Links posted in January 2008
January 30, 2008
A food scientist examines the Double Dip in time for the Superbowl of Snacking, the Superbowl. [thx kottke] One surprising thing: the claim that was the only known study "to proclaim that it was inspired by an episode of 'Seinfeld.'" None come to mind, but I'd be surprised if that were true. (I know we've seen some academic work inspired by The Simpsons land on Alkaline Earth).
$1 Image Stabilizer for any Camera - awesome. My trick has always been to frame the shot, hold it against my face (even when not using the viewfinder) and look at a distant object, but this looks even better, and highly portable. [thx df]
Via Feministing, we have finally found that infomercial product that is so absurd, so ridiculous, that you have to imagine how someone would even possibly think that it could accomplish its stated goal of making you fit. It goes beyond the simple machines that you just wonder about their value. This simply makes you shake your head in utter befuddlement.
Oh, and Ellen DeGeneres tries it out, interviewing her guests on it, including a 11 year old guitar hero champion.
January 29, 2008
History of world religions in 90 seconds....
Also check out:
http://www.mapsofwar.com/ind/imperial-history.html
January 28, 2008
Enjoyed this gallery of Chimpanzee and Baboon photos from the '70s and '80s by a primate researcher. Not only the great kodachrome toned photos, but also the fascinating bush stories: close encounter with lion, "helpful tips for sleeping in the bush part I", and helpful tips for sleeping in the bush part II. [more inside]
Duncan Watts doesn't believe in the theory of The Tipping Point. He thinks there is no such thing as a class of Influentials that are tastemakers that decide what ideas or products catch fire. He thinks anybody can start a trend. Consider it an assignment or personal challenge.
January 25, 2008
"[T]o photograph each of the nation’s 50 state capitol buildings and dispatch a postcard from each city, using postage stamps from a childhood collection. Each postcard would be mailed to the next state on his journey, where he would pick it up, continuing until he had gone full circle back to Indiana."
Well, that was the plan, until he got listed. [more inside]
An illuminating examination of Bush's favorite painting - If someone knows where an "N days left in the Bush Presidency" banner is we can add it to the homepage. [thx, kottke] [more inside]
January 23, 2008
The Vader Sessions - kindof a "Wizard People, Dear Jedi". Brilliantly redubs Vader's star wars scenes with clips from James Earl Jones' other movies. Leia becomes the victim of his unwelcome attentions, and Grand Moff Tarkin becomes a middle manager forced to endure his boss' uncomfortable ramblings. [thx BSG]
Also, since Nate's link was buried in a necro'd thread, a repost: If you click on one YouTube link this year, it should be Lasagnacat.com.
The bomb was found while crews were working on a new metro station in downtown Naples Thousands of citizens had to be evacuated. (The link is in Italian.) [more inside]
I've been really enjoying this cleverly-named blog, "Little Trouble in Big China" -- the adventures of a brave young lady who has moved to China, mostly for the adventure of it. She reports on issues like "can I watch Terps basketball in my apartment" (yes) and "Things You Don't See Every Day (But I Might)" (mittened scooters, 20 foot flagpoles transported by bike)
January 22, 2008
I don't know if anyone else has seen this , but Tom Cruise has given a truly crazy interview:
The maiden commercial voyage of the SkySails kite propulsion system.
A certain girlfriend of mine is working for a state senator. A state senator who's been on the daily show as it turns out (scroll down and you'll see a link to the clip).
January 21, 2008
Butt Naked Returns to Liberia to Confess A chapter of world history I never knew about: this guy was basically the Flip Wilson of genocidal maniacs, right down to "The Devil Made Me Do It". The crimes involved are heinous, but the story is disconcertingly fascinating. From the Washington Post, front page of site:
One of Liberia's most notorious rebel commanders, known as Gen. Butt Naked for charging into battle wearing only boots, has returned to confess his role in terrorizing the nation, saying he is responsible for 20,000 deaths.
Journey's "Separate ways" - shot-by-shot remake of Journey's "Separate ways". [more inside]
January 20, 2008
Dolphins
finally invent the wheel.
Humanity says "oh shit"
The Onion predicted that this would happen several years ago.
Sudahir Ventakesh, the guy who (as described in Freakonomics) did his dissertation on the economics of a crack gang, has been watching the Wire with a group of ex-thugs and blogging about their reactions.
Well, crap. I made a long nerdy post about the fun you can have now that computers support multi language alphabets. But checking an older machine shows that for many the future is not here yet. Here instead is a link to the Firefox v3.0 beta. [more inside]
January 16, 2008
Evil Grimace - the 4-armed shake thief they don't want to admit existed.
January 14, 2008
First 5 minutes of "Teeth." Alamo is showing it this week to fantastic fest badge holders. Enjoy.
The 2007 Feltron Annual Report is available now. In a series of elegant infographics, you may discover how many albums Mr. Feltron bought in the year (12 CDs, 1LP and 98 download tracks), and how often he visited bars in October (6 times; he made 57 total bar visits, down 39% from last year). My print copy is on the way. (last year's report).
Metadata is the new Eyeballs (which is the old Interaction).
Nanocontest! Hello all from the American Physical Society! I thought at least one of you guys (or all of you guys!) might have fun with this. There are only 2 entries so far so you have a good chance of winning. I would love to see AE as the proud owners of the worlds smallest trophy.
January 13, 2008
Top of the Crops 2007 - Circlemakers.org shares their top Crop Circles of 2007. Via the highly enjoyable Wikipedia page detailing a putative reply to our Arecibo Message. (more, tin foil hat recommended.)
