Category Archives: Fun

Breakfast time! Professor Steve Steve decided to look around for Googleplex for scifoo celebrities….(under the fold):

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OK, it’s 2:45am here, and I have a session at 9:30 in the morning, so, below the fold, just a quick scifoo photo dump….

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Statistical analysis of crew-members’ deaths on Starship Enterprise, including various risk factors.
(Via)

Last night I went all the way to Alameda to meet my SciBling Chris Hoofnagle at a place called Lucky Juju. That was great fun!

Lucky Juju is a warehouse full of pinball machines. In addition to Chris’ interns at Berkeley, there were also interns from Stanford’s Center for Internets and Society there, ACLU of Northern California, EFF, Internet Archive, Creative Commons, and the First Amendment Project. And a couple of us from PLoS. And, of course, Professor Steve Steve, who displayed some real pinball wizardry while singing “See me, Feel me, Touch me, Heal me”….

I guess I am the cheapest of all my sciblings – better get me while I am still alive, as I appear to be pretty worthless as a corpse:
$3540.00The Cadaver Calculator – Find out how much your body is worth. From Mingle2 – Free Online Dating

Some more pictures. At the time many of those were made, there was no telephone, no movies, no radio, no TV, no computer games, no Second Life. This was the most high-tech entertainment. I wish I could bring back some of those inventors and show them what evolved out of their inventions. Also, how society changed, i.e., what is deemed ‘acceptable’:

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There is a museum at the Pier with many, many old toys and games found at arcades. All are perfectly functional. Some are more than 100 years old. Here is a sample:

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I am obsessed with Alcatraz. I plan to go next week to visit the Rock and hear the CLANG sound of cell doors closing behind me in the dark. Pier 69/Fisherman’s Warf is the closest point to it in the entire Bay, so if you wanted to escape and swim in this freezing cold water, this was the best destination – except that this was also the most likely place to be greeted by a uniformed and armed welcome committee…

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Of course I saw the Golden Gate Bridge (I see the Bay Bridge every day from where I live). I am too scared of heights to actually walk over the bridge, though…

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Best beer and best books – where I also bumped into a few Plossians/Plossers/Plosinians:

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A horse and carriage at the Pier 39 (a very touristy spot) and, of course, the famous streetcars. I believe that my father, when he came to San Francisco back in 1966 1961 [thanks, Mom] on his choir tour (they even cut a record then), rode on the streetcar, of course.

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It was a tough, long and gruelling week at work, so i decided, after sleeping late, to do what I have not done yet – play tourist and go see famous sites in San Francisco. I took a cab to Pier 39, then spent a few hours slowly walking back home. In this and next few posts, you can see what I saw, but, for the benefit of people with modems, I will put most of the pictures under the fold, so keep clicking on the “Read More” button underneath each post:

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Blake Stacey has some casting ideas…

Yesterday, I met Janet and her charming and brilliant sprogs at the Lawrence Hall of Science, where they have a cool exhibit called CIRCUS! Science Under the Big Top (which reminded me that I wanted to join the circus back when I was 18). One thing I did not know was that to get to the museum from Berkeley campus, it is a couple of miles of steep uphill, which I climbed on foot. Should have hitchiked!
Wifi is iffy right now, so I’ll post as many pictures per post as the system will let me. First, just to show how high up the place is, the entire Bay Area is clearly visible – though, of course, covered in fog:

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Professor Steve Steve (see more of his pictures) is now over his jet lag and decided to go to work with me today. Here he is meeting with Liz Allen, the PLoS Director of Marketing and Business Development:

Steve Steve is traveling again. He is a big fan of PLoS…

LOLafrica:

Sheril is in South Africa taking pictures of poopin’ elfants.

This rating was determined based on the presence of the following words:
* sex (18x)
* death (13x)
* suicide (6x)
* hell (3x)
* dangerous (2x)
* penis (1x)
Thanks, Jennifer

…and made me very, very happy:

(From here)

I could not resist this one, first seen here:

What Science are You?

You are Entymology. You are a conneseiur of the crawly. Bugs fascinate you. Let’s face it, they are cool. Most people will think you’re weird icky, but those of sophisticated taste will realize just how exquisit a roach can truly be.
Take this quiz!

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The word ‘circadian’ has a certain mystique about it for people not in the know, thus it is not surprising that there are several bands around with that word incorporate in their names. I know I blogged about it before but I am too lazy right now to search my archives for it. Anyway, here is the newest addition to the lineup, an Ohio band called the Circadian Skyline.

In the age of Google, perhaps they are:

I saw a pattern of responses to the question, “Do you have a business card?” Many of the responses were the same, “just Google my name and you will find me.”

So, go now and do your ego-tickling exercise: search for your first name only, then search for first and last name, then for first and last name in quotation marks. Will people find you if they Google your name?
When I search just “Bora”, the top hits are about the island in Tahiti, the next tier is for Volkswagen Bora (and Google helpfully asks if that is the search you want to expand). I am the first human to show up right underneath the car: ‘Science And Politics’ is #2 and “A Blog Around The Clock” is #5.
When I search for “Bora Zivkovic”(with or without quotes), you need to go a long way down the page to find anyone but me (there is apparently a Danish soccer player of that name).
With a name like this, it was not hard to get so high. But a John or Mary Smith may have more difficulty. How did you do?

Jenna drew a squid. Perhaps if I post it here, PZ will see it and post it as well, and send Jenna a Pharyngulanche of visitors to her blog.

It’s been decades ago, but yes, I have done it myself. Detailed instructions. Do not read around meal-time.

Oooops! It is actually Pi Day!

You’ll have to work fast – there are only five days left – but you can win some nice big prizes if you make the winning design for the Threadless T-shirts with the theme “Science Is Culture”.

If, like me, you don’t give a rat’s behind for the basketball tournaments and brackets but are interested in science, then go ahead and make your predictions in the Science Spring Showdown 2007 tournament over on World’s Fair. Various Sciencebloggers will write “Basics”-style posts in defense of one concept or another, you will vote for winners and if you correctly guess all the winners – well, I don’t know what will happen, but you will certainly become immensely famous around these parts, at least.
So, donwload the brackets, fill out your choices and follow the tournament at the Press Center over the next several days.