Tuesday, February 28, 2012

Etsy Finds: Beads and Honey

Beads and Honey filled the second half of my emergency custom order supplies run I had a few days ago. I'm afraid now that I've had two very successful experiences buying gemstone beads online, I may lose all my willpower and just throw my paycheck down the black hole of Etsy for the next few months!

There was a bit of a snafu with shipping prices (PayPal and Etsy are having a hard time letting me switch my shipping address to South Korea), but Lynette was super nice and patient about it. My beads arrived intact all the way from Texas, as beautiful as pictured and of superior cut and drilling. Lynette also included a discount coupon! Squee! Here's what I bought, and some other things besides:

















Monday, February 27, 2012

Music Monday: Go Down Gamblin'

Once in a while a song I haven't heard in years jumps into my head for no real reason. This Music Monday selection is one of them, from my band geek high school days (low brass represent!). Blood Sweat & Tears has always been one of my top bands of their era, one that should be more remembered than it is ,and this one is definitely one of their more underappreciated offerings. You rarely ever hear this on the classic rock or oldies radio stations. "Spinning Wheel" is about the only song of theirs that ever gets any air time.

Anyway, not only does this song rock out loud (David Clayton Thomas is a tremendous vocalist), but it has what is probably the greatest tuba solo in the history of music, rock or otherwise.

Yeah, that's right. Tuba solo.





Skip ahead to about 1:22 for the low brass face-melting awesomeness.

Saturday, February 25, 2012

Science Saturday: Are You Scientifically Literate?

Here's a fun quiz from the Christian Science Monitor: Are you scientifically literate?

It's a fun little waste of time and a refresher on high school science I haven't yet forgotten (joules and ohms and horsepower, oh my!), though I contend that they say this constitutes scientific literacy. This is science trivia. Scientific literacy isn't just remembering facts, it's also about the right mindset. A true test of scientific literacy would be open-ended problem solving questions asking you to, say, evaluate some given data and give a hypothesis, or what have you.

Still fun, though!

Wednesday, February 22, 2012

Polyvore Post: Teaching Outfit Two



I think it's time for another Polyvore Post! Another outfit I wear a lot:

Teaching Outfit Two
Teaching Outfit Two by kokoba

What's the same:
  • The white tank top is absolutely identical.
  • The shape of the frames.
  • The shape of the stone in the bolo tie (30 mm x 40 mm cabochon).
  • The shade of blue in the t-shirt.
  • The color of the cardigan.
  • The watch,


What's different:
  • The corduroys actually have a faint and faided paisley pattern in orange and olive green. All of the paisley corduroy pants on the Internet you can share on Polyvore are hideous, while the ones that look exactly the same can't be shared. D'oh!
  • My shoes aren't actually Pumas, and they are very light brown in some spots.
  • The blue shirt is a Ben Folds concert t-shirt, but again: all of the ones I could find online were either completely different-looking, or unable to share on Polyvore. Mine actually has "Ben Folds" written on the front in yellow cursive text.
  • The shape of the cardigan. I never button mine up, and it only has three buttons at the bottom, anyway. Honestly, I think they're mostly just decoration. Also, it has pockets.
  • The glasses frames are green and brown in color, not black.
  • The stone in the bolo isn't tiger eye, but rather a very green unakite. It looks like this:

What did you wear today?



Monday, February 20, 2012

Music Monday

My little brother posted this on my Facebook wall and got it stuck in my head. Naturally, the only way to get it out is to share it with you!

Wednesday, February 15, 2012

New Beads!

A couple of weekends ago, I made a bead emergency trip to Dongdaemun. I bought one strand I needed, and like billion strands of things I loved, including these amazing faceted mookaite briolettes. Look at how adorable they are! I'm embarrassed of, and kind of horrified at, how much I paid (I need to start haggling a bit more at the markets here in Korea), but I don't care. Non, je ne regrette rien!

MY BEADS, LET ME SHOW YOU THEM.


So many possibilities!

