Mr. Yamaguchi, as a 29-year-old engineer for Mitsubishi Heavy Industries, was on a business trip in Hiroshima when the United States dropped the first atomic bomb on the morning of Aug. 6, 1945. He was getting off a streetcar when the “Little Boy” device detonated above Hiroshima.

Mr. Yamaguchi said he was less than 2 miles away from ground zero. His eardrums were ruptured and his upper torso was burned by the blast, which destroyed most of the city’s buildings and killed 80,000 people.

Mr. Yamaguchi spent the night in a Hiroshima bomb shelter and returned to his hometown of Nagasaki the following day, according to interviews he gave over the years. The second bomb, known as “Fat Man,” was dropped on Nagasaki on Aug. 9, killing 70,000 people there.

-janelane

Survivor of 2 Atomic Bombs Dies at 93 - Obituary (Obit) - NYTimes.com

About the name: Cooking For Engineers
Michael selected the name "Cooking For Engineers" on a whim. He has no idea if it means "To cook for the purposes of providing engineers with food" or "To instruct engineers in the science and art of cooking". He likes the ambiguity, and other people seem to find the name intriguing and even interesting. He regrets that the name can be misread (when in a rush) to be "Cooking Foreigners".

Cool. Includes step-by-step photos. Maybe "Cooking for Dummies" would be more appropriate. :-)

-janelane

About Cooking For Engineers

As I try to get in the holiday spirit, I keep finding things that get me out of it. The weather, trying to think of gifts, dreading travel – it all weighs on me.

Then this comes along. A wilting Christmas tree, wrapped in barbed wire and wearing a couple dreary, rust-colored stars. The cat is kinda cute, but is it supposed to be an ornament, or something the tree has captured? And why does it have wings, anyway? I’ve never seen the TV special in which children send holiday wishes to The Winged Black Christmas Cat.

Item Not As Described: FREE Is A Four Letter Word

For a coroner, any death caused by disease or old age is natural. When someone dies a violent or suspicious death, medical examiners try to determine both a "cause" and a "manner." The cause refers to the biological condition that killed the victim—in Murphy's case, sudden cardiac arrest. The manner describes all the other circumstances that led up to that particular cause. Most states recognize five different manners: homicide, suicide, accident, natural, and undetermined. If a manner of death is deemed to be "natural," then the victim is thought to have died of an internal disease process or normal deterioration of the body. Outside forces, like chemicals or human intervention, had only a minimal influence. (There are some gray areas: Death by infectious disease is typically categorized as being natural, even though the killer microbes come from outside the body.)

Billy and I got in a tiff about the semantics of natural causes. Looks like he owes me 5 bucks. :-)

-janelane

What the coroner's office means when it says Brittany Murphy died from natural causes. - By Brian Palmer - Slate Magazine

Well, here’s something you don’t see everyday. Our friends over at National Geographic report that octopuses have been discovered tip-toeing with coconut-shell halves suctioned to their undersides, then reassembling the halves and disappearing inside for protection.

Click the link (and go to 12/15/09) to watch the video. It gets better by the minute.

-janelane, I love the whole world

Cute Overload :D

When Sarah Palin's 413-page autobiography, Going Rogue: An American Life, hit stands Tuesday, readers discovered the governor's most mavericky move yet: The book lacks an index. So Slate has compiled its own. Just print out this index, paste it into the back of your copy, and start skipping around! (And, yes, the page numbers are real.)

Alaska
________autumn bouquet of, 1
________robin's egg sky of, 2
________superiority to Lower 48 of, 1-413

Baldwin, Alec
________preference for Stephen over, 314

..

cap and trade
________brilliant suggested renaming of as "Cap and Tax," 390
________characterization of as "environmentalist Ponzi scheme," 391

...

meat
________preference for, 18
________deep question about: "If God had not intended for us to eat animals,
how come He made them out of meat?" 133

ROFL!

-janelane

Slate's unauthorized index of Sarah Palin's autobiography, Going Rogue. - By Christopher Beam - Slate Magazine

I promised Rattle that I would change my name when I completed my PhD, and Noteworthy recently reminded me of this - thus, as of May 1st, 2009 (albeit a bit late) I am now "Dr. Nanochick":) Too bad that title doesn't come with a higher pay raise:)

Finally! Can I have a glowing cat for Christmas? ;-)

-janelane

"The doctor is in"

I am not screened because I look like a terrorist. I am routinely screened because I look like someone who will readily comply.

The foremost linked article is fascinating. I don't travel much, and I haven't seen the full body scanners at ATL yet, but it is great to know that my apprehensions (and probably ultimate refusal) about getting in those machines is supported by law enforcement.

-janelane

Do I have the right to refuse this search?

Investigators began piecing together on Friday how and why an Army psychiatrist facing deployment to a war zone gunned down dozens of people a day earlier at the Fort Hood Army post in Texas, in one of the worst mass shootings ever on an American military base.

This guy seems to have pre-traumatic stress disorder. Just the thought of being sent to war sent him over the edge. How did he reconcile joining the army in the first place with not wanting to be sent to war?

This is a tragedy that should never have happened.

-janelane, sympathetically

Suspect Was to Be Sent to Afghanistan - NYTimes.com

Ideally, Buchmann says, you should try to keep your [laptop] battery charged from 20 percent to 80 percent. Keep in mind that these are guidelines for ideal use—it's generally inconvenient to unplug your machine before it goes all the way to 100. But even if you're not on constant guard, be mindful of charging your machine constantly, well past when you know it's full. You also should be conscious of letting your battery run all the way to zero.

Try to keep your laptop as cool as possible. The best technique here is to charge up your battery when the computer is turned off. When your laptop is turned on and plugged in, you should pull the battery out of your computer. Yes, pull it out.

More fodder for the advice drawer that will probably need to be cleaned out in 6 months.

-janelane

Four essential tips for extending the battery life of your computer, cell phone, and every other gadget. - By Farhad Manjoo - Slate Magazine