function follows form

Floppy CD?! That's what the designers told me their product is. The designmart area at Tokyo Designers' Week is one of the most interesting to visit, you get to chit-chat with the designers themselves and buy their products too!

this is a floppy alright

but it goes into the CD tray!

function follows form

His dying wish

I usually read the morning paper on my way to work and get a pick-me-up from Dilbert and other interesting articles. But last Tuesday morning, one particlular article tugged gently at my heartstrings, touched and lola nyo, so to speak.

This was about the survivors of a hydrogen bomb test at Bikini Atoll and that they recently marked the 50th year of that incident. There was this guy, a radio operator of the doomed Japanese trawler whose entire crew were irradiated by the bomb test, who died at age 40 and whose dying wish was...

"Please make sure that I am the last victim of a nuclear bomb."

I guess my visit to Hiroshima and the A-bomb museum 2 summers ago made me more sensitive to this person's dying wish. What happened at Nagasaki and Hiroshima should never be repeated but the threat is just getting more real than ever.

One moment you are enjoying listening to your fave music at iTunes, then time stops at 8:15, your seated body disintegrates into charred dust and leaves a "shadow" on the last remaining piece of concrete that stands among the ruins. Just like the shadow I saw in the museum, of a woman seated on the steps of bank waiting for it to open, at ground zero in Hiroshima.

Grass

I am not talking about the XTC song, this is more about the smell of freshly-cut grass.

Just in time for Araw ng mga Patay, and in case you are in front of a salad bowl and are about to munch on some healthy leafy greens...read on!

From the yahoo Q&A, "Why does grass smell only when it is cut?" comes a very interesting answer from "glutamate" :

According to botanists (plant scientists), the smell of cut grass is caused by gases emitted from each injured blade. Chopped grass releases a long list of volatile organic compounds, including methane (swamp gas), acetone (as in nail-polish remover), ethanol (grain alcohol) and acetaldehyde, a chemical similar to the toxic preservative formaldehyde.

Plants produce the volatile compounds within seconds of being cut. Some also produce the chemicals when they are damaged by frost.

Botanists are still studying why wounded plants give off a burst of volatile organic compounds. One reason, they suspect, is that the chemicals have an anti-microbial action, protecting the cut part from invasion by microbes already teeming on the leaf surface.

Some scientists suggest thinking of cut grass as a kind of chemical polluter. Volatile organic compounds from wounded grass react with nitrogen oxides in the air, helping to form more ozone near the ground (where we don't want it). And grass sheared off and left drying on the lawn releases even more volatile organic compounds -- up to 10 times as much as the cut grass still rooted in the ground. So mowing the nation's lawns may be a significant source of air pollution, scientists say -- even trumping the pollution belched out by gas-powered mowers.

Still, most scientists say there's no reason not to enjoy the cut- grass smell on a summer day. When we bite and chew raw vegetables, they point out, the veggies release their own small burst of compounds -- just as grass, clover and other plants do when a hungry horse tears off a tasty mouthful.

Mestizo ka ba? Sali na!

Tignan nyo nga naman, may Multiply site FOR FILIPINO MESTIZOS only!
tsk, tsk, tsk... infiltrate ko kaya? di naman nila alam na ako'y hindi mestizo.
Lusob mga kapatid!

dog lover ka, kamo...

Sige nga, spread your love on this one puppy...

Hanga ako sa may-ari nito, ano kaya ang kanyang chaka-threshold? Applicable kaya ito sa tao?
Wag ka, may fan club pa 'to! Hmm, there's a saying "God is in the details". Go and look at the photos and tell me what you saw.

the harder they fall

Hmm, according to this Reuters article, "Having more years of formal education delays the memory loss linked to Alzheimer's disease, but once the condition begins to take hold, better-educated people decline more rapidly".

Suwerte-suwerte lang talaga.

mini muni-muni episodes

ito ang nangyayari kapag wala akong magawa sa opisina, mini muni-muni episodes...

When I go on business trips at kasama ko bossing namin, eh talaga namang nakakahiya po sa front desk, kapag ini-aabot na sa bossing ko ang ilang sheets ng faxes para sa kanya na halos lahat ay e-mail naman! Ito kasing bossing ko hindi gumagamit ng PC pero may e-mai account siya, o di ba ang galing?

Kaya tuwing wala siya sa opisina, eh kelangan naming i-fax sa kanya ang lahat ng emails nya for that day. Sa totoo lang kahit nasa opisina sya, eh kelangan naming i-print yung e-mail nya para mabasa nya! hahahaha! heto, ang sanhi ng pagkakalbo ng mga bundok natin!

Tapos pag may email syang gustong i-circulate, photo-copy nya ito at sabay abot sa amin.
mahal na mahal nya ang copier namin. Lagi ko ngang sinasabi sa kanya na pwede naman itong ikalat via e-mail na lang para tipid sa toner at papel dahil lagi rin itong bossing ko na nag sasabi na kelangan daw namin mag observe ng cost cutting measures.

Di raw, mas mabuti na yung may hard copy. Sows, roll up to da sky ang mga mata ni Anghelina!