Roam Around the World

Is this what happened to globes when Google Maps was invented? I wonder which ones have the Soviet Union.

If You Can't See Them, They Can't See You

I think it's going to be one of those days.

Like I Didn't Know This Already

If you're in your 20s, you can probably rattle off a list of friends who were recently let go from their jobs. Or you're one of those people yourself. And it's not because of anything you did; it's just the fact that you are in your 20s and, to upper level management, expendable.

"Employees in their 20s and 30s are finding themselves more at risk of a layoff, according to labor lawyers, as employers look to avoid age-discrimination lawsuits by adopting a 'last one in, first one out' policy and turn to tenure as a means of conducting layoffs. In some cases, young, childless professionals say they feel they're being targeted in layoffs, while employees who have families to support are given special consideration."

Ugh.

I can understand why companies work this way. If you have to fire someone, why not have it be the kid who makes copies instead of the person who has been a loyal worker for 30 years? It sucks to fire anyone, so why not have it be the person you know the least?

But that doesn't make anyone who gets laid off feel a lot better. Especially when no one is hiring.

It's just bad timing. You can be an awesome worker and way less annoying than some of your older coworkers, but you'll be the first to go because your job is probably not all that important to the company, because you don't have a family to take care of, and because you were the most recently hired. How is that our fault? And how is an entire generation of workers supposed to develop their careers if they can't keep their jobs, much less move forward in a company? I feel like this is going to have major repercussions for twentysomethings as we get older.

Achoo!

Just like pogs or troll dolls, this season's trend--swine flu--doesn't seem to be lasting very long. After all the craze, now it seems like this illness isn't as intense as everyone assumed it would be.

"U.S. Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano acknowledged claims by Mexican authorities who believe their cases have peaked. 'I have no reason to think that is inaccurate,' Napolitano said. 'What the epidemiologists are seeing now with this particular strain of H1N1 is that the severity of the disease, the severity of the flu -- how sick you get -- is not stronger than regular seasonal flu.'"

Sorry, swine flu. You're not a lot scarier than normal flu.

But I think we have learned some good lessons here. First of all being--wash your hands. Seriously, stop hacking into your hand and then touching things. I hate that.

I'm Sorry, Dave, I'm Afraid I Can't Do That

A computer self-discovered the laws of physics. In just over a day. Take that, Newton.

Scientists thinks programs like this will be extremely helpful in connecting data and theories, and making scientific breakthroughs. Know what kind of breakthroughs I think this will make? The kind that will break down our fragile human shells when the robots realize we're useless.

Co-creator of the program Hod Lipson says:

"In the end, we still need a scientist to look at this and say, this is interesting."

Really? The computer needs us to say, "Hmm..." about it?

Computers are totally going to take over. Watch out for cylons!

Where Have All the Songbirds Gone?

Is this worse than the disappearance of honey bees? Or because of it? The same idea?

Insect-eating birds are disappearing all over North America, and scientists are trying to figure out what's up. Some ideas: a lack of nesting areas, a lack of food, destruction of wetlands, etc. Unfortunately, biologists are still not sure what exactly is going on to create such a drastic decrease in the populations of these birds.

“Is it a food problem?” asks biologist Pamela Hunt, chair of the Nightjar Working Group. “We don’t know. Something is going on because all these aerial insectivores are suffering.”

It's not good when biologists are worried and have no idea what's the cause.

I'm especially worried because I hate bugs, so what's going to happen to us if all the bug-eating birds are gone? We're going to get eaten by bugs, that's what.

Save the birds. Save the world.

Time Is on My Side

A few favorite fun facts from 20 Things You Didn't Know About Time.

• The average U.S. city commuter loses 38 hours a year to traffic delays.
  
• The Department of Energy estimates that electricity demand drops by 0.5 percent during Daylight Saving Time, saving the equivalent of nearly 3 million barrels of oil.
• By observing how quickly bank tellers made change, pedestrians walked, and postal clerks spoke, psychologists determined that the three fastest-paced U.S. cities are Boston, Buffalo, and New York.
• The three slowest? Shreveport, Sacramento, and L.A.
• One second used to be defined as 1/86,400 the length of a day. However, Earth’s rotation isn’t perfectly reliable. Tidal friction from the sun and moon slows our planet and increases the length of a day by 3 milli­seconds per century.
• This means that in the time of the dinosaurs, the day was just 23 hours long.
• Time has not been around forever. Most scientists believe it was created along with the rest of the universe in the Big Bang, 13.7 billion years ago.
• There may be an end of time. Three Spanish scientists posit that the observed acceleration of the expanding cosmos is an illusion caused by the slowing of time. According to their math, time may eventually stop, at which point everything will come to a standstill.

