As Heard: "Liar, Liar" by the Castaways

As heard [Actual lyrics]

Chorus:
My, my Anton pie [Liar, liar, pants on fire]
Your nose is longer than a colorful lie [Your nose is longer than a telephone wire]

Verse 1:
Ask B. Beaver why I'm sad [Ask me, baby, why I'm sad]
You've been out all night I know you've been had [You been out all night, know you been bad]
Don't tell me different I know it's a lie [Don't tell me different, know it's a lie]
Come to me, honey--see how I cry [Come kill me, honey, see how I cry]

Verse 2:
Why must you hurt me, do what you do [Why must you hurt me, do what you do]
Listen here, girl--can't you see I love you [Listen here, girl, can't you see I love you]
Make a little effort, try to be true [Make a little effort, try to be true]
I'll be happy, not so blue [I'll be happy, not so blue]

Chorus:

My, my Anton pie [Liar, liar, pants on fire]
Your nose is longer than a colorful lie [Your nose is longer than a telephone wire]

Verse 3:

You keep on telling me those lies [If you keep on tellin' me those lies]

Still going out with other guys [Still goin' out with other guys]

There'll come a day when I'll be gone [There'll come a day I'll be gone]

Take my advice--it won't be long [Take my advice, won't be long]

Verse 4:

When that day comes, it won't be bad [When that day comes, won't be mad]

Be rid of you but I'll still be sad [Be free of you, but I'll still be sad]

Despite all your cheatin', I still love you so [In spite of your cheatin', still love you so]

I'll be unhappy I let you go [I'll be unhappy if I let you go]

Chorus:

My, my Anton pie [Liar, liar, pants on fire]
Your nose is longer than a colorful lie [Your nose is longer than a telephone wire]

Observations:

• It's odd that, knowing the name of the song, and understanding the content of the lyrics, I still kept hearing the first line as My, my Anton pie.
• I filled in dropped words to make the lyrics grammatically whole.

A Cilantro Family Tree

"This," the park ranger said, pointing out pairs of small black berries on a bush next to the trail, "is the twin-berry. It is edible."

"Ooooh! Edible berries!" Several of us plucked off a set or two and tried them. We regretted it.

"They are edible," the ranger continued. "But you'll notice I didn't say they tasted good."

There are few foods I've encountered in day-to-day cooking that I truly dislike—mustard, water chestnuts (the texture), cilantro, and an unidentified spice that a Nepalese restaurant I used to get takeout from started putting on their food.

The first time I remember encountering cilantro was in 2000. I bought a burrito in San Francisco, bit into it—and spit it out. I thought something had gone bad. But what were these green flakes? I began to find them more and more—often they were not identified on the menu. At one restaurant, they made me a delicious meal, and then, as an afterthought, dropped a handful of cilantro on the top, rendering the meal unpalatable to my taste.

My wife, however, loves cilantro. Why does it have such an overpoweringly repugnant taste to me, but a flavorful taste to her? Genetics. "Wysocki theorizes that some people have a specific anosmia—a nasal blind spot, if you will—that makes them insensitive to cilantro's pleasing, aromatic notes. All they get is a soapy-smelling component that's normally masked by the good stuff. ... Lots of people love the herb. Just as many, it seems, hate it. There appears to be no middle ground, and the reason for that just might come down to genetics. Scientists have yet to isolate the cilantro-hating gene, but a Philadelphia researcher who put twins up to sniffing the herb is hot on the trail."

(There is a middle ground—I've spoken to people who like cilantro, but don't love it—and people who have eaten it indifferently.)

My mother and sister both hate cilantro. My father doesn't know what it is. (He seldom eats out, and won't eat Mexican food for fear of intestinal distress.) Our son is too young to register an opinion on cilantro, but I'm eager to find out how my cilantro-hating genes and he cilantro-loving genes will manifest themselves in our offspring. I hope to construct a cilantro family tree to determine how these genes have been inherited.

Flavor, though, can be mutable. Sour can become sweet with the proper application of glycoprotein molecules.

Where can you get glycoproteins? From synsepalum dulcificum, also known as the miracle fruit, a native plant of West Africa. "The cause of the reaction is a protein called miraculin, which binds with the taste buds and acts as a sweetness inducer when it comes in contact with acids, according to a scientist who has studied the fruit, Linda Bartoshuk at the University of Florida’s Center for Smell and Taste. Dr. Bartoshuk said she did not know of any dangers associated with eating miracle fruit."

