This public service announcement brought to you by generic Daypro:

If someone knows the number for Gregory House, please pass it along. For the rest of you, let's see if emulating the renowned TV diagnostician has armed you to deduce the cause of the following: jaw pain on the right side; not in the teeth, and just below the ear, occasionally pulling at the canal; bad enough to wake up the patient in the middle of the night and make for a generally irritable disposition during the day.

Possible causes:
1. Minor car accident in which the patient's head was tossed forward while the patient was looking 90 degrees to the left. Sound like whiplash? I thought so too.

2. Insufficient hygiene following fairly extensive dental work in the area not four months ago. Cavity? Good bet, even though the pain was not localized in the teeth. This theory went out the door when the pain started shifting from lower to upper jaw and back.

3. Stress: a history of teeth clenching and grinding. This is third on the list because it is a relatively recent recurrence of a childhood habit. The dentist originally caught it after the patient experienced pain on a business trip following a procedure. Altitude? Eh. Not enough to cause this type of pain.

Current most likely cause: Number 3, clenching. Turns out that having an abnormally strong bite can be downright excruciating when coupled with stress and a nasty unconscious habit.

Enter daypro: an anti-inflammatory that will at least make it all go away during the daylight hours. As for the stress that induces the clenching...well, there are always refills.

Two introductions:

1. To TED: Technology, Entertainment, and Design. These folks host some of the most amazing speakers at a conference that is truly "old web" -- you remember don't you? Back when it was all possibility and no profitability. Check it: TED

2. To Ze Frank: a truly "old web" artist/designer/funnyman.

"...the post-scholastic set..."

This is how Natalie Angier, NYT columnist and author of The Canon: A Whirligig Tour of the Beautiful Basics of Science, describes folks like me: out of school and no longer able to dedicate the time to go back and learn things like the hard sciences.

Strikes me that this is one of those phrases that misses from both ends:
(a) anyone hep to the phrase "post-scholastic set" is likely a grad in a good job with either an express or implied continuing education requirement. True, they aren't in a science lab, but they certainly aren't beyond picking up a slightly more technical overview of the field. Whether they choose to or not is a different question. A question which "pop science" likely does not answer.

(b) anyone who has no idea what "post-scholastic set" might mean is also the kind of person for whom "pop science" holds little to no appeal.

For those whose eyes are glued to the engineering-spectacle-turned-business-gamble that is the Airbus A-380, I present the following:

* one 77 second video of a complete evacuation of this tin foil albatross, care of Gizmodo.

You are watching nearly 600 persons evacuate out of just one side of the airframe. I believe they are doing this in Germany, but you will soon see video of the same test being conducted here. The FAA and its equivalents have their quirky requirements, and there are a lot of fanboys happy to volunteer for the chance to sit in one of these things and then deplane it about as rapidly as practicable, so these tests are conducted at a mfg's expense in each country (or, in the case of the EU, I believe they now do it as a single body. If anyone has more information on this, I'd love to hear it.)

Christianity: What if someone threw a ressurection and nobody came?

Thegameiam asks the right questions about enviro-fads: What about the fact that compact flourescents are low-level hazmats? In the same vein, here's one for you (and me) city-dwelling car owners:

Doesn't owning a car in the city create the very congestion we abhor? Or, put economically, isn't urban parking massively underpriced, creating crowded parking lanes instead of open, drivable ones? Slate reports in the "Everyday Economist."

Eastern Market: This is a DC staple. It burned down last night. Fenty promises to rebuild it. Whatever initiatives the community comes up with you'll see posted here.
More from the Washington Post

Big Lebowski Action Figures.
That is correct, I said Big-&*($!-Lebowski Action Figures. Get your grubby paws on them through Uncrate.com.

Absurdistan
This is a delicious romp through what I have to guess is modern Azerbaijan. I commend it to the attention of those who appreciate less-than-likable protagonists, wry commentary on the steel-and-glass instant empires springing up in places like Dubai, and stabs at the current trend toward "revolution viz. the media."

You can find out more at Amazon. Or, as always, you can ask us and we will loan it to you!

People argue over what the Noahite law of "eiver min ha'chai" (prohibition on eating a limb from a live animal) applies to. Lobster is a maybe, live octopus tentacles -- that is most definitely a, "Yes!" Don't believe me?

Check out this video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hvyunwtlvuc&eurl=http%3A%2F%2Fgizmodo%2Ecom%2F

RSC actually got a ticket for jaywalking! I understand the public safety concern, but cracking down on this common practice is just silly - and has repeatedly been proven silly - in major cities. To review:

• NYC tried this with $5 tix. People literally laughed at the cops. Then they got angry. The tix stopped.
• No other major city in America gives out these tix to my knowledge. There are different cultures regarding jaywalking -- for example, it is rampant in DC, Boston, NYC, and other such old world crowded cities. On the other hand, LA, Portland, ATL, and other, newer magalopolises have a more docile populace. Of course, the roads there are wider and permit higher speeds.

