[caption id=“attachment_6890” align=“aligncenter” width=“640”] The Elevator at the Sears Tower[/caption]

A month or so ago I had a disagreement with my sister-in-law. I’d read about how many traffic crossing buttons and elevator buttons to close the doors were not wired up to anything. She claimed I was wrong and I couldn’t remember where I’d read it. Luckily, I recently came across an article on Placebo Buttons at Your Are Not So Smart.

" Ninety percent of Latinos said that they are friends with people of a different race, making them much more likely than the rest of America to reach across racial lines to make friends." The rest of the article goes on to talk about whites and blacks, but I think part of the reason Latinos tend to cross race barriers so easily is that Latino (or Hispanic) is not a race, it’s an ethnicity. Unlike the old world countries, we’re more likely to come from countries in which people are of all races. In other words, I’m less likely to see a Cuban-American as an other no matter their race; they’re part of my tribe. European whites tend not to have that as their countries are pretty much pure white.

Back around May I backed Jonathan Coulton and Greg Pak’s kickstarter Code Monkey Save World. The ONLY reason I backed it is because of this stretch goal to have Takeshi Miyazawa draw a children’s book based on Jonathan Coulton’s song, The Princess Who Saved Herself.

if you don’t see a “play” button below, click just left of the left-most number and the song should play

[caption id=“attachment_6874” align=“aligncenter” width=“660”] The Princess Who Saved Herself[/caption]

One of the people who developed the pacemaker is now 86. And he has a pacemaker.

-Boing Boing

Ever since the play by email (PBEM) feature in Civilization IV, I’ve tried to play multiplayer games with my brothers. It’s pretty ridiculous in this day and age that Civilization has Nintendo-level abysmal support for asynchronous play. The games often take 40 hours to complete solo and even longer when playing live so asynchronous play is the only way that makes sense to play a game.

This time around there’s a website called Giant Multiplayer Robot to handle passing the files around. Before I’d run a program with Civ IV to make it work more easily than emailing the games around, but GMR makes it extremely easy. You just install its client and authenticate with Steam. Then it lets you know when you have a turn to play.

I just found out from my brother that Alvarez Guedes died. I have almost the same story as the person who wrote the linked article. I’m not sure if I’ll expound on it in a longer post, but I wanted to pass along the link. He was an awesomely funny dude, my favorite comedian, and the world is less funny with him gone.

That’s what they’re asking over at Angry Asian Man. The song is incredibly catchy and the video probably would have made my list of crazy K-Pop vids. I know Scarlett would probably like it based on her current favorite words.

I’m always late on my podcasts. I have a lot of stuff I want to listen to and not much time for listening. This week I was catching up on the final week of Talk of the Nation episodes as well as some This American Life episodes from a month or more ago. They kept talking about how Republicans need to do something about immigration reform in order to get the Latino Vote - or at least not automatically lose it. After all, Latinos are natural allies with the Republicans - on average Latinos tend to be socially conservative and pro-business. Great allies! Except for that whole Republican racism image that I’m not entirely sure is undeserved. (Especially since it’s been a tactic they’ve been using ever since Nixon used it to wrest the South from the Democrats. Remember McCain’s alleged black son being a tactic to lose him key states in the South?) Instead of “Build that Dang Fence” they should be working on comprehensive Immigration Reform, the pundits said. But here’s the thing - Latinos are quite diverse culturally. See this video from The Daily Show:

If you have a huge party like someone’s 60th or a graduation party that you want to take photos at, there are basically three things to remember whether you’re doing it for money or just to document a special time for the family and friends.

If You Can, Get Photos of the Preparations/Empty Venue

Once the people arrive, it will probably be a controlled chaos that you’ll be trying to capture. People often put a lot of thought into decorations and centerpieces. Take some time to document them.

I was sad today when I realized I’d already forgotten about the Trayvon Martin case.