But are you happy?

• October 7, 2005 | 12:03 PM ET

I'm taking a long weekend in the mountains, so probably no posts until Tuesday.  Let me know if I miss anything good.

• October 6 |

Thanks to everyone who submitted questions for the Dr. Legato chat yesterday.  You can listen to the transcript .

I've fallen woefully behind on the mail, so allow me to catch up:

Will,
I think you are wrong in stating the final death toll of Katrina is 972.
Isn't it the final (minus the 9th ward) death toll of Katrina IN LOUISIANA?

Otherwise, keep up the good work.
Bryn Lewis

Hi Bryn,
I'm always open to the possibility of being wrong so I looked around a little harder.  The real news is that the door to door searches in Louisiana have ended, though they leave open the possibility of simply coming upon a body.  That 972 number is what they got after the official search in Louisiana.  I also find , and .

It appears the 1193 comes from , which as far as I know has not declared an end to searching.  Off the bat I'm not seeing any numbers for Alabama dead, but their coast got hit hard too, so there may be even more than that in the full Katrina total.
Yours,
Will

—Jeannine

Dear Jeannine,
It's interesting to note your mail while Health and Human Services Secretary Mike Leavitt is being the world isn't ready for bird flu.

At least we can say that bird flu isn't something that's going to sneak up on us.  Right now it's the second most viewed story on our site.  By the way, is an interesting link on that Kos page you mention.
Regards,
Will

Hi Will,
I adore your bits and bites.  But had to protest on "146 Reasons Sugar Why Sugar Is Ruining Your Health":

#15: Sugar Causes Hypoglycemia (low blood sugar).  Despite the footnotes -- in this case, some textbook from 1975 -- DOH!  Maybe they meant HYPERglycemia (high blood sugar).  People with the "hypo" version crave sugar. Maybe that's what they meant?

Anyway, if you're a real believer in the Evils of Sugar, check out the .  No kidding.  They got online groups for everything now...

*That's a good problem to have, as my husband likes to say.  And I know what I'm talking about: Type 1 diabetes since 2003.

Oh, I also loved this:  that's supposed to help fight diabetes.  Brought to you by a company called !
Best,

Dear Amy,
Thanks for those coffee links.  Am I understanding that it's coffee made from mushrooms?  There's a place near where I live that has "Soy Joe" which is coffee made from soybeans somehow.  Tastes pretty much like regular coffee but I guess it's supposed to have healthful significance.  (P.S. "Cup of Money" does not instill confidence in the company's motives.)
Cheers,
Will

UPDATE:  The only thing I know about sugar is that if I eat it before I got to bed I have a hard time waking up the next day, but luckily Clicked has some well informed readers, and several have written in to say that sugar can cause both hypo- and hyper- conditions.  [Note to MSNBC.com health editors: sugar stories have a passionate audience.]

Hey, speaking of coffee...

Hey Will,
Thought you might find this interesting...

City Hippy has partnered up with the Green LA Girl blog to run a collaborative London / LA challenge to see how easy it is to get a Fairtrade coffee in Starbucks around the world. The more people that join the challenge the more accurate a picture we will get.

For more info please .

The results so far?  Easy in the UK...tricky in the US...should be interesting.

Of course anything you can do to get people involved would be great.

Namaste,
Al

Dear Al,
Thanks, that does sound interesting, although I try to shop local, so I avoid Starbucks even if it is fairtrade.  I actually have a close friend who works for Starbucks and goes with a guy who is a fairtrade coffee importer.  I wonder if she can get me some inside info on your project.  I'll let you know what I find out.
Yours,
Will

The impact probability of Apophis is currently 1.8e-04, which is about 1:18,000.  I'm pretty sure it will be okay to get up on April 13, 2036.
jbm!

Hi JBM,
Actually, clicking that "impact probability" number in the chart takes you to a page that says...

Will:
You do realize the asteroid you linked to has a 1 in 5,560 chance of hitting Earth, right?  Couldn’t be sure from your paragraph.
Gus

Dear Gus,
What?  You don't see the threat in a 99.98200000% chance that nothing will happen?  By the way, I don't know if many people clicked that far in, but there is a showing how asteroid impact probability is determined.

One more on this...

