In the United States, daylight savings is observed in all states but Arizona and Hawaii. Arizona chooses not to observe it because the state is so hot that people will only run their air conditioning systems longer if daylight was optimized. Hawaii does not observe daylight savings because they experience very little variation in their winter and summer days (based on their latitude). Alaska is trying to get rid of it and Indiana just started observing it this year."Theoretically, the amount of residential electricity needed in the evening
hours is dependent both on when the sun sets and when people go to bed. Because
people tend to observe the same bedtime year-round, by artificially moving
sunset one hour later, the amount of energy used is theoretically reduced."
Clip #1: K-Fed gets introduced as an 'A-Lister' then gets booed (LINK)
Clip #2: K-Fed gets told that he has less talent than Paris Hilton (LINK)
Clip #3: K-Fed gets dropped to the mat! (LINK)
VS 
Court reporters: During my 2.5 week jury duty, I spent much time watching the court reporter use the stenotype machine. Needless to say I was intrigued. First, how can she hear what these people are saying and second, how does she type all that so fast with only 22 keys? Nothing a little wikipedia can't answer. They describe a stenotype as a phoenetic chorded keyboard which means you press multiple keys at the same time to create the phoenetic sounds of the words. The result is up to 300 words per minute. Amazing. Check out the keyboard layout:
Cinnamon sticks: Recently we attended a wedding that had a fantastic setup for the coffee. Good coffee, whippped cream, and cinnamon sticks! We were unsure exactly how they created cinnamon from cinnamon sticks. The answer isn't that great...they just grind up the bark to get the cinnamon. What is also interesting to note is that it's really cassia or "bastard cinnamon." Real cinnamon costs more. (LINK)
Gelato: Over in Italy, we ate a lot of gelato. It's fantastic! But one thing that we never settled was what the critical difference is between ice cream and gelato. It's cream! Gelato uses milk, not cream, and is supercooled to reduce air content and make it more dense. Ice cream uses cream (I guess that makes sense). (LINK)
Lakers: The preseason has begun and Lakers took their first win against Utah last night, 94-79. Kobe didn't play (sore knee), but Sasha Vujacic made the big plays in the game (here's a picture of him turning into Teen Wolf). Lamar Odom was the high scorer with 18. AND, Jordan Farmar (UCLA) made his debut scoring a field goal and a free throw after 4 minutes of play time. Go Lakers! (LINK)
If you haven't heard already, Google just bought YouTube...probably my blog's largest content provider (or any blog for that matter). It looks like Google is continuing to expand its dominance of the world's internet. So how much does the most popular internet video site go for these days? $1.65 billion. Couldn't they have made it $1.651 billion and given me the measly $0.001 billion? (ARTICLE)
My favorite show, The Office, is already going strong this season. It's the one show I have to see right away so I'm able to talk about it at work on Friday. The interactions between characters have become essential formulas for each episode: Michael and Dwight, Jim and Pam, Dwight and Angela...it's all so good. And if you aren't watching the deleted scenes (available here) then you are missing out on part of the episode. They're not your typical "I know why they were deleted" scenes.
Most people like to talk about how smoggy LA is, but Joanne and I had a great experience when we went out to dinner to celebrate our anniversary. We went to eat at Windows, a restaurant on top of the old Transamerica (now SBC) Building just south of the skyscraper cluster of downtown. It was a beautiful day and we were able to watch the sunset and enjoy a fantastic dinner.
