Zeitgeist

Khan Academy

Sat, 18 May 2013 01:30 GMT

Doodal

Fri, 17 May 2013 23:17 GMT

now you're doodling with portals

Color Scheme Designer 3

Fri, 17 May 2013 22:32 GMT

COLOURlovers :: Color Trends + Palettes

Fri, 17 May 2013 21:13 GMT

Smashing Magazine

Fri, 17 May 2013 21:01 GMT

Instructables - Make, How To, and DIY

Fri, 17 May 2013 20:57 GMT

Prezi - The zooming presentation editor

Fri, 17 May 2013 20:46 GMT

Font Squirrel | Handpicked free fonts for graphic designers with commercial-use licenses.

Fri, 17 May 2013 19:06 GMT

Bret Victor on drawing dynamic visualizations

Fri, 17 May 2013 18:41 GMT

I really wish Bret would independently release some of his work as products

David Chang cooks space food for Chris Hadfield

Fri, 17 May 2013 18:32 GMT

Momofuku's David Chang cooks up some gourmet space food for celeb astronaut Chris Hadfield.

Unfortunately, it doesn't work out so well. Who knew that gravity was so useful? But stay for the best part of the whole thing...right at the end, Hadfield feeds himself asparagus like a fish.

Tags: Chris Hadfield David Chang NASA food space

7min

Fri, 17 May 2013 18:25 GMT

dead simple timer for the Scientific 7-Minute Workout

Welcome to Google Island

Fri, 17 May 2013 18:19 GMT

short fiction by Mat Honan, inspired by Larry Page's comments at I/O [via]

Interview with a Metafilter troll, ten years later

Fri, 17 May 2013 18:18 GMT

randomly, I'd commented in his first post [via]

Zamzar - Free online file conversion

Fri, 17 May 2013 18:00 GMT

Clipping Magic

Fri, 17 May 2013 17:42 GMT

remove backgrounds from a browser

Mat Honan visits Google Island

Fri, 17 May 2013 17:03 GMT

After taking in a four-hour keynote at the Google I/O conference, Mat Honan is transported to a magical place called Google Island.

The soft, froggy voice startled me. I turned around to face an approaching figure. It was Larry Page, naked, save for a pair of eyeglasses.

"Welcome to Google Island. I hope my nudity doesn't bother you. We're completely committed to openness here. Search history. Health data. Your genetic blueprint. One way to express this is by removing clothes to foster experimentation. It's something I learned at Burning Man," he said. "Here, drink this. You're slightly dehydrated, and your blood sugar is low. This is a blend of water, electrolytes, and glucose."

I was taken aback. "How did you..." I began, but he was already answering me before I could finish my question.

"As soon as you hit Google's territorial waters, you came under our jurisdiction, our terms of service. Our laws-or lack thereof-apply here. By boarding our self-driving boat you granted us the right to all feedback you provide during your journey. This includes the chemical composition of your sweat. Remember when I said at I/O that maybe we should set aside some small part of the world where people could experiment freely and examine the effects? I wasn't speaking theoretically. This place exists. We built it."

I was thirsty, so I drank the electrolyte solution down. "This is delicious," I replied.

"I know," he replied. "It also has thousands of micro sensors which are now swarming through your blood stream."

"What... " I stammered.

"Your prostate is enlarged. Let's go hangout now. There's some really great music I'd like to recommend to you."

You could consider this a follow-up to 2004's EPIC 2014 by Robin Sloan and Matt Thompson.

Tags: Google Mat Honan Matt Thompson Robin Sloan

Daft Punk, Goat Lucky

Fri, 17 May 2013 16:16 GMT

Daft Punk + goats who yell like people = not the funniest thing you've seen in your life but it hits a certain spot, that's for sure.

(via @thebakerruns)

Tags: Daft Punk remix video

Subtle Patterns | Free textures for your next web project

Fri, 17 May 2013 12:00 GMT

Google

Fri, 17 May 2013 04:58 GMT

All shootings aren't created equal?

Thu, 16 May 2013 22:00 GMT

American tragedies don't occur on the southside of Chicago or the New Orleans 9th Ward. They don't occur where inner city high school kids shoot into school buses or someone shoots at a 10-year old's birthday party in New Orleans. Or Gary, Indiana. Or Compton. Or Newport News.

David Dennis asks (and answers) a compelling question: Why isn't the New Orleans Mother's Day parade shooting a national tragedy?

Tags: David Dennis guns New Orleans

The three types of specialist

Thu, 16 May 2013 20:50 GMT

From a passage of Kurt Vonnegut's Bluebeard, the three types of specialists needed for the success of any revolution.

Slazinger claims to have learned from history that most people cannot open their minds to new ideas unless a mind-opening team with a peculiar membership goes to work on them. Otherwise, life will go on exactly as before, no matter how painful, unrealistic, unjust, ludicrous, or downright dumb that life may be.

The team must consist of three sorts of specialists, he says. Otherwise the revolution, whether in politics or the arts or the sciences or whatever, is sure to fail.

