James and the Giant Corn Genetics: Studying the Source Code of Nature

October 3, 2009

Hardly Strictly Bluegrass

Filed under: Uncategorized — James @ 5:26 am

I’m going to be in SF for a big part of the day attending Hardly Strictly Bluegrass a free music festival, so I probably won’t have time to write anything too interesting today. So it’s a a day for linking to other people’s cool stuff:

  • This guy created a map of every McDonalds around the country. Pretty fun, though I don’t share his despair at their frequency. I’ve done a lot of multi-day drives and the great thing about franchises is being able to pull into a place where you know the menu, and the prices for lunch or dinner even if you’ve never been in the state before. I remember getting Subway the first time I drove through Laramie, WY. The counterexample was stopping at a cool looking diner in north eastern Missouri getting stared at as we walking in the door, and feeling awkward the whole time about being the only people under fifty in the whole joint.
  • California is still working on a plan to build a high speed train between San Francisco and Los Angeles. Which would be great for traffic, the environment, and poor grad students who want to see more of the big cities before I return to my midwestern homeland. The downside is $45 billion for 800 miles (>$55 million per mile) seems like a ridiculous price tag.
  • Check out the Ig nobel awards. A humorous set of reverse nobel prizes, this year awards for things such as a doctor publishing on have cracked only one set of knuckles for decades with no ill effects and a study of whether you’ll do more damage by hitting someone you don’t like with an empty or full beer bottle.

Hope ya’ll are having a good Saturday.

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