Forest for the Trees Department

From a Space.com article about the current favorable planet-viewing conditions:

Here is a trivia question: How many planets are visible without a telescope? Most people will answer "five" (Mercury, Venus, Mars, Jupiter and Saturn). But if you answered "six," congratulations, you can go to the head of the class!



That sixth world that can be spied without optical aid is the planet Uranus.

[Clears throat.] Um, seven. Look down, buddy.

Fontography

Ever seen German text in Comic Sans MS? It's a bit of a mind-fuck, especially on this page about Kant. I'm not saying it's all gotta be that unreadable Fraktur font, but Comic Sans just doesn't seem to fit...

Thought of the day

There are people who enjoy pain, but I bet nobody enjoys itching.



(grumble grumble frickin' mosquitos...)

Test testiness

Okay, I know Web sites need to make money, especially the ones with popular free features. But sneaking the commercial stuff into the popular free features? That's like sneaking shredded prunes into a kid's hamburger and hoping he doesn't notice.



To wit: Emode.com's "What's Your Cat's Type?" test. Looks like a regular Emode test, a fun way to kill time...although question 4, "I buy different types of food to give my cat lots of variety," seems uncharacteristically dull...and on the next page, question 7, is definitely getting at something: "I purchase brands that provide nutrition to build my cat's system to protect it from illness and injury." And question 12 gets right to it: "It's important to feed my cat the best food I can even if it's more expensive." Ahem. This ain't much of a cat personality test, is it? It's more of a cat-owning consumer personality test.



As you might suspect, when you click the button to finish, you get this:

While Emode calculates Your Cat's Type, take this opportunity to enroll with Friskies and receive special offers designed specifically for your cat.

With a whole heap of questions about how many cats/dogs you have, what you feed them, how often you buy food...yeah, okay, I get it, you're the masterminds behind this test. And the most annoying thing is, it's not even a particularly fun or interesting test. There's four, count 'em, four cat "types," which are so generic as to apply to pretty much nothing. I'm not expecting deep, insightful answers from Emode; still, I expect at least the entertainment level and variety of, say, "What Breed of Dog Are You?"



Look, I know they've got to make money. And I don't mind them have sponsors. But I don't like having the sponsors worked right into the test. Or having a test that's just a thinly-veiled advertising and data-collecting tool.



Okay, I'm probably creating a tempest in a Lenox Swedish Lodge^TM Teapot, available at Bed Bath & Beyond for only $89.99 plus $9.95 for standard shipping. And if I'm doing something as silly as taking online tests I guess I can't take too high of a moral high ground. Still: It's annoying. And sneaky. Go hire a focus group or something, willya? And you'd better not be putting any shredded prunes in that cat food, you hear?

Hey, they're good for something!

At last, our elected officials have done something useful: House Votes to Reinstate "Do Not Call" List. When was the last time the government acted this fast to do, well, anything that we little people wanted?

"Hi-yo Silver, awaaaayyyyyyyy...." [splat]

Snapple fact of the day:

In 1985, the fastest bicyclist was clocked at 154 mph.

Yikes. What was he doing, being dropped out of a plane?



Update: First of all, it was 152.2 mph. Second, he was on the Bonneville Salt Flat, cycling behind a pace car designed to keep all the wind off him so there'd be almost no aerodynamic drag. (Which you can read about, and see pictures of, at 152 MPH Pedal Bicycle.)



Y'know, I think that's more impressive as a feat of engineering than one of actual bicycling speed...



Incidentally, the fastest bicyclist without a pace car got up to 63 mph, according to this Physics of Sports page. Now that I'm actually impressed by.

J. Ho-hum, or, "Is that a pistol in your pocket?"

Raise your hand if you give three shakes of a flying rat's ass about J. Lo and Ben.



Yeah, me neither.



I do, however, like this paragraph from the latest "Oh My God It's More Stuff About Those People!" story, in which the ersatz übercouple set off marriage rumors by going to a courthouse in Georgia:

"They were also asking where Mr. Affleck could get a pistol toter's permit," [court clerk Barry] Wilkes said, adding the couple were directed to the probate judge's office. Since that is the same office that issues marriage licenses, rumors of nuptials flared.

Um...what's he want a gun permit for? I don't know about you, but it seems to me to be more of an indication that the relationship is going to be very, very over soon...