How a Musical Petri Dish Could Waste Your Whole Morning

You know those things you occasionally come across that look kind of cool and you think might be good for a minute or two of diversion? You know how it’s all fine and dandy until you somehow get sucked in and, before you know it, half the day is gone? Yeah. Meet Seaquence.

Seaquence is an online web app created by Ryan Alexander, Gabriel Dunne, and Daniel Massey, with support from Gray Area Foundation for the Arts. It is described as “an experiment in musical composition,” where “adopting a biological metaphor, you can create and combine musical lifeforms resulting in an organic, dynamic composition.” It’s basically an online petri dish where you add little squiggly creatures that make music. You control what combination of sounds each creature makes by adding antennae or changing the wiggle pattern of their bodies. When you’re done, you have a little virtual ambient orchestra; an ecosystem of minuscule musicians that you have guided, shaped and molded to your exact specifications. Oh, the power! Muaaa-haa-haa! Continue reading “How a Musical Petri Dish Could Waste Your Whole Morning”

Standing Up For Your Heart

My new standing desk! Still have some work to do to get everything set up the way I want it, but...

I’m standing as I write this. I’m ecstatic about it. After what I thought might be received as a harebrained or frivolous request, our Facilities folks came yesterday and raised one side of my L-shaped desk to about 40″ high. Add one anti-fatigue mat which is cushily supporting me as we speak, and a stool-height chair (for occasional use) yet to be ordered, and I’m hoping my desk and I have the beginnings of beautiful, renewed relationship.

Maybe some reading this are wondering, “What’s the big deal?” Maybe you already get to stand up for at least part of your day. I’m a software developer, so, unless you count a few trips to the bathroom and the water cooler and walking to meeting rooms, I really don’t have a lot of opportunity to stand. Maybe you just really love sitting. I’d just gotten sick of it. I’d go home after sitting all day long and feel exhausted, my body aching like I’d spent the day in the workout room, my back feeling like I was closer to 85 than 35 years old. I’d think, “That’s weird…I haven’t even really done anything today.”

Yeah. Precisely. That turns out to be a big part of the problem. Continue reading “Standing Up For Your Heart”

How That Cut on Your Hand Could Save Someone’s Life

Quick quiz: Which of these would not be highly unusual for you to say to yourself today?

  • “Shoot, I’m running late again.”
  • “My goodness, it’s a lovely day.”
  • “I really shouldn’t have eaten so much.”
  • “Oh good! I sliced my finger with this kitchen knife! I’m finally bleeding!”

If you answered the first three, congratulations, you’re in good company. If you picked the last one, I’d have to guess you’re either a little macabre, highly prone to sarcasm or, like me, have recently gotten acquainted with Help Remedies’ “help, I’ve cut myself & I want to save a life” product and are looking forward to making the best of an unfortunate situation. Continue reading “How That Cut on Your Hand Could Save Someone’s Life”

“Baby, you have the dreamiest antibodies…”

There’s likely a percentage of the readers of this blog who, if presented with a photo montage of George Clooney, Brad Pitt, Javier Bardem, Daniel Craig, Denzel Washington, Ryan Gosling and other celebrity heartthrobs, might have to take a moment (or several) just to sit back, breathe deeply and appreciate the view. And who could blame us? They’re manly men, all. Easy on the eyes, fairly dripping with testosterone, make our hearts go pitter-pat, maybe make our loins jump just a little with subconscious fantasies of beautiful Clooney babies. What? It’s only natural! It’s biology!

But a recent research effort, published in the February 21 edition of the journal Nature Communications, asserts that our twitterpation (or Brad Pitterpation, as it were) may not be so much for these guys’ handsome faces, strong jawlines, broad shoulders, six-pack abs, that spot in the crook of their neck that probably smells really good…

*sigh*
*batting eyelashes*

Sorry, got distracted there for a second. No, it might not be their looks that we’re really lusting after, but their…robust immune systems? Their drop-dead sexy antibodies? Continue reading ““Baby, you have the dreamiest antibodies…””

What Do Lions Have In Common With Teenagers? OMG, You’ll Srsly LOL!