Will,
I really enjoy reading your blog.  You can translate the statistics for
99942 Apophis into amount of destruction at .  If it were to hit Earth, it would make a big hole, but it's not large enough to knock the Earth off its orbit.
Cheers,
Eileen

Dear Eileen,
Thanks, that's good to know.  Another cool link associated with this asteroid is .  You can actually put the solar system in motion and watch the game of chicken the planets are playing with the asteroid.  In case you're curious, the model does not show a collision with Earth in 2036.
Thanks all,
Will

Tangled Bank is a blog carnival that celebrates the best science, nature and medical blog writing. It was published today at .
—GrrlScientist

Hey Will,
Martyn from The Peking Duck mailed me about this. There are Chinese dog confiscation teams going around Guangzhou finding sick dogs in veterinary clinics and killing them, scouring streets and homes for unregistered dogs, often beating them to death in front of their owners.

.

Thanks!
Richard
aka The English Guy

Dear Richard,
If the dog is already in a veterinary clinic, why would they still kill it?  [I ended up writing three "why" sentences before realizing the futility of even asking.]
Thanks for pointing this out,
Will

Wil,
Looks like MTA and BART don’t want to let that guy post their maps in and iPod version .
Cheers,
Jason

Dear Jason,
That is just so ridiculous to me I can't even stand it.  If you're providing a public service, it makes sense that the elements of that service are also in the public domain.  (I'm sure someone will write to point out why that's poor reasoning.)  I actually liked the idea that he could design his own map and use that, but the fact that the MTA is being picky about what's close to their map and what isn't frustrates me.
Cheers,
Will
P.S.  OK, After a few moments of thought, here's the drawback I can think of:  Imagine this guy with the iPod maps wins the lottery and decides to spend the next few years traveling around the world on a unicycle and his online activities fall fallow.  In that time, train service changes and I'm still relying on my iPod map because I think it's an official map because it looks official. I don't think that's an unreasonable argument.

Will:

Concerning the following entry from 10/02/05:

From what I have read concerning this report, the GOA lacks the ability to punish or pursue any type penalty to the parties investigated.  They can only offer their reports to Congress who then must deal with the reports.

From the GOA site:

• evaluating how well government policies and programs are working;
• auditing agency operations to determine whether federal funds are being spent efficiently, effectively, and appropriately;
• investigating allegations of illegal and improper activities; and
• issuing legal decisions and opinions

I cannot find the article that stated the fact that the GOA has no enforcement power, but when I read it I clicked away from the article realizing that nothing would come of it with the Republicans holding all four branches of the federal government.
—Donald

Dear Donald,
That sounds about right.  I imagine the Attorney General is the one who'd do the actual law enforcing.  Or maybe a special investigator like Fitzgerald with the Plame case (which I think is still technically the Justice Department).
Cheers,
Will

is the blog of one guy who has bought an unlimited two month pass on Air Canada for $7000 Canadian and has a plan to earn a million frequent flyer miles with it.  And he's only one of four guys who are doing that in October and November.  He has the blog I included a link for; he and the other three are also posting in the Air Canada forum at Flyertalk: you can reach that forum directly at .

Unbelievable but true...
—Kate Gregory

Dear Kate,
I feel like there was a movie about something like that, though I may be thinking of Tom Hanks in Terminal.  I'm real skeptical about those flyer miles.  There's a part of me (a grumpy pessimistic part) that fully expects this guy to accumulate all those miles and then get totally screwed by a last minute rule change.  Good luck to him anyway.
Thanks,
Will

• October 6 |

Are we wired up to be cheerful, or are some of us destined ?  Commuter Click length, but an interesting look at "positive psychology."  A little annoying with all the sneering at American happy culture though.

Speaking of happiness, — Are we measuring national success by the wrong standard?

OK, enough about happiness.  The blogosphere continues to simmer with discussion of SCOTUS nominee Harriet Miers:

The Anchoress is the only person I've seen who actually predicted the Miers nomination.  " because he is the master of the rope-a-dope. AND…(and here I know I am going to be very unpopular) I disagree with the hysterics coming from the right, today. But I understand that they are a necessary part of his roping and doping."  Her is an interesting perspective as well.

