I don't suffer from insanity.

A university study showed that 72% of shopping carts tested positive for poo.  Apparently I've been doing it wrong - I push them with my hands.

I wonder what percentage of iPods have poo on them.

"Green acres is the place to be, farm livin' is the life for me."  Are you and Eddie Albert's Mr. Douglas like two peas in a pod?  Yearn no more my country friend.  Now you can be reminded of the good life with a can of cow farts.

Engineering Matters delves a bit deeper into Autodesk's vision for simulation.  There are some interesting things in here.

• Autodesk's offerings are now on par with those from ANSYS, MSC, Siemens PLM, and Dassault.
• The commentary segregates engineers into "simulation analysts" and the "common engineer."
• The simulation analyst gets more capability.  This is good.
• The common engineer may not be better off because, in their opinion, the common engineer cannot be an expert in any one software tool.  Therefore integration is the key and this may not have happened yet.
• With respect to CFD in particular, the issue of having two similar tools (Algor's CFD and the new CFdesign) can be problematic.  Even though the former is for the common engineer and the latter for the analyst to "delve deeper" the saying holds true: "a man with two clocks never knows what time it really is."  Merging the two tools into one isn't easy.

The news is still full of stuff about Autodesk's acquisition of Blue Ridge Numerics.

• Ken Wong "It seems that CFD technologies are in high demand."
• Brief announcement in Industry Week
• Autodesk's FAQ

The ten golden rules of Twitter include #6 Relationships take time.  What does your email address say about you?  Gmail users are thin young men ages 18-34.  AOL users are overweight women ages 35-64.  And so on.  Fast Company thinks LinkedIn is going to change my social media life.  Dunno, I've never really been comfortable with LinkedIn.

Time waster of the week: Psykopaint.  Is it a game, a photo editor, or therapy?  Read what GraphicSpeak has to say.

Lesson #37 in How to Speak Science.  The journal article from Biological Psychology titled "Odor perception between heterosexual partners: Its association with depression, anxiety, and genetic variation in odorant receptor OR7D4" is actually about the fact that your body odor depresses your wife.

More examples of beautiful maps.  Not all online stores are like this one.

In an article on People Skills in Engineering, the concept of emotional intelligence (EQ) is introduced and the question is raised whether universities need to introduce EQ skills into the curriculum.  I say no - if students don't have these skills by the time they reach college there's no sense trying to teach them.   Furthermore, these skills aren't just for engineers; they seem like something every person should have.

• Awareness of personal feelings and the ability to control them.
• Emotional resilience: the ability to perform consistently under pressure.
• Motivation: the drive and energy to achieve results.
• The ability to take other people’s needs into account.
• Influence and persuasive skills.
• Decisiveness: arrive at clear decisions and drive them through.
• Conscientiousness: display commitment to an action plan and match words and deeds.

 Why did the chicken drive on the left side of the road? So he could use his sword right-handed to protect himself from oncoming traffic.

At first I was just disappointed by this article's lack of supporting evidence for the claim that employees from wealthy backgrounds advance at 3 times the rate of their middle class peers.  It became clear that this is just an opinion piece based on the idea that rich kids don't fear the boss.  However, I LSTM (laughed silently to myself, not LOL) when I got to the end of the article that I'll quote for its sheer hilarity.  "I believe my generation will overthrow the arbitrary and brutal authority of corporate capitalism and bigoted conservatism in favor of rationalistic, libertarian socialism driven by a scientific approach and a concern for universal social justice."  Someone didn't get enough hugs - or allowance - as a kid.

• Dyna-Tech offers CFD modeling for HVAC.
• Nokia sold Qt to Digia - News from WorldCAD Access and Engadget.
• Open CASCADE technology 6.5 was released.
• CDAJ-China is now distribution ADT's TURBOdesign in China.
• Naval architects Knud E Handen are using CFD for hull design.
• On the use of CFD to study data center cooling.
• Paraview 3.10.0 was released.
• H&A Architects offers CFD modeling.

James Browne (the other one) at the University of Texas has developed PerfExpert, a tool for analyzing the performance of and finding bottlenecks in software for high performance computing.  Is OpenOffice.org still relevant now that Oracle is its only backer?  (Recall that LibreOffice was recently forked from OpenOffice.)  For you iPad people, Verto Studio 3D is new modeling software.  Looking for a free, open-source CAD system based on Open CASCADE?  Check out heekscad.

American passport holders by state.  New Jersey leads with 68% and Mississippi trails with 19%.

Edible 3D printing takes us one step closer to Star Trek's food replicators.  To my beer friends I say, eat this: beer marshmallows.  PLEASE REMAIN CALM.  Contrary to some reports, Cap'n Crunch isn't going anywhere.  (Love those crunch berries.)

Copyblogger presents 10 blogging lessons learned from launching a $1,000,000 project.  (I've earned precisely 55 cents from this blog.  Thanks to whomever clicked on one of the amazon links.)  The first is "look customer objections in the eye."   Prospects don't have time for you, don't have money for you, and don't have faith in you.  Tell them why they're wrong.

Like scifi?  This lovingly detailed drawing of science fiction's evolution will keep you busy for hours.  I stopped looking when I found author Philip K. Dick.

Visualizations of the Japanese earthquake and tsunami:

• Wave height map of the Pacific
• Video of wave propagation
• Live seismic map

 Is Picasso's Painter and Model really a missing link and how did it end up in Tehran?

What of the odds of your death?  1:1, of course.  More interesting, the odds of dying in a car wreck are 1:84.  The doomsday rule is used to calculate day of the week from a date.

I work with a person from China and when asked what her initial impression of the U.S. was she replied that everything here is scented and smells nice.  A pair of bloggers sought out the first impressions of folks from India when they first arrived in New York.   "Organized, yet lacking identity" was one thought.

I wonder what their first impression was when Indians found a mile-long cave on the moon.

Here's a transcript of Secret Service radio communications from the day Reagan was shot.  Honestly, it's quite unremarkable.

Fun yet infuriating: URL Hunter is an online interactive game played in your browser's URL bar.

I'm enjoying every minute of it.