It’s been a while since I’ve posted one of these. I guess this is how you get politicians to work together:

No one is sitting on the edge of his or her seat waiting to hear what you have to say. You need to disrupt the established paradigm to get through.
– Linda Kaplan Thaler, Bang!: Getting Your Message Heard in a Noisy World

Lauren came and visited me this weekend (we hung out with Aimee and her family in Napa) and we had a fun time exploring San Francisco and Napa together.

On Saturday we went in to San Francisco — Lauren has never been — and we drove to Pier 39, walking around sightseeing. We encountered the “Bush Man”, a homeless man that hides behind bushes and scares unsuspecting passersby, and Lauren even got yelled at by a street performer covered in silver spray paint after she tried to take his picture.

In the evening on Sunday we went to the “Friends of Napa” celebration in Napa and grabbed some dinner at a Mexican Restaurant with this picture of Jesus on the wall.

And finally on Monday, after I had dropped Lauren off for her flight, I walked out to my car and caught a glimpse of this decorative Honda Element.

Eric Bryant posted some interesting facts about Coke and Water, what they’re used for (other than drinking) and how important water is to our general health. It makes you stop and think how much we try to find all these solutions to our health problems when water, something that naturally occurs on our planet, is the answer for a lot of these health issues.

Here’s a look at another website I found with some other facts about Coke and Water.

Oh, and  USC plays today at 12:30 pm.  Fight On!

Ron Paul on CNN last night.

You’ve seen different personality tests on the internet (like this one) and it makes for good fodder on social networking sites and blogs. But it makes very little actionable difference in our lives and the way that we communicate with one another.

So it was interesting to hear from some people that they have started using these personality tests to “color code” their emails to one another. Based on Jung’s classification of personality preferences(Introversion-Extroversion, Intuitive-Sensing, Thinking-Feeling, Judging-Perceiving), employees have begun marking their emails with a color related to their classification. Often in emails it’s hard to understand everything that a person is trying to say and when you understand what personality classification you can understand better their way of thinking.

For example, a person that exhibits a strong Thinking classification is very detail and results-oriented. On the other hand a person who exhibits a strong Intuitive classification has more of a global view, examining long-term effects and considering the big picture. It’s easy for conflict to arise between these two styles since each is considering differing and (sometimes) opposing aspects of a problem. But when you understand the mindset of others, it makes the world of ambiguous emails a little easier to understand.

Faced with the choice between changing one’s mind and proving that there is no need to do so, almost everyone gets busy on the proof
– John Kenneth Galbraith

It’s the engineer in me that draws me to stories like this one. But on the heels of the Olympics, it’s an interesting study into how fast humans can actually run. You probably saw the guy from Jamaica set world records in both the 100 and 200 meter sprints. Apparently scientists have been mapping the world record times in the 100m sprint over the years and it’s become a pretty good model for predicting when a certain time in the 100m would be reached (see chart below).

But Bolt has blown this model up with his record-setting times in the Olympics and his atypical body shape for running sprints. Scientists had thought 9.45 seconds to be a limit for how fast someone could go. But it makes you wonder how fast is as fast as someone can run? Where is that limit? Is there a limit?

Although I, at first, enjoyed having the pictorial blog theme, it’s become a bit of a pain to try and maintain and I’ve found it actually deters me from posting much. So I’m switching over to something a little simpler that will allow me to post without having to worry about finding images to go with each post. A little simplicity does the soul good.

The Office Teaser. Evan showed you this one, and here’s another one by Dwight.

Just watch this one (hint: it has to do with the title of this post). It’s a little long, but you’ll enjoy it. Thanks to Paula for pointing me to this video.