Last week during a snowstorm, I needed a mind-clearing/creative exercise after work, so my camera and I took a stroll around West Hartford for over an hour (and I think the cold I have had for the last week was because of this excursion!).   Here are a few shots I took:

(Nod: The Daily Dish)

As if you haven’t been able to tell, I like quizzes.   Here’s today’s.   How many Olympic host cities can you name from their emblems?   I scored 18/20.   How about you?

News from the helicopter world via Wired: Eurocopter is developing technology to reduce the noise generated by helicopters.   The first technology is a different blade design.   Instead of a straight-edge blade, angles are built-in to the blades:

In addition to the Blue Edge rotor blade, the company also introduced something called Blue Pulse technology. Also designed to reduce helicopter noise, the Blue Pulse system uses three flap modules in the trailing edge of each rotor blade. Piezoelectric motors move actuate the flaps 15 to 40 times per second in reduce the “slap noise” often heard when a helicopter is descending.

Both of these technologies are able to reduce noise by minimizing the blade-vortex interaction of the main rotor on a helicopter. Blade-vortex interaction is the source of the pulsating sound most of us are familiar with when helicopters fly overhead. The noise is created when a rotor blade hits the wake vortex left behind from the blade in front of it.

Here’s a demo:

Pretty amazing.   I’d say look for this technology in those unmarked black helicopters, but you won’t hear them coming.

Awesome tilt-shift of New York City by Sam O’Hare:

I tried this with some of my photos once. Cool effect.

Black. Orange. Brazil. Rivers. A well known brand named after a famous Brazilian river perhaps?

The Brand Quiz tests your knowledge and color/visual association of specific brands.   For each question in the quiz, you’re presented with two colors from the brand, a visual clue, and a cryptic text clue.   Some are easy; others, not so much.

I scored 18/21 on my first trip through.   I’d love to know the answers of the ones I skipped over.

How did you score?

(Nod: Brand New)

Take the Pew Research Center quiz to find out.   Millennial, of course, referring to the Y-Generation, or Millennial Generation.   I scored 90/100.   How did you score?

Ten Minutes:

The 5-minute nap produced few benefits in comparison with the no-nap control. The 10-minute nap produced immediate improvements in all outcome measures (including sleep latency, subjective sleepiness, fatigue, vigor, and cognitive performance), with some of these benefits maintained for as long as 155 minutes. The 20- minute nap was associated with improvements emerging 35 minutes after napping and lasting up to 125 minutes after napping. The 30-minute nap produced a period of impaired alertness and performance immediately after napping, indicative of sleep inertia, followed by improvements lasting up to 155 minutes after the nap.

Maybe if I took a nap during the day I wouldn’t fall asleep on the couch at night.   I wonder how my department’s management would respond to my nap requests.

(Nod: The Daily Dish)

Throughout his analysis of the past NFL seasons, ESPN NFL analyst Merril Hoge often proved himself to be very energetic and enthusiastic using the Perceptive Pixel touchscreen telestrator on SportsCenter.

If you’re an SC producer, what can you have Merril do now that the NFL season is finished? Have a little fun… with NCAA squash.

Google Maps have hit the slopes.   You can now see ski slopes in Street View.

You can check out the Olympic slopes in Vancouver, too.   I think my favorite part of this new feature is the little character you drag along the map to see Street View.   In normal maps, he looks like this:

But on the slopes, he looks like this:

Nice touch, and another great feature from The Google.

Hilarious:

ComingSoon.net is reporting Ian McShane will join the cast of Pirates of the Caribbean: On Stranger Tides as the legendary Blackbeard.   McShane is definitely a riveting choice for the role and the series.   Johnny Depp and Geoffrey Rush will reprise their roles as they look for the Fountain of Youth (hinted at at the end of At World’s End).   Joining the cast with McShane is Penelope Cruz.   Orlando Bloom’s and Keira Knightly’s characters won’t be returning which offers the series something of a fresh-esque start.

I’ve been watching Olympic curling at work for the last week.   There’s just something very riveting about the game.   Perhaps one of the reasons I get sucked in is because curling is a thinking game loads of strategy is required.   A few of my coworkers were at first skeptical toward the game, but I’ve managed to turn them into viewers, too.

Anyway, GOOD posted a handy primer on curling here.   Useful if you’re new to the game.

The Washington Post “asked former politicians and others to name one idea other than reforming the much-discussed filibuster that might get Congress moving.”   Several interesting ideas, including this one from Mack McLarty, Chief of staff to President Bill Clinton, 1993-94:

…abolish the anonymous hold on nominations. Beyond fixing the Senate, this would also strengthen the governance of our country by allowing the president to more expeditiously get his full team in place.

And this one from former Rhode Island Senator Warren Rudman:

To restore the public’s trust and put senators back to work, we need to end their reliance on special-interest money. The best solution I know is citizen-funded elections: a system of small donations from constituents and matching public funds for qualifying candidates who forgo large donations.

(Nod: Ezra Klein)

We will always be a happy, hopeful kid in our mothers’ hearts, and our mothers will always occupy a special place in our hearts. P&G capitalized on these sentiments with their touching Olympic commercial. I’ve liked the commercial since I first saw it, and now that I found out Daniel Kleinman (the same Daniel Kleinman of James Bond title sequence fame) had a hand in the project, I like it even more.

Go moms!

