Another Interesting Woman, Milk, and TellMe

So thanks to an anonymous reader(!), I've discovered another interesting woman, Eva Hoffman. I'm linking to a site with an interview because information about her seems to be a little sparse (Google turns up a lot of older links). The site tells me that she's a visiting prof here at MIT, but I haven't heard of her (then again, I suppose the name wouldn't have jumped out at me even if there had been a guest lecture by her). An MIT Google search turns up mostly things from a few years ago... maybe she's retired now? In any case, Lost in Translation (apparently not an unpopular title) is on my reading list now, too.

In other interesting things, there was a recent finding (thanks, National Geographic!) saying that humans were mostly lactose intolerant up to the beginning of domestication and farming. There is now speculation and debate about whether humans started doing so because they could stomach cow's milk or the other way around, but the most interesting thing to me was the fact that the majority of people in the world are lactose intolerant. Sparing the biological details, that means that they lose the ability to digest milk after about age 4. It turns out that 'white' people, specifically northern Europeans, are an exception to this trend. Now, growing up in a northern European country, I was completely bewildered by my lactose intolerant friends when I moved to the US. I thought it was just another one of those weird 'American' trends. Now it turns out it was just due to greater ethnic diversity.

On the techie side, it looks like Microsoft might buy TellMe (serves them right for rejecting me for an internship last semester). Yes, yes, they're just rumors, but the two are discussing it. I don't know whether that would be good or bad for getting an internship there next year. Also, Google Maps now has TRAFFIC!

Finally, here are some fun music videos (thanks, VSL!):
* Real-life Pacman (the song's not bad either)
* "Window in the Skies", by U2 (careful, it's catchy)
* "Enjoy the Silence", by Depeche Mode, because the 80's are awesome