The rarest of these specialists, he says, is an authentic genius -- a person capable of having seemingly good ideas not in general circulation. "A genius working alone," he says, "is invariably ignored as a lunatic."

The second sort of specialist is a lot easier to find: a highly intelligent citizen in good standing in his or her community, who understands and admires the fresh ideas of the genius, and who testifies that the genius is far from mad. "A person like this working alone," says Slazinger, "can only yearn loud for changes, but fail to say what their shapes should be."

The third sort of specialist is a person who can explain everything, no matter how complicated, to the satisfaction of most people, no matter how stupid or pigheaded they may be. "He will say almost anything in order to be interesting and exciting," says Slazinger. "Working alone, depending solely on his own shallow ideas, he would be regarded as being as full of shit as a Christmas turkey."

Slazinger, high as a kite, says that every successful revolution, including Abstract Expressionism, the one I took part in, had that cast of characters at the top -- Pollock being the genius in our case, Lenin being the one in Russia's, Christ being the one in Christianity's.

He says that if you can't get a cast like that together, you can forget changing anything in a great big way.

(via @moleitau)

Tags: Bluebeard books Kurt Vonnegut

Meme star chart

Thu, 16 May 2013 19:44 GMT

From XKCD, a chart of the memes that various star systems are just hearing from the Earth's light-speed communications.

This is the meme version of Contact's opening credits scene, which is one of my favorites:

Tags: astronomy Contact movies space video

Human embryos successfully cloned (sort of)

Thu, 16 May 2013 18:29 GMT

A group of researchers in Oregon have successfully cloned human embryos. No, really:

The researchers, at Oregon Health and Science University, took skin cells from a baby with a genetic disease and fused them with donated human eggs to create human embryos that were genetically identical to the 8-month-old. They then extracted stem cells from those embryos.

The embryo-creation technique is essentially the same as that used to create Dolly the sheep and the many cloned animals that have followed. In those cases, the embryos were implanted in the wombs of surrogate mothers.

These embryos won't work for producing clones humans...they are being used to harvest stem cells.

The Oregon researchers, who published a paper on their work in the journal Cell, say their goal is what has been called therapeutic cloning: making embryonic stem cells that are genetically identical to a particular patient.

Embryonic stem cells can turn into any type of cell in the body, like heart cells, muscles or neurons. That raises the hope that one day the cells will be turned into replacement tissue or even replacement organs to treat a host of diseases.

Tags: cloning genetics science

Nintendo claims ad revenue over fan-made YouTube videos

Thu, 16 May 2013 17:23 GMT

Minecraft was offered the same deal and turned it down

How index cards inspired Google's new UI design

Thu, 16 May 2013 17:14 GMT

it's all over the upcoming Maps redesign

Explore history through Google Maps

Thu, 16 May 2013 15:00 GMT

MyReadingMapped makes use of Google Maps & Google Earth to tell stories about history. For instance, here are maps of The Civil War and the American Revolution, a map of Roald Amundsen's 1910 South Pole expedition, and a map of the wars of Alexander the Great.

Tags: Google Maps history maps

Google adds sending money to Gmail

Thu, 16 May 2013 01:14 GMT

no fee for Google Wallet funds or bank transfers, 2.9% for credit/debit

Recurring Developments

Wed, 15 May 2013 19:28 GMT

visualization of Arrested Development in-jokes [via]

List of NYC's outdoor summer movies

Wed, 15 May 2013 18:27 GMT

There are a lot of outdoor movies showing in NYC this summer: here's a listing of the whats, wheres, and whens. Movies include The Goonies, Jaws, Duck Soup, Moonrise Kingdom, Grease, and Blade Runner.

Tags: lists movies NYC

Kevin Poulsen on Aaron Swartz's StrongBox project

Wed, 15 May 2013 18:16 GMT

curious that it didn't launch with Wired first

Strongbox

Wed, 15 May 2013 16:14 GMT

The New Yorker introduces their Strongbox, a way to anonymously send files to editors at the magazine.

Strongbox is a simple thing in its conception: in one sense, it's just an extension of the mailing address we printed in small type on the inside cover of the first issue of the magazine, in 1925, later joined by a phone number (in 1928-it was BRyant 6300) and e-mail address (in 1998). Readers and sources have long sent documents to the magazine and its reporters, from letters of complaint to classified papers. (Joshua Rothman has written about that history and the magazine's record of investigative journalism.) But, over the years, it's also become easier to trace the senders, even when they don't want to be found. Strongbox addresses that; as it's set up, even we won't be able to figure out where files sent to us come from. If anyone asks us, we won't be able to tell them.

Strongbox is based on DeadDrop, an open source app built by Aaron Swartz.