Miracle fruit, freeze-dried miracle fruit, miracle fruit seeds, and miracle fruit tablets, can all be purchased over the Internet. I recently bought some tablets made in a laboratory in Taiwan. The directions instructed me to let the tablet dissolve on my tongue, ensuring the glycoproteins coated my tastebuds. I sucked on the tablet like a lozenge and took a short of rice vinegar with hot sauce. The front of my tongue was dulled to the shock of this mixture—but the back and my throat were insufficiently glycoproteined. The first bite of a lemon tasted like lemonade—but subsequent bites reverted to pure sour lemon. It had the same effect with beer. The glycoproteins had no effect on the cilantro flavor, or on the taste of a dill pickle.

Test Subject V (TSV) let the tablet sit in the middle of her tongue until dissolved. She tried a pickle and a lemon slice, noting the overwhelming oddness of the change in taste. I concocted a mixture of rice vinegar, hot sauce, and lemon juice. She took a sip. It was tolerable, lacking the normal bite of the ingredients. She noted that she normally wouldn't go near the hot sauce. Her husband came in the room—a perfect control subject. She took a sip, and then offered him a sip. The flavor did not please him. He looked like he'd just eaten a twin-berry.

Guess Who Thinks She's Pregnant?

Guess who thinks she's pregnant?

Nope, not her.

Nope, not her, either.

Me? Nope.

It's my sister's cat. Last week, my sister found lumps on her cat's abdomen. Concerned, she took her to the vet, who found that her mammary glands were swollen, consistent with pregnancy. Except that the cat was spayed years ago.

Now there are two possibilities at this point--the spay didn't take, which does happen, or this is a case of feline pseudopregnancy. Human pseudopregnancy happens less often in real life than it does on soap operas, but it does occur, and can even continue full-term into birth. (This is where imaginary friends come from.)

In canines, pseudopregnancy is not uncommon, but in felines it is infrequent. When it does occur, it is usually the result of a neutered male mounting the female. The female, without understanding the possibility that the male's reproductive organs are nonfunctional, believes that it must be pregnant.

"Breeders sometimes use 'Teaser Toms' to stimulate ovulation and end the estrus cycle in queens which are not yet ready for breeding. Teaser Toms are neutered by vasectomy, leaving the barbs on the penis to stimulate ovulation." -Franny Syufy, The Mating Game: Mating and Conception in Cats

In this case, however, my sister's cat has not been in contact with even a neutered male cat for more than a year (and has not had "relations" with any cat or other animal). The vet surmised the cat could be picking up on pheromones from a pregnant female. However, of the four resident human females, two are post-menopausal, and the other two have self-tested to confirm that they are not pregnant. Two frequent visitors to the house, an adult and an infant, have been in contact with a pregnant female--so I suppose it's possible that they are bringing pregnancy pheromones with them on their visits.

Gapplesoft 2009.12.05

Google

Google DNS - Google is coming for you. Not content with its ability to improve the user's web experience with web applications, Big G has lately been targeting every element between you and the web--from free wifi and Chrome OS and the Go language to its own public Domain Name Service. Of course, this isn't just altruism on Google's part--these improvements will ultimately make users feel more comfortable with a cloud-computing future--using Google's ad-supported web applications. Of course it's ultimately money that drives innovation, but it's still innovation, and I benefit without paying a price.

You Can't Handle the Google! - If you break it, then you buy it--then, if you fix it, do you own it? Is Google trying to "own" the web in some sense? I don't mean this as a conspiracy theory--I'm not paranoid that Google is compiling my blog posts, email, and reading habits for some nefarious undiscovered plan ("aka Google is a fascist socialist Kenyan Muslim"). But they could very well brand it, like they did with search (ever Google a search term?). Another part of their campaign to improve the web is aimed at the website developers themselves--curiously, though, it only seems to be available for Firefox, not for Chrome. Also, why aren't Webmaster Tools and Analytics integrated?

Google v. FBI - With all the talk about the Big G's quickly growing domain of power and the imagined privacy concerns, now Google has a chance to prove it isn't a threat to the average consumer, even the creepy ones that make peephole videos.

