Cutting it pretty close

I bought a geek toy I've wanted for a while now - it has elements of cookery AND geekery and is therefore irresistible: a ceramic santoku knife. (Wikipedia on ceramic knives.)

While it's a specialist toy tool, useful for slicing or cutting only... it is very very good at slicing and cutting.

Check out this cross-section of a local hot-house tomato:



That's a "detail" from the deconstructed tomato below:



It does, indeed, cut pretty close.

Finished simple salad:

Yo mama

Oh my. An election-related game of the dozens breaks out on Twitter:

fernandorizo: hey twitter, @anildash , @mathowie , and @loresjoberg are saying hell of yo mama jokes up in here. no limits no knuckles style, exactly.

loresjoberg: @anildash Yo mama so fat, when she suspends her campaign they have to bring in a crane.

loresjoberg: @anildash Yo mama so ugly, Sarah Palin knows how to field dress her.

fernandorizo: @anildash yo mama's such a ho, she said she'd sit ON Ahmedinejad with no preconditions

loresjoberg: @anildash Yo mama so fat, she got an endorsement from General Mills.

loresjoberg: @anildash Yo mama's so ugly, Obama said "You can put lipstick on a pig and it would look a lot like yo mama on dollar margarita night."

anildash: @mathowie Your moms so nasty Joe the Plumber had to tell her to stop "sharing the wealth".

gesteves: @anildash, yo momma’s so fat, John McCain looked into her eyes and saw three letters: KFC.

anildash: @fernandorizo well played! Your mama so nasty Bill Ayers wouldn't pal around with *her*.

Quantum Hoops

There's a new documentary out, "Quantum Hoops," about the Caltech men's basketball team.

Caltech, as a school, simply does not have the wherewithal to take sports seriously. For these students, basketball will never be anything more than a diversion. The basketball coach can try to recruit players, but he can't expect any breaks from the scary high standards of the admissions office.

As a result, a fair chunk of the basketball team (last season, all five seniors, for instance) did not even play high school basketball. The Caltech basketball team has more valedictorians than high school basketball players.

But they play real deal NCAA Division III basketball.

And, predictably, they get killed.

Night after night. Week after week. Year after year.

At the time this documentary was made, the team had not won a game in 21 years.

[...]

What we are used to as college basketball is really basketball as a college major, or in many cases instead of college. Not basketball as an activity.

The version at Caltech puts stuff like health, education, and love of the game first. I can't speak for basketball, but I think a lot of colleges would be better off with that kind of athletic presence on campus. Maybe all the professional development of basketball players should take place somewhere else -- somewhere that is not supposed to be about academics.

ESPN: Nerd Squad: The Tale of Quantum Hoops

via kottke

Assess your geekitude

I scored 26.82446% - Total Geek.

Hat tip: Fiona.

I've got your number

You don't need 007's "Q" to listen in on coded broadcasts that are transmitted to spies in faraway places.

Anybody can tune in to the world's top spy agencies talking to operatives in harm's way. All you need is a cheap shortwave radio receiver - the kind available at any drugstore.

Tune it to 6855 kHz or 8010 on the hour. You might hear a girlish voice repeating strings of numbers in a Spanish monotone.

"Nueve, uno, nueve, tres, cinco-cinco, quatro, cinco, tres, dos ... ," went one seemingly harmless message heard this week on a Grundig radio.

It was the Cuban Intelligence Directorate or Russian FSB broadcasting coded instructions from Havana to spies inside the U.S.

Snoop, Here It Is (New York Daily News, 26 Nov 2006)

For more on this fascinating topic, see the website SpyNumbers.com.

What kinda throughput you gettin' these days?

Time-Warner Cable, New York, NY, 7:22 AM EST:

We're taking an informal poll. Post your results in the comments if you're so inclined.

Hat tip: Fiona.

Confirming the obvious

Hat tip: Fiona.