Tags: Aaron Swartz New Yorker Strongbox

What radio broadcasts sounded like in 1939

Wed, 15 May 2013 14:43 GMT

The audio of a complete broadcast day from radio station WJSV in Washington, D.C. The day in question is September 21, 1939. A partial listing of the schedule:

12:30 Road of Life (soap)
12:45 This Day Is Ours (soap)
1:00 Sunshine Report (news)
1:15 The Life & Love of Dr. Susan (soap)
1:30 Your Family and Mine (soap)
1:45 News
2:00 President Roosevelt's Address to Congress (speech)
2:40 Premier Edouard Daladier
3:00 Address Commentary (news)
3:15 The Career of Alice Blair (soap)
3:30 News (news)
3:42 Rhythm & Romance
3:45 Scattergood Baines
4:00 Baseball: Cleveland Indians at Washington Senators (sports)
5:15 The World Dances (music)
5:30 News (news)
5:45 Sports News (news)
6:00 Amos and Andy (comedy)

(via @ftrain)

Tags: audio radio

Updates on previous entries for May 14, 2013*

Wed, 15 May 2013 05:11 GMT

Angelina Jolie had a preventive double mastectomy orig. from May 14, 2013

* Q: Wha? A: These previously published entries have been updated with new information in the last 24 hours. You can find past updates here.

Tags: post updates

Social Roulette

Tue, 14 May 2013 21:44 GMT

1 in 6 chance of deleting your Facebook account and all posts

The Atlantic on Chris Hadfield return from the ISS

Tue, 14 May 2013 21:22 GMT

his Space Oddity cover is just amazing

Maddeningly simple game: Rebound

Tue, 14 May 2013 17:20 GMT

Two controls, one bouncing stick, uneven terrain that eventually falls out from under you, get the stick as far to the right as you can. Harder than it sounds. I got 107.04 on, like, my 2,341st try. (Cheat code: you can get pretty far just by holding 'A' down.) Also fun: seeing how far to the left you can get...I couldn't get much past -48.

Tags: video games

The Soviets cloned the Space Shuttle

Tue, 14 May 2013 15:35 GMT

How appropriate that at the height of the Cold War, in which the United States was attempting to spend the Soviet Union into collapse (a task at which they eventually succeeded), the Soviets cloned the buggiest, most inconsistant part of the US space program.

Called Buran (Russian for blizzard or snowstorm), the program was launched by the Kremlin as a reaction to NASA's space shuttle and an attempt to gain an edge in space against the backdrop of Ronald Reagan's "Star Wars" Strategic Defense Initiative. It was also an attempt to fulfill the Soviet Union's dream of reusable spacecraft and payloads, ideas that predated the American space program.

A massive effort began. Over a million and a half people worked on the multi-billion dollar project, while researchers developed new, elaborate schemes for Russian space exploration. Among other tasks, Russian scientists hoped that the Buran would be able to carry the space station back to Earth, and -- the reported reason for its inception -- to allow the USSR to carry out military attacks from space.

And from Maciej Ceglowski's epic takedown of the Shuttle program, this little tidbit:

The Soviet Shuttle, the Buran (snowstorm) was an aerodynamic clone of the American orbiter, but incorporated many original features that had been considered and rejected for the American program, such as all-liquid rocket boosters, jet engines, ejection seats and an unmanned flight capability. You know you're in trouble when the Russians are adding safety features to your design.

(via @Mike_FTW)

Tags: Buran Cold War Maciej Ceglowski NASA Soviet Union space Space Shuttle

Angelina Jolie had a preventive double mastectomy

Tue, 14 May 2013 13:50 GMT

In this morning's NY Times, Angelina Jolie writes about her decision to have a preventive double mastectomy to hopefully ward off cancer.

My mother fought cancer for almost a decade and died at 56. She held out long enough to meet the first of her grandchildren and to hold them in her arms. But my other children will never have the chance to know her and experience how loving and gracious she was.

We often speak of "Mommy's mommy," and I find myself trying to explain the illness that took her away from us. They have asked if the same could happen to me. I have always told them not to worry, but the truth is I carry a "faulty" gene, BRCA1, which sharply increases my risk of developing breast cancer and ovarian cancer.

It happens that just last night I read about the BRCA-1 gene in Siddhartha Mukhergee's excellent biography of cancer, The Emperor of All Maladies. This part is right near the end of the book:

Like cancer prevention, cancer screening will also be reinvigorated by the molecular understanding of cancer. Indeed, it has already been. The discovery of the BRCA genes for breast cancer epitomizes the integration of cancer screening and cancer genetics. In the mid-1990s, building on the prior decade's advances, researchers isolated two related genes, BRCA-1 and BRCA-2, that vastly increase the risk of developing breast cancer. A woman with an inherited mutation in BRCA-1 has a 50 to 80 percent chance of developing breast cancer in her lifetime (the gene also increases the risk for ovarian cancer), about three to five times the normal risk. Today, testing for this gene mutation has been integrated into prevention efforts. Women found positive for a mutation in the two genes are screened more intensively using more sensitive imaging techniques such as breast MRI. Women with BRCA mutations might choose to take the drug tamoxifen to prevent breast cancer, a strategy shown effective in clinical trials. Or, perhaps most radically, women with BRCA mutations might choose a prophylactic mastectomy of both breasts and ovaries before cancer develops, another strategy that dramatically decreases the chances of developing breast cancer.

