Personal WiFi on the Go

This is what I need!

Shiny Happy People

REM - Shiny Happy People
by damned78

MIT Clean Energy Prize

The winners will be announced today. These projects look promising perhaps.

DC Weekend

perfect timing

nothing to see here

peekaboo

kinetic sculpture race

ford the river?

dashing young man

dashing young man taking a sip

Chemical Free

My coworker told me that sodium lauryl sulfate (SLS) and parabens are found in almost all personal cleaning products, like body wash, soap, and shampoos. But they are really bad for you. Anything that you apply to your skin will get absorbed into your bloodstream. SLS is the same thing as sodium dodecyl sulfate, a reagent we use in bio research. The function of SDS is to denature proteins so that you can run them on a gel and see if your protein of interest is there. So proteins are usually folded up in a certain configuration, and SDS is negatively charged, so it interacts with all positively charged amino acids and binds, unfolding the protein. And protein structure = function. I'm not sure of the clinical implications of SLS, but companies use it because it is very foamy and sudsy and we all love suds so we pay for it.

I was reading that all of the chemicals in most commercial shampoos are really bad for your hair, and can create chemical buildup and you can start losing your hair. And I think this might be happening to me... I was using Dove for the longest time b/c it kept my hair shiny and smooth and smelling fresh. But lately my hair has been brittle and thin and easily sheds and Dove isn't really working anymore. I'm not sure if it's the oxidative Los Angeles sun and air, or if it's the Dove. But I'm definitely switching to chemical-free.

Parabens are some type of cancer-causing chemical, I'm not really sure what they do. But anyway, the less industrial chemicals... the better for me. I tried this all-natural, organic soap:



And it is really awesome! It leaves my skin feeling super smooth. So I'm looking into replacing my shampoos and conditioners too. I found this site that has a pretty good collection of chemical-free stuff.

Oh yeah, I think I am going to get the shampoo on that link, since it's the cheapest and seems promising.

Nice site

The whitehouse website - now featuring content. huh

Energy Frontier Research Center

money for research projects. MIT got two of these grants.

May 4 Youth Day

Today is May 4, the anniversary of the 1919 May 4 Movement. It was a really interesting anti-imperialism, anti-feudalistic, new culture, patriotic movement spearheaded by educated youth. It is important to the understanding of modern China and the roots of the Communist Party. It's now National Youth Day.

Branding

I'm interested in branding for nonprofits and progressive causes. Who's your target audience? What's your message? Whats the best way to convey this message? It'd be interesting to look at successful brands, such as Obama's and the current Democratic party vs. the failing GOP brand. But I don't know if I have the skills for being a good brander. I've just started looking into it. And also, I have this other belief that people will be able to understand which is the good policy without branding, but with substance. But hey, the Obama brand just made me like him even more. So maybe it has more value than I'd think. I just don't like the thought of paying $50 for the brand, when the real value is only like $1. But that's for retail. But it's similar for other things. Branding has that degree of psychological manipulation... But then again everything you say to people, every argument you present, is a form of psychological manipulation. And I want to be manipulative anyway, or at least have those skills to convince people of things when I need to.

Pinocchio

For some reason, I thought of Pinocchio today and started reading about the original storyon Wikipedia. I've never read it before. It is strange.