Google Calls Murdoch's Bluff - So Rupert Murdoch thinks Google News is bad for Wall Street Journal (and presumably his other holdings)? Then he can take his urls and go home. But he should expect to get 25% less traffic--traffic that is currently funneled from Google. I understand Murdoch not liking someone else making a dime off his content, but Google News isn't at all degraded if he pulls his sites, and the idea that people aren't going to WSJ's site because the WSJ headlines on Google News say it all is simply ridiculous. If he really wants to use this situation to his best advantage, he should start tweaking his headlines to draw in more readers from Google. Instead of "University Plans Climate Data Probe," how about "Data Probe University Plans Climate"?

Google Search HCI Game, Set, Match - A couple of years ago, I took a class in human-computer interaction, focusing on improving user interfaces by grouping features logically, making buttons large enough to easily click, etc. One trick they didn't teach us was hiding all the nonessential features until the user does an onmouseover on the page. It's funny how a company that makes its revenue from ad sales so adamantly refuses to clutter its main page with anything other than what it still apparently views as its core business.

Google Gives Up Gears Ghost - I've mostly used Gears to synch my Google Docs for use on the road--but the synchronization has always been kind of spotty. It's a rare thing for Google to give up, and it's kind of sad. But they haven't been able to get Gears to play nice with Apple's latest OS, and now they're claiming that it doesn't matter because HTML5 will obviate its need. This is a good thing, though--Google is saying that a plug-in isn't necessary thanks to new web standards. That's relatively forward-looking, especially next to Microsoft's Silverlight madness.

"Lightweight" Features for YouTube - How many years has it been since Google bought YouTube? Yet their branding and light touch with features is still absent. Then comes this news about a streamlined "Feather" option for YouTube. Okay, it's only in beta, but it isn't explained very well, and doesn't work for all videos (which means those videos just won't work unless you opt back out of the beta before you try to play them). This is definitely a botched released, and it doesn't have the Google touch.

From the Department of - Holy crap. Nothing particularly useful, but definitely the future of the Web.

Merry Googlemas - Google has an offer to send one free actual holiday card with a cleverly disguised Google advertisement on it. Uh ... what for? And one? What's the point?

constable /k'ʌnstəbəl, k'ɒn-/ - Google now has its own dictionary, but why isn't it integrated with their search engine. And who wrote it? And at what point in its development did this occur?

Speaking of integration into the main search engine, Google has rolled translation into the engine, though you have to hunt down through the search options to find it. One of the acknowledged problems in the world of search is the fact that the information you're seeking may be in another language. Although direct translation is only a partial solution, it is a step forward.

And then there's this from the New York Times.

And on and on and on ...

Apple

More Apple Tablet Rumors? - I can't wait to get my greasy fingers all over the screen. I could probably even get my entire handprints on it.

Apple Streams - Unlike Google's relentless march of upgrades, acquisitions, and roll-outs, Apple moves slowly and deliberately, but with careful consideration. By partnering with a streaming service, Apple could add streaming revenue, allow users to access their libraries from any Internet-connected device, and add more avenues for people to buy music, and to play their music on? An iPod, of course.

A Million Monkeys on a Million Laptops Write a Million iPhone Apps - Articles abound this week about how the iPhone App store is getting a bit unwieldy. I came to the same conclusion more than a year ago, when two apps that made fart sounds went to court over who had the rights to that kind of application.

Microsoft

Bing Maps Goes Google - Remember that time Microsoft rolled out hybrid satellite views with street labels, and like an hour later, Google released their own version, like it was so easy it only took them minutes? Years later, Microsoft is finally making another effort to compete with Bing Maps, with 3D maps and a "bird's eye" view (angled aerial photo maps). However, the 3D maps requires the installation of an additional tool, which makes it a competitor not with Google online maps, but Google Earth. And no matter how "cool" these new features look, how useful is either of them? Especially stacked against Google's Street View, something Bing Maps still doesn't have, integration with Panoramio, YouTube, Wikipedia, etc. Besides, it's unlikely that Bing will make much headway against Google Maps API. Oh, and some of the features are browser-dependent.

Microsoft Hearts Yahoo - It still seems so silly to me that anyone would actually lobby to join forces with Yahoo! It's very sad. I heard someone just bought Friendster, too.

