don't ya hate it when that happens?
Sunday, May 03, 2009
Heard this song in an AT&T commercial and i thought it was really cute :)
Falling In Love At A Coffee Shop- by Landon Pigg
I think that possibly
Maybe I've fallen for you
Yes there's a chance
That I've fallen quite hard over you
I've seen the paths that your eyes wander down
I wanna come too-
I think that possibly
Maybe I've fallen for you
No one understands me
Quite like you do
Through all of the shadowy corners of me
I never knew just what it was
About the same coffee shop I love so much
All of the while I never knew-
I never knew just what it was
About this old coffee shop I love so much
All of the while I never knew-
I think that possibly
Maybe I've fallen for you
Yes, there's a chance
That I've fallen quite hard over you
I've seen the waters that make your eyes shine
Now I'm shining too-
Because, oh because
I've fallen quite hard over you
If I didn't know you, I'd rather not know
If I couldn't have you, I'd rather be alone
I never knew just what it was
About the same coffee shop I love so much
All of the while I never knew-
I never knew just what it was
About this old coffee shop I love so much
All of the while I never knew-
All of the while
All of the while, it was you
You-
You-
You-
Monday, March 16, 2009
8 Brilliant Scientific Screw-ups
8 Brilliant Scientific Screw-ups by the mag
mental_floss477:http://blogs.static.mentalfloss.com/blogs/archives/23600.html
By Eric Elfman
Hard work and dedication have their time and place, but the values of failure and ineptitude have gone unappreciated for far too long. They say that patience is a virtue, but the following eight inventions prove that laziness, slovenliness, clumsiness and pure stupidity can be virtues, too.
1. Anesthesia (1844)
Mistake Leading to Discovery: Recreational drug useLesson Learned: Too much of a good thing can sometimes be, well, a good thing
Nitrous oxide was discovered in 1772, but for decades the gas was considered no more than a party toy. People knew that inhaling a little of it would make you laugh (hence the name “laughing gas”), and that inhaling a little more of it would knock you unconscious. But for some reason, it hadn’t occurred to anyone that such a property might be useful in, say, surgical operations.Finally, in 1844, a dentist in Hartford, Conn., named Horace Wells came upon the idea after witnessing a nitrous mishap at a party. High on the gas, a friend of Wells fell and suffered a deep gash in his leg, but he didn’t feel a thing. In fact, he didn’t know he’d been seriously injured until someone pointed out the blood pooling at his feet.To test his theory, Wells arranged an experiment with himself as the guinea pig. He knocked himself out by inhaling a large does of nitrous oxide, and then had a dentist extract a rotten tooth from his mouth. When Wells came to, his tooth had been pulled painlessly.
To share his discovery with the scientific world, he arranged to perform a similar demonstration with a willing patient in the amphitheatre of the Massachusetts General Hospital. But things didn’t exactly go as planned. Not yet knowing enough about the time it took for the gas to kick in, Wells pulled out the man’s tooth a little prematurely, and the patient screamed in pain. Wells was disgraced and soon left the profession. Later, after being jailed while high on chloroform, he committed suicide. It wasn’t until 1864 that the American Dental Association formally recognized him for his discovery.
2. Iodine (1811)
Mistake Leading to Discovery: Industrial accidentLesson Learned: Seaweed is worth its weight in salt
In the early 19th century, Bernard Courtois was the toast of Paris. He had a factory that produced saltpeter (potassium nitrate), which was a key ingredient in ammunition, and thus a hot commodity in Napoleon’s France. On top of that, Courtois had figured out how to fatten his profits and get his saltpeter potassium for next to nothing. He simply took it straight from the seaweed that washed up daily on the shores. All he had to do was collect it, burn it, and extract the potassium from the ashes.
One day, while his workers were cleaning the tanks used for extracting potassium, they accidentally used a stronger acid than usual. Before they could say “sacre bleu!,” mysterious clouds billowed from the tank. When the smoke cleared, Courtois noticed dark crystals on all the surfaces that had come into contact with the fumes. When he had them analyzed, they turned out to be a previously unknown element, which he named iodine, after the Greek word for “violet.” Iodine, plentiful in saltwater, is concentrated in seaweed. It was soon discovered that goiters, enlargements of the thyroid gland, were caused by a lack of iodine in the diet. So, in addition to its other uses, iodine is now routinely added to table salt.
3. Penicillin (1928)
Mistake Leading to Discovery: Living like a pigLesson Learned: It helps to gripe to your friends about your job
Scottish scientist Alexander Fleming had a, shall we say, relaxed attitude toward a clean working environment. His desk was often littered with small glass dishes—a fact that is fairly alarming considering that they were filled with bacteria cultures scraped from boils, abscesses and infections. Fleming allowed the cultures to sit around for weeks, hoping something interesting would turn up, or perhaps that someone else would clear them away.
