Let me know which seems better. So far, Blogger seems more readily customized, Wordpress seems cleaner. It may be that working out a better HTML template for Blogger is a better way to go, but I'm open to suggestions!
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Watch the Watchmen
Inspired by my hatred of Yahoo and my enjoyment of The Watchmen this past weekend.
Reformatting
Sorry for the lack of posts lately-- working on some new formatting to make the whole thing more readable. Any suggestions would be greatly appreciated!
Thanks,
The Management
Thanks,
The Management
What's next? Unicorns?
Giant snakes, fish with transparent heads, and now pink albino dolphins.... in Louisiana of all places!
Maybe it's in honor of Mardi Gras.
"While this animal looks pink, it is an albino which you can notice in the pink eyes. Albinism is a genetic trait and it unclear as to the type of albinism this animal inherited."A different dolphin species, the endangered Amazon river boto (Inia geoffrensis), which lives in South America , is sometimes called the pink river dolphin because of its appearance."
Happy Square Root Day
Square root day - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Always vigilant-- Google Trends top search this morning was Square Root Day. Who knew (or cared?)
Seuss
Dr Seuss remains one of my favorite authors-- The Butter Battle Book, The Lorax, and The Sneetches top my personal list. Seuss was brilliant-- happy birthday.
"Anapestic tetrameter consists of four rhythmic units, anapests, each composed of two weak beats followed by one strong beat; often, the first weak syllable is omitted, or an additional weak syllable is added at the end."
"Lord Byron's epic Don Juan, for example, contains much anapestic tetrameter."
| x | x | / | x | x | / | x | x | / | x | x | / |
| And | to- | day | the | Great | Yer- | tle, | that | Mar- | vel | ous | he |
| x | / | x | x | / | x | x | / | x | x | / | |
| Is | King | of | the | Mud. | That | is | all | he | can | see |
Your money or your life
Taxpayer Beware: Bank Bailout Will Hurt : NPR
Incredibly well-produced piece on NPR this morning-- not surprising since Alex Blumberg works for This American Life.
"This is a robbery note!" Johnson says. "It's saying, 'Guys, either you'll have 20 percent unemployment or national debt will go up to these dangerous levels, unless you buy toxic assets — not for what they're worth, not for what the market price is, as much as you can pay.' "
Johnson says his "first reaction was: 'It's a spoof.' My second reaction was: 'Oh my God.'"
Signed, sealed, delivered
Obamas praise Stevie Wonder at White House - CNN.com""I think it's fair to say that had I not been a Stevie Wonder fan, Michelle might not have dated me. We might not have married," Obama said Wednesday as he and the first lady hosted a concert and award ceremony for Wonder. "The fact that we agreed on Stevie was part of the essence of our courtship.""
Subway Porn
Subway Map Porn For The Mass Transit Freak
We get so used to road maps that I think subway maps can bring out new ways of seeing cities. Same goes for topographical maps or sewer systems or power lines. Any way of visualizing places or things we've grown accustomed to brings new things to light.
Giant Thai Stingray
Giant Stingrays Found Near Thai CityYour source for big news about big animals-- real and fictional. This one hasn't been photoshopped, I promise. However, it would be good curried... a bit of thai basil, some ginger, sri rachca, coconut milk... Anyone have good stingray recipes?
"Recreational fishers and biologist Zeb Hogan (wearing cap) hold a live, 14-foot-long (4.3-meter-long) giant freshwater stingray the fishers caught in the Bang Pakong River in Chachoengsao, Thailand, on March 31, 2008. ""There are accounts of freshwater stingrays growing as large as 1,000 pounds (450 kilograms), which could make them the largest freshwater fish in the world"
I've only got eyes for you
Shifty-Eyed Thieving Fish Caught on Video - TierneyLab Blog - NYTimes.com
Deep-sea fish are just bizarre. That's all there is to it. No light, lots of pressure, and strange prey do odd things over millenia. Creationists eat your hearts out.
Sketches
Back to the Drawing Board
Drawings and sketches have always been my favorite forms of art. Da Vinci and Van Gogh's pencil and charcoal sketches seem less burdened with formality than their heavy oils. They're more playful and expressive because they weren't really meant for our eyes. They're like personal notes with all the quirks of character that come with that medium.
These architectural drawings are the same way.