I also want to say that it was nearly impossible to get a good picture of these! Time to figure out what kind of photography set up  I can get together in my shoebox apartment.

Monday, February 13, 2012

Music Monday: Tiga

I'm in the process of cleaning out my music library and re-organizing it. The great thing about this is that I keep finding musical gems I had somehow forgotten about. This one sends me on a hardcore nostalgia trip for senior year of college. Plus, the video is pretty cool, too.

Saturday, February 11, 2012

Science Saturday: Playing God

I put off watching this one for a while because the title was just so dumb, honestly. Phrases like "playing God" and so forth perpetuate this image of science as a reckless, thoughtless endeavor; a field of study full of people who don't consider the consequences or repercussions of what they do. It paints this image of science as something that will ultimately doom us all and glosses over all of the good that science has brought us.

It's doubly unfortunate that Playing God has such a stupid title, then, because it's seriously the most amazing thing I've seen in a while. All of the documentaries I've watched so far have been good, of course, but this is the first that made me go, "Holy shit!"

It's another BBC production, this time hosted by Adam Rutherford. This one is all about genetics and what amazing things scientists are doing with gene splicing: goats that produce tougher-than-Kevlar spider silk in their milk, radiation treatment in tiny carbon capsules injected under astronauts' skin, purely synthetic materials created with squid camouflaging genes that will change color from the carbon dioxide in your breath, brewer's yeast that make petroleum instead of alcohol. Everything in here sounds like the stuff of science fiction, and yet scientists are creating this today


The good: Everything. Just...everything. It also raises legitimate ethical concerns, not fluffy fear-mongering.

The bad: The documentary gives a little too much credence to the "are we meddling with what we should not?" view in some places, but for the most part avoids that trap entirely.

One interesting fact: It was all interesting, but I think my favorite part was the "citizen science" lab that was set up in the community center of some town in California. For a small membership fee, John Q. Public can now perform science experiments that, just a few years ago, were only possible to do in university laboratories. I wish something like that had been available when I was a kid!

Would recommend? A must-see. More than anything else I've watched so far. Even more than the Alan Turing biopic, and that's saying a lot!

Tuesday, February 7, 2012

Teaching Outfit One

Because I'm too lazy to do any fashion self-portraiture, and because I'm already in my PJs, here's a Polyvore collection of what I wore today. This is an outfit I probably wear once a week, at least. (I packed pretty light coming over to Korea, so I repeat my outfits a lot.)






What's the same:

  • The cut and color of the gaucho trousers.
  • The color of the sneakers.
  • The shape of the cardigan.
  • The shape of the watch face and the mechanics of the cuff.
  • The t-shirt is the same shade of yellow.


What's different:

  • My glasses aren't sunglasses, of course, but Polyvore doesn't seem to understand the sheer cuteness of regular glasses so there you have it. They're also greener in the frames.
  • The cardigan I have is far more drab green than bright forest green.
  • My trousers are ankle-length. They also have an elastic waistband, without buttons or fasteners.
  • My shoes aren't Pumas.
  • My bolo tie is a piece of unakite my boss' husband set for me, but again—difficult to find bolo ties on Polyvore! The color family is close, though.
  • Instead of the adorable peanut butter and jelly hug graphic, my t-shirt (a discount find at BangBang, a large Korean clothing chain) has a brown print of a camera and some random Engrishee text.


I think I might make this kind of post a regular deal. What people wear is interesting, right? I think it is, at least. Also I like the challenge of trying to match items on Polyvore to the items in my wardrobe.

What did you wear today?

Monday, February 6, 2012

Thursday, February 2, 2012

I found more Internet crack.

Someone linked me to Polyvore, which is all of the fun of making fashion collages without the mess of scissors and glue and paper scraps.  Between this and Pinterest, my life is ruined. Like on Pinterest, I'm Kokoba.  You can follow me there!  Here's my first creation:

Stepping Out on St. Patrick's Day

Are you on Polyvore? What's your favorite collection you've made so far?