— A coalition of the chillin’ is a blog expression I wouldn’t have expected to catch on  but appears to have entered the popular lexicon.  The idea is to agree not to get upset over an issue with which you disagree, and has particular application to issues that cause intra-party divisions.

is not quite the same as chillin’

Some bloggers are

Did papers around the country show Miers briefing the president with the famous “Bin Laden Determined to Strike in U.S." memo?  , But Papers Handle Photo From That Day Quite Differently

I think liberals are at seeing conservatives turn on Bush.  "We already know that lots of conservative are skeptical about Harriet Miers, but what's more interesting is the number of conservatives who are turning their guns on George Bush himself."

reprints an excerpt from number 76 of the Federalist Papers to make a point about the nomination of Harriet Miers and what the founding fathers expected from the system of checks and balances.

— “A reasonable conclusion is that this nomination should be viewed with uncertainty and puzzlement. A silver lining: The uncertainty and puzzlement should not divide people along political lines.”

has a pretty amazing work up of Harriet Miers’ bio.

Speaking of government nominees, " is to find an important government job occupied by a person with no apparent qualifications other than strong personal, political, or business ties to a member of the administration."  That's a good idea, and it's not like there's an industry whose whole mission is double-checking and watch-dogging the government, so a blogger might as well do it.

Billmon is already anticipating the president’s .

on so many levels.  Non-native pythons growing to 13 feet?  Eating live alligators?  That subsequently burst from the snake's living guts?  Woah.  This may be cooler than alligators in the New York City sewers.

but I think it's over my head.  It’s supposed to be an easy way to make your own social app.  If you know programming, it might be easy, but frankly, it looks harder than the cell phone door opener to me.  (see below)

— What a handy site.  Back when the AIGA had their big conference in Boston I was trying to find designer bloggers and had a difficult time of it.

— “This site puts the talents and knowledge of philosophers at the service of the general public. Send in a question that you think might be related to philosophy and we will do our best to respond to it.”  Neat idea, but so far more questions than answers.  Did you know there’s a ?

if you have the buzz-in kind of apartment.

(with footnotes)

"Physicists in Australia have slowed a speeding laser pulse and captured it in a crystal, a feat that could be instrumental in ."

— Short version:  Intrusive commercials are offensive, mass marketing is toast.  Part of his point is that people don’t want to see ads when they aren’t actually looking to buy anything.  I may be off base, but I’m pretty sure that at this point marketing to American consumer culture is based on a strategy of making people want and buy stuff they don’t actually want or need.

— I’m pleased to say that the first thing that came to mind was Will Smith’s grandmother’s pie baking robot in I, Robot, not C3P0.  (By the way, don’t forget for links like this if you don’t care to go through the registration process.)

I’ve mentioned Digg a few times here.  What’s especially interesting about that community is .  While there are many active communities online, I can only think of a few with members who identify themselves by name.  Farkers, Freepers, Kosaks… maybe Slashdotters?

(actually more than one)

In case you missed it, 972 is .

— The idea is that smart folks would collaborate on creating a text book database that’s free to use by anyway with internet access.  Naturally the book publishers would freak out over this, but if they could find a way for professors to get book writing credit for working on it, I bet it would really take off.

— There’s that much lime juice in Coke?  (Note that folks are already picking this recipe apart.)

— Would be better named the 4 hour trick.  The idea is to make your co-workers think you’re extra devoted to your work when in fact you’re taking half the day off.

that landed with the landing gear sideways?  Flickr has some .

Speaking of cool Flickr photos, folks are pretty amazed at .  I guess the leaves on the tree cause the light to split and project a bunch of little eclipses on the ground.  You get a better sense of it from the which for some reason wouldn’t play on my work machine but plays fine at home.  Scroll through the comments for links to other photos.

— They’re basically houses that float, rising with the water level on anchored posts.  The river ferry terminals on the Hudson River work that way.  I wonder what kind of securing system there was on the floating casinos in Mississippi.  Those might have been too big for an idea like this.  P.S.  Does habitat for humanity build these kind of houses?

(and others) are in uproar over a proposed law in Indiana that would block assisted reproduction for people who aren’t married and straight.  Some of what I clicked makes it sound like an unmarried woman would get arrested for getting pregnant, but when I checked for the story I see it’s about “assisted reproduction.”  .

does some heavy work with the satellite images of those buses that were so famously unused (or maybe not) from hurricane Katrina.

