I was looking up articles today and came across the website for Biochemical Journal. It makes me feel 14 again!

As I was going through this morning's stack of e-mail, I found that today's word-of-the-day from WordSmith was algorithm, which is derived from the nickname of the inventor of the algorithm, al Khwārizmī ("the person from Khwārizm"). The Wordsmith post mentioned that Khwārizm is now Khiva on the border of Turkmenistan in Uzbekistan:

View Larger Map

Let me pause to say that I'm still a little wow'd by the fact that I can see Khiva within seconds of learning of it existence. I was admiring the old city walls, when I noticed the map looked like a fish head (or maybe a chameleon) in profile. In particular, it looks kinda like the Wolf Fish featured in the logo for Uwe Onken's Fishing Tours. I've been to Uzbekistan, but I've never been to the North Sea, birthplace of the Onkens. The Pilaf was better in Uzbekistan.

YouTube has finally caught up with my childhood even better than Yesterdayland (R.I.P):

Star Wars Trumpet Solo

The good folks at Zillow finally have a property value heat map for the St. Louis area:

Although St. Louis has a much narrower dynamic range than the larger cities, the map gives a great overview of the socio-economic regionality of the metropolitan area. There's a thesis project in there somewhere.

(Thanks again to Ned at Starchamber for first posting about Zillow Heat Maps.)