Finally one day, Fleming decided to clean the bacteria-filled dishes and dumped them into a tub of disinfectant. His discovery was about to be washed away when a friend happened to drop by the lab to chat with the scientist. During their discussion, Fleming griped good-naturedly about all the work he had to do and dramatized the point by grabbing the top dish in the tub, which was (fortunately) still above the surface of the water and cleaning agent. As he did, Fleming suddenly noticed a dab of fungus on one side of the dish, which had killed the bacteria nearby. The fungus turned out to be a rare strain of penicillium that had drifted onto the dish from an open window.
Fleming began testing the fungus and found that it killed deadly bacteria, yet was harmless to human tissue. However, Fleming was unable to produce it in any significant quantity and didn’t believe it would be effective in treating disease. Consequently, he downplayed its potential in a paper he presented to the scientific community. Penicillin might have ended there as little more than a medical footnote, but luckily, a decade later, another team of scientists followed up on Fleming’s lead. Using more sophisticated techniques, they were able to successfully produce one of the most life-saving drugs in modern medicine.
4. The Telephone (1876)
Mistake Leading to Discovery: Poor foreign language skillsLesson Learned: A little German is better than none
In the 1870s, engineers were working to find a way to send multiple messages over one telegraph wire at the same time. Intrigued by the challenge, Alexander Graham Bell began experimenting with possible solutions. After reading a book by Hermann Von Helmholtz, Bell got the idea to send sounds simultaneously over a wire instead. But as it turns out, Bell’s German was a little rusty, and the author had mentioned nothing about the transmission of sound via wire. Too late for Bell though; the inspiration was there, and he had already set out to do it.The task proved much more difficult than Bell had imagined. He and his mechanic, Thomas Watson, struggled to build a device that could transmit sound. They finally succeeded, however, and came up with the telephone.
5. Photography (1835)
Mistake Leading to Discovery: Not doing the dishesLesson Learned: Put off today what you can do tomorrow
Between 1829 and 1835, Louis Jacques Mandé Daguerre was close to becoming the first person to develop a practical process for producing photographs. But he wasn’t home yet.
Daguerre had figured out how to expose an image onto highly polished plates covered with silver iodide, a substance known to be sensitive to light. However, the images he was producing on these polished plates were barely visible, and he didn’t know how to make them darker.
After producing yet another disappointing image one day, Daguerre tossed the silverized plate in his chemical cabinet, intending to clean it off later. But when he went back a few days later, the image had darkened to the point where it was perfectly visible. Daguerre realized that one of the chemicals in the cabinet had somehow reacted with the silver iodide, but he had no way of know which one it was … and there were a whole lot of chemicals in that cabinet.
For weeks, Daguerre took one chemical out of the cabinet every day and put it in a newly exposed plate. But every day, he found a less-than-satisfactory image. Finally, as he was testing the very last chemical, he got the idea to put the plate in the now-empty cabinet, as he had done the first time. Sure enough, the image on the plate darkened. Daguerre carefully examined the shelves of the cabinet and found what he was looking for. Weeks earlier, a thermometer in the cabinet had broken, and Daguerre (being the slob that he was) didn’t clean up the mess very well, leaving a few drops of mercury on the shelf. Turns out, it was the mercury vapor interacting with the silver iodide that produced the darker image. Daguerre incorporated mercury vapor into his process, and the Daguerreotype photograph was born.
6. Mauve Dye (1856)
Mistake Leading to Discovery: Delusions of grandeurLesson Learned: Real men wear mauve
In 1856, an 18-year-old British chemistry student named William Perkin attempted to develop a synthetic version of quinine, the drug commonly used to treat malaria. It was a noble cause, but the problem was, he had no idea what he was doing.
Perkin started by mixing aniline (a colorless, oily liquid derived from coal-tar, a waste product of the steel industry) with propylene gas and potassium dichromate. It’s a wonder he didn’t blow himself to bits, but the result was just a disappointing black mass stuck to the bottom of his flask. As Perkin started to wash out the container, he noticed that the black substance turned the water purple, and after playing with it some more, he discovered that the purple liquid could be used to dye cloth.
With financial backing from his wealthy father, Perkin began a dye-making business, and his synthetic mauve colorant soon became popular. Up until the time of Perkin’s discovery, natural purple dye had to be extracted from Mediterranean mollusks, making it extremely expensive. Perkin’s cheap coloring not only jumpstarted the synthetic dye industry (and gave birth to the colors used in J.Crew catalogs), it also sparked the growth of the entire field of organic chemistry.
7. Nylon (1934)
Mistake Leading to Discovery: Workplace procrastinationLesson Learned: When the cat’s away, the mice should play
In 1934, researchers at DuPont were charged with developing synthetic silk. But after months of hard work, they still hadn’t found what they were looking for, and the head of the project, Wallace Hume Carothers, was considering calling it quits. The closest they had come was creating a liquid polymer that seemed chemically similar to silk, but in its liquid form wasn’t very useful. Deterred, the researchers began testing other, seemingly more promising substances called polyesters.