Radical is an understatement...what a tough and brave decision to make. Again from the book, I liked this woman's take on it:

An Israeli woman with a BRCA-1 mutation who chose this strategy after developing cancer in one breast told me that at least part of her choice was symbolic. "I am rejecting cancer from my body," she said. "My breasts had become no more to me than a site for my cancer. They were of no more use to me. They harmed my body, my survival. I went to the surgeon and asked him to remove them."

The genetic testing company 23andme screens for three common types of mutation in the BRCA1 or BRCA2 genes:

Five to 10 percent of breast cancers occur in women with a genetic predisposition for the disease, usually due to mutations in either the BRCA1 or BRCA2 genes. These mutations greatly increase not only the risk for breast cancer in women, but also the risk for ovarian cancer in women as well as prostate and breast cancer among men. Hundreds of cancer-associated BRCA1 and BRCA2 mutations have been documented, but three specific BRCA mutations are worthy of note because they are responsible for a substantial fraction of hereditary breast cancers and ovarian cancers among women with Ashkenazi Jewish ancestry. The three mutations have also been found in individuals not known to have Ashkenazi Jewish ancestry, but such cases are rare.

23andme testing kits are only $99.

Update: Two things. First, and I hope this isn't actually necessary because you are all intelligent people who can read things and make up your own minds, but let me just state for the official record that you should never never never never NEVER take medical advice, inferred or otherwise, from celebrities or bloggers. Come on, seriously. If you're concerned, go see a doctor.

Two: I have no idea what the $99 23andme test covers with regard to BRCA1 and BRCA2 gene mutations beyond what the company states. The most comprehensive test for BRCA1 and BRCA2 mutations was developed by a company called Myriad Genetics and costs about $3000. Myriad has patented the genes, a decision that has been sharply criticized and is currently being decided by the Supreme Court.

But many doctors, patients and scientists aren't happy with the situation.

Some are offended by the very notion that a private company can own a patent based on a gene that was invented not by researchers in a lab but by Mother Nature. Every single cell in every single person has copies of the BRCA1 and BRCA2 genes.

Myriad officials say they deserves the patent because they invested a great deal of money to figure out the sequence and develop "synthetic molecules" based on that sequence that can be used to test the variants in a patient.

"We think it is right for a company to be able to own its discoveries, earn back its investment, and make a reasonable profit," the company wrote on its blog.

I do know the 23andme test covers something related to the BRCA1 and BRCA2 mutations...a friend of a friend did the 23andme test, tested positive for the BRCA1 mutation, and decided to have a preventive double mastectomy after consulting her doctor and further tests. (thx, mark, allison, and ★spavis)

Tags: 23andme Angelina Jolie books cancer genetics medicine science Siddhartha Mukhergee The Emperor of All Maladies

Updates on previous entries for May 13, 2013*

Tue, 14 May 2013 05:11 GMT

1927 color film of London orig. from May 13, 2013

* Q: Wha? A: These previously published entries have been updated with new information in the last 24 hours. You can find past updates here.

Tags: post updates

How Bing Crosby invented Silicon Valley, basically

Mon, 13 May 2013 17:58 GMT

The headline (How Bing Crosby and the Nazis Helped to Create Silicon Valley) glistens with Mashable-grade hyperbole, but watch as Paul Ford deftly and convincingly connects crooner Bing Crosby with a Nazi invention that helped power the invention of Silicon Valley.

Fast-forward into the mid-nineteen-forties. The Second World War had just ended. Americans were picking over the technological remains of German industry. One of the things they discovered was magnetic tape; the Nazis had been using tape recording to broadcast propaganda across time zones. It was a remarkable invention. Previous sound-recording technologies had used wax cylinders or discs, or delicate wires. But magnetic tape was remarkably fungible: it could be recorded over, cut and spliced together. Plus it sounded better.

Radio shows, however, were supposed to be live. Radio inherited its forms from vaudeville, from variety shows, and it was assumed that the artifice of pre-recording would diminish the audience's connection, at great risk to the sponsors. Crosby-a master of artifice-didn't buy that, according to "Bing Crosby: Crooner of the Century," by Richard Grudens. In 1946 he used his industry power-by then he was on top, one of the world's richest, most famous and intensely beloved celebrities-to step away from live broadcast by choosing a sponsor and network that would let him use large, wax discs. "Philco Radio Hour" d'ebuted in 1946 on ABC, at thirty-thousand dollars a week. Bob Hope was his first guest.

Tags: Bing Crosby Paul Ford

The proof "from outer space"

Mon, 13 May 2013 15:29 GMT

In August of 2012, mathematician Shinichi Mochizuki posted a series of four papers online that purported to prove the ABC Conjecture, "a famed, beguilingly simple number theory problem that had stumped mathematicians for decades". Then, nothing. Or nearly nothing.

The problem, as many mathematicians were discovering when they flocked to Mochizuki's website, was that the proof was impossible to read. The first paper, entitled "Inter-universal Teichmuller Theory I: Construction of Hodge Theaters," starts out by stating that the goal is "to establish an arithmetic version of Teichmuller theory for number fields equipped with an elliptic curve...by applying the theory of semi-graphs of anabelioids, Frobenioids, the etale theta function, and log-shells."

