News Chum Stew: CSUN, PIs, Words, Brats on Bikes, Wine, and Purim

Well, it’s (ummm) Saturday again… time to clear out the miscellaneous accumulated news chum links:

• CSUN In The News. There are a number of different schools I support. UC Berkeley, where my daughter goes. UCLA, where I went. CSUN, where my wife went, and where I’m on the CS advisory board. So I was very pleased to see that a number of CSUN Engineering Professors and Students were receiving awards from the Engineers Council for their contributions to the fields of engineering and computer science. Go CSUN!
• Business Booms after Budget Cuts. A while back, I bemoaned the fact that there were fewer private investigators on TV, and more and more cop shows. I just found out where all the PIs have gone. According to the LA Times, private detectives investigate more cases amid police budget cuts. When the cops can’t do it, hire a PI.
• Words, Words, Words. One of the classes I truly enjoyed when I was at UCLA was Linguistics 10, which looked at the structure of words. Ever since then, I’ve loved word history. This article is a great example: 7 Words that Came About from People Getting Them Wrong
• Food for the Ride. Here’s something for you, Kevin. It appears that an enterprising group in Germany like hot brats with their bikes, so they’ve designed a grill to fit on the back of their bike to cook sausages as they ride.
• A Good Dunking. We all know wine is better when it is aged. Here’s a new way to do it. One Napa Valley winery is aging wine by submersing it in the ocean. I don’t know how they keep it from becoming salty.
• An Unsung Feminist. This weekend is the Jewish holiday of Purim. You’ll hear lots (get it, lots :-)) about Mordechai and Esther and Haman (boo!). But what about Vashti? Here’s an interesting article from the Jewish Journal with a perspective on Vashti: who stood up for the right to not do as her husband dictated, who said that she wouldn’t dance naked in front of his friends, and was divorced and likely put to death for sticking to her beliefs…. just so she wouldn’t set an example for other women.