In Texas, history is being written by those who have the most money.

For anyone interested in or concerned with how Christian conservatives continue to wield influence on American politics or anyone interested in reading the somewhat disturbing process on how school textbooks are written (hint: it’s all about politics and money and now religion), New York Times reporter Russell Shorto’s article on recent events in Texas regarding their state social studies curriculum is a must-read.

Each year in Texas, the state board of education reviews a school subject and hears petitions on what to include in or what to remove from that subject’s curriculum.   Why this is important is because of its national implications.   Because of Texas’s large textbook-purchasing budget, textbook publishers cater to Texas standards.   Because publishers would rather not create multiple versions of the same textbook to meet other states’ requests, Texas wins, and what Texas wants, other states get, too.

The problem is that the Texas State Board of Education is half made-up of Christian conservatives who are interested in rewriting the history books to elevate religion and their claims of religious intentions of the Founders and downplay other political entities throughout American history.

Merely weaving important religious trends and events into the narrative of American history is not what the Christian bloc on the Texas board has pushed for in revising its guidelines. Many of the points that have been incorporated into the guidelines or that have been advanced by board members and their expert advisers slant toward portraying America as having a divinely preordained mission.

There is, of course, an established separation of church and state in the Constitution, a doctrine that has been upheld by the U.S. Supreme Court.   Christian advocates in Texas, however, are adamant about challenging that doctrine and are trying to paint the Founders as ardent Christian crusaders.

But how Christian were the Founders?

…the founders were rooted in Christianity they were inheritors of the entire European Christian tradition and at the same time they were steeped in an Enlightenment rationalism that was, if not opposed to religion, determined to establish separate spheres for faith and reason. “I don’t think the founders would have said they were applying Christian principles to government,” says Richard Brookhiser, the conservative columnist and author of books on Alexander Hamilton, Gouverneur Morris and George Washington. “What they said was ‘the laws of nature and nature’s God.’ They didn’t say, ‘We put our faith in Jesus Christ.’ ” Martin Marty says: “They had to invent a new, broad way. Washington, in his writings, makes scores of different references to God, but not one is biblical. He talks instead about a ‘Grand Architect,’ deliberately avoiding the Christian terms, because it had to be a religious language that was accessible to all people.”

…which makes many of the Founders deists, not Christians.   Furthermore,

The curious thing is that in trying to bring God into the Constitution, the activists who say their goal is to follow the original intent of the founders are ignoring the fact that the founders explicitly avoided religious language in that document.

Yes.   There is no mention of “God” in the Constitution, and the pseudo-religious mentions in the Declaration of Independence are all deist-minded: “Nature’s God,” “Creator,” and “Divine Providence.”   Moses, Jesus, and the like are conspicuously and purposefully absent from both documents.

Do Christian activists in Texas merely want to bend history to their liking, or is there something else involved?   Brian Spears at The Rumpus writes:

…there is still a danger in allowing the history books to be rewritten to the degree these people wish. Orwell was right when he said “who controls the past, controls the future,” only in this case, the past I’m concerned about is not in the books, but in the memories of the kids who’ll read those books. The people pushing for these changes aren’t looking for nuanced view of early America-they want a curriculum loaded with Christian Dominionism and American exceptionalism, because they’re hoping to convert people to the cause, and a good place to start is in the public schools.

I wonder how the people at Fox News might respond to political indoctrination.   Still, this is definitely a fight worth watching, no matter your position on religion and politics.   Both the past and the future are at stake.

(Nod: The Daily Dish)

A simple, moving PSA urging you to always wear your seat belt.

(Nod: Motionographer)

Awesome stop-motion:

(Nod: Nagle)

(Nod: The Daily Dish)

…and sometimes you should feel like using a nut.   From Lifehacker:

The folks at Apartment Therapy know a thing or two about making an almost-perfect piece of furniture perfect, and according to them, a walnut under the right circumstances can buff out a ding in vintage wooden furniture with the best of ’em. The simple method, in, *ahem*, a nutshell:

1. Identify areas of your wooden furniture that are unsightly because they have been bumped or scraped.
2. Get your walnut.
3. Rub the walnut on the damaged area.
4. Watch in amazement as the damaged area begins to darken.
5. Step back and admire your work. Hey, you didn’t even break a sweat!

How true is this?   From Graph Jam:

I recently stumbled upon this fan-made Seattle version of the Perfect Strangers opening sequence.   Terrific work:

(Nod: TV Series Finale)

The Favourite Website Awards site of the day today: Record Tripping.

To play different games, you use your mouse’s scroll wheel (or trackpad) like you would scratch a record.   Very inventive and beautifully designed and executed.   This kind of stuff makes me jealous.

Back in 1995, Golden Girls Estelle Getty, Rue McClanahan, and Betty White did a parody of Clueless for the MTV Video Awards.   Last night, I stumbled upon this treasure for the first time.   If you enjoy the Golden Girls, you’ll enjoy this:

In time for President’s Day yesterday, Nerve ranked the 43 men who’ve occupied the White House, but not by effectiveness, historical significance, or popularity.   No, they ranked the presidents by sexiness.   The commentary is pretty funny.   Here’s what they had to say for #5 Franklin Pierce:

There’s not much to say about this obscure president, except that he’s gorgeous. He’s like Johnny Depp, but without as much to show for himself.

(Nod: @ezraklein)