This is not just gibberish to the average layman. It was gibberish to the math community as well.

"Looking at it, you feel a bit like you might be reading a paper from the future, or from outer space," wrote Ellenberg on his blog.

But seeming jibberish by a genius might just be solid mathematics, but Mochizuki isn't doing much to help other mathematicians confirm or refute his assertions. Which raises an interesting point: mathematics isn't all just logic and truth...there's a social element to it as well.

"You don't get to say you've proved something if you haven't explained it," she says. "A proof is a social construct. If the community doesn't understand it, you haven't done your job."

(via @dunstan)

Tags: mathematics Shinichi Mochizuki

1927 color film of London

Mon, 13 May 2013 14:14 GMT

Claude Friese-Greene shot these scenes in color around London in 1927.

(thx, rob)

Update: This footage was taken from the British Film Institute's YouTube channel and it turns out there's tons of color footage Friese-Greene shot around Britain in the 1920s. Like farm laborers in Devon in 1924, a busking family in Scotland in 1926, the docks in Cardiff in 1926, and much more. (via @magnakai)

Tags: Claude Friese-Greene early color photography London video

GeoGuessr

Sat, 11 May 2013 06:18 GMT

teleport to a random place the Street View Car's been, and guess where you are

Slow motion video of kids trying new foods

Fri, 10 May 2013 21:03 GMT

Perfect for a slow Friday afternoon. Have a good weekend everyone.

Tags: food slow motion video

The seven-minute workout

Fri, 10 May 2013 19:45 GMT

According to science, you can achieve the results of a long run and a visit to weight room by doing "12 exercises deploying only body weight, a chair and a wall." And the whole thing only takes seven minutes.

"There's very good evidence" that high-intensity interval training provides "many of the fitness benefits of prolonged endurance training but in much less time," says Chris Jordan, the director of exercise physiology at the Human Performance Institute in Orlando, Fla., and co-author of the new article.

The themes and techniques of Steven Spielberg

Fri, 10 May 2013 18:36 GMT

A nice short analysis by filmmaker Steven Benedict of the themes expressed and techniques used by Steven Spielberg in his films.

Tags: movies Steven Benedict Steven Spielberg video

Stanley Kubrick: A Life in Pictures

Fri, 10 May 2013 16:00 GMT

Stanley Kubrick: A Life in Pictures is a documentary released in 2001 about Stanley Kubrick. Narrated by Tom Cruise, the film was directed by his long-time assistant Jan Harlan and features interviews of many actors from Kubrick's films as well as other noted directors like Spielberg and Scorsese. The entire thing is available on YouTube:

You can also rent/buy on Amazon or rent/buy on iTunes.

Tags: movies Stanley Kubrick

Time lapse satellite images, 1984-2012

Fri, 10 May 2013 14:51 GMT

Working with the USGS, NASA, and Time, Google has built a viewer for satellite image time lapses. Among the images are those of the deforestation of the Amazon rainforest, the retreat of an Alaskan glacier, and the growth of Dubai. You can also refocus the map on any other area you want. More info here and here's the extensive Time feature.

Tags: Google Google Maps maps

Who is Kickstarter for?

Thu, 09 May 2013 22:48 GMT

$400k pledged to 2,200 other projects by the Veronica Mars/Zach Braff first-time backers

Life in space

Thu, 09 May 2013 21:31 GMT

The quick progress of the US space program in the 1960s and 70s and the science fiction of the 70s and 80s seemed to point towards humans living permanently in space. What happened?

Ironically, our actual experiments in space living have largely reinforced this stark perspective. Real life in space is often cramped, unpleasant and even pointless. Some years back, I visited Star City near Moscow, the training centre for cosmonauts since Gagarin, where I had a chance to clamber inside a full-scale training mock-up of the Mir space station. The experience was more like residing inside a computer terminal than one of O'Neill's cylindrical islands, so proximate and abundant were tubes, wires, levers, buttons and unnameable gadgets.

More disorienting was the placement of controls and conveniences: because space was limited, these were distributed throughout the station without reference to Earthly gravity, thus making use of 'ceilings' as sleeping quarters, walls for toilet cubicles and virtually any other surface for any other activity. One could get used to such things (and you'd have to be a true cynic to tire of the view outside your window). But it's a far, far cry from strolling the wide corridors of the Starship Enterprise.

They promised us life in space, flying cars, and jetpacks but all we got were pocket-sized rectangles containing all human knowledge. FAIL.

Tags: science space

Hyperbole and a Half on depression, part two

Thu, 09 May 2013 19:55 GMT

19 months later, a followup to her last post

Protected bike lanes = good for business

Thu, 09 May 2013 19:20 GMT

Some interesting data about how protected bike lanes in NYC dramatically increased retail sales of local businesses.

A new study from the New York Department of Transportation shows that streets that safely accommodate bicycle and pedestrian travel are especially good at boosting small businesses, even in a recession.

