Archive for April 29th, 2011

TMQ Watch: April 26, 2011.

Friday, April 29th, 2011

WCD got into it a bit last week with Lawrence over the merits of the NFL draft. It is our position that the draft just really isn’t that important to NFL teams. We do not dismiss the draft totally; a team may get lucky and pick up, say, an Earl Campbell. But teams are just as likely to get lucky and pick up, say, a JaMarcus Russell. Our belief is that good coaching, good team building, and good player selection (remember, players don’t have to come from the draft; undrafted unwanted free agents that do surprisingly well are an ongoing TMQ trope) are more important than draft choices.

With that introduction out of the way, let’s jump into TMQ’s annual “mock the mock drafts” column.

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Posted in NFL, Sports, TMQ watch | 1 Comment »

Do not taunt Happy Fun Bubble.

Friday, April 29th, 2011

A casual conversation on our way to dinner led us to this Wall Street Journal article about Crayola’s Washable Colored Bubbles product.

Crayola figured out a way to make colored bubbles (excuse us, “bubbles of color”) on demand. This is a pretty hard problem if you understand anything about the physics of soap bubble formation; you’re talking about surfaces thousands of times thinner than a human hair. Conventional dyes won’t work, so Crayola’s invention is kind of a big deal.

Crayola’s invention also stains things. Permanently. At least that’s what some parents are claiming. (A quick look of my own at the Amazon product reviews suggests that the WSJ may have slightly overstated the number of negative reviews. Or Amazon may have pulled some.)

“Keep away from brick, vinyl, finished and unfinished wood, wallpaper, painted walls, carpeting, draperies, and other materials that cannot be laundered.”

Why are we reminded of the classic phrase “hypergolic with such things as cloth, wood, and test engineers“?

We briefly considered picking some of this up for our younger relatives, but then had second thoughts; we much prefer our spleen where it currently is, on the inside of our body, as opposed to having it yanked out violently through our nose.

Posted in Clippings, Geek | Comments Closed

“150 g of pidgeon gizzards”

Friday, April 29th, 2011

We have previously made note of Modernist Cuisine: The Art and Science of Cooking as well as the NYT‘s coverage of same.

Now, also by way of the NYT, we have coverage of the book’s errata. Wouldn’t want to overcook those scrambled eggs there, Bob.

Also, we’ll toss up a link for our great and good friend Glen, who is a big Negroni fan.

Things have been kind of slow this week, and we have also been coming off either a cold or an allergic reaction to all the crap floating around in the air. We are aware TMQ has a new column up (his annual “mock draft”) and plan to blog that in the TMQ Watch, perhaps as early as tonight.

Posted in Admin, Clippings, Food, Mixology | Comments Closed