If time is slowing down, does that mean I have more time to finish my thesis?

I've Never Been Good With Math

"To put a trillion dollars in context, if you spend a million dollars every day since Jesus was born, you still wouldn't have spent a trillion."

It's all kind of mind-boggling when you really think about it.

The Two Worst Words in the English Language

Wintry Mix

Not as fun as snow. Not as easy to get through as rain.

This is basically what the view from my office looks like. Can we go home now?

Those Kids Today

It's one of those big fears that never goes away. Kids are having sex! All over the place! All kinds of sex! Without protection! With multiple partners! Your child will turn into Juno! Except not as funny!

But it turns out that teenagers today are actually not having as much sex as they've had in previous generations, despite recent alarm about teen sex/pregnancy being on the rise. Of course, if you're a parent I'm sure you'd rather your child didn't have sex at all, maybe until he or she turned 45. So even statistics like "47.8 percent as of 2007, according to the National Youth Risk Behavior Survey, down from 54.1 percent in 1991" might not look fantastic. But even so, it goes against the recent fears about kids having more and more sex in risky situations.

That said, teens today are engaging in less "relationships" and having more casual encounters that might not lead to a full-blown relationship. Take that as you will. I think that, as long as teens are safe, that's not as much of an issue. (After all, how long do high school relationships even last?) But sometimes emotional triggers can make those encounters way more complicated--no matter how old you are.

One note I found interesting:

"The latest rise in teenage pregnancy rates is cause for concern. But it very likely reflects changing patterns in contraceptive use rather than a major change in sexual behavior. The reality is that the rate of teenage childbearing has fallen steeply since the late 1950s. The declines aren’t explained by the increasing availability of abortions: teenage abortion rates have also dropped."

Maria Kefalas, Associate Professor of Society at St. Joseph's University, claims, "This creeping up of teen pregnancy is not because so many more kids are having sex, but most likely because more kids aren’t using contraception."

Another reason why 'Abstinence Only' education doesn't work. If teens are going to have sex, they're going to have it. Better that they know about contraception and use it the right way. But again, it looks like more teens are waiting until their late teens or 20s to actually have sex anyway. Maybe because they're more aware of consequences or less inclined to feel pressured by their peers about the sex issue.

It's not exactly a turn back to Puritan values. Of course, even in previous generations that were supposedly "waiting for marriage," most people still had sex before that. So it's not like teens today are having a lot more sex anyway than their 1950's counterparts. Hopefully they just have a better sense of what sex means and how to protect themselves.

A Little Sunshine from Google

In today's "Quotes of the Day" on my iGoogle page:

Thanks to TV and for the convenience of TV, you can only be one of two kinds of human beings, either a liberal or a conservative.
- Kurt Vonnegut

Maybe this world is another planet's hell.
- Aldous Huxley

What luck for rulers that men do not think.
- Adolf Hitler

Come on, Google. Not even one glimmer of hope?

Happy New Year

Happy 2009 friends of ladyfaces. We took an extended vacation over the holidays, but we're back, and one of our resolutions for '09 is to blog more and bring you more awesomeness.

But first we must mourn the passing of one of my favorite traditions of the last decade. The 200X glasses. That's right. Thursday was the last night you could ever wear the new year on your face. because from here on out there'll be no more. That one in front of the left eye would just look weird.

But in all seriousness, we are finally about to say goodbye to the aughts and hello to the teens. I'm wondering what it'll mean for the future of our world, but for now, I'll just sit back and enjoy another year, feeling old while I say to myself "how the hell did it become 2009?"

And Joe the Plumber Has a Book Deal

From Media Bistory, the big question: What is this recent trouble in the publishing world going to do for books?

There are two camps: the "Fewer books mean more quality books" side and the "big publishers will focus on for-sure sells and celebrity authors."

I can't really see much of an argument for the former. Sure, usually when you have to really focus on what you sell, you want it to be the best of the best. Unless you can sell Paris Hilton's dog autobiography and people will actually buy it. So why try out this amazing new writer if you can just get Joe the Plumber to "write" a book? It makes sense when you think that these people are looking at the bottom line.

Of course, I think that small presses have an opportunity to step it up and get people's attention with good work. They might be the saving grave of the publishing decline--that is, if they can survive that long.

WTF?

In Michael Cunningham's story 'White Angel' (from Home at the End of the World), a plane crashes into a neighbor's house and kills the family.

Apparently that can really happen.