I will not rant; I will ask for responsibility first and action second: DC assumes you will jaywalk. The lights are not timed for pedestrians at rush hour, but for cars. Many lights are too short, others too long. Others should simply include an "x cross" feature (I am looking at you, Farragut Square) during periods of very high congestion. Thus, to walk this city is to jaywalk this city. If MPD wants to hand out tickets, lets see a little civic planning first to fix these problems and improve pedestrian flow. Do that, and I think people will be less resentful of the ticketing. Don't, and you can expect an angry backlash.

(Brace yourselves, it's coming)

I finally have my "young associate" story. I am writing from the basement of client's offices -- a small pre-fab structure nestled down a side street in a rural town in the deep south. Outside is a toolshed piled high with boxes. I am taking inventory to see what we can, should, or need to provide to the feds. Yup, the feds. In the age of hyper-contracting by the government, this little office does 8 figures a year in government business. To put that in perspective...these 13 people wield the same capital as a 100 person firm in a major city.

Now they face criminal charges...funny thing is, nobody is unhappy with their performance, just their paperwork and corporate relationships.

...

Iron Chef shows we will never see:

• Secret Ingredient: Ramen!
• Secret Ingredient: Bacos!
• Secret Ingredient: . . . .WATER!

...how about a "restricted ingredient" show?

• No Salt.
• No Water.
• No Heat.

"Pleasanty Surprise of Groping"
- translated motto of the Beijing Olympics on a sign in that city. A more proper translation is reported to be "Find something new and be pleasantly surprised."

See it at the NY Times

Clientcopia is why I don't miss my life as a designer. Check out their actual quotes from clients.

www.clientcopia.com

Overheard at IKEA yesterday:

"Dude, what if you had a . . .um . . . slave, and you wanted to pass it off on Craigslist.com so that, like, people wouldn't know you had one."

"If I had a slave and I wanted to get rid of him, I would free him."

"Oh. But . . .what if you wanted to be nonchalant about it and be like, 'A used DVD player, and you can make an offer on the XboX, oh and this is Tyrone . . .'"

"Why does your slave have to be black?"

"Ok, so here's the DVD, and here's the XboX, Oh, and this is Alan."

"Alan. That's a nice name. If you are a slave, your master should free you."

[ p.s. we moved! ]

Thanks to JR for noting this:

"I'm in the private sector and for the first time in my life I'm earning money. You know that's sort of part of the Jewish tradition." - Tommy Thompson in front of the nation's Reform Judiasm action committee in D.C.

Happily, there goes that candidacy.

RIP Vonnegut. To pen humor about the streets of Dresden, where you emerged as a POW to witness the devastation wrought by your own countrymen, is to elevate humor to its original state as a foil to great tragedy.

"She was a dull person, but a sensational invitation to make babies. Men looked at her and wanted to fill her up with babies right away."

- Slaughterhouse Five

For those of you who wonder about my often contrarian view of foreign policy and military conflict, meet my teacher, Prof. Andrew Bacevich, Lt. Col. Ret.

http://www.bu.edu/alumni/bostonia/2007/spring/soldier/index.html

He embodies the thoughtfulness we should expect of all self-proclaimed experts in foreign policy. Thus, he neither a neo-con nor a blame-america-firster; neither a dove nor a hawk; neither a Bushie or that new breed of the conservative front, the post-Bushie. He is instead an ardent student of history because weapons are new, but conflict is very, very old. He is a pragmatist, understanding that things are never simple on the battlefield. And he is funny - because foreign policy is nothing if not rife with irony.

He is the author of American Empire. I commend it to anyone reading this -- it is accessible and perspective-altering.

Saw a Lunesta spot last night. Listed as a possible side-effect of the popular "sleep aid": drowsiness.

leaving home for home
tall stacks of moving boxes
displace my comfort

"There's no right way to eat a Rhesus." -MentalFloss.com

Turns out that the outmoded idiom, "slow boat to China," is actually an old poker term. A card-shark finding a whale (dead money to you land-lubbers) would tell him that he'd like to "get him on a slow boat to China." There's no specific boat in mind. Indeed, the phrase was most likely used by east coasters or south-westers, nowhere near the necessary ports of call.

http://www.straightdope.com/mailbag/mslowboatchina.html

(p.s. The idiom got me riffing on the irony that our language contains an idiom about how slowly we travel to the very country with which we have the largest trade deficit. It's as if, in a Shanghai cafe, one should expect to hear businessmen on deadline talking about putting their work "on the hydrofoil to Frisco.")

Erev Pesach is probably the most overlooked part of the entire holiday. We today scramble as our forebears must have scrambled to prepare for the great exodus, from Egypt to the wilderness, from the boroughs to the Florida beaches, or from our kitchens to some more cramped and unfamiliar version of our kitchens.

Amen.

Oh, and for those of you who complain about the gastro-intestinal consequences of Matzah, just remember that our complaints are nothing. Our ancestors got a few days out and actually begged Moses to take them back to slavery rather than be forced to eat more of the stuff.

"Easter teaches..."

Easter teaches that Jesus was really a large rabbit who could lay colored eggs of salvation. If man can find the eggs, he can be saved.

Use commas, they help. To wit:

25 yo SWF likes seal, clubbing.



- vs. -
25 yo SWF likes seal clubbing.