How to shoot down a helicopter with a handgun, and other party tricks
How to shoot down a helicopter with a handgun. Slate Magazine
The Explainer strikes again:
"Yes, just aim for the tail or the pilot. The tail rotor is critical for stability in the air, but it's generally made of light and vulnerable materials such as fiberglass and hollow aluminum. If a bullet were to strike it in the right place, one of the propeller blades could break off, throwing the craft into a spin. (Even a stray article of clothing can get sucked into the tail rotor and down a chopper.) But the tail rotor is a small target, so you may be better off shooting at the cockpit, in the hope of disabling the pilot."
The King is Dead! Long live the King!
Today's Pictures: Get Fat on TuesdayMardi Gras and Carnival in general are fascinating holidays-- they're all about overturning social order for a brief period of time, breaking down norms and going wild. They even appoint a jester as King (Rex) with the freedom to rule the city. It's dedicated chaos aimed at keeping everything orderly for the rest of the year.
The history and spread of the festivals alone can keep you entertained for hours, but if you start searching Google images....
The Magnum photos from Slate are safe for work, but I'm not guaranteeing anything if you look further afield...
This is your brain. This is your brain on Facebook.
Facebook et al risk 'infantilising' the human mind | guardian.co.uk
The argument over social networking rages. Does it empower or infantilize? Improve or destroy relationships? Increase our knowledge or decrease our attention span?
Lady Greenfield, professor of synaptic pharmacology at Lincoln college, Oxford, and director of the Royal Institution weighs in:
"The sheer compulsion of reliable and almost immediate reward is being linked to similar chemical systems in the brain that may also play a part in drug addiction. So we should not underestimate the 'pleasure' of interacting with a screen when we puzzle over why it seems so appealing to young people."
"It is hard to see how living this way on a daily basis will not result in brains, or rather minds, different from those of previous generations. We know that the human brain is exquisitely sensitive to the outside world."
Farhad Manjoo over at Slate has a different take:
"Skeptics often suggest that online social networks foster introverted, anti-social behavior—that we forge virtual connections at the expense of real-life connections. But only someone who's never used Facebook would make that argument. Nobody avoids meeting people in real life by escaping to the Web. In fact, the opposite seems true: Short, continuous, low-content updates about the particulars of your friends' lives—Bob has the flu, Barbara can't believe what just happened on Mad Men, Sally and Ned are no longer on speaking terms—deepen your bonds with them. Writer Clive Thompson has explored this phenomenon, what social scientists call "ambient awareness." Following someone through his status updates is not unlike sitting in a room with him and semiconsciously taking note of his body language, Thompson points out. Just as you can sense his mood from the rhythm of his breathing, sighing, and swearing, you can get the broad outlines of his life from short updates, making for a deeper conversation the next time you do meet up."
Goodness gracious, great balls of fire
Scientist Looks to Weaponize Ball Lightning | Danger Room from Wired.comGotta love scientific mysteries, especially when they account for so many UFO sightings and could be part of a secret military weapons program...
This one works like a smoke ring of high-energy "magnetoplasmoids"
"Koloc called the weapon "Phased Hyper-Acceleration for Shock, EMP, and Radiation" -- PHASER."It can be used for a range of purposes from stunning personnel to destroying the functionality of electronically operated devices, smaller rockets, vehicles and packages that represent an immediate threat to the United States," he wrote. "This dial-able PHASER weapon can be set on 'Stun' or dialed down, selecting a non-lethal level for persons needed for later interrogation... One mundane application for law enforcement would be the disruption of the engine electronics to stop vehicles that would otherwise be the target of a high-speed chase. Dialable versions of the PHASER will be available for use in civilian encounters."
Khoda
Khoda on Vimeo
[Via Geekologie]
Khoda from Reza Dolatabadi on Vimeo.
[Via Geekologie]
Khoda from Reza Dolatabadi on Vimeo.
"What if you watch a film and whenever you pause it, you face a painting? This idea inspired Reza Dolatabadi to make Khoda. Over 6000 paintings were painstakingly produced during two years to create a five minutes film..."
Cool
2008 Was Earth's Coolest Year Since 2000I'm no climate-change skeptic, but I do hate the argument that journalists should sensationalize and overstate news about warming in order to rile up public interest. Confirmation bias is bad enough already.
So, it won't surprise me if the news that 2008 is the coolest year since 2000 doesn't make many headlines.
Atlantis: lost, found, lost again
Google shoots down 'Atlantis' picturesYou'd think that we'd have found an entire submerged continent by this point if it really existed. Of course, sometimes there really are lost shipwrecks filled with gold. And Google's new ocean-mapping tool has opened up some great new options-- including speculation that a rectangle approximately the size of Wales (of all places) was actually Atlantis. Turns out, it's not:
"Bathymetric (or seafloor terrain) data is often collected from boats using sonar to take measurements of the seafloor. The lines reflect the path of the boat as it gathers the data," Google said.
