I'm not letting this one go.]
• Why I Hate Designers [Mostly protesting too-small, white text on gray backgrounds, which was in vogue at the time.]
• On Hoarding PDFs [Generic data hoarding complaint]
• On Comment Fragmentation
• I don't want to register for another damned account.
• On the one hand, self-interested utopianism; on the other, knee-jerk cynicism
• Life During Terrorist Wartime
• I Just Reinvented ShareThis 
• Best American Post-Apocalyptic Skylines
• Manhunter vs. Red Dragon
• For a while, I thought I let a blog suicide happen 
• Slushpile [Entire draft: Department of Irony Abuse. The Social Web is Powered by Self-Righteous Indignation. Whenever I see the word "steampunk," I want to punch the author in the throat.]
• On the "On..." Construction in Titles
• Bring Back Body Hair
• Women Are From Venus, Men Are From Earth
• For the Love of God, Please Stop With the Hat Tips [About attribution, not fedoras]
• I Don't Hate Stupid People, per se
• What Do I Want to Do When I Grow Up?

  
2007

• Political Blogging Is a Lot Like Prayer
• "Works As Designed" Is the Beginning of a Discussion, Not the End
• Extremists Think Everyone Else Is Just as Extreme
• The Difference Between Courtesy, Dignity, and Respect
• Gene Weingarten's Secret Strategy to Save the Washington Post? [Pointless complaint about why Gene Weingarten will never call his online presence a blog.]
• I'm Going on Vacation: Please Burglarize My House
• Thank God for Secularism
• There Is Absolutely No Point to This Entry About Paracord  [Indeed.]
• Why Chat Still Matters [Key line: "The beauty of text-based chat is that it's realtime, but with just enough asynchronicity and persistance to forgive a little latency -- whether that latency is due to connection issues, or because your attention is somewhere else." Unintended humor: "Granted, I'm an IRC snob."]
• Rethinking Text-Based Chat [Mostly same as above. Renamed and saved for a dumb thing I did when I programmed the People Connection page at AOL.]
• The Retro-Future Ain't What It Used to Be
• I'm Not a Photographer -- I Take Pictures [Self-evident.]
• The Stupidity Problem and Online Community [Too obvious. Sample: "People are stupid, and the stupidest people are the loudest people. And the worst people are loud, stupid people who think that they're smart."]
• Searching for a Slogan
• Via-bility [Also blog attribution. Amusingly, references Propeller.com, Jason Calacanis-era Netscape's stab at a Digg clone, back when Digg was all user-voted social linksharing.]
• Fark Submitters Are Illiterate, Stupid and Lazy: Lessons From TotalFark
• In Case of Emergency, You Are Probably Useless
• I'm Generally Good for Four Good Ideas a Year
• Nicholas Negroponte, I Blame You [I plan on revisiting Being Digital in 2015.]

2006

• minimizing the duration of risky social transactions [Boiled down to "get out of the passing lane.]
• [Untitled entry about an article on choosing domain names. Opening: "Interestingly-titled article that utterly fails to provide any useful content, though also provides unintended humor."]
• Why Do Digg Users Hate Blogs?  [Digg 1.0 users hated links that pointed to blogs instead of original stories, even if the intermediary articles added value.]
• Why Do Regular Schmoes Care About Movie Grosses? [Way beyond overly obvious.]
• Anagram Lies: Funeral Does Not Equal "Real Fun" [A former cow-orker's funeral. I'll keep it, but it's not a draft of anything.]
• More Things Women Don't Know About Men's Urinals
• [An entire pending post built around one line from the movie Se7en]

Rocking to OK GO With the Drone Lobby

I get the feeling that the off-duty National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency employee who drunkenly crashed a drone onto the White House lawn didn't know or sign on to the drone lobby's voluntary "Know Before You Fly" guidelines.

You know, the guidelines they were pushing just last week -- topped off by a free (well, mostly free) OK GO concert at the 9:30 Club?

The one that says "Do not fly under the influence of alcohol or drugs"?

And has a bit about not flying near or over sensitive infrastructure or property?

Not to mention prompts drone pilots to follow all local laws and ordinances? (Which, in this case includes the Flight Restricted Zone that covers most of DC. There's a prescient bit in that Time article from May 2014 on the likelihood of getting caught: "Doubtful, unless you upload the video to the Internet, crash spectacularly, or get way too close to a really sensitive area like the White House.")

