Mulberry Jam

From one of my guilty pleasures/timewasting websites, icanhascheezburger:

I talked to my sister last week and she was just getting over her first case of the flu, ever. I don’t know how she survived to the age of (mmmhh) without having it before, especially since she has a five year old daughter, but she managed it somehow. She was shocked by how nasty it is, how you just want to lie on the couch all day and moan. It’s been a few years since my last case, but I remember it with an awful fuzzy vividness.

So this morning I read about a new Google site tracking flu cases with fascination. Google has studied the volume of searches for flu-related terms like “fever” or “flu”. Over five years they tracked it against CDC reported cases of the flu and found that the searches are actually an excellent leading indicator (since CDC reports lag real time by weeks). Now you can go to a new page and get a look at current trends for the US as a whole or for your state or region.  Here’s a graph showing the correlation between searches and flu cases:

Google's Graph Comparing Search Activity to CDC Flu Cases

Kind of cool, I thought. My version of this image is a bit low-res; you can see a better version and get the whole explanation of how it works by going to Google’s explanatory page.

Okay, it’s been a while since I put any funny cat videos in. This one had me guffawing– my little Miss Thing used to be a master at this trick:

Thanks to Fritz for this one– another great film about cats. Very important viewing for all my cat-loving engineer friends out there. You know who you are.

Wow, this is full of good stuff.  Pointless quote marks  pointed out for your delectation and amusement.  Found this one on the Birdchick Blog.

…the birds have to use potholders to pull worms out of the ground.
…the potatoes cook underground, and all you have to do to have lunch is to pull one out and add butter, salt and pepper.
…farmers are feeding their chickens crushed ice to keep them from laying hard-boiled eggs.
…the cows are giving evaporated milk.
…the trees are whistling for the dogs.
…this morning I discovered it takes only 2 fingers to drive a car.
…hot water now comes out of both taps.

(Thanks, Frances, for these!)

It’s been a busy week, so posts have been scarce I’m afraid. My teacher and mentor at the yoga studio is away for two weeks and I’ve picked up several of her classes as a substitute. I’m having great fun but it has taken away from time at the desk for writing.

So to tide you over until I get back to original material, here are some cool links I’ve had fun with in recent days:

Little sis turned me on to the Gama-Go website. Connie is a connoisseur of Japanese pop culture and design, and this kind of thing is right up her alley. There’s something very appealing about this little guy. And check out the design for one of their men’s tee shirts:

Another fun site I’ve recently added to my Design Links is Plan 59. The site collects and sells images from mid-century commercial design. These images straddle the line between cool and kitsch for me.

And high on the “just plain neat-o” meter is this site managed by Nikon. The Nikon Small World competition collects scientific photos of extremely tiny things. Some of these images are startlingly beautiful. See last year’s winners here.

I’ll be back with more gentle ravings next week.  Have a nice weekend.

I knew that the Washington area was full of overeducated people, but even the animals are well-read. Apparently horses in this area can read signs:

One of the casualties of my recent upgrade to the software that runs this blog was my old template for the look of the site. After changing to the newest version of WordPress last Wednesday, I was forced to also change to a template that would work with the new software. After a couple of false starts with themes that didn’t quite work for various reasons, I’ve adopted this somewhat cleaner layout. I’m pleased with some aspects of this design; other things I hope to improve over time. If any of you have comments or suggestions about the new look, I’d love to hear from you.

Here’s a short article from one of my favorite blogs about a hitherto unsuspected danger lurking out there– the risk of getting hurt while knitting in a car. Add that to the list of high-risk activities to avoid! Maybe there should be a law requiring abdominal shields or something.