Random Thinking

I started reviewing books on amazon back in 2001. At the time, I was running the book review department for JavaRanch and received many free books from the various book publishers. The ranking in amazon is based on a formula that uses the number of helpful votes a review receives as its basis. For some reason, computer books accumulate votes much quicker than regular books so it didn’t take long before I reached the pinacle of amazon reviewer-dom and recieved a Top 1000 badge. In fact, I came close to a Top 500 badge.

In the middle of 2005, I gave up reviewing. There were various reasons for this, mostly because I had enough of JavaRanch and wanted to spend more time on my own site. With the end of my relationship with JavaRanch came the end of my source of free books and the end of my reviewing. Slowly my position dropped until I was in the 900′s.

At the end of 2006, I decided to start reviewing again, but this time it would be only books I read for pleasure. My ranking continued to worsen as the books I reviewed generated many less helpful votes than the old technical books. Finally, a couple of days ago I dropped out of the top 1000 ranking group and lost my badge.

But I really have no regrets. I have always reviewed because I enjoyed reviewing, not for some arbitrary rank.

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Note: The amazon ranking system is sort of mysterious but the general theory is that it works like this: Points are assigned based on the number of helpful votes a review accrues. Two points are awarded when a review reaches 3 helpful votes and another two points are awarded if the review reaches 10 helpful votes. Two points are removed if you have 5 more unhelpful votes than helpful votes. There are limits to how many times per day that a person can vote and have their vote count. And there are limits to how many times per day a person can vote for the same reviewer and have their vote count.

This is Beth looking serious on Nana’s birthday. She really is as beautiful as Michel.

It was Nana’s birthday the other day and I was able to get Nana to pose. I’m not sure why she wanted to pose with her head in a bowl, though. Anyway, happy birthday to Michel’s mom, Mary.

I haven’t been blogging much lately because I have been very busy at work with a very cool project and when I get home I’m usually too exhausted to blog by the time I take care of supper and get Mikey settled in for the night. Plus Michel has discovered the fun of Facebook so I have to fight her for the computer when we are in bed. But I promise to try to blog much more.

For those who have very good memories, you may recall I wrote about our fish tank a while back. The conclusion of that blog entry was that the best way to take care of a fish tank was to leave it alone. That the tank and the bacteria that live in it with the fish eventually reach a point of equilibrium and the tank stays clean on its own. What screws this theory up is algae. Our tank had become overrun with algae, although the fish didn’t seem to mind. But it did make the tank much less attractive. So yesterday, I cleaned the tank, threw away all the old plants and cleaned the ornaments. The water was very cloudy after the cleaning but today it was crystal clear and the fish seem very happy. Like the skulls?

We did buy one new ornament in addition to all the new plastic plants. It’s a very cool looking gargoyle sitting over a human skull with a huge hole in the forehead of the skull. It hooks up to the air pump and every few seconds the wings flap when they fill up with air. I think it goes with the skulls nicely, don’t you?

The British Medical Journal has released seven medical myths that they have debunked.

1. Reading in dim light does not weaken your eyes and leads to glasses. You may have some limited eye blinking and blurriness but nothing should be permanent.
2. You don’t need to drink 8 glasses of water each day. The American Journal of Psychology said there is no evidence to support this theory.
3. Shaving does not makes hair grow back faster or coarser. Stubble may feel coarser but it isn’t.
4. Eating turkey does not make you sleepy. Turkey contains no more trytophan (the amino acid involved in sleep) than beef or chicken.
5. We use more than just 10% of our brains. The myth originally came about in 1907 but with the invention of the CAT scan and MRI, we can see that we use all of our brain.
6. Hair and fingernails do not grow after death. The skin does dry out and retract which may give the appearance of longer hair or nails.
7. Mobile phones do not interfere with medical equipment. Modern mobile phones are safe in hospitals. Although users of mobile phones can be annoying.

Jennifer over at Pinwheels pointed out this article over at WebMD, Down Syndrome May Curb Cancer. The focus of the article is that a gene called Ets2 seems to help reduce cancer rates and reduce the size of tumors in people with Down syndrome. The gene is located on the 21st chromosome so people with Down syndrome have an extra Ets2. Until this recent study, Ets2 had always been thought to be a cause of cancer but research was done on why cancer rates are lower in people with Down syndrome and it was realized that the extra Ets2 seems to tip the balance and turns Ets2 into a cancer fighter. This could lead to drugs to fight cancer in the future. As one researcher said, if Down syndrome did not exist there would have been no point to doing the over-expression research on Ets2 and an exciting potential treatment would have been missed. And we will all owe a debt to people with Down syndrome if a drug is developed from this research.

Now that it is a new year, it is time to look back at the most important news events of last year. Nah! Let’s forget about them and look at the oddest news of 2007:

1. A German man who shared an apartment with his mother left her in her favorite armchair in the apartment after she died… for two years.
2. Because of the bad smell in another German apartment, Police broke in expecting to find a corpse. Instead they found a man with very smelly feet.
3. A Croatian man got on a tram and died. And no one noticed for six hours as he rode around the city of Zagreb.
4. Mark McGowan, a British artist, ate meatballs made from a dog (A Corgi) that died from natural causes. McGowan claimed his meal was a protest against animal cruelty. He also said the Corgi tasted terrible.
5. A man in Zimbabwe stole a bus because he needed to get to the government office so he could get his driving license.
6. A German bus driver threw a woman off his bus because her cleavage was distracting him from driving.
7. A 60 year old German man (why do these things seem to happen in Germany) stripped off all his clothes in court during his appeal for a previous conviction for… flashing.
8. 25 years ago a woman in Thailand got on the wrong bus, got lost, and ended up living in the streets. But 2007 was a good year for her as she finally was reunited with her family.