Microsoft v. Pirates - Pirates were powerful and feared in the 18th century. So was Microsoft.

Snoring

I.

Both my parents were snorers. On a trip to Italy, sharing a room with my mother for economy, I hardly slept. I tried sandwiching my ears between pillows, filling them with toilet paper, tying shirts around my head, and even closing myself into the bathroom, curling up between the sink and toilet on the cold tile floor. Finally, exhausted at four in the morning, I left, walked a couple of blocks, and waited for sunrise at the Pantheon.

II.

My college roommate is snoring.

"Dave!"

Still snoring.

"Dave!"

Still snoring.

"Dave! Wake up!"

No answer. I stand up and walk over to his bed.

"Dave," I say, nudging his arm.

Still snoring. But why? His air passage must be blocked. Why? Because his head is tilted down toward his chest. So now what? Fix it.

Recalling CPR lessons from years past, leaning over him, I place my left hand on his forehead and my index and middle fingers from my right hand under his chin, and begin to gently tilt his head back.

At that moment, he wakes up.

III.

I'm snoring now. Is it the weight gain, the longer eyebrow hair, or something else to do with the aging process? I tried wearing an adhesive strip on my nose, opening the passages, but that didn't work. Is my pillow too soft, or my belly?

Claes Oldenburg Miniature--Only $39.99!

Gapplesoft 2009.11.28

Google

Google Buys Teracent - I'm including the link to the WSJ article on this that I found via Google News--I wouldn't otherwise have even gone to the WSJ site, and even this visit was cut short by the paywall. This does show that with all the recent advancements, Big G hasn't forgotten where its money comes from. (+1)

Wait--I Thought That Stuff Had Been Looted? - While looking at photos ain't the same, it's the best most of us will ever be able to do. (+1)

Google's Sorry, Very Sorry - That's an embarrassing spot to be in, but kudos for standing by the integrity of the search algorithm. Sometimes, democracy can be very messy. (+1 for the integrity)

Google Partners with TiVo - I have to be honest--I don't even understand what this is, but it sounds important. (+?)

Apple

Nosmo King - Maybe the smoke interferes with the FM transmitter, 'cause mine ain't working yet. (+0)

Magic Mouse Drivers for Windows - Thanks! Now how about some drivers for Chrome OS? (+1)

"There's an Ad for That" - Wow, it looks like Verizon made AT&T feel like Apple made Microsoft feel. I bet we could get ubiquitous wireless Internet for the same or less cost than these commercials. WWGD? (-1)

Don't Forget the Bubblewrap - I once met this woman at a conference who bragged about her degree in logistics. I didn't understand what that was at the time, but her job was walking the microphone around to audience members with questions--so I figured that's what it was about. I didn't understand why she needed a degree for that. (-1)

Apple Unveils 'Live Music'--Oops, Missed It - Okay, so it's music that was once live, and is either more vibrant than overproduced studio music or completely awful because the 'artists' have no talent. At least now we can find out before springing for concert tix. I'd like to think the bands will win, too, for monetizing something they were already producing, but it's likely some corporation actually gets the money from this sort of gig. (+1)

Microsoft

WSJ to Block Google, Sell to Bing? - I'm not mad at WSJ or Microsoft for this move--more appalled by their stupidity. I'm half-inclined to give them a point because I feel sorry for them, but I can't bring myself to award stupidity. (-1)

Windows 8 in 2012 - The thing that bothers me most about Microsoft's strategy is their tendency to announce things well before they have anything to show for it. Why would they announce Windows 8 when they've just released Windows 7? (-1)

This week's score: Google (+3), Apple (+0), Microsoft (-2)

Cumulative score: Google (+9), Apple (+1), Microsoft (-5)

Elsewhere

Has Firefox jumped the shark? Just kidding, really--after all Google Chrome is fresh out of the box and already has a Mariah Carey theme.

The Fantastic Mister _____

Step 1: Obtain doll clothes of a size appropriate for groundhogs, foxes, squirrels, etc.

Step 2: Locate fresh roadkill, the more intact the better.

Step 3: Dress the roadkill in doll clothes.

Step 4: Leave the dressed roadkill where it is likely to get hit again.

Step 5: Wait and watch for amazement as passersby spot what looks like an animal that had been well-dressed when it got hit by a car.