Now, while it may not be great news for the drone lobby, I would guess that it's going to be great advertising for the DJI Phantom line.

And on that whole "drone" thing -- sorry, guys: You've lost the "drone" war. Despite the connotations of the word drone that you don't like (Hellfire missiles raining death upon insurgents and wedding parties with equal impunity) and the fact that drone is, admittedly, a term that lacks nuance, the terms you're trying to push -- UAS (unmanned aircraft system), sUAS (the same, prefixed by "small"), RPA (remotely piloted aircraft) -- they've all got too many syllables.

Get it down to cute nickname that's two-syllables (tops), then we'll talk about not calling them drones.

Anyway, here are my photos from the concert. Doors were at 7pm, I got there around 8, so I can't attest to the existence of a pre-show drone advocacy timeshare-like presentation; all I know is that there were more jackets and ties than I'd ever seen before in the 9:30 Club, they showed OK GO's I Won't Let You Down, and some guy who I'd been standing next to at the front left of the stage (presumably, a bigwig from the Small UAV Coalition) got onstage and gave a short introduction.

OK GO frontman Damian Kulash in front of adoring drone and/or OK GO fans.

Damian Kulash with a quadcopter drone that someone was trying to exchange for backstage passes for their upcoming New York show.

"Know Before You Fly" banner.

I took many pictures of the guy working the confetti cannon. This is the only one that I liked.

There was a lot of confetti.

"Dad, why do you have a hammer in your pocket?"

"Dad, why do you have a hammer in your pocket?"

"To break off pieces of my chocolate bar." [Demonstrates by holding a Cadbury chocolate bar in his hand and hitting it with the hammer.]

---

This past weekend, my sister had a showing of Every Day Is a Holiday up at the Mohonk Mountain House resort up in New Paltz, New York. She was able to take a guest, so my Mom went with her, and I came up to keep my Dad company (he''ll be 92 this year and these days doesn't much feel like traveling).

The drive up Friday afternoon was pretty painless, and I used the opportunity to binge-listen to Serial, which I'd avoided until this point.

My goal for the weekend was pretty simple: No home improvement projects, no road trips, no extensive oral history interviews -- just spend some time, heat up a few meals, take him to church on Sunday, and listen to his stories (and get him to tell some different ones).

So, we did all that. Plus, I changed the flapper in the downstairs toilet.

Halloween 2014: Speed Hump Ahead

My Speed Hump Halloween costume this year.

The Inspiration
I came up with my Halloween costume idea early in October. I don't know if most people have a favorite traffic sign, but for me, it's Speed Hump.

The Preparation
I figured that building the sign itself would be pretty straightforward. But I had some trouble figuring out how to mount it. I wanted to wear it on my head, but decided that if I couldn't come up with a way to mount it and make it see-through, I would just wear it on my chest. So I started the build.

The Build
The sign itself is a piece of 20"x30" 3/16" foam core board, cut down to 20"x20" and with the corners rounded off. I wasn't sure if paint would melt the foam core, so originally I planned on getting the color by gluing on colored paper or vinyl sheets. But after some research, I figured the foam core could handle the paint (which was good, since otherwise it would have been hard to match the color of the eye screen).

I prepped the foam core by spraying it with two coats of clear polyurethane. Then, I hit it with two coats of yellow acrylic spray paint. It held up fine.

For the lettering, I used alphabet stickers from Michael's, which were a good-enough generic sans seriff font.  In a pleasant coincidence, the letters also happened to be the same width as the black electrical tape I used for the border (3/4").

I left about two inches of separation between the rows of letters (more than in real life) for the eye hole, which I cut out with a utility knife (even though I was still being optimistic, since I still hadn't figured out the head mount).

After some research, I decided to use buckram fabric, a stiff cotton mesh, for the eye screen.

Closeup of the white buckram fabric that would cover the eye hole.

I spray-painted it yellow.

The white buckram and the spray-painted fabric.

Then, I did a practice run on a scrap piece of foam core. I cut out the eye hole, then cut a plus-sign-shaped piece of buckram to match. After I ironed creases into it, I hot-glued it to the inside and back of the eye hole.

Buckram fabric glued into the eye hole and viewed from the back.

As you can see on the front side, being neat with the hot glue gun counts for a lot (I'm glad this was only practice):

Front view of the practice eye screen.