"But you will die, brother, if you go to it long enough."
"Imagine the face of warfare with autonomous robotics"
The title quote comes from Hemmingway at the beginning of the paper. They have a pretty optimistic take on the potential of military robotics:
"Instead of our soldiers returning home in flag‐draped caskets to heartbroken families, autonomous robots—mobile machines that can make decisions, such as to fire upon a target, without human intervention—can replace the human soldier in an increasing range of dangerous missions: from tunneling through dark caves in search of terrorists, to securing urban streets rife with sniper fire, to patrolling the skies and waterways where there is little cover from attacks, to clearing roads and seas of improvised explosive devices (IEDs), to surveying damage from biochemical weapons, to guarding borders and buildings, to controlling potentially‐hostile crowds, and even as the infantry frontlines."
The list of books and movies imagining the face of war using and war against autonmous robots goes on for pages (if anyone has that list, post it, I'm curious). The upside is, we've got some interesting ways of discussing the moral and ethical dilemmas that come up when robots start killing people. The downside is that we get fiction and reality mixed up. And we often focus on doom and gloom scenarios where robots destroy humanity (Terminator, The Matrix, I Robot, BSG) as opposed to more nuanced approaches (Ghost in the Shell).
100-Foot 'Borneo Monster' found-- Loch Ness Monster Missing, presumed eaten
100-Foot 'Borneo Monster' Said Photographed | LiveScience
We try to keep on top of late-breaking big-snake news here at 42. Needless to say, this is almost certainly a hoax, but boy oh boy do I wish it wasn't!
"One photo, of a serpentine shape in the Baleh river, was said to be taken from a helicopter by a member of a disaster team monitoring flood conditions. Locals suggest that the animal may be a creature of folklore called Nabau, a dragon-like, shape-shifting sea serpent. Others aren't convinced."
Update: Scientific American weighs in, though not decisively.
Nxtbook Media - headed for the dustbin of history
Nxtbook Media - Today's Digital Publishing Solution
The pdf file format is pretty damn versatile. Just about every journal article I've ever read, scientific or otherwise, came in pdf. Rich pdf adds in some handy tools too-- forms and links and so on.
So when I pulled up this (boring) article today, I was a little dismayed when I tried to click on the strange document in front of me-- I couldn't highlight the text, I couldn't save the file to my desktop without downloading some highfalutin software, and it made a weird swooshing sound when I turned the page. Prentious BS.
So, I'm here to tell you now Nxtbook Media-- it's over. This means war. I will find a way to read your files without your software.
Leeks
Wikileaks Forced to Leak Its Own Secret Info | Threat Level from Wired.com
There is something poetic about this-- due credit to Wikileaks for following through and leaving the leak up though.
More stories on leaks (and leeks) in the future...
Well I'll be damned
How Catholics calculate purgatory sentences. - By Nina Shen Rastogi - Slate MagazineYes, I will. Reintroducing indulgences is an interesting ploy-- a bit like bringing back geocentrism. I suppose it's hard to compete with charistmatic revivalist religions like Pentacostalism (great Economist piece) and Mormonism.
Of course, as one priest points out, "“The good news is we’re not selling them anymore.”"
But what's the point? One of the parishoners asked, "What is five years in terms of eternity?”"
I put together a quick spreadsheet to try and calculate how long I'll be enjoying Purgatory, but there doesn't seem to be any clear equation... Any suggestions?
Subtle knives
Safer kitchen knives | The blunt truth | The Economist
Nothing subtle about it though-- where do we draw the line between paternalism and product design? Sharp knives don't kill people; people kill people. How far should we go to proect people from themselves?
"That suggests a systematic redesign might make most such knives less lethal without making them less effective."
Should "systematic redesign" be mandatory? And if so, how will we cut through to other worlds?
Worth a shot... literally.
Geographers Find Bin Laden — Theoretically - TierneyLab Blog - NYTimes.com
Parachinar. If Osama Bin Laden was an endangered species of wildlife, he'd be hiding in Parachinar.
"So why hasn’t anyone claimed the $50 million bounty on his head?"
Thomas Gillespie at U.C.L.A. thinks we've been looking in the wrong place:
"The theory of island biogeography states that large and close islands will have higher immigration rates and support more species with lower extinction rates than small isolated islands.These theories can be applied over varying spatial scales to posit bin Laden’s current location based on his last reputed geographic location. Distance-decay theory would predict that he is closest to the point where he was last reported and, by extension, within a region that has a similar physical environment and cultural composition (that is, similar religious and political beliefs)."
