LOL!

Apr. 4th, 2008 02:23 am
littlelotte: (Default)
Southwest Michigan boy smarter than the Smithsonian...

Mich. boy finds 1981 Smithsonian error

ALLEGAN, Mich. - Is fifth-grader Kenton Stufflebeam smarter than the Smithsonian?

On a winter break trip with his family to the Smithsonian Institution's National Museum of Natural History, the 11-year-old southwestern Michigan boy noticed that a notation, in bold lettering, mistakenly identified the Precambrian as an era.


Since it opened in 1981, millions of people have paraded past the museum's Tower of Time, a display involving prehistoric time. Kenton was the first to point out the error.

Kenton, who lives in Allegan but attends Alamo Elementary School near Kalamazoo, said his fifth-grade teacher, John Chapman, had nearly made the same mistake about the Precambrian in a classroom earth-science lesson before catching himself.

"I knew Mr. Chapman wouldn't tell all these students" bad information, the boy told the Kalamazoo Gazette for a story published Wednesday.

So Kevin Stufflebeam took his son to the museum's information desk to report Kenton's concern on a comment form.

Last week, the boy received a letter from the museum acknowledging that his observation was "spot on."

"The Precambrian is a dimensionless unit of time, which embraces all the time between the origin of Earth and the beginning of the Cambrian Period of geologic time," the letter says.

The solution to the problem would not involve advanced science but rather simply painting over the word "era," the note says.

While no previous visitors to the museum had brought up the error, it has long rankled the paleobiology department's staff, who noticed it even before the Tower of Time was erected 27 years ago, said Lorraine Ramsdell, educational technician for the museum.

"The question is, why was it put up with that on it in the first place?" Ramsdell said.

Excited as he was to receive the correspondence from museum officials, he couldn't help but point out that it was addressed to Kenton Slufflebeam.

In Allegany.

wheeeeeee!

Jul. 14th, 2007 05:54 pm
littlelotte: (waitress)
I am now a certified FSP (Food Safety Professional ha) through the National Registry of Food Certified Professionals. I got a 93 on the exam, too :-D The stupid 15 hour study program could have been condensed into about 2-5, though :-P

Also, I'm finally taking advantage of my restaurant manager status to get free subscriptions to industry magazines :-D In my search I found a USA Today article from yesterday...

Dining Out as Art?
Who moved my cheese? And my soup?;
'Dark dining' deprives one sense to feed the others

Jerry Shriver

If candlelit dinners no longer spark your senses, then consider upping the ante by attending one of the "dark dining" events that are catching on at U.S. restaurants.

Eating a multi-course meal while blindfolded or in a blacked-out room has become one of the most popular offshoots of the European-based experimental cuisine movement, in which basic elements of cooking and dining are deconstructed and tweaked to create new sensory experiences. And with the arrival of the lights-out concept here, entrepreneurs have given it a distinctive spin by adding American comfort food and performing artists to the mix.

"The idea is to offer a unique dining experience that touches people and opens their understanding of a universe that we often neglect," says Benjamin Uphues, head of Opaque-Dining in the Dark (darkdining.com), which stages dinners for 50 customers on Fridays and Saturdays at California's Hyatt West Hollywood hotel.


Wild.
littlelotte: (Default)
Olympic construction in Beijing and archaeology...

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/02/08/world/asia/08archaeology.html?_r=1&ref=world&oref=slogin

My parents are coming up today to put the title of the car in my name so that I can get insurance in my name later this month, so I need to shower and do a touch of cleaning.
littlelotte: (Archaeo Linds)
Couple found hugging in Neolithic burial...

http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20070206/sc_nm/italy_embrace_dc

Another article...

That is so wild and so sweet and so bizarre...
littlelotte: (waitress)
This was an article in the NYTimes today about a food critic jumping to the serving side of things for a week. My one real issue with the article is where he mentions that the servers tend to make around $45,000 a year pre-taxes, all tips. Not all of us make that kind of money. That completely depends on the area and the restaurant. I make a fraction of that (and have made less other restaurants), and people thinking all servers make that much only adds fuel to the non-tippers' fires.

http://www.nytimes.com/2006/01/25/dining/25note.html?_r=2&8dpc

The full article, in case you're not registered at the NYTimes and you catch this another day... )
littlelotte: (Lindsay mask)
http://www.sptimes.com/2002/02/27/Business/A_novel_approach_to_h.shtml

http://www.cigna.com/health/

Bah...I need my job to start so I can more directly look into all of this :-P I like the sliding scale way of handling health insurance, though, that they talk about in the top article. That's nice.

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