Mr. XKCD [vid] gives a talk @Google. Impromptu (which shows, a bit) but funny... And what a crowd! Guest appearances by Guido van Rossum (author of Python) and Donald Knuth (father of Computer Science, author of TeΧ and The Art of Computer Programming). </geek>
Scandal and controversy in the world of competitive scrapbooking - Too much to take in: $2.6-billion industry... boycotts... the phrase 'quarter-life crisis'...
An avant-garde Hall of Fame scrapbooker -- part of a movement of 'scrappers who use "loneliness, narcissism and rage" rather than "teddy bear stamps, snowflake stencils and cupcakes" -- is stripped of her title. If this were april-1st I'd think it was a great hoax, but it's in the LA Times. Fake? not Fake? Who knows: enjoyable. [thx kottke] [more inside]
January 09, 2008
Found, and Found again - I can't believe I never saw this, on the internet or internate. Found (not ffffound) has a whole section of people who recognized a find as theirs, including most notably the tortured artistic soul behind the "Please be certain to keep this door locked in order to prevent people from defecating in the washing machine" sign. What I even more enjoyed were the surprisingly touching stories of people being unexpectedly reacquainted with figures from their past, whether it was their boyfriend from four years ago, their grandparents, or themselves.
January 08, 2008
It seems somehow incongruent for me to post this, but: "What is the largest number of different animal species who have been harmed or exploited for a single meal that you've eaten? I think I'm at 5."
Weaksauce! I retired before age 20 and I'm sure I've topped that.
So: describe a menu exploiting as many different species as possible. Eggs, Milk and Honey count[*]; white cane sugar does not. Desirable dishes for under say $100 total, that might conceivably be served at a restaurant or fine dinner -- no ortolan-infused california highway of the sea from a gonzo combination of Grandpa Freeman's scrapple house and Marlon Brando's Komodo Dojo. Winner gets a video on battery cages and puppy mills from Pablo! The bidding shall start at ten.
I'm gonna go have a cucumber sandwich with bean sprouts.
January 07, 2008
This is the funniest thing I've heard in ages. It describes a sex-ed journalist and her (terrifying) adventure on a porn set. NSFW, but it itself isn't porn in any way, and if you have headphones, you're fine.
“From 1989 to the end of 1991, while I worked the night shift covering the D.C. police and crime beat, I was an active crack addict and alcoholic. My use was not recreational. I was not a dilettante.
“To feed my addiction, I routinely ventured into some of the same drug-plagued neighborhoods where I covered nighttime murders and nonfatal shootings — violence that was usually fueled, directly or otherwise, by the crack trade. I made buys in dark crack houses and dangerous back alleys. I smoked my way to the edge of financial ruin. At the same time, I helped chronicle the bloody toll the drug was exacting on the street.”
January 06, 2008
Those of you at lunch on Thursday got to see the incredible amount of work put in to saving some trees near the ESB renovation. There is an article in the latest issue of The Alcalde about trees in UT's history and the current effort towards creating a more tree friendly plan for new construction. [more inside]
Motion Mountain - "the self-published 1,500-page (!!), still-unfinished physics textbook written and designed by your polymath genius uncle who dwells on a mountain with the spirits of departed philosophers (whom he quotes, in German). It's what a physics textbook would be like if a poet wrote it..." (I'll note that in my once-over, the actual crackpot index is far, far lower than the above-linked might indicate, possibly even down to background levels).
I wouldn't put it at the core of my own get-your-own-physics-degree-on-the-back-of-a-tour-bus curriculum, but I'd certainly make it an optional reading alongside The Flying Circus of Physics. Where he's right, he's compelling, and where he's heterodox, it's interesting to reason examine both sides. (See the Butterfly Effect on p.286.) The way he looks at and presents concepts is fascinating and visual and beautifully written; even the typesetting is artful and delicate.
I'd really like to hear other's opinions, especially curmudgeonly ones, as I'm not sure yet how carefully I should endorse the book. [more inside]
Photos with a that random guy in the background A couple edge towards harmless NSFW, if you care. [thx kottke]
Fun game If you're allowed to play computer games, that is. [more inside]
In other word news, it seems it's time for me to go off on another etymology rant. This List of Banished Words is pretty funny, so it's no fair to get peeved about their prissy insistence that "decimate" (originally meaning 'to kill of one in ten, as by lottery' -- from how the Romans did mutineers) hasn't and shouldn't be extended to mean "devastate".
But I'm surprised that none of the dictionaries (OED, M-W, Bartleby, MSN) I looked in had the very common signal-processing sense of decimation meaning 'divide a sample into, then eliminate a fraction of, many small slices". Google shows about a million hits for
(decimation OR decimate) (sampling OR signal OR MPEG)
and wikipedia had an entry, of course.
So the next time someone tells you that wikipedia is an unreliable reference, remind them there's more than one way to be wrong. [more inside]
Ladies and Gents, your 2007 word of the year: Subprime. A good choice, I think. Full rundown here [PDF].
January 03, 2008
Straight Cash, Homey - field spottings of terrible, terrible fan jerseys. By my rough count Ryan Leaf prevails in appearances over a dead heat between Vinny Testaverde and Shawn Kemp.
By the way, I need someone to take a picture of my John "Hot Rod" "Hot Plate" Williams jersey.
[more inside]
Well, today is the stupid date set by the Iowa legislature for the insane Iowa caucuses. The candidates have been campaigning for insane marathon closing periods. The most recent polling has Obama gaining momentum, Clinton losing it, and Edwards holding stead, but pretty much with the three of them in a statistical tie.
On the Republican side, there is a statistical tie between Mitt Romney and Mike Huckabee, with John McCain and Ron Paul making strong late surges in the battle for third place.
Edwards needs a win to stay alive, and McCain needs Romney to lose in order to stay alive. More about the caucus process in the extended for those that care. [more inside]
January 02, 2008
The late night shows return tonight with (WWP) and without (NBC) their writers. [more inside]