I'm deeply skeptical that this method is more accurate than the combined force of greed (from the reward) and actual boots on the ground (CIA, FBI). But, who knows. It does make some sense to think of fugitives as hunted animals after all.
Maybe there are some predator-prey models they could try out next?
It just keeps going and going and going...
NASA -Spirit Gets Energy Boost from Cleaner Solar Panels
Not really an original joke, but hey...
"Spirit and Opportunity have been operating on Mars for more than five years in exploration missions originally planned to last for three months. JPL, a division of the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena, manages the Mars Exploration Rover project for NASA's Science Mission Directorate, Washington."
Work work
Do You Like to Drink Beer?
Local job listing (and fun Talk of the Nation):
"Volunteers ages 21 to 45 are needed for a new investigational medication study examining cravings for alcohol. Participants will take two 5-day periods of an investigational medication (Strattera®) and make 5 outpatient visits to the UVa C.A.R.E. clinic. On two visits, participants are asked to rate their mood and craving levels after drinking alcohol. Study-related tests include blood, urine, and breath alcohol level. Medication and mental and physical exams are provided at no charge.
Compensation is up to $200. ATX Alcohol Study IRB-HSR #13464
UVa Department of Psychiatry and Neurobehavioral Sciences
Phone: (434) 243-0642 ask for ATX Study
Principal Investigator: Heather M. Haughey, Ph.D. "
Texans likely abducted by meteor, not satellite debris
SPACE.com -- Texas Fireball Likely Caused by Meteor, Not Satellite Debris
Putting it in terms a Texan would understand, Preston Starr, the observatory manager at the University of North Texas, told the Associated Press that
"Sunday's fireball was likely caused by a meteor streaking through Earth's atmosphere at between 15,000 mph and 40,000 mph. The object would have been the size of a truck and have the consistency of concrete."
Apparently the fireball "appeared over a wide swath of Texas, loosed sonic booms that rattled windows and shook houses."
Did I mention I love Texas?
"Faster than a speeding bullet — and bigger than a Wal-Mart."
"Go to work on an egg"
New research shows high-quality protein in eggs contributes to power, strength and energy
In the 1950 the UK Egg Marketing Board launched an ad campaign suggesting that people should "go to work on an egg." Witty stuff. Turns out they might have been onto something:
"high-quality protein in eggs contributes to strength, power and energy in the following ways:Sustained energyMuscle strengthGold-standard proteinSatiety & Weight ManagementValue & Versatility"
Of course, you can have too much of a good thing...
Overpaid, oversexed, and over here
The Richard Casement internship | The Economist
Go show the Brits what for:
"We invite applications for the 2009 Richard Casement internship. We are looking for a would-be journalist to spend three months of the summer working on the newspaper in London, writing about science and technology. Our aim is more to discover writing talent in a science student or scientist than a scientific aptitude in a budding journalist. Applicants should write a letter introducing themselves and an original article of about 600 words that they think would be suitable for publication in the science and technology section. They should be prepared to come for an interview in London or New York, at their own expense. A small stipend will be paid to the successful candidate. Applications must reach us by February 20th. They should be sent to: casement2009@economist.com."
The end of the world as we know it
Nuclear submarines collide in Atlantic | guardian.co.uk
This pretty much sums it up: "They can't see each other in the water," one official said.
Really? Of course, this could be a massive coverup of renewed Franco-British squabbling, with the captains of each ship playing a high-risk game of nuclear chicken... Who turns away first?!
"Kate Hudson, the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament chairwoman, described the incident as "a nuclear nightmare of the highest order".
"The collision of two submarines, both with nuclear reactors and nuclear weapons on board, could have released vast amounts of radiation and scattered scores of nuclear warheads across the seabed," she said. "The dents reportedly visible on the British sub show the boats were no more than a couple of seconds away from total catastrophe."
Hudson said it was the first time since the cold war that two nuclear-armed submarines were known to have collided."
Life of Pie
Pi Day - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Mark your calendars, we're celebrating the geekiest holiday of the year. Apparently MIT, home of my favorite open-source educational materials and media lab, sends out acceptance letters so that they arrive on Pi Day. It's that good.
So, prepare your pies of all sorts: charts, small Indian currency worth 1/192 of a rupee, shiny-loving birds, or post-irradiation examinations. The best pi-pun wins a prize!
Knight-errant
NPR: Knights in TrainingThe Knight Foundation and their Digital Media Center are helping NPR journalists go multi-media. It seems tough to capture audio and photos (AND video) all at once, but they're finding a way.
I wonder if there are any positions open for squires?
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