Nanocindy certainly picked the right time to enter the baseball bet. Now that the Brew Crew has Sabathia'd itself up a notch, perhaps it is time that natedogg got in on the game... The Cardinals need Carpenter and Wainwright back as soon as possible.  

posted by Valatan in Sports at 07:27PM CST - 0 comments

Kiva, Heifer -- following on the discussion of Bill Gates' philanthropy, it's worth noting that the long tail of piggy bank philanthropy well outweighs what the plutocrats plump in. I highly recommend Nick Kristof's article last week recounting the remarkable cascade effect direct giving to a well-chosen charity can have. Even if you aren't in a position to donate money, though, you're probably in a position to loan it (see inside).

The most appalling thing I saw while I was in Africa was the rice distribution center in Ethiopia [pic after the jump]. About a hundred people wait around for hours until the trucks come by to unload food; the cycle repeats. We're doing it all wrong -- these infantilizing handouts deter local food production, feed corruption and bureaucracy as much as they feed the indigent, incentivize (as you see) standing around for food rather than earning it, and gift food at a sustenance level but skills at a starvation level. It's the development equivalent of feeding tubes for a persistent vegetative state.

Continued...    [more inside]

posted by mrflip in Local at 01:16AM CST - 2 comments

What I Did Last Month - Last month I asked people on twitter whether they would allow me to take over their Facebook accounts for a week. Within a half hour I had to remove the request due to the volume of incoming username and passwords. I selected two people that were in the medium friend range and appeared to use Facebook in an active way, and asked for a one page "how-to" guide on how to be them before I started. Here is a description of that week in the words of one of the people I took over :: Lessons Learned from Ze Frank (Being Me) (shorter version) :: and x... gets the square - Ze Frank Wuzz Inside My Internetzz...! (same person, in more detail) 

posted by zieglerfe in Something at 04:34PM CST - 0 comments

Brains and Brawns! A Russian man has just been crowned world champion in the sport of chess boxing. Apparently the idea originated in a French comic strip from the early '90s. In 2003 a Dutch artist decided to bring the 'sport' to life. The 'sport' is played by starting a chess match in the middle of a boxing ring. After four minutes, the chess board is cleared and the opponents box for three minutes. A match consists of six rounds of chess and five rounds of boxing. A match is decided by knockout, checkmate, or points    [more inside]

posted by KarmicBlasphemy in WTF Mate? Kangaroos! at 05:41AM CST - 4 comments

BillG's Last Day At Microsoft - feat. Jay-Z, Bono, Napoleon Dynamite, Bill Gates playing Rock Band Guitar Hero (!), and so much more...    [more inside]

posted by mrflip in Nerdliness at 09:48PM CST - 4 comments

The Pitchfork Guide to Upcoming Releases: Summer '08 - Welcome once again to the Pitchfork Guide to Upcoming Releases, our seasonal guide to upcoming releases! This installment covers a wide swath of the crucial cuts you'll be jamming on through the summer and into the fall, from LPs and EPs to singles and music-related DVDs of note.    [more inside]

posted by zieglerfe in Something at 09:00PM CST - 3 comments

GORBACHOV - Think Proletarian Chicks with Hammer and Sickle fighting Zombie enemies of the people alongside our eponymous glasnoster, recast with sword&sandals, laser eyes, oiled chest and iconic birthmark - as an eyeliner emotel music vid. Stunningly bizarre. If your rig will handle the HD I recommend it. [via Panopticist -- one of my favorite blogs; posts only every few weeks but when he does it's solid gold]  

posted by mrflip in Something at 04:27AM CST - 3 comments

Crazy Baseball Play - finally, the baseball equivalent to this (2005 remake). Check out not only the video highlight (next-to-last clip) but also the delightful photogallery with reaction shots. Something tells me "Shocked Red Sox dude at Yankee Stadium" is about to be a mini-celebrity in Bahstin.  

posted by mrflip in Sports at 03:04AM CST - 0 comments

FontStruct is a free font-building tool brought to you by the world’s leading retailer of digital type, FontShop. [via doncarlo] 

posted by zieglerfe in Something at 03:38PM CST - 0 comments

A switch hitter vs. a switch pitcher. This happened a while ago but I've been meaning to watch the video. Here it is on the off chance some of you missed it. 

