PHL men's room

Yesterday I found myself in the Philadelphia airport waiting for connecting flight. At more than one point in my multi-hour stay at said airport, I found myself needing to use the "facilities." I was quite surprised at the men's room's design and arrangement. You enter a long room with urinals on the right side, sinks on the left side and stalls in the back. The urinals are fairly standard. The thing that is odd is that there is a mirror along the whole wall over the urinals. This mean you can look yourself in the eye as you are doing your business. This also means you can look your neighbor in the eye without having to turn your head to do so. Not only that, but the sink wall (which is opposite from the urinal wall) also has a mirror running its full length. This means than not only can you look yourself in the eye, you can make eye contact with almost anyone in the room. I must say, the arrangement felt a little awkward. I'm a fairly private individual and a shoe-gazer by nature so don't much care for eye-contact in public rest rooms. I have thought it'd be amusing and awkward to make a public rest room where the urinals were mounted facing each other on a half wall... just to make things awkward. The bathrooms in PHL aren't quite that bad, but they gave me a feel for what it could be like.

Incidentally, one of the more interesting places I've urinated was at the Virginia Military Institute's football stadium. They didn't have urinals, they had a section of wall with a trough and drain at the bottom of it. They had water running down the wall and the gents can line up next to each other and pee on the wall. I was the only one in there at the time so I didn't have to stand shoulder to shoulder with a keydet and I was glad for that.

UFO TV Show Opening Sequence

campy tv show open. fun stuff.

An interesting day at work. (not mine)

Policeman hijacks payroll plane

A couple Australian pilots flying a small plane carrying a lot of payroll money had an interesting day at work. The two police guards flying with them pull out their guns and forced them to land the plane. The pilots are okay and the 2 million in cash has been recovered.

It's bad that one of the robbers was shot dead (tho maybe he deserved it) but it's good that the victims are okay. Hopefully they're psychologically sound after this. I imagine them laughing it off over a few drinks. Of course, I'm very very removed from the situation and I don't know these men so my imagination is ill-informed.

Gettysburg address powerpoint presentation

http://norvig.com/Gettysburg/

23AndMe Will Decode Your DNA for $1,000. Welcome to the Age of Genomics

An interesting article... well, I was interested for a while but I stopped reading on the fourth page.

I'd kind of like to know what is in my genetic makeup.

http://www.wired.com/medtech/genetics/magazine/15-12/ff_genomics?currentPage=1

cleans up nicely

evolution is an award winning short film that shows a model from no make-up to the final billboard picture to show what goes into idealized beauty.

there are two of me

HowManyOfMe.com

There are 2 people with my name in the U.S.A. How many have your name?

The Man Who Saved the World by Doing ... Nothing

Thank God.

http://www.wired.com/science/discoveries/news/2007/09/dayintech_0926

Cool Wallet

Here's an article in wired about a Stewart/Stand wallet that I think would be cool to have. It's made of woven stainless steel thread. Of course, I'm not the kind of person to pay $80 - $125 for a wallet even if I think it's cool.

gored

The American Heart Association has a women's heart health campaign going on now. they call it "Go Red"

The web address is goredforwomen.com

I don't think I want to be gored for anyone.

Incidentally, I don't like the TV ad. They just show pictures of different women. The reds are really intense and the skin tones are pushed to yellow. I think they were trying to make it a graphical look. To me it just looks like they have the colors turned up too high... like above normal "broadcast legal" limits. I appreciate what they're trying to do, but I'd lower the saturation of the skin colors and, after pumping up the reds to where a lot of the detail is lost, pull the over all saturation down so it does look it was shot in a radiation leak.