From El Universal:

Public safety officials in Mexico City last week announced that they would suspend the capital’s drunk driving vigilance program for the nights of Christmas Eve and New Year’s Eve....

The suspension of drunk-driving vigilance for Christmas and New Year’s celebrations is a tradition in the capital, where the practice is known as a “noche libre,” or “free night.”

I've long had an interest in social networking and have been happy to work on orkut at Google. I finally got permission from ACM to post a paper I co-authored about orkut: Evaluating Similarity Measures: A Large-Scale Study in the Orkut Social Network, which describes research I did with fellow Googlers Mehran Sahami and Orkut Buyukkokten. While the paper would only be of interest to computer scientists (especially working in recommender systems, data mining, and collaborative filtering), I also described the highlights in a non-technical manner in Too Much Information, an occasional column for orkut media:

Last spring, orkut began providing related community recommendations, which are displayed on the bottom-right side of community pages. They were generated automatically based on common community membership. For example, since many of the same people belonged to both The Simpsons! and South Park, links to each community were displayed on the other community's page. Some of the associations were amusing. For example, there was a link from C++ (a computer programming language) to What's she trying to say? (a community for men who don't understand women). Another interesting relation was between Chocolate and PMS.

[I realize this doesn't fit in the Beyond Satire theme. Consider this our holiday present to you.]

Children have been clamoring for Floam™, a micro-beaded modeling clay that has been heavily and attractively advertised. Unfortunately, people who have ordered Floam™ report long delays and deceptive business practices. Instead, make your own Floam™-like clay in whatever quantities and colors you like.

We found several anonymous recipes online. My husband Keith Golden tried three different recipes, then refined the best one. The result is virtually identical to Floam™ (except for smelling better). My major contribution was tracking down the polystyrene beads. (Note that the text on this site is covered by a Creative Commons license permitting reproduction with attribution for non-commercial purposes.)

Ingredients

• 2 tsp. borax (available in laundry aisle at your grocery store)
• 1/2 cup water
• 1/4 cup white glue (we used Elmer's)
• 1/4 cup water
• food coloring (otherwise it will look like cottage cheese)
• an air-tight plastic bag (for mixing and storage)
• 5/3 cups of polystyrene beads (we used 2/3 cups micro-beads and 1 cup bean bag filler)

Floam™ is made with polystyrene (aka Styrofoam™) beads ranging in size from about 1 mm to 1/8 inch in diameter. You can make an approximation of the beads at home by grating polystyrene cups, packing material etc., although we did not try this. We bought two different types of beads:

• Micro-beads (about 1 mm in diameter), which we found at a Jo-Ann Fabrics & Crafts store. We had to call several stores before finding one that sold them. They can be ordered from Roseann's Dolls.
• 1/8" beads, sometimes called "milk bottle filler" or "bean bag filler", which we bought on eBay but you can also buy through Roseann's Dolls.

Instructions

1. Dissolve 2 tsp. borax completely in 1/2 cup (4 oz.) water. Set aside.
2. In a separate bowl mix 1/4 cup (2 oz.) white glue and 1/4 cup (2 oz.) water. Optionally add food coloring.
3. Pour the glue solution into the air-tight bag. Then add 3 tbsp. (9 tsp.) of the borax/water solution to the glue solution. Do not mix them yet. You will have some borax/water solution left for another batch.
4. Add the polystyrene beads.
5. Seal bag and knead by hand until thoroughly mixed. Let stand about 15 minutes, and then knead a few minutes more.

This should produce a hard clay well suited for sculpting; for a more malleable clay, use fewer beads and optionally less of the borax solution.

Notes

• The polystyrene beads will get everywhere.
• We read but did not try this tip: "If you have access to a chemical supply house, try a 4% solution of polyvinyl alcohol instead of glue for a less rubbery polymer. It will be more transparent & show off color better." Simon Quellen Field added: "Polyvinyl alcohol is easy to get: It's used in artificial tears (and of course, white glue). On that web site you will find a hundred or so synonyms -- looking them up will likely get you better prices."
• You can read safety information about borax.
• The main difference we could detect between this and Floam™ is that ours smells like glue, while theirs smells like stinky chemicals.
• Do not eat or taunt.

If you make some and have photos or suggestions, we'd be happy to post or link to them.

Update (January 7, 2006)

Some commenters have reported problems with this recipe. If the recipe worked for you, could you reply, so I get an idea whether this works for most people. It would also be great if you have any advice for the people having problems.

Update (January 8, 2006)

We added some details to the instructions, such as that the two solutions should not be mixed together in step 3. (They are mixed in step 5.)