Ah, the life of a lion roaming the African savanna: sleep, chase a wildebeest, play with your cubs, fight a little with that one uppity lioness, yawn, catch a gazelle, eat the gazelle, drink at the watering hole, sleep some more and…send a text message? Yep, it’s happening in Kenya, where conservationists are now getting automated SMS messages from GPS-enabled collars on the increasingly threatened animals. Unlike traditional texting from your garden-variety teenager, though, these messages aren’t filled with LOLs, gossip and the teen angst du jour, but up-to-the-minute location information to allow researchers to track the lions’ movements in greater detail than ever possible before. Continue reading “What Do Lions Have In Common With Teenagers? OMG, You’ll Srsly LOL!”

With Just a Smile, Our Hearts Beat as One

Every morning, as I’m in the bathroom getting ready for work, my husband goes and collects our five-month-old daughter from the bedroom as soon as he hears the half-hearted fussing indicating she’s woken up. It’s become our routine that he brings her out to say good morning to me, her face still bearing the vestiges of sleep, her eyes squinting into the light. Shielding her eyes with his hand, he’ll say brightly, “Here’s Mama!” and I stop whatever I’m doing to give her a huge smile, grab and kiss her pajama-clad feet and welcome her enthusiastically into the new day (even if I’m a bit bleary-eyed and not feeling all that enthusiastic myself). Invariably, she rewards me with a huge, face-scrunching grin, wrinkling her nose and opening her mouth wide — as close as she can get at this point to a reciprocal “Good morning, Mama!” We trade big smiles back and forth for a few moments, and then Daddy takes her in for the much-needed diaper change. Continue reading “With Just a Smile, Our Hearts Beat as One”

Make Your List, Check It Twice, and Please Try to Stay Focused

We are almost a week past Black Friday, and, if you were one who ventured out to shop all the deals, I applaud you: you have more dedication and shopping fortitude than I, and I certainly do hope your bruises and scratches are healing nicely. It sounds like it was brutal out there. Black Friday is traditionally considered the start of the holiday shopping season here in the United States, where many of us begin the three to four week slog through the stores, catalogs and websites, buying up those perfect gifts for our friends and family, our poor credit cards creaking gamely under the weight of all that shopping. Continue reading “Make Your List, Check It Twice, and Please Try to Stay Focused”

DIY: Build a Baby Who Loves Broccoli

I’m about six months pregnant with my husband’s and my first child, a wee thing of unknown gender and much kicking that we’ve taken to affectionately calling “The Colonel.” Amid all the voracious reading that modern moms like me seem compelled to do, I was intrigued to see the results of a study from the University of Colorado School of Medicine indicating what I eat during these nine months of magical gestation may directly affect The Colonel’s openness to eating various foods. As I sit down to dinner every night, am I setting myself up for a picky eater, or will my kid be just as happy to try Brussels sprouts as pancakes (shaped like Mickey Mouse, per my husband’s big plans)? This research may have the answer. Continue reading “DIY: Build a Baby Who Loves Broccoli”

Why It Might Be Good To Be A Big Crybaby

It came out of nowhere. Hit me like a Mack truck. My  husband and I were sitting and watching “CBS Sunday Morning” yesterday like we usually do, and they did a segment on tearjerker movies (which are, apparently and regrettably, in increasingly short supply). They interviewed Leonard Maltin, and he brought up the clip from Disney’s “Dumbo,” where Timothy Q. Mouse takes Dumbo to visit his mother, who’s been locked up as a “mad elephant” after losing her temper when Dumbo is teased for his oversized ears. Hearing Timothy call to her that he’s brought her a visitor, and seeing Dumbo’s trunk reaching up over the edge of the cell window, Dumbo’s mom stretches to the edge of her shackles, extends her trunk out and caresses him as big tears form in his eyes and he buries his face in her trunk. She then lifts him and swings him gently back and forth while singing him a lullaby.

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CORf1liT9cE] Continue reading “Why It Might Be Good To Be A Big Crybaby”

Neuroplasticity, trivia and a sprinkling of Twitter

Without really trying to be, turns out I’m kind of wired for trivia. My brain seems to reserve lots of little nooks and crannies for bits of information that are probably entirely useless to my day-to-day life or career, but man, are they fun to pull out at parties. I can’t tell you why it’s easier for me to remember that horses are largely physiologically incapable of throwing up than it is to recall some of the names of my childhood friends, I just know that’s the way it is. I’ve learned to embrace it. But is trivia useful, or just a waste of gray matter? Turns out, absorption of trivia is a potential tool to engender positive brain plasticity (neuroplasticity), especially as we age and fight the good fight against dementia and memory loss. Continue reading “Neuroplasticity, trivia and a sprinkling of Twitter”