I like all of them

Your Fragrance Profile

The best calming fragrance: jasmine The best fragrance for everyday wear: sandalwood The best fragrance to boost your sex appeal: rose The best fragrance for energy: peppermint

What's Your Fragrance Profile?

Well, the other downside they don't mention is the poop issue

You Would Be a Pet Bird

You're intelligent and witty, yet surprisingly low maintenance. You charm people easily, and they usually love you a lot more than you love them. You resent anyone who tries to own or control you. You refuse to be fenced in. Why you would make a great pet: You're very smart and entertaining Why you would make a bad pet: You're not interested in being anyone's pet! What you would love about being a bird: Flying, obviously What you would hate about being a bird: Being caged

What Kind of Pet Would You Be?

What can I say, I'm in a Scottish mood

'I'm Gonna Be (500 Miles)' by the Proclaimers



The movie the video is from is Benny & Joon. Oh, and YKWIA, don't watch. I love the song, but the twins in the band are...well...beauty challenged.

It could have been worse

I do own an ancient video game console--I just don't play regularly.

You Are 68% Nerdy

You are a pretty big nerd, and you're getting nerdier every day. Don't worry if you don't have friends... there's always robots.

How Nerdy Are You?

I'm home therefore I blog :)

First there's 'Can't Touch Harry Potter'...I particularly like:

VOLDE * MART: Always Most Evil...Always



then there's 'If You Were Gay'



then there's Stephen's Lynch 'If I Were Gay'



and then...the one that harmed me the most:



Thanks to YKWIA for truly harming me, especially with the last one. Obviously guys, while it's mostly pretty tame, you may not want to watch this at work with the sound turned way up. On the other hand...what are you watching YouTube at work for, anyway?

So I finished Harry Potter over the weekend

and have moved on to re-reading His Dark Materials (if you plan on reading the books, don't read the Wikipedia article; it has spoilers that are not marked as such).

Harry Potter was a good read, although it was a bloodbath that seemed a little pointless at times. Almost everything we expected to happen did, though, so that was great.

I worked a great deal last week, but I'm working shorter shifts this week. This coming week, I'm only working 10 hours at the store, though, so that's nice--and I get off this Saturday (that's the third since I started in December 2005). All the work made it difficult to read, and even this week I've been doing a lot more of my game notes (3 hours a day the last few days), so I've been getting home about 3 in the morning, which isn't fun when you've got to wind down and be back up at 9 am. Which brings me to this quiz:

You Don't Get Enough Sleep

You definitely don't get enough sleep, and it's turning you into a mental zombie! You need to get more sleep, starting tonight if possible. Avoid caffeine, keep a regular bedtime, don't watch TV before bed, and sleep in complete darkness.

Do You Get Enough Sleep?

So I think I'll trundle off to bed now. I'd tell you more exciting things but there haven't been any. I still owe a few stories but I'll save that for another day. Good night.

You've probably heard of Oscar the cat by now

but if not...

There's the original essay that appeared in the New England Journal of Medicine (It requires a .pdf reader such as Adobe Acrobat Reader.)

Here's one of the news stories about Oscar.

In the same issue of NEJM, by the way, there was an interesting article on 'The Spread of Obesity in a Large Social Network over 32 Years'. Looking at relationships between spouses, families, and friends, the researches discovered that ties to an obese person increased chances of becoming obese as well. Here are some facts to the study:

• A person's chances of becoming obese increased by 57% if he or she had a friend who became obese.
  
• Among pairs of adult siblings, if one sibling became obese, the chance that the other would become obese increased by 40%.
  
• If one spouse became obese, the likelihood that the other spouse would become obese increased by 37%.
  
• Persons of the same sex had relatively greater influence on each other than those of the opposite sex--most particularly for males. A man had a 100% increase in the chance of becoming obese if his male friend became obese. It wasn't as significant among women.
  

Hey, I'm home early for a change

So I thought I'd watch some funny videos.

How not to read in a library:

How Peter got his library card suspended...


Which brought me to this (hey, I was in a 'Family Guy' mood):

How a toilet works...


and then there's Stephen Lynch, who a friend discovered on YouTube. He's terribly unpolitically correct, so you may not want to watch the videos if you're easily offended. 'Priest' is hilarious--if you're not Catholic. But this one's tame--and so fun for those who have encountered gaming geeks, especially of the hack and slash variety.



Hope you have enjoyed this comic interlude...(which was also the name of a comic store I once worked in--comic geeks are very similar to gaming geeks, incidentally).

Can you imagine such an impact that one life has had?

He only saved a billion people...

Only five people in history have ever won the Nobel Peace Prize, the Presidential Medal of Freedom and the Congressional Gold Medal: Martin Luther King Jr., Mother Teresa, Nelson Mandela, Elie Wiesel ... and Norman Borlaug.

You've probably never heard of Norman Borlaug, known as the father of the Green Revolution (no, not some bloody coup). The 93-year-old was awarded the Congressional Gold Medal earlier this month, putting him in pretty solid company in terms of those who have made the world a better place. His contribution? He's an agronomist who revolutionised food production, particularly in developing countries.

In 1960 about 60 percent of the world's people experienced some hunger every year. By 2000 that number was 14 percent, a remarkable achievement. But as Borlaug cautioned at the ceremony in his honor, that still leaves 850 million hungry men, women and children.

There are many who would criticise the Green Revolution on environmental and political issues; don't let me leave you with the impression that it's all great. But still--in terms of the alleviation of human suffering, it's quite an accomplishment.

I glanced at the Newsweek article a few days ago, and I'm sorry to say when I talked about him over dinner tonight I 1) couldn't remember his name and 2) thought he had died, having not read the article carefully, assuming that was the reason for the tribute. Part of Alter's column's point is that scientists were once famous--Einstein being the most notable example, I suppose, but now they toil away in relative obscurity. And here I forgot the man's name. I hope this rectifies it somewhat.

End of an era and the beginning of a new one--hopefully of peace on both sides

British troops leave after 38 years