One day, a young (and apparently bored) scientist in the group noticed that if he gathered a small glob of polyester on a glass stirring rod, he could use it to pull thin strands of the material from the beaker. And for some reason (prolonged exposure to polyester fumes, perhaps?) he found this hilarious. So on a day when boss-man Carothers was out of the lab, the young researcher and his co-workers started horsing around and decided to have a competition to see who could draw the longest threads from the beaker. As they raced down the hallway with the stirring rods, it dawned on them: By stretching the substance into strands, they were actually re-orienting the molecules and making the liquid material solid.
Ultimately, they determined that the polyesters they were playing with couldn’t be used in textiles, like DuPont wanted, so they turned to their previously unsuccessful silk-like polymer. Unlike the polyester, it could be drawn into solid strands that were strong enough to be woven. This was the first completely synthetic fiber, and they named the material Nylon.
8. Vulcanized Rubber (1844)
Mistake Leading to Discovery: Obsession combined with butterfingersLesson Learned: A little clumsiness can go a long way
In the early 19th century, natural rubber was relatively useless. It melted in hot weather and became brittle in the cold. Plenty of people had tried to “cure” rubber so it would be impervious to temperature changes, but no one had succeeded … that is, until Charles Goodyear stepped in (or so he claims). According to his own version of the tale, the struggling businessman became obsessed with solving the riddle of rubber, and began mixing rubber with sulfur over a stove. One day, he accidentally spilled some of the mixture onto the hot surface, and when it charred like a piece of leather instead of melting, he knew he was onto something.
The truth, according to well-documented sources, is somewhat different. Apparently, Goodyear learned the secret of combining rubber and sulfur from another early experimenter. And it was one of his partners who accidentally dropped a piece of fabric impregnated with the rubber and sulfur mixture onto a hot stove. But it was Goodyear who recognized the significance of what happened, and he spent months trying to find the perfect combination of rubber, sulfur and high heat. (Goodyear also took credit for coining the term “vulcanization” for the process, but the word was actually first used by an English competitor.) Goodyear received a patent for the process in 1844, but spent the rest of his life defending his right to the discovery. Consequently, he never grew rich and, in fact, wound up in debtors prison more than once. Ironically, rubber became a hugely profitable industry years later, with the Goodyear Tire & Rubber Co. at the forefront.
This article originally appeared in mental_floss magazine.
Labels: facts, inventions
Monday, November 03, 2008
breath in
hmmm, 2008 has been a better year than 2007...this is for my tita ilse who passed away this morning after a year long battle with cancer. she went thru the treatments and still... it wasn't enough... i meant to come visit... i called today to check up and it was too late... i'm so sorry... <3 i'll be with tito nito next week in seattle...
and while i'm in this space, i'm sorry jack, that we didn't get to hang out before you passed away... i know you were finally getting in touch with me and all our other hs friends and hopefully things were starting to look up. i thought you were only kidding when you said you could be dead in the next 5 years... who knew? thanks for checking out that south city apartment you told me about... i'm sorry things had to end like this... it's the worst way to go... i hope your killer realizes the full extent of what he's done. nothing is fair... life is strange that way... but i see from your facebook profile that you are loved. RIP
some bad stuff.. onto some good stuff.. i'm in a good place in life. i feel my heart, mind, and soul are whole, not pieces strewn about here and there. sometimes i really do feel like there just is not enough time in the world to do everything i want to do... watching the time slip away like sand between my fingertips. hawaii was good for me. music is good for me. i feel laughter around every corner.. well, maybe not today, but i know it'll be there when i get back...
Tuesday, October 28, 2008
woohoo, my butter mochi got props! hahahah well it's really not mines, but you know....
"Anyway, the party was fun, even if we couldn't really stay. Whoever made that sticky white cake deserves some props. Later that night I couldn't figure out why I wasn't hungry when people wanted to go to Safeway, until I remembered I ate like three fucking pounds of that shit. (Also the dumplings.)"
Wednesday, October 22, 2008
yay
yay! i finally got that promotion and a pretty good sized bump! that's pretty good for this economy as my sis amelia pointed out. everything here's been tight... worked til 11pm tonight tho and i have to be in by 8am... these past two weeks at work have been jam packed....and the social calendar is crazy every oct/nov... all you crazy valentine's day babies!!! ;) now that i have that gross image in your mind... you're welcome :)
i got the iphone... went to kauai (loved it!) bought another ukulele, i get to play sports again at the end of november... hmm, what else... :)
got to go to seattle to visit my great aunt tho... get car fixed, get haircut, move, etc... oh well.. :) hope all is well with everyone else in this facebook dominated world
Sunday, June 22, 2008
Brisbane / san bruno fire
i just noticed the channel 4 news report on a brisbane fire and my first thought went to my cousins family living in the house my grandparents used to own. so many memories...they evacuated right above the house, but i feel really strongly that everyone should evauate just in case. fires are so unpredictable...
apparently in santa clara county the fire was started by lightning from a thunder storm sat afternoon... that same storm that made it rain while it was sunny during the corporate track meet....
Friday, April 25, 2008
"Love love love"- Music for animals