A military fighter jet crashed into a San Diego house yesterday, killing the mother, grandmother, and child inside. One other child is still missing. But I can't imagine many survivors from that scene. Apparently the jet was in training before it reported having trouble, and was trying to land at a Marine Air Station. Instead, it spiraled out of the sky and right into a residential area, essentially blowing up an entire house.

"Inside one of [the neighboring] houses, Robert Johnson sat in the living room with his daughter, Heather Certain, and her 2-year-old son, Nicholas, according to the Union-Tribune. They heard the explosion, then saw a giant fireball in their picture window facing their front yard."

Not exactly what you expect on a normal day in the suburbs. Earthquake, sure. Flood, why not? Mudslide, bring it on. But jet plane? How does something like that even happen? Pretty scary.

Vegetarians For the Win

An interesting article about the state of food in the world today, and now we can't sustain ourselves the way we produce/distribute food now. Problems regarding food distribution and production include:

• Surging oil costs have made it more expensive to harvest, fertilize, store and deliver food.

• The rise in droughts and hurricanes worldwide has wiped out crops and made farming more difficult.

• The world is running out of the raw materials -- water, oil, good farmland -- needed to keep the food system intact.

"A lot of people have begun to understand at various levels that the food system, as it is, can't go on," says Paul Roberts, author of "The End of Food."

It's kind of scary, because I can't imagine the average person doing anything to change their eating habits until it's too late. Also, I can't imagine large corporations redistributing their food product, when they know wealthier countries will pay more for it. As Roberts says:

"It's going to have to be profitable or the market won't be interested in it. And if the market isn't interested in it, it's not going to happen."

I wonder what that would take.

Welcome to Svalbard

Polar bears are resorting to cannibalism! Scary!





What would Iorek Byrnison think?

It's a Six-Month-Long Battle

If you put on your winter coat before December, it means winter has won. And you might as well just give up now.

I refuse to yield! It's me and the fleece until absolutely necessary.

The Shallowest Generation

Usually it's the Baby Boomer generation complaining about the hipster generation, claiming we're lazy, selfish, and disloyal to companies. And the Boomers claim they were active in the social change that we only claim to be into. But now James Quinn, a senior director of strategic planning at the Wharton School, takes on the Baby Boomers. Specifically, how overspending and bad banking has taken its toll on the economy.

It's an interesting article. Whether the Baby Boomers are the cause of this crisis or not, the idea of overspending and stupid bank decisions feel real across all generations.

Plus, for once it's nice to not be the generation blamed for the failings of society.

Something Actually Scary

The Bush administration is using its last couple of months in office to push through suck-tastic regulations. Or rather, to loosen current regulations so our quality of life can decrease.

"The Bush administration is making a last-minute push to enact U.S. federal regulations that would ease rules designed to protect the public, observers said..

Included among the proposed changes are rules that would clear roadblocks to some commercial ocean-fishing activities, ease controls on emissions of pollutants that contribute to global warming, relax drinking water standards and lift a major restriction on mountaintop coal mining, the Post said."

Yeah. We all want drinking water standards to be relaxed. I can to get a nice glass of crap.

At this point, I'm sure they don't even care if they come across as scary world-destroying villains. They can do whatever the fuck they want. They're at the end of their terms and don't need to be re-elected.

Ugh.

My favorite part is White House spokesperson Tony Fratto saying:

""And yes, we'd prefer our regulations stand for a very long time -- they're well reasoned and are being considered with the best interests of the nation in mind."

American--where we want to drink polluted water ever day. Right.

West Tennessee folks trying to kill Obama

So some boys outta western Tennessee got themselves brought in on account of having themselves an illegal sawed off shotgun and plans to murder some black folks and one of our two Presidential candidates (I'll let you guess which one).

These self-described skin heads weren't the smartest bunch though. Here's a line from the local story...

According to the complaint, the defendants further discussed their killing spree to include targeting a predominately African American school, and to continue their spree until their final act of violence, which would be to attempt to assassinate Obama.

Really guys? You were gonna shoot up a school, and then go try to kill one of the most protected presidential candidates in recent history? That gonna work out good for you? I have a feeling something might have gone wrong though. I don't think most folks who go on massive school shootings often get out alive. Most either go kamikaze and end their lives, or get killed by cops in the crossfire. And you weren't necessarily planning the sniper approach (which is reprehensible, but was at least arguably effective) so how on earth were you going to get away unnoticed? What, you think people just don't care about predominately black schools? That's lame. You guys have a lame plan. But then again, it's for the best that you're lame. Two less idiots out there trying to kill Obama.

Newsweek's version of the story.