One way to end genocide is for everyone to be dead so there's no one left to kill.  Unfortunately, that’s .  Most depressing quote: “The first genocide of the twenty-first century has proceeded without a hitch, and the genocidaires have won.”

.

— Flip houses until you can afford the mansion.  It took me 45 years to buy the big house, but I probably could have won earlier if I’d been paying better attention.

  (Note, one pretty clear F bomb out loud.  Beware at work.)

• October 4, 2005 | 8:53 PM ET

Tomorrow afternoon I'm going to be chatting with Dr. Marianne Legato, author of "Why men never remember and women never forget."  This book is a look at the actual differences between male and female brains.  You may recall having seen her .

If you have any questions on the subject, send them along before 1 p.m. ET Wednesday.

• October 4 |

The blogosphere is as awash in Harriet Miers discussion as the TV news-o-sphere is with talking heads on the matter.  This is what clicked:

spent the day harvesting links.

Well, that didn't take long:  (not really).

is working on pro and con arguments for Miers.  You have to just scroll through the blog, they're not all in one place.

In addition to of some conservative blog reaction, I also clicked one on and another from .

breaks down his objections with a nice list (along with some other opinion round-up.

We've heard a lot about how little information there is about Miers, but that hasn't stopped some bloggers from taking the extra step of and researching those.

— It's worth reading the because they're not duct tape band aids really, they're just designed to look like duct tape so the man wearing them can still feel manly.  There's something very weird going on in the field of men's aesthetics.

; Sues RIAA for Electronic Trespass, Violations of Computer Fraud & Abuse, Invasion of Privacy, RICO, Fraud — Woah!  You go!

shows popular Delicious tags along with a live look at the tagging itself.  It kind of reminds me of .

While playing with LiveMarks I clicked .

— That mold is so dismaying.  It looks like they painted some kind of psychedelic ceiling border on the walls.

on surveillance and got themselves shot.  What strikes me as odd about the story (other than the sheer bad luck of the carjackers) is that the names of the carjackers aren't being released, nor are the names of the agents nor the number of shots fired or who or how many people had guns.  How the heck did this get to be a story?

to stop Tehran's nuclear ambitions.

The link text said I could listen to new music as early as the reviewers do .  I'm enjoying podcast #3 right now.  I feel cooler already.  (My only complaint is that the voice levels are so much lower than the music levels, but no doubt they'll work that out eventually.)

is plastic made from corn meal, so it biodegrades.  Looking at the FAQ, it dissolves in water too, which limits the possible uses quite a bit I would think.

Time on what goes into the making of the new (which I am eagerly anticipating).

I'll never understand the pleasure some people take in using to wake up other people.

A liveblogging of the weekend's — This might be a bit long since you already know the story, but I really like how transparently it shows this person's way of gathering news.  Web research, TV channel flipping, local news, national news, first hand reporting, word of mouth information, maps, photos, personal political contextualizing... online news deep thinkers would do well to take a look at this.

I don't usually catch Andy Rooney on 60 minutes but against the war (or more specifically the cost of it) caught the of a lot of bloggers.  (Another .)

— "A rain forest ... is such an efficient system for using energy because there are so many organisms exploiting every tiny niche of the nutrient cycle."

I found myself running into a lot of information on Mirrormask but rather that try to round it all up, I see .

—  The whole article is like this:

: A Moon with Odd Craters

You have about 30 years before we all go .  I don't understand most of the stats on this other than that it's about a fifth of a mile in diameter.  I imagine the more important number is the one that says how likely it is to hit and how likely it is to burn up before it hits the ground.

?

What is the ?  Ah! :

seems to treat it as exceptional if a person doesn't show up in a search engine.  I'm not so sure.  I've looked for a lot of former friends and classmates online and come up with nothing, especially ones who don't do white collar work that requires they be on the computer.  As an aside I'll point out that the article also mentions online family genealogy sites.  From a personal security standpoint, those things are best kept private.  Do you have anything secured with your mother's maiden name?

