November 28, 2006
Gangsta Tank, 1940s Style
The cool Modern Mechanix blog shows off this chillin' old school gangsta tank ride:
I think they were just way ahead of their time. Now how would this look with a gold grille and spinners?
Ford's Jose Paris might've had this in mind when he designed the SYNus:
Kind of reminiscent of the Mad Max trucks in Iraq, except with a bit more OEM style. Betcha it'll be just a few years until miniguns and ceramic armor show up at the SEMA show.
November 15, 2006
Reading List Thus Far
Just finished up Saucer, by Stephen Coonts.
It was...just ok. Like a mildly entertaining broadcast TV movie you watch instead of a rerun of Lost or something.
Next up: Angels and Demons by Dan Brown. The first few bits of this book were on the last cassette of The DaVinci Code as filler, and the whole CERN-Geneva tie-in sounded interesting. [Geek!]
November 14, 2006
Getting a Kung Fu Grip, revisited
A while back I wrote about increasing grip strength, citing the Honolulu Heart Program's study showing grip strength directly proportional to life expectancy.
Well, the study has been updated recently, now with 40 years of data, and yep, grip strength is still an indicator of longevity.
Some of this might be experimental bias--grip strength is really easy to sample, given the variety of apparatus out there. Subjects don't even need to disrobe. There are even versions for lab mice. Luckily grip strength is proportional to upper body strength, so it works ok as a metric.
Someone needs to invent a mouse that includes grip strength training--think of a Gripmaster with optical tracking.
+ 
Now that would be a Mighty Mouse.
November 13, 2006
DITA's Future's So Bright...
...ya gotta wear shades. Used to be that the only search hits you got on "dita" was the XML content model we all know and love and Marilyn Manson's wife.
But an inadvertent visit to Dita.com led me to the cool shades all the popular kids, like Jessica Simpson below, are wearing these days:
Luckily, I'm so uncool I was still wearing my Ray Ban aviators even during the "itsy bitsy eyeglasses with 4 button suits era", so I'm now a with-it kind of guy. Or at least I'd like to think so.