The Mount
After I did the real eye hole, it was time to figure out the mount. After fiddling with a bunch of headlamp mounts, bike helmets, and even my CERT helmet, I figured it out (though I didn't take any pictures in-progress).

All you need is a bike helmet that's still in its box (if you don't have a box, or it's not completely square, you can make one out of cardboard. But that's extra work):

1. Take the bike helmet out of the box. 
2. Fold and tape the flaps in.
3. Pad the inside of the box with crumpled newspaper.
4. Put the helmet inside the box (dome side in, open side facing out, so when you put on the helmet, the box is on top).
5. Use additional newspaper to center the helmet inside the box and keep it from moving around too much.
6. Then, use a shitload of duct tape to secure the box to the helmet.

After a test fit, I wrapped outside of the box in duct tape. Then, I spray painted the duct tape black. (Why not just spray paint the box? Because shut up, that's why.) I also used black magic marker to color in any other exposed spots of duct tape.

For the actual mount, I used Velcro adhesive tape, sticking a few patches of loop-side onto the box, and some hook-side to the sign. (Actually, I hot-glued some thin cardboard onto the back of the foam core, and stuck the hook-side Velcro onto that. I didn't want the paper to peel away if I needed to make adjustments, which is why I chose Velcro in the first place.)

When it's all done, it looks like you're wearing a box with a chin strap.

Then it was time for the finishing details. Looking up specs for mounting traffic signs, I punched two holes 2" from the top and bottom of the sign, threading 5/16" bolts, washers, and nuts through them and hand-tightening them.

This is actually the spare post that I made. The top hole has a washer inside, so I could thread it onto the bottom bolt of the sign.

For the "post", I took two strips of silver duct tape (about four feet long), and taped them back-to-back (sticky side to sticky side). Then I used the same hole punch to punch a row of 3/8" holes down the center, an inch apart. (Actually, the spec is an inch apart on center, so my post isn't to spec. Darn.)

I also taped a few pennies to the bottom for some weight, ironed it flat, and used more duct tape to stick it to the bottom of the sign.


The Tweaking
The rest of it was just black pants, shirt, shoes, socks, and gloves, as well as a black balaclava on my head, so you couldn't see me from the side.

For my first outing, I discovered that the balaclava didn't work out so well -- not only were my glasses fogging up, but the way eye screen works, the "inside" has to be darker than the outside.  Because the back of the sign was open, there was no real "inside." So it was really hard to see out.

As for drinking while wearing it, I borrowed a crazy straw, which kind of worked. But after a while, between the inability to see, hear, or drink, I took off the helmet and wore it backwards (so the sign was behind me).

Without the sign, it's almost halfway to a Dark Helmet costume:

The tape on my chest is just to cover a reflective logo.

For the second outing, I ditched the balaclava, and taped some black weed barrier fabric around the box, forming a kind of veil. That worked slightly better. You can see it above, and here in the side view:

However, another problem became apparent when I went into a dark, crowded bar: Not only is it hard to see, but you're either bumping into people with the side of the sign, or they're bumping into you.

Anyway, that's the costume. I'll probably detach the sign and use the box for a future head mount.

Verdict
I'm happy with the final product; it looks just like I pictured it. However, it's kind of annoying to wear, especially in crowded places.


Pluses: Relatively easy to make, looks good, got a lot of compliments.

Minuses: Hard to see, hard to talk, hard to drink, hard to move around, people bump into it.

Materials
(Most of the crafty items were bought at Michael's craft store, using a 40% off regular-priced items coupon)

One 20"x30" piece of 3/16" foam core board	$3
Black adhesive alphabet stickers	$7
Yellow acrylic spray paint	$5
Clear polyurethane spray	On-hand
Black acrylic spray paint	On-hand
Silver duct tape	On-hand
Black 3/4" electrical tape	On-hand
Two 5/16" bolts; two 5/16" nuts; four 5/16" washers	$1
Bike helmet in box	On-hand
White buckram fabric	$1
Black weed barrier fabric	On-hand
Velcro tape	On-hand
Hot glue	On-hand
Black magic marker	On-hand

Tools Used
Scissors, utility knife, iron, hot glue gun, yardstick, hollow punch set

Incidentally, you can buy a real 24"x24" Speed Hump traffic sign online for about $50.