— This reads almost like an "infotisement" for some kind of new hair replacement therapy.  I'd be more impressed if they took a hair stem cell and grew a new liver with it.

Jay Rosen took a trip to participate in between bloggers and mainstream media honchos.

Commute Click: Via the above PressThink,

in British Municipal Office - "Offends Muslim Staff" — Looks like "dhimmitude" will be a new popular buzzword in some online circles.

Speaking of new words, "a useful lexicon of current otaku jargon" — which is to say, .

Speaking of making up words: — I don't see on the list if someone wants to try adding to Wikipedia.  ()

And while we're making words,

A quick trip to the mailbag:

. You should watch the trailer for their video.
Enjoy,
Jeanie
Charleston, IL

Dear Jeanie,
Thanks.  I don't have a Video of the Day yet, so this will do nicely — particularly since I'm real high on octopi lately.  I never heard of "the extreme sport of cluster ballooning" before, although I think everyone has imagined it at some point in their youth.
Cheers,
Will

• October 3 |

This weekend I ran into an interesting theme of how blogs are making previously personal matters both public and collaborative.  lost her job (among other bad news) and turned to readers for assistance.  was kidnapped and she appealed for help through her blog (the boy was eventually recovered).  And this weekend saw the first ever .

— I would be neat if you could subscribe to this like a podcast to get map updates and service changes.  (P.S. New York City MTA, get with the program!)

Speaking of mapping, — And as a result they named a newly discovered ant "Google."

Speaking of ants, somehow Tony has managed to round up a .

Speaking of the origins of scientific names, ; Planet nicknamed ‘Xena,’ so moon informally dubbed ‘Gabrielle’ — There's a sentence at the end that mentions that efforts are under way to come up with a formal name.

Scoble posts an and why that's not as crazy as it might seem.  (Still seems pretty nervy to me.)

— That NNDB is an interesting site.

has a round-up of blog reaction to the latest Bali bombings.

As the Plame investigation reignited at the end of last week I clicked remarks from a few bloggers over the weekend.  I don't watch the , but apparently he said something that has folks thinking Fitzgerald's case will go .

Powerline has copies of , which I'd not seen elsewhere, along with some analysis of the case.

Jeralyn Merritt goes to elaborate detail in trying to sort out the new developments in the case.  Such detail that she actually warns readers that the post is for, "."

— I'm as good as dead.

is coming.

Alaska airlines on their plane.  There's a schedule at the end in case folks in the northwest want to try to spot it flying by.  The idea itself is fun, but if, God forbid, there are ever any problems with that plane, it's not hard to imagine regretting being silly.

Following last Friday's Video of the Day, there's one for and an especially good one for .  According to the source site for these things, the videos were never really intended for public viewing.  UPDATE:  Here's the on it.

Video of the Day:  .  First the shark eating video and now this.  Who knew the octopus was so cool?  (The host site is mostly safe for work with labels on the stuff that isn't, but they do appear to have a banner ad in rotation with thong photos that can show up randomly.)

Speaking of animal videos, National Geographic has a live cam pointed at an .  When I logged on last night there were some small animals there but I just logged in again and saw an elephant.  The sounds alone are pretty cool.

— I'm seeing an increase in stories about how biodiesel is the fuel of the future (once the U.S. is able to switch over to the low-sulfur kind.)

"Somehow, however, I just cannot buy that there is such a thing about a Web 2.0 and, the more I read about it, ."

GAO: — I'm not sure what it means that the government broke the law.  The piece ends with a quote from a congressman saying, "Legislation is now pending in Congress to ensure that similar abuses of the public trust do not recur, and we should pass that legislation immediately."  If they already broke the law, why is new legislation necessary?

Speaking of breaking the law,

— The more we do everything with keyboards, the closer handwriting comes to being a lost art.

— Though PETA makes news every now and then, we don't hear about this kind of activism very often.

— See the reader note on .

In the mail...

Hello! I hope this finds you having a great start to the week.

I just wanted to let you know that this week's Carnival of Debt Reduction is up at .  (Yes, I am hosting my second carnival in two weeks!). Anyway, I thought your readers would like to know about this edition of the Carnival of Debt Reduction. The permalink to the Carnival is .  I'd appreciate it if you'd share it with others.
Thanks so much,
FMF