Start thinking of wishes

NASA is about to bring some stardust back to earth. A spacecraft is capturing samples of solar wind, which carries electrically charged particles that were blown out of the sun. It never occurred to me before that stardust exists in the real world, and not just in fairytales and Disney movies. This part of the article talks about what the scientists are going to do with the stardust:

Opening the capsule in a modern clean room should allow an analysis with an accuracy unparalleled by efforts from the 1969-72 Apollo missions, says team scientist Don Burnett of the California Institute of Technology.

Since I still kind of think of stardust as something magical, I keep thinking they're studying it to figure out why it has special powers. But that's probably not the case.

bookmark it

Today (after the swimming part of the day), I was eating a fish taco at a place that makes very good fish tacos, and my friend looked at her receipt and pointed out that they had another location. The first thought that came into my head was "We should bookmark it." It was like my brain thought if I "bookmarked" the location of the other good fish taco place, I'd be able to go there anytime I wanted. This is like when I lose something in my apartment and my fingers subconsciously start reaching for "Ctrl-F," which is how you find stuff in most PC programs. I think I'm trying to turn reality into a web browser. Does this mean I'm using the computer too much?

Sometimes the future sucks

Today I went to the beach with some friends and had a really fun time playing on boogie boards and splashing in the waves. The photos I took with my digital camera are the kind that make you nostalgic as soon as you see them. We look so cute and summery and fun.



We were kind of joking about the beach being polluted (it is in Los Angeles after all, and you can see some smokestacks in the distance), so tonight I looked it up in NRDC's Testing the Waters report and Surfrider's State of the Beach report. Surfrider told me there was a pollution warning on this beach yesterday because of high bacteria levels. NRDC told me the beach was closed several times last year, for bacteria and sewage reasons. YUCK.



I hate everyone out there who is making my beach dirty. I guess it's all of us together, using electricity and sewage lines and everything, so maybe we all suck. With all the futuristic technology in the world, you'd think someone would come up with a way to keep the beaches clean.

Graffiti bike

As a former New Yorker who still likes that city a lot, I was annoyed when I first started reading this Wired article about a guy whose bike spray paints slogans on the street. But then I read that the stuff he's spraying is actually washable chalk, so now I think he's cool. Messy slogans painted onto the sidewalk are lame, but messy chalk slogans seem like a fun idea, especially when they're anti-Republican. The project, Bikes Against Bush, is Joshua Kinberg's master's thesis at Parson's School of Design.

More scariness

My Google newsfeed about robots just lead me to

this story. The most interesting part:

"The nanny testified that the man (Helge Fossmo) sent text messages that he said were from God to her cell phone. She claimed she was a robot that had been 'programmed to kill.'"

I'm glad I don't get evil text messages. Like maybe they said "u r a robot. kill them now!" OR "god (me) says u r a killer." I mean, how does someone convey in a text message that it's coming from god? Wouldn't you see the sender's phone number?

Molar Manor

I spent this morning at a haunted house called

Molar Manor. It's all set up inside a big warehouse, so it can be very dark and scary even during the day. (Their website has a good photo gallery.) The explanation for the tooth-related name is that it's owned by a dentist, which I guess is sort of creepy in its own right if you're not into dentists.



Today they opened very briefly for some kids from a camp. My friend works there, painting scary walkways and such, so I got to help scare the kids. Basically, this meant I wore a very unscary purple robe and tried to make sure the kids walked through in the right direction. I only really freaked out one boy, who was walking the wrong way until I yelled "Go that way!" in a creepy voice. I don't think he expected a real person to start talking to him in the middle of all the fake murderers.



I took a bunch of pictures of the creepy stuff, but this one is my favorite:

	I am being pulled in too many directions

Stress bot

I haven't been putting up many little robots lately. That's one I painted before I left New York, when life was getting really crazy.