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Bees Sniff Out Land Mines
The bee. We slather its delicious vomit on bread and muffins. We send colonies out to pollinate our crops. Now Colin Henderson and his University of Montana colleagues have partnered up with bees to “locate buried land mines” and do it more quickly and thorougly than any dog.“We can survey in one day what takes more than a week with dogs,” he says, “and humans stand 300 yards away.”
Bees can find not only land mines, but also drugs and decomposing bodies. Oh, and they are smart enough to recognize a sugar daddy when they see one.
Here’s the full article. Read it. Enjoy. Things like this are part of the wonderfulness of life.
Gapminder Website
After watching two of Roslings’ presentations at TED, I had to find his website. Or at least the gapminder website. You’re going to love noodling around with the free tools out there.
Ira Glass on Story and Surprise
I found this a fascinating talk. It’s Ira Glass who is the executive producer of the This American Life radio program from Chicago Public Radio. It’s a show that merges true stories (and some short fiction) of everyday people, surprise, humor, and meaning. There’s a structure to the types of stories that they produce. It’s not a new thing. It’s used all the time in a venue many of us are familiar with. Maybe you’ll identify that venue immediately. If not, it doesn’t matter. Watch and listen. This is a fascinating talk and it highlights just how much humor, curiosity, and insight depend on surprise.
Ira Glass at Gel 2007 from Gel Conference on Vimeo.
The Face of Mechanical Genius
This is Warren Ellis.I heat my house with radiant heating. When we built this place, Nellie, I, and the girls laid down yards and yards of tubing. Then the mudmen came in and covered it all up with concrete. We run hot water through that tubing. That water it heated by a boiler, which also heats the water for sinks and showers.
About two and a half weeks ago our boiler quit working. We called the guy who sold it to us. It worked again for one week and went out again. Then again. And again. Now if we lived in the valley and it was summer it wouldn’t be an issue. But we live at 6,000 feet, in the mountains, and it’s winter. We just got four inches of snow two days ago. Needless to say, heat is important.
Well, four technician visits, $600, and many hours later, we still have problems. The blasted boiler conked out again tonight just as Nellie and I were about to take showers to go to a dance for adults our church was putting on.
So we brought in the big guns. We called Warren. Now Warren fixes cars. He fixed our fridge. He’s worked on everything from computers to furnaces. So Warren arrives. In less than 10 minutes the @#!$ boiler was working again. And we now know exactly what the problem is so the Lochinvar boiler rep can’t tell us to look for something else and that it’s an installation error (yes it’s a Lochinvar Knight boiler–remember that boiler buyers). Genius. Absolute genius.
I offered to give Warren a big old kiss–hey, hot water’s important, almost as important as a wife who doesn’t have to take a cold shower in the morning. Warren refused.
So here’s a wet one for ya, Warren. You’ve done your work to further world peace.
The Myth of Being More Productive by Multitasking
One of my personal flaws is my monkey fascination. I am interested in too many things. For example, when I was at the university I wanted to major in English, History, Dutch, Art, and graduate with Honors.
Um, no. That didn’t work. They finally wrote me a letter and said 220 credits was more than enough. And I would graduate the next semester with whatever degree I could cobble together.
Of course, then I started my Masters of Accountancy and Information Systems program. (Some people never learn.)
When I was in my Masters program I started an investment club, wrote fiction, and wanted to start a FSBO home business as well as a write a non-fiction book with 4 collaborators. Oh yeah, and I was supposed to be Mr. Mom with two kids at the time while my wife put me through school.
All this did was stress my marriage to the point that my wife was considering giving me the pink slip. Of course, being so involved in so many projects I had no idea I was in danger of being layed off.
No, over the years I’ve learned that simplicity and focus is divine. It’s good to say no to the million things that vie for my attention, even the many noble causes. It’s smart to put a lot of effort into a few things. Become an expert in one area.
In business, I’ve watched some friends focus, focus, focus. They’ve put in their time and have become very successful at what they do. They’ve worked hard. . . at one thing. On the other hand, you have those of us who haven’t yet been able to give up that danged monkey brain. (Although I will give myself credit–for the last five years I’ve been trying to reduce. Trying to focus. I’m failing spectacularly. But I figure sooner or later my efforts will pay off.)