posted by soku in Sports at 02:26PM CST - 1 comments

What if you surveyed people about aspects of music that they might like or dislike? What if you explicitly wrote a song to embody as many of those qualities as you could? You'd get The Most Wanted and Most Unwanted Songs ever written. The Most Unwanted Song contains themes of cowboys, holidays, and advertising. The singers are opera sopranos (rapping! no less) and kids and the instruments are heavily focused on bagpipe and accordion. There are constant tonal and tempo changes and it is way too long. In other words, Mike Patton could have written it and it sounds like something that zieglerfe would listen to on purpose. Listen to the songs on this edition of Crap From the Past (most wanted ends segment 'b' and most unwanted is most of segment 'c').
    [more inside]

posted by natedogg in Music at 10:31PM CST - 12 comments

Ever wondered what your Myers-Briggs "letters" were? This subject just came up today in emails with a friend of mine, turns out we have the same letters.

So at my last job there was one co-worker within R&D who was really into Myers-Briggs personality testing, she had read so much about it she could usually guess people's letters based on their behavior. I was an odd duck for her though and she needed me to take the test to figure it out. The reason for her confusion is cause until me she had never run across an ENFJ. Most of the folks in R&D were INTP's, go figure.

At my current job we actually had to take a personality test and had a workshop centered around learning more about our coworker's personality types and how to improve our communication with each other based on what we learned about each others communication styles from the personality testing. It wasn't Myers-Briggs but it had several common features. I actually found it to be a really good exercise.

So if you're ever wondered about the whole Myers-Briggs thing (choose the Jung typology test), the above link will let you know where you fall. I have a sneaking suspicion there will be a lot of INTP's here too. ; ) 

posted by Vanalyn in Nerdliness at 02:59PM CST - 58 comments

Drive Your Bike to Work Day - missed it this year, but enjoy the pix. [thx dennis]    [more inside]

posted by mrflip in Toys at 05:34AM CST - 2 comments

50 Best Pun Stores - my hometown has a "Jamaica me Tan" 

posted by natedogg in Funny at 06:12PM CST - 4 comments

Looking for the Mouse and Better than Free -- both obviously hit close to home for me but are, I think, generally interesting.

If you take Wikipedia as a kind of unit, all of Wikipedia, the whole project--every page, every edit, every talk page, every line of code, in every language that Wikipedia exists in--that represents something like the cumulation of 100 million hours of human thought. ...

And television watching? Two hundred billion hours, in the U.S. alone, every year. ... In the U.S., we spend 100 million hours every weekend, just watching the ads.

posted by mrflip in Something at 05:14AM CST - 0 comments

Oh yes, WE TV, a spin-off of Lifetime has actually created this webshow.  

posted by beckto in WTF Mate? Kangaroos! at 10:05PM CST - 6 comments

My new favorite chaotician is Remi Gaillard, kindof a french Spike Jonez but more of a dick. (whole channel here; note that vids auto-play). Here are things you can't do in a city; first four by Gaillard, last three not:
* play soccer,
* reenact Rocky,
* throw a party,
* buy groceries,
* play tennis,
* make music,
* go for a drive
[via kottke] 

posted by mrflip in Movies at 11:11PM CST - 1 comments

Wikipedia: thank you for a lot of things but thank you especially for [citation needed].
    [more inside]

posted by natedogg in Funny at 04:34PM CST - 1 comments

Saddest picture on the internet? (The link only goes to the blog I found this on)
I want to gauge my psychology as compared to other Alkaline Earth-ers. I imagine that the sequence of photos below evokes several simultaneous emotions in you, but what I want to know is: are you closer to laughing or crying?    [more inside]

posted by McD in Funny at 11:31PM CST - 3 comments

The World's Greatest Athlete? An interesting attempt by the WSJ, that great sports paper, to choose who is the "best" athlete in the world.    [more inside]

posted by Ned in Sports at 04:47PM CST - 6 comments

Spore Creature Creator Available for Free Trial Download Spore has their creature creator up now for a free trial download. It is a biggish download.

Now I haven't touched a game in years but I have to admit, I think I might buy this one when it releases. I'm really geeking out on it. 

posted by Vanalyn in Nerdliness at 02:21PM CST - 6 comments

And the record of Harbo and Samuelsen still stands. Though these guys tried , the 102 year old record is safe.  

posted by beckto in Something at 02:03PM CST - 0 comments

Water on Mars!  

posted by mrflip in Science at 08:18PM CST - 0 comments