NYC DOT found that protected bikeways had a significant positive impact on local business strength. After the construction of a protected bicycle lane on 9th Avenue, local businesses saw a 49% increase in retail sales. In comparison, local businesses throughout Manhattan only saw a 3% increase in retail sales.

And that's just one of the many tidbits from a NYC DOT report released last November (right around the time of Hurricane Sandy, which is probably why no one noticed at the time); read the whole report here:

Among them: "retail sales increased a whopping 172% after the city converted an underused parking area in Brooklyn into a pedestrian plaza", and traffic calming in the Bronx decreased speeding by ~30% and pedestrian crashes by 67%. (via @lhl)

Tags: business cities cycling NYC

GeoGuessr

Thu, 09 May 2013 17:40 GMT

This is like CSI for geography dorks: you're plopped into a random location on Google Street View and you have to guess where in the world you are. So much fun...you get to say "wait, zoom in, enhance, whoa, back up" to yourself while playing. My top score is 14103...what'd you get? p.s. Using Google in another tab is cheating! (thx, nick)

Tags: games geography Google Maps Google Street View

It's a bird, it's a plane, no, it's a bolide!

Thu, 09 May 2013 15:36 GMT

Since 861 AD, almost 35,000 meteorites were recorded hitting the Earth but only 1,045 were actually seen falling. This animated infographic is a good way to visualize the data. Bolides is the perfect domain name. (via @DavidGrann)

Tags: astronomy science space

Homemade inventions from China

Thu, 09 May 2013 14:49 GMT

This is amazing: Alan Taylor rounds up some homemade inventions from China, including DIY submarines, giant motorcycles, home-built robots, and can't-possibly-fly airplanes. I can't pick a favorite, but this homemade welding mask is outstanding:

Ok, and this giant motorcycle:

Oh, and this rickshaw-pulling robot:

And, and, and... (via @faketv)

Tags: Alan Taylor China photography

Updates on previous entries for May 8, 2013*

Thu, 09 May 2013 05:11 GMT

Is this a photo of Billy the Kid, Doc Holliday, Jesse James? orig. from May 08, 2013
Under pressure orig. from May 08, 2013
Steven Soderbergh: The state of cinema orig. from May 07, 2013

* Q: Wha? A: These previously published entries have been updated with new information in the last 24 hours. You can find past updates here.

Tags: post updates

Riding an icebreaker

Wed, 08 May 2013 20:25 GMT

Marine scientist Cassandra Brooks narrates a time lapse video of her two-month journey on an Antarctic icebreaker. High points: the ice ramming at 2:35 and the fishing penguins at the end.

Brooks blogged her journey for National Geographic. If you want to fall down the rabbit hole of how icebreakers are designed and how they differ from usual ships, Wikipedia is a good place to start.

For a ship to be considered an icebreaker, it requires three traits most normal ships lack: a strengthened hull, an ice-clearing shape, and the power to push through sea ice.

Tags: Cassandra Brooks time lapse video

Is this a photo of Billy the Kid, Doc Holliday, Jesse James?

Wed, 08 May 2013 17:38 GMT

This is purported to be a photo of (from l to r) Billy the Kid, Doc Holliday, Jesse James, and Charlie Bowdre.

The story goes that the photo was taken in 1879 in Las Vegas, New Mexico, at a time when each of the men may have been in town. It's entirely plausible that these men all met and posed for a photo, but as there doesn't appear to be any provenance for particular photo, we're left with trying to ID the long-dead from the very few authenticated photos that exist. So...maybe? But probably not? (via if charlie parker were a gunslinger...)

Update: Ah, here's an even better photo that's almost certainly mislabeled, purportedly featuring Wyatt Erp, Teddy Roosevelt, Doc Holliday, Bat Masterson, Butch Cassidy, and the Sundance Kid:

Contrast both of these photos with this (very real and accurately labeled) group photo of participants at the 1927 Solvay International Conference on Electrons and Photons:

Among those pictured are Albert Einstein, Marie Curie, Neils Bohr, Paul Dirac, Max Planck, Erwin Schrödinger, Wolfgang Pauli, Werner Heisenberg, Arthur Compton, and Hendrik Lorentz. (thx, mike)

Tags: Billy the Kid Charlie Bowdre Doc Holliday Jesse James photography

Under pressure

Wed, 08 May 2013 16:18 GMT

Damn! Watch this railroad tanker car instantly implode:

I couldn't find too much information on the source of this clip, but it appears to be part of a safety training video on the perils of improperly steam cleaning tanker cars. In the clip, the tanker car is filled with steam and the safety valves are disabled. The steam cools, then condenses, the pressure inside drops, and the pressure difference is big enough to crumple that huge railcar like a napkin.