The multitasking myth shows up not only in the general activities we engage in, but also in learning. I heard this NPR story on myth of multitasking and thought I’d share.
Maybe less really is more.
The church of dead chickens
For about two hours each Sunday I get to teach a bunch of wonderful six and seven year olds at our church. 5 boys. 2 girls. One of the boys likes to rip the buttons off his shirts with his teeth. So I’m thinking, hey, this is my kind of crowd.
I teach with a man named Jed. Poor mountaineer barely keeps his family fed. One day he was shooting up some food when up from the ground came a bubbling crude.
Okay, so Jed isn’t a poor, bare-foot fellow with starving kids. He’s an eligible bachelor who helps his father run one of the biggest cattle ranches up here. Nevertheless, his name IS Jed. And we do live in the mountains.
So anyway, we have a great time with these kids. I mean, with adults, they all sit there polite in their chairs. But with these kids, well, every once in a while there’s one boy who gets up and jigs like Lords of the Flame. We appreciate his art and then get on with the lesson. You also get to say things like, “Hey, do you need to blow that schnoz,” and “get your hand out of your pants” right in the middle of class and nobody bats an eye. During the prayer one of them likes to sit Indian style, hands out, thumbs to the birdie finger (what’s the real name of that finger anyway, Tallman?), and say “oohm.” Trying to break him of that habit. That’s not quite the civilized style of prayer in these parts. But at least he closes his eyes and figures prayer is fun.
So at the beginning of each class we go around and tell one cool or interesting thing that happened that week. I think their stuff is cool. They think my stuff is cool. We have a cool chat and then move on to professionally prepared lessons. Lots of interaction. I’m a private sector teacher, right? (Look, I’d say “trainer,” but then all them snooty types would say, “So what do you want? Sex TRAINING or sex EDUCATION?” Then they’d look down on me. And I’d say, well, education can sometimes be boring. Let’s try the training part. Then I’d get kicked out of my church job. So I’m keeping my job, okay?)
Jed and I, we facilitate some good lessons. Thing is you never know what gets through. Until, of course, the parents give you some feedback.
I had a party with the kids over at my house. We couldn’t find an official slip-n-slide, so we pulled out some plastic, folded it up, and then set it up on our hill. One benefit of coming to my house for slip n slide fun is that we have a hot water tap outside. Nice for washing cars. Nice for mixing with the cold water so you’re sliding in a warm sploosh. Not some ice fest because you want to be loosey-goosey when you’re careening over grass.
It was all good until one boy zoomed down the slide at 80 mph while another was trying to straighten our redneck slip-n-slide. The first smacked the other I don’t know where with his head. All I know is that there was a nice watermelon sound and a delayed wail of extreme pain. We all admired the sound echoing around the hill we live on then moved onto some buddy tag (you call it missionary tag out here in Mormonland). Then to flying paper airplanes off our deck, after which we cooked s’mores over a fire. We ended up with hooligan fireworks on the driveway–smoke bombs and tanks. Everyone loved it. Kids didn’t want to leave. Who would?
That Sunday we had another fine lesson at the church. So what do you think this kids are going to remember?
I’ll tell you what they’ll remember. One little gal just told her mom that they needed to get some dead chickens and turkeys and put them on their porch. This is what they learned in primary from Brother John and Brother Jed. And she’s not the only one talking like that.
I deny teaching any voodoo.
Or taxidermy.
Of course, I will admit that when we were flying airplanes off the deck I told them I wanted to put up a few platforms maybe two feet square down by our garden. Put them up on 7 foot poles and throw some dead animals on them during the winter, maybe a chicken from the store, and watch the bald eagles and hawks gather. I mean, come one. Forget those weiner sparrows. Who wouldn’t want a few bald eagle badboys in the garden, looking down and scaring the cats? We all agreed that was cool then went on flying our multi-colored airplanes.
So that’s what I’ll admit to. But the parents can’t be mad because being nice to others, especially those with razor sharp beaks and talons that like to rip and tear raw flesh, hey, that’s the second great commandment. I was just teaching the gospel truth.
