Anybody want a peanut?

xkcd - A Webcomic - Westley's a Dick

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 City

Your 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.

Don't Panic

xkcd - A Webcomic - Kindle

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 Tuesday

Mardi 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.com

Gotta 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.

"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 2000

I'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' pictures

You'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.