Friday fun. Pixar's short films are on the web. Broadband recommended, obviously.

Found on the Internet.

For those of you who watch what you eat, here's the final word on nutrition and health. It's a relief to know the truth after all those conflicting medical studies:

1. Japanese eat very little fat and suffer fewer heart attacks than Americans.


2. Mexicans eat a lot of fat and suffer fewer heart attacks than Americans.


3. Africans drink very little red wine and suffer fewer heart attacks than Americans.


4. Italians drink excessive amounts of red wine and suffer fewer heart attacks than Americans.


5. Germans drink a lot of beer and eat lots of sausages and fats and suffer fewer heart attacks than the Americans.

Conclusion: Eat and drink what you like. Speaking English is apparently what kills you.

Lots of parents have wished there were a way to harness the energy of the average five-year old. Now there is, with a merry-go-round driven pump for Third World wells.

Two different stories today showing that marketers just don't understand e-mail. First, the Direct Marketing Association is developing a policy to allow members to guess e-mail addresses for customers from third-party lists. Turns out that when they actually ask people for e-mail addresses, the response rate is too low. Uh, guys, maybe that means people don't want you to have the information?

The second article talks about how newspaper sites are requiring more detailed registration information in order to have better demographics for advertisers. It also points out how many databases are filled with registrations from Mickey Mouse and other luminaries. Again, there's a lesson here...

I've had to feed several otherwise reputable companies to my spam blocker after they ignored repeated opt-out requests. So I use disposable and easily blockable addresses for almost everything. I routinely lie on site registration forms. Somehow marketing practices that encourage otherwise honest people to give you bad information don't sound like a great use of resources to me.

(For the record, the Thin Film Manufacturing list is not for sale or rent. All mailings go either to a double opt-in mailing list, or to people I have personally met.)

Science News has a good overview of strained silicon, including both the reasons to use it and some discussion of how to make the stuff. Aimed at non-experts.