The mysteries of Google

Google is keeping me awake.
They apparently updated the page rank system a couple weeks ago. There's a lot of panicky chatter about it on the webmaster forums. (Mystifying, too. Many people are "quoting" Google as saying that PageRank has no effect on Google listing results, which makes no sense to me.)
My personal Google resume, while still largely referring to me, is quite different than it was last time I checked it. Also, weirdly, it now includes things I recently sent out through Constant Contact. Apparently the new ranking system favors newsletter aggregators (unless those aggregators are new, which I admit is possible).
My professional website's Google listings are extremely pear-shaped. I don't even know where to start.
It's exciting, in a grumblecakey-awake-late-geeky kind of way.

James Burke has been busy.

James Burke, who wired my brain when I was 7 with his show Connections, is busy working on this piece of crazy beauty.
There are lots of ways to help, from buying his books on Amazon to researching and writing grants. I can write grants. I hate it, but for James Burke and what he's trying to do, I think I'd be willing.
(Because I don't have enough hobbies. Guess I'm just trying to fill those four pesky free weekends between now and December...)

Slacker.

Many people claim to be the winners of a Slack Blogger Award, but I'm not sure they deserve it.
Ehren has now officially passed the one-year mark since his last post in this blog.
I'm just sayin'.

Inanity to the nth

Guess how many teams are in The Big Ten?
You can tell by looking at their logo.
*blink?*
I'm not sure where to start.
Probably best that I don't.

(Ehren would have posted this but he decided to email it to me instead, which earns some kind of demerit from the posting committee...)

Owl-faced night parrots: Not dead yet!

I'm watching David Attenborough's Life of Birds, and was moved to do some checking on the status of the incredibly endearing and extremely endangered kakapo. There are still under 100 of them, but seven chicks were hatched this year. Most touching detail: They all have names. All of them.

The denizens of YouTube

When I found that recording of Braes o' Balquhidder on YouTube I was happy.
I'm irrationally happier now to know that there are multiple YouTubers who are devoting themselves to uploading video of gramophone recordings. At least five. Possibly dozens, or scores.
(Discovered this thanks to Will's tip about Forty-Seven Ginger-Headed Sailors.)

Ecoguilt Calculator

Patagonia has made me feel a little less crazy.
They have a proto-ecoguilt-calculator on their website (thanks to Jeanne for the tip).
I've wanted an ecoguilt calculator for a while, and the Patagonia tool is a good start.
It doesn't do everything I want.
I want to know exactly what karmic burden I am accepting when I buy a product.
I don't just care about my carbon footprint, although here's a nice carbon footprint calculator.
I want to know about:

• Carbon footprint (including materials, production, and shipping)
• Virtual water
• Support of local economies
• Physical safety (in terms of working conditions, solvents, pesticides, other chemicals) of the people involved in production
• Degree of admirable-ness/ethicalness of the labor practices in the entire supply chain (good marks to living wages; big demerits for child labor, forced labor, or slavery)
  
• Whether any animals are involved in production (either as materials or power) and whether those animals are treated well
  
• Organic production methods for any agricultural products

I want to be able to compare (for example) these bamboo towels to these organic cotton towels and know which ones are more virtuous overall. Patagonia makes me feel less crazy for wanting to know this stuff. (Not that I need any high-performance outerwear. Really, right now it's about towels and patio furniture. I have finally accepted that a linen or cotton patio umbrella isn't practical, so I'm trying to at least get a used one from FreeCycle.)