Crazy Base Jumping Video With Wing Suits

This is an absolutely crazy base-jumping video, with wing suits. If I didn’t have the life and family I have now, I could see myself wanting to do this, but there’s too much risk involved for me and I’ve got too much to loose. Still - it’s awesome to see.

wingsuit base jumping from Ali on Vimeo.

We Refinanced Our Mortgage Today

We have refinanced (or at least started the process) and locked in at 4.96 after paying a point (it was 5.6 without the point, lenders wanting up-front money and assurance in today’s market). We are rolling in the point and closing costs into the new loan and we’ll still be saving $140/month over our current loan (and if we hadn’t rolled in the costs, it would only have saved us $21/month more).

Obviously, this may be biased, but here’s an article that helped me make up my mind:

Say Hello to the Best Rates in History
by Victor Burek
Posted Dec 17 2008, 08:11 AM

In today’s economy things are changing very quickly and you can chase rates for a while but you don’t want to miss the boat. I would advise all readers, determine a rate that makes sense as far as what it costs and how much you are saving. Once rates hit that level, lock, close and move on with your life. Rates can and will go lower, but there is much more room above for rates to go higher then below for rates to go lower. And keep in mind, LIFE happens, things can change, you could simple forget to make 1 payment to a credit card and your credit could fall and now you don’t qualify. One month ago, rates where 1% higher then they are now, 2 months ago rates where 1.25% higher then now. So, as you can see, things can move quickly.

The Mates Of State, The Story Of Taking The Family On Tour

There’s a great video done by Dan Harris of ABC news on the Mates of State and what the family does when they go on tour.

I love the wholesomeness of it and it fits right in with what I think they would be like.  This band is one of my absolute favorites and that’s only encouraged by this peak into their good parenting and family priorities.

http://abcnews.go.com/video/playerindex?id=6318255

http://www.facebook.com/note.php?note_id=37203373110&ref=mf

I Heart Coffee (well, Not Me Actually)

I have never developed a taste for coffee, personally, but I love the smell and I do love all the sugary-icey-foo-foo drinks.  Here’s an entertaining story about coffee from Christoph Niemann, an illustrator at The New Yorker, Atlantic Monthly, The New York Times Magazine and American Illustration.

This American Life, For The Win - Re: Talking To Our Kids As Much As Possible

364: Going Big

All of TAL is always great, moving, funny, and every other positive adjective I could think of (yes, I’m a fanboy)… but the first act in this show is about baby education and it’s importance…

Paul Tough reports on the Harlem Children’s Zone, and its CEO and president, Geoffrey Canada. Among the project’s many facets is Baby College, an 8-week program where young parents and parents-to-be learn how to help their children get the education they need to be successful. Tough’s just-published book about Geoffrey Canada and the Harlem’s Children Zone is called Whatever It Takes. You can see a slideshow of more photographs from the project here. (30 and 1⁄2 minutes)

It’s worth listening to, but basically, one of the points I was struck by (@~11min) was that one of the main factors in the difference between successfully bright children and those who aren’t. The difference is that successful children heard more words… in the study cited, the “kids who made it” heard 20 million more words in the first 3 years and thus developed a bigger vocabulary early on, and could more easily handle the other basic building blocks of learning. If those building blocks are missing, they are hard to get later. (@~14min). Also “children of professionals” tended to hear 500,000 words of encouragement and only 80,000 words of discouragement, whereas “children of poverty” typically heard the opposite; 80,000 encouragement and 200,000 words of discouragement. (@~17min)

I’m sure all of us parents are doing great on this front, and in fact some of us have talked about this exact topic… but I was struck by the profundity of the topic and am myself encouraged to talk to poppy more, just doing idle tasks and whatnot. 

“now we are sweeping the floor.  now you are eating something random off the floor.  now we are looking out the window.  now we are listening to NPR.”

A Touching Movie Clip About Selling The Right Message

Grand Central - Project Care (phone Numbers For The Homeless)

Prescription Drugs In Drinking Water

A vast array of pharmaceuticals — including antibiotics, anti-convulsants, mood stabilizers and sex hormones — have been found in the drinking water supplies of at least 41 million Americans, an Associated Press investigation shows

To be sure, the concentrations of these pharmaceuticals are tiny, measured in quantities of parts per billion or trillion, far below the levels of a medical dose. Also, utilities insist their water is safe.

But the presence of so many prescription drugs — and over-the-counter medicines like acetaminophen and ibuprofen — in so much of our drinking water is heightening worries among scientists of long-term consequences to human health.

In the course of a five-month inquiry, the AP discovered that drugs have been detected in the drinking water supplies of 24 major metropolitan areas — from Southern California to Northern New Jersey, from Detroit, Michigan, to Louisville, Kentucky.

http://www.cnn.com/2008/HEALTH/03/10/pharma.water1.ap/index.html

http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=88062858

I almost hesitate to have relayed this information. One more scare-story isn’t exactly what I’m into… but for some reason this story struck me as something that should be spread some… it seems like something people ought to have in the back of their head and if enough people asked about it, perhaps it wouldn’t get swept under the rug so easily. perhaps.

