This Washington Post/SFGate story reports on a study which shows that biologically, 7 a.m. is just too early for high school students:

Carskadon, who teaches human behavior and is director of sleep research at E.P. Bradley Hospital in Rhode Island, led a team of researchers who helped prove that — biologically speaking — teenagers really are out of it early in the morning.

The researchers measured the presence of the sleep-promoting hormone melatonin in teenagers’ saliva at different times of the day. They learned that the melatonin levels rise later at night than they do in children and adults — and remain at a higher level later in the morning.

My high school started at 8:00 AM, though there were some students who took elective classes which did start at 7:00. To this day I have trouble getting up that early–which makes it especially nice to have a job so close to home.

Linked from SFGate’s Culture Blog:

Matthew Baldwin at defective yeti recounts George W’s presidency in the style of Infocom’s classic text adventure game Zork.

It starts in the Oval Office, where Bush examines his desk, tries to pet the presidential seal (‘It’s not that kind of seal’) and goes for a pretzel (‘I don’t think the pretzel would agree with you’).

I was not much of a Zork player, but was strongly addicted to the Hitch-Hiker’s Guide text adventure. Perhaps W should have given the sandwich to the little dog after all.

From TVGasm via SFGate: Giada’s Disaster

Ever wonder what would happen if one of our favorite Food Network chefs created something they actually didn’t like? Well, we were lucky enough to witness such an event when Giada De Laurentiis of Everyday Italian attempted to make some sort of sorbet. She claimed on the air that her facial expressions of disgust and malaise were merely a reaction to the icy treat, but we know better. Behold the Great Giada Disaster of 2006.

From the linked discussion comes an animation (mirrored) of the screen captures. You really need to read that thread, though, to get the captions for each frame.

Two new Restaurant Reviews plus a couple others I hadn’t posted about here:

• Stanford’s Restaurant & Bar (Walnut Creek, CA)
• Gyros Gryos (Palo Alto, CA)
• MacArthur Park (Palo Alto, CA)
• Oak City Bar & Grill (Menlo Park, CA)

After just under seven years, I have retired the original OMNIMVR. The ’99 Pontiac Grand Prix GTP served me so very well, but at 100,000 miles and seven years it was entering that stage of a car’s life where it was going to take significant money to keep it running, and I’d rather put that money into a new car. So I donated the Pontiac to Tony La Russa’s Animal Rescue Foundation–I’ll take a roughly $6000 deduction on my 2006 taxes–and have purchased a new 2006 Infiniti G35 Coupe.
I’ve had it for just about two weeks now, and I am absolutely loving it. Jen is handling the DMV/license plate issues, and we’re getting a new set of OMNIMVR plates for it–they should be here in a few months, she says. I don’t have any great pictures yet (certainly not as good as in the gallery on the Infiniti Web site) but here are two from January 3rd, the day I took delivery.