Update XII: At Least it's Not an Oxymoron

So... I guess I should post something, huh?

Time hasn't been very spare with me lately. (When is it ever, really?) Another of those crunch-time moments is coming up soon. Part of it is voluntary, but... You know, "voluntary" is a loaded word. No one ever does anything for no reason. There's always honor, or morals, or... something. And those things are as compelling, if not more so, as a paycheck.

It occurs to me that I love to help people - in a way, do voluntary work. And it doesn't have to be important stuff - I've put aside my homework before to help someone finish a computer game. I've always thought that this was because I love challenges, but now... I'm starting to wonder if it is a form of self-validation. That I'm afraid I'm of no real use to anyone, and I have to continuously work for others to prove my place in the world.

That's would certainly explain why my failures cost so much emotionally.

Okay, so... we were watching MythBusters yesterday. (Well, my father and brother was watching. My drawing table has a decent view of the television, so I glanced up every now and then.) There was this one myth about Western movies, where one guy hitches up the window grille of a jail cell to a horse and pulls the bars out for his companion can escape. So the MythBusters people built up an old-style jail cell wall with railroad ties, the way they used to be built, put in a window grille, tied a rope from the grille to a horse and tried to pull it off.

The thing is, they were doing it entirely wrong. See, their idea was that you have to break part of the wall to get out the bars, so they tied the rope in a loop around all the bars. (That got them nowhere - even a truck they used to replace the horse started to pull the entire wall along with the grille.) But in Westerns, the rope is always tied around the middle bar only. The idea here is to bend the bars, so their width reduces and the entire grille can be pulled out easily, with little to no damage to the wall. The show entirely missed that out.

Now I'm not saying that tying the rope to the middle bar would have guaranteed that the grille could be pulled out. I'm saying there would have been a better chance of doing so. Besides, that would have been more authentic to the myth which the show was trying to test in the first place. I guess what I mean is that MythBusters is just a commercial programme, and its findings should not be taken to represent the whole truth.

In other news... this doesn't surprise me. I mean it does a little, but not by much. Half of us never check food labels anyway, and when there are fewer people doing something, there are fewer who can bring up issues with them, so it does make sense that food labels are not written in a manner consumers can understand.
(Note that the study size was quite small, so I would take its findings with a pinch of salt in any case.)

Now this, on the other hand, is mind-boggling. Also, reason #255 not to believe dieticians.

Webcomics round-up:

Friday's Megatokyo is an exercise in hilarity. Not just mild amusement, but full-blown, full-page comedy. And that's great.

El Goonish Shive gets a severe case of plot twist.

In Sluggy Freelance...
...
Darn! Why didn't I figure that out earlier!

I was happy to see Star Cross'd Destiny start up again. I hate it when stories die away... so much lost potential. Also, no ending. A start and no end - that's like someone disappearing and you don't ever find out what happened. No closure.
Anyway, SXD started up again, and we're finally back to where we left off. It should be interesting to see how this plays out.

Till next time.