The Nerd Handbook - Where Was This When Asked Me “why?”

It’s long, but great - go read the Nerd Handbook and understand your favorite nerds just a bit more.  Here’s a quote from the top:

Understand your nerd’s relation to the computer. It’s clichéd, but a nerd is defined by his computer, and you need to understand why.

First, a majority of the folks on the planet either have no idea how
a computer works or they look at it and think “it’s magic”. Nerds know
how a computer works. They intimately know how a computer works. When
you ask a nerd, “When I click this, it takes awhile for the thing to
show up. Do you know what’s wrong?” they know what’s wrong. A nerd has
a mental model of the hardware and the software in his head. While the
rest of the world sees magic, your nerd knows how the magic works, he
knows the magic is a long series of ones and zeros moving across your
screen with impressive speed, and he knows how to make those bits move
faster.

The nerd has based his career, maybe his life, on the computer, and as
we’ll see, this intimate relationship has altered his view of the
world. He sees the world as a system which, given enough time and
effort, is completely knowable. This is a fragile illusion that your
nerd has adopted, but it’s a pleasant one that gets your nerd through
the day. When the illusion is broken, you are going to discover that…

Algebrahelp.com - Where Was This When I Was In School?

I recently came up with a VERY simple algebraic equation… trying to figure out how many months it would take for something to become cost effective.  I looked at the equation and thought I would see if google search could solve it (it can solve basic math problems and even unit conversions), but google couldn’t handle it.  So I thought I’d see if there was something else.  It took no time to find Algebrahelp.com.

I fed the calculator my equation: {{ 2000*X = (100*X) + 3000 }} and got the following:

Simplifying2000X = (100X) + 3000

Reorder the terms:2000X = 3000 + (100X)

Solving2000X = 3000 + (100X)

Solving for variable ‘X’.

Move all terms containing X to the left, all other terms to the right.

Add ‘(-100X)’ to each side of the equation.2000X + (-100X) = 3000 + (100X) + (-100X)

Combine like terms: 2000X + (-100X) = 1900X1900X = 3000 + (100X) + (-100X)

Combine like terms: (100X) + (-100X) = 01900X = 3000 + 01900X = 3000

Divide each side by ‘1900′.X = 1.578947368

SimplifyingX = 1.578947368

Genius!  Not only an answer, but an explanation!  Yay Internet!  I can’t wait to teach Penelope how to do Algebra… suppose I should wait till she’s born first though…

Hubble Ultra Deep Field - A Sense Of Proportion

As Douglas Adams put, humans really can’t deal with having a sense of proportion.  We aren’t capable.  But we can stretch for it…

(I can touch my toes, but I can’t bend further over… but I should try to)

Take 5 minutes and read this fantastic piece on an image from Hubble Ultra Deep Field.  It’s a great reminder of what we know about space and a few tools to help you start to realize that you can’t ever come close to grasping a true sense of proportion.

In many ways, I find this liberating and beautiful.  We are an infinitesimal part of something much, much bigger. Now, with pictures…

Here’s a way of looking at it: there are enough stars in the universe that if everybody on Earth were charged with naming his or her share, we’d each get to name a trillion and a half of them. Even that number is still impossibly hard to comprehend - if you named a star every time your heart beat for your whole life, you’d have to live about 375 lifetimes to name your share.

…

What the Ultra Deep Field image ultimately offers is a singular glimpse at ourselves. Like Copernicus’s On the Revolutions of the Celestial Spheres, it resets our understanding of who and what we are.

Liam - Comedian Who Did The “shoes” Video

From “Shoes” to “Muffins” to “Text Message Breakup” Liam has been keeping thousands of video watchers entertained… ok… so “Muffin’s” was a little less entertaining than the other two, but all three are great. I also found his youtube profile, with some other video’s I’m not yet familiar with… researching…. Here are the three video’s, for the convenience of any who need to watch (again).

Ultimate In Singapore As Reported In The Wall Street Journal

The Ultimate Sport - WSJ.com:

Besides being relatively inexpensive to play, part of Ultimate’s appeal lies in the fact that stature isn’t as critical as speed and dexterity: catching, throwing, jumping and pivoting. One of the star players for the Filipino team Pula, Panoy de los Santos, for instance, is just 1.57-meters tall (but the fastest member of the team).

Another attraction is that Ultimate is a noncontact game, so women like it as much as men do — 35% of the 500 players in the Philippines are female. As a result, Asian teams typically compete in the mixed divisions.

Ultimate calls for players — seven to a side — to pass a plastic disc to each other within a 110-meter-long pitch and to score points by catching the disc in an end zone. The game has no referees; players resolve their own disputes and those who commit fouls are honor bound to admit them. At higher levels of play, there may be “observers,” but they make calls only when a team appeals. (Some Americans refer to the disc as a Frisbee, after a trademark brand.)

In Singapore, the dominant Ultimate country in Asia after Japan, the game became popular in the late 1990s when some expatriates vowed to play once a week “rain or shine,” says Mr. DuBos. Then, students at the National University of Singapore and Singapore Management University took up the sport. Today, the city-state boasts eight club-level teams, which train together and compete in local and international competitions.