American in Spain

Finally, some competition for TinyUrl! TinyUrl provides one of those services that is so useful that you slap yourself for not thinking of it first. You give TinyUrl a long web address, like “http://erikras.com/” and they shorten it. The way they shorten it is to generate a unique code which they store in their database with your url. Then when someone goes to their website with the code (e.g. http://tinyurl.com/5c8tsq) it will look up the original url in the database and forward you there.
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The flowers of Passiflora edulis are gorgeous. I particularly like the Fibonacci numbers of stamens, three of one kind, and five of another. Fibonacci numbers are, of course, related to the Golden Ratio, which is pretty much the mathematical definition of beauty.

At this time of year, these passion flowers are blooming vigorously here. Later, they will turn into passion fruit. (more…)

This car was parked outside my building today. The entire car was covered with these colorful letters. I flipped the photo 180º to get the letters upright. Pretty loud, huh?
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Spain’s first interplanetary space mission has landed successfully on the surface of Mars and has begun transmitting images back to Earth. “The Spanish Interplanetary Exploration Space Travel Agency has been planning this mission for decades,” said José Mentiroso, the spokesperson for SIESTA, thrusting a glass of red wine into the air vigorously. The lander, known as “El Toro” for its intense charge towards the red planet, touched down early this morning and immediately began sending images back home. When asked about rumors that they were really looking for a spice trade route and just accidentally stumbled upon the Martian planet even though other countries have been sending probes there for years, Mentiroso replied that “history will forever remember Spain as the discoverer of the red planet!”
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So I go away for a couple days, come back, and see two withering cactus flowers and three brand new flowers open towards the heavens! They’ve started appearing a month later this year than last. They’re still just as beautiful as ever. I’ll have to keep an eye out for future flowers to see what kind of timelapse trickery can be done. But for now, enjoy the first flowers of 2008.
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This weekend, I participated in a golf tournament organized among friends. It was very similar to the tournaments I participate in most Februarys. On Thursday evening, my friend, Manolo, and I left for Asturias, the Spanish region bordering Cantabria on the west. We stayed in Hotel Aldama, which has a 9-hole “Pitch & Putt” course next to it. Soon after we got there, the other 5 men arrived, and we went out for dinner and drinks in nearby Llanes.
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This video needs to be shown to every science classroom all over the world. Please pass this along to as many people as you can, especially if they are teachers.

Here Be Dragons is a free 40 minute video introduction to critical thinking. It is suitable for general audiences and is licensed for free distribution and public display.

Most people fully accept paranormal and pseudoscientific claims without critique as they are promoted by the mass media. Here Be Dragons offers a toolbox for recognizing and understanding the dangers of pseudoscience, and appreciation for the reality-based benefits offered by real science.

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During the recent Twitter outages, I checked the Twitter Status Blog a few times. I noticed that it was running on a platform called Tumblr, so I investigated a little further. Here, I plan to explain what Tumblr is, why its creators think it’s useful, what you can do with it, and what I’ve decided to use it for.
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A conversation I had with the nice lady at the local Telefónica office.

Erik: “Good morning, I’m here to inquire if it’s possible to order an iPhone yet.”
Lady: “We don’t have any information at all about that. We know that it was announced in the press, but Telefónica hasn’t told us anything about that yet.”
Erik: “Okay. So I should check back in a week or two?”
Lady: “Yes, check back next week.”

Something tells me that, by the time I actually leave that store with an iPhone, she’s going to recognize my face as “that guy who’s always pestering us about an iPhone”.

Maybe this widget will help calm me down.

I thoroughly enjoyed watching Spain’s first game in the Euro 2008 soccer championship yesterday. They stomped Russia 4–1. Russia’s goal was pretty lucky, and all four of Spain’s were perfectly executed.

The motto for the Spanish team for the World Cup two years ago was, “¡A por ellos!” (which came with its own song). The motto for this Euro 2008 tournament is “¡Podemos!“.
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