Update: See also "sun kink", when railroad tracks buckle in intense heat:

An explanation of the effect can be found here. (thx, will)

Tags: physics science video

US gun homicide rate down 49% over last 20 years

Wed, 08 May 2013 15:10 GMT

The national rates of gun violence and homicide in the US have fallen significantly in past 20 years, but most people are unaware. From a recently released Pew Research report:

Nearly all the decline in the firearm homicide rate took place in the 1990s; the downward trend stopped in 2001 and resumed slowly in 2007. The victimization rate for other gun crimes plunged in the 1990s, then declined more slowly from 2000 to 2008. The rate appears to be higher in 2011 compared with 2008, but the increase is not statistically significant. Violent non-fatal crime victimization overall also dropped in the 1990s before declining more slowly from 2000 to 2010, then ticked up in 2011.

Despite national attention to the issue of firearm violence, most Americans are unaware that gun crime is lower today than it was two decades ago. According to a new Pew Research Center survey, today 56% of Americans believe gun crime is higher than 20 years ago and only 12% think it is lower.

The whys behind the drop in gun violence (and in crime in general) are more difficult to come by:

There is consensus that demographics played some role: The outsized post-World War II baby boom, which produced a large number of people in the high-crime ages of 15 to 20 in the 1960s and 1970s, helped drive crime up in those years.

A review by the National Academy of Sciences of factors driving recent crime trends (Blumstein and Rosenfeld, 2008) cited a decline in rates in the early 1980s as the young boomers got older, then a flare-up by mid-decade in conjunction with a rising street market for crack cocaine, especially in big cities. It noted recruitment of a younger cohort of drug seller with greater willingness to use guns. By the early 1990s, crack markets withered in part because of lessened demand, and the vibrant national economy made it easier for even low-skilled young people to find jobs rather than get involved in crime.

At the same time, a rising number of people ages 30 and older were incarcerated, due in part to stricter laws, which helped restrain violence among this age group. It is less clear, researchers say, that innovative policing strategies and police crackdowns on use of guns by younger adults played a significant role in reducing crime.

(via hacker news)

Tags: crime guns murder USA

How to prevent protests in China

Wed, 08 May 2013 13:59 GMT

Taking a page from Orwell, officials in Chengdu, China endeavored to prevent recent protests by moving the weekend and scheduling security exercises at the same time and place as the scheduled protest.

As text messages circulated calling for another protest, authorities decided to fiddle with the calendar: For many, Saturday became a workday, and the day of rest was moved to Monday, May 6. So as Saturday dawned, schoolchildren straggled reluctantly back to class, and employees at government-run work units discovered the day was taken up by urgent meetings.

But the more radical steps involved brutalizing the addicts themselves. Saakashvili mandated as aggressive a drug policy as any country has attempted since Mao Zedong threatened to execute all Chinese opium fiends and "cured" about five million of them overnight. If you think New York's stop-and-frisk rule is invasive, try Georgia's: Cops can stop anyone at any time for no reason and force him to urinate into a cup. Fifty-three thousand people were stopped on the street in 2007, or about one in 20 of the young men in Georgia. About a third of those passed dirty urine; first-offenders were levied a fine of several hundred dollars. One more dirty test amounted to a criminal offense.

"There was such an unprecedented drug war," Otiashvili says. "What was going on-and still goes on-in Georgia doesn't happen anywhere. No country puts people in the prison for a positive urine test."

(via @tylercowen)

Tags: China drugs Georgia politics

Sandra Day O'Connor's Bush vs. Gore mistake

Wed, 08 May 2013 13:22 GMT

Former Supreme Court Justice Sandra Day O'Connor now admits that taking on the Bush vs Gore case in 2000 was probably a mistake.

"It took the case and decided it at a time when it was still a big election issue," O'Connor said during a talk with the Chicago Tribune's Editorial Board on Friday. "Maybe the court should have said, 'We're not going to take it, goodbye.'"

The case, she said, "stirred up the public" and "gave the court a less than perfect reputation."

"Obviously the court did reach a decision and thought it had to reach a decision," she said. "It turned out the election authorities in Florida hadn't done a real good job there and kind of messed it up. And probably the Supreme Court added to the problem at the end of the day."

[Hair tearing-out noise]

Tags: legal politics Sandra Day O'Connor Supreme Court

Pong in pure CSS3

Wed, 08 May 2013 06:32 GMT

no Javascript

Upstream Color now on sale through VHX

Wed, 08 May 2013 02:16 GMT

only a month after the theatrical release

Steven Soderbergh: The state of cinema

Tue, 07 May 2013 22:05 GMT

At the recent San Francisco Internation Film Festival, Steven Soderbergh gave a keynote about the current state of cinema. It is worth reading if you enjoy movies or are engaged in any sort of creative work.

