Speaking of mics, here's one for the real creeps.

Why buy what falls from the sky?

One of the most logical campaigns I've heard of recently is Think Outside the Bottle, a nonprofit that challenges us to examine why we waste vast amounts of money and resources when much of the world still lacks access even to clean water. "Just three corporations – Coke, Pepsi and Nestlé – make up over half of the US bottled water market. These corporations are privatizing our water, bottling it and selling it back to us at prices hundreds, even thousands of times what tap water costs. They have turned a shared common resource into a $100 billion global market." To my surprise, culinary might is also helping to forge a path: "Alice Waters of Chez Panisse, in Berkeley, California, has helped lead the way by serving tap water instead of bottled water."

Jeff Caso, a former Nestlé Senior Vice-President for Marketing, Sales and Communications, summarized it best: "We sell water so we have to be clever.”

Try these creative ways to reuse newspaper. I think I need to give the shoe odor absorbing trick a try.

executive orders

Exactly how far can our government go to protect our so-called international security? Bring your attention to sections 1(a)(3), 1(b), 2(b), and 5... apparently it's okay now that "any conspiracy formed to violate any of the prohibitions set forth in this order is prohibited."

Germans Hack At Forest of Signs Distracting Drivers

Germany's vast excess of traffic signs: The funniest news I've read in ages.

stop the road rage!

I'd heard of a cyclist in New Haven shot by a driver with a BB gun, but it never occurred to me that the people who keep our roads driveable (for god's sake) are victims of the same kind of impertinence to the point at which roads are shut down for their safety.

Great stuff in the news today. Like a series of Ocean's Eleven-type burglaries of the wealthiest homes in LA and old Swedish ladies surfing the web at 40 gigabits per second.

What's beneath your house? It's frightening to realize that the very infrastructure of our cities is so old that when it fails, it can kill, and replacing it costs unthinkable amounts of money. Although it couldn't have taken longer to build it than to replace it, right? So the expenditure hasn't changed that much... we just need to realize that we have to spend money on it again.

As if mandatory voting wasn't a strange enough policy in Belgium, now they're trying to scrap it, which seems even stranger. Why is it that when people are given a choice, they become too lazy to decide? In some countries, people die trying to vote.

Hear hear.

China bars U.S. trip for doctor who exposed SARS cover-up, apparently not understanding that this might make the country look worse. Quit while you're ahead, China.

the red balloon(s)

Who has the patience to sit in a lawn chair for a 193-mile ride through the air, hoisted by 105 large helium balloons? A 47-year-old gas station owner, that's who. Brilliant. Fearless. Quirky. I think he could make money off of this, although I suppose the trip is at your own risk. A lawn chair! I imagine it gets a little uncomfortable after a while. What if you wanted to get off a stretch? Did he read a book or listen to music or have a drink? I bet plenty of Belgians would have the lounging experience to do such a thing.

I really enjoy exploring Zeeland through Google satellite maps, but the sight of this housing development actually makes me ill. No geographic image has evoked such a visceral reaction in me before. The thing looks like some sort of pox. It's clearly somebody's idea of a good time, residents and architects included. Perhaps on the ground it has its virtues. But all the identical roofs suggest identical houses. Just horrid.

In better image news, I've found the first online specimen for my safety card collection.

The world is a-changin' -- fast. "According to figures released last week by Nielsen SoundScan, physical album sales decreased by 15 percent from Jan. 1 to July 1 this year, while sales of digital tracks, though still a much smaller business, rose 49 percent." In just half a year, iTunes, and to a lesser extent, Amazon, Yahoo Music, Napster, and Rhapsody, have brought statistically very significant change to the music sales landscape. Where does this leave live concerts? Are they affected at all?

I thought I had it bad when the calls I was receiving on my 5000 cell phone number in college suggested that the previous owner had been or still was in jail. But imagine being assigned Paris Hilton's cell number.

Josh Wolf is running for mayor of San Francisco against Chicken John wearing a justin.tv-style webcam on his forehead? I'm proud to say I come from one of the nuttiest cities on the planet. I used to hang out with a few of the justin.tv folks in the God Quad in Branford College. Never imagined that this is what they'd be up to in a couple of years. Nor did I envision a mayoral campaign for Wolf. Just when you think you know the world...

it's a bird! a plane! a... train!

"London to Frankfurt by train? It's possible, it can be as fast and as easy as flying and it's far better for the environment, a group of European high-speed rail companies claimed Monday." There has definitely been an unmet need for the international rail alliance Railteam, but its goal completion date seems far away, and who knows if the discount airlines will still be flying by then. How long will they be viable before the price of fuel makes them impractical? Anyway, the whole carbon offset business that's been all over the news lately would certainly motivate me to go by train rather than plane if they could make it equally attractive and affordable. I don't like to lose time, but a longer train trip probably won't be such a problem as I get on in years (really!) and became a little more patient. I'm already feeling more leisurely nowadays, reading nonfiction books and listening to Yale lecture podcasts. I'm liking this life.

Tiffany

"Medieval form of THEOPHANIA. This name was traditionally given to girls born on the Epiphany (January 6), the festival commemorating the visit of the Magi to the infant Jesus."

So goes the description for the group "I am a Tiffany" on the college social networking site ConnectU, which I'd nearly forgotten about. This is new information to me; certainly not the history of the name given in my parents' old copy of What Shall We Name the Baby?. In that case, I have a new pseudonym. I also can no longer enjoy the great coincidence that one of the only words rhyming with my name is "ephiphany."

It's still funny that the two words that rhyme with Tiffany that I can remember right now, epiphany and antiphony, have religious connotations. This despite the fact that "-phony" is a false rhyme.

Sometimes I turn my head when someone says "timpani." Then I feel stupid.