Update (January 15, 2006)

Readers have reported problems when using "PVA glue" but success when using glue that lists "PVA alcohol" as an ingredient.

Update (April 24, 2006)

In December, I tried buying beads over ebay from 246daisy246. I never received the beads, and she got nasty when I asked to see the proof of delivery she claimed to have. I only got a refund after complaining to PayPal. I believe she has been posting misleading comments recommending herself. I replied to the first and have been deleting the rest.

Update (May 20, 2006)

Today I disabled further comments on this article. While there have been some excellent comments, there have also been many flames and spam I've had to delete, especially from sleazy ebayers. I repeat my recommendation not to buy floam beads (or anything else) from 246daisy246.

Update (June 15, 2006)

Snarlia sent me a link to her helpful information on making floam, including where to buy the ingredients.

According to this Reuters article, babies are on the U.S. Transportation Security Administration "no-fly" list:

Sarah Zapolsky was checking in for a flight to Italy when she discovered her 9-month-old son's name was on the United States' "no-fly" list of suspected terrorists.

"We pointed down to the stroller, and he sat there and gurgled," Zapolsky said, recalling the incident at Dulles International Airport outside Washington in July. "The desk agent started laughing.... She couldn't print us out a boarding pass because he's on the no-fly list."

Zapolsky, who did not want her son's name made public, said she was initially amused by the mix-up. "But when I found out you can't actually get off the list, I started to get a bit annoyed."

As a public service to the TSA, I would like to point out a difference between babies and terrorists: You can negotiate with terrorists. Come to think of it, that's also a difference between the TSA and terrorists.

The November 12 New York Times has an article Military's Information War Is Vast and Often Secretive by Jeff Gerth on the U.S. military propaganda unit:

The 1,200-strong psychological operations unit based at Fort Bragg turns out what its officers call "truthful messages" to support the United States government's objectives, though its commander acknowledges that those stories are one-sided and their American sponsorship is hidden.

"We call our stuff information and the enemy's propaganda," said Col. Jack N. Summe, then the commander of the Fourth Psychological Operations Group, during a tour in June. Even in the Pentagon, "some public affairs professionals see us unfavorably," and inaccurately, he said, as "lying, dirty tricksters."....

The United States Agency for International Development also masks its role at times. AID finances about 30 radio stations in Afghanistan, but keeps that from listeners....

As the Bush administration tries to build democracies overseas and support a free press, getting out its message is critical....

In its rejected plan, the company looked to American popular culture for ways to influence new audiences. [The Lincoln Group, a government contractor] proposed variations of the satirical paper "The Onion," and an underground paper to be called "The Voice," documents show. And it planned comedies modeled after "Cheers" and the Three Stooges, with the trio as bumbling wannabe terrorists.

This reminds of Christopher Buckley's hilarious novel Florence of Arabia (see reviews), in which an idealistic Amercian feminist seeks to revolutionize the status of women in the Middle East through a mysteriously-funded TV network. One show, "Mukfellas", portrays bumbling religous police.

I found out about this article from my husband, who read about it in the Nation blog.

Usually we shop at natural food stores, but occasionally we go to the neighborhood chain store, most recently in search of food coloring for making our own floam.

My husband asked a grocery store worker, "Do you sell food coloring?" The worker cheerfully replied: "We sure do. In almost every product."

I was skeptical when my sister Andrea forwarded me this story, but it appears to be true, as seen in the LA Times:

Former FEMA Director Michael D. Brown, heavily criticized for his agency's slow response to Hurricane Katrina, is starting a disaster-preparedness consulting firm to help clients avoid the sorts of errors that cost him his job.

"If I can help people focus on preparedness, how to be better prepared in their homes and better prepared in their businesses — because that goes straight to the bottom line — then I hope I can help the country in some way," Brown said in Denver.

"I'm doing a lot of good work with some great clients," he said. "My wife, children and my grandchild still love me. My parents are still proud of me."

Today (the day after Thanksgiving) is Buy Nothing Day. Wouldn't it be more successful if they held it on Thanksgiving, when most stores are shut anyway?

I like saying something slightly different from what people ordinarily expect and seeing if they notice the difference. A sort-of example is when, as a kid, I asked my mother if chocolate milk came from brown chickens, and she replied, no, they come from regular chickens.

Here are some sayings from my (nominally) adult household:

• Cleaner than a baby's bottom
• I feel like a needle between two haystacks.
• More fun than a bowel full of monkeys

I welcome additions.

According to an article in the November 11 Chronicle of Higher Education, today's college "students favor connecting with others via cellphones instead of e-mail, which they view as an obsolete technology used 'to communicate with old people.'"