But before we talk about movies we should talk about art in general, if that's possible. Given all the incredible suffering in the world I wonder, what is art for, really? If the collected works of Shakespeare can't prevent genocide then really, what is it for? Shouldn't we be spending the time and resources alleviating suffering and helping other people instead of going to the movies and plays and art installations? When we did Ocean's Thirteen the casino set used $60,000 of electricity every week. How do you justify that? Do you justify that by saying, the people who could've had that electricity are going to watch the movie for two hours and be entertained - except they probably can't, because they don't have any electricity, because we used it. Then I think, what about all the resources spent on all the pieces of entertainment? What about the carbon footprint of getting me here? Then I think, why are you even thinking that way and worrying about how many miles per gallon my car gets, when we have NASCAR, and monster truck pulls on TV? So what I finally decided was, art is simply inevitable. It was on the wall of a cave in France 30,000 years ago, and it's because we are a species that's driven by narrative. Art is storytelling, and we need to tell stories to pass along ideas and information, and to try and make sense out of all this chaos. And sometimes when you get a really good artist and a compelling story, you can almost achieve that thing that's impossible which is entering the consciousness of another human being - literally seeing the world the way they see it. Then, if you have a really good piece of art and a really good artist, you are altered in some way, and so the experience is transformative and in the minute you're experiencing that piece of art, you're not alone. You're connected to the arts. So I feel like that can't be too bad.

Update: If you prefer to watch the speech, have at it:

(via @MikeShefferNJ)

Tags: movies Steven Soderbergh

The Humble Bundle Double Fine Bundle

Tue, 07 May 2013 21:21 GMT

ridiculously amazing deal, and a very creepy Tim Schafer video

Return of the CSS Zen Garden

Tue, 07 May 2013 21:10 GMT

revived on its ten year anniversary

Debunking criticism of NYC's bike-share program

Tue, 07 May 2013 19:51 GMT

NYC is set to introduce their bike-share program at the end of the month. I think it's a great idea and am interested to follow how it does in practice. Many have objected to the share program even before it starts (reminding me of the smoking ban protests, ultimately much ado about nothing) but Sommer Mathis does an admirable job heading them off.

Claim #3: The stations are too ugly for historic neighborhoods, and Citibank's sponsorship is too crassly commercial.

These are just some of the claims behind a series of lawsuits that are already in the works, brought by specific building owners who argue that docking stations don't belong next to their beautiful buildings. They're also worried that delivery truck access may be impeded by the presence of some stations. The lawsuits are being filed within the context of additional complaints that neighbors feel they weren't consulted on the location of some stations, despite the city's department of transportation having held nearly 400 meetings on station locations with community boards and other neighborhood groups. This is a classic NIMBY reaction, and by far the easiest one the city could have predicted. The idea that bike-share infrastructure is somehow uglier or more commercial than any other element of New York's streetscape is easy enough to debunk. But the truth is, one of the best things about the design of the Alta bike-share stations is how easy they are to install and, if need be, later remove. It's entirely possible that small problems with the specific locations of some stations will become apparent after the program launches, and they'll need to be moved around the corner or across the street to better serve users. This has happened here in Washington, D.C., and it'll happen for sure in New York. But that's all part of the bike-share roll-out process. If there's a legitimate problem with the location of a single station, that can actually be fixed within in a matter of hours or at worst, a day or two.

Our neighborhood newspaper went full-NIMBY about the bike-share this week and hit all the major points addressed in this article, including the ridiculous "bike racks are taking valuable parking spots" one. (via @jmseabrook)

Tags: Citi Bike cycling NYC Sommer Mathis

NYC's broken food cart system

Tue, 07 May 2013 18:18 GMT

Adam Davidson on the asinine and broken food truck/cart system in NYC. This short paragraph not only explains what's wrong with the food cart biz in NYC but also with American politics in general:

Economically speaking, the problem is a standard one, known as the J-curve, which represents a downslope on a graph followed by a steep rise. Some sensible changes to the current food-vendor system may have long-term benefits for everyone, but the immediate impact could spell short-term losses for those who now profit from the system. A small group of New Yorkers -- particularly owners of commissaries and physical restaurants -- are highly motivated to lobby politicians not to change things. And most of the potential beneficiaries don't realize they're missing out. Many of the rest of us would love to have more varied food trucks, but we don't care enough to pressure the City Council.

(via @tylercowen)

Tags: Adam Davidson food NYC

The NY Times' dumb anti-profanity policy

Tue, 07 May 2013 16:18 GMT

PepsiCo is dropping Lil Wayne as a Mountain Dew spokesman because of "vulgar lyrics" referring to Emmett Till after the Till family put pressure on the beverage giant. What lyrics? Because of its ridiculous policy against including bad words in such an august publication, the NY Times doesn't even say what the lyrics are! Which makes the entire article worthless from a journalistic perspective. The lyrics are the entire story...without them, it's just a bunch of press release bullshit. FYI, because we are all adults here (and your kids already know the lyrics), here are the lyrics in question courtesy of Rap Genius:

Pop a lot of pain pills
Bout to put rims on my skateboard wheels
Beat that pussy up like Emmett Till
Yeah....
Two cell phones ringin' at the same time
That's your ho, callin' from two different phones
Tell that bitch "leave me the fuck alone!"
See, you fuck her wrong, and I fuck her long
I got a love-hate relationship with Molly
I'd rather pop an ollie, and my dick is a trolly
Boy, I'll bury you like Halle

How can people even discuss the artistic merit and/or offensiveness of the lyrics if you can't print them? The Times should either simply publish whatever it is they are talking about or not run the story at all. (via @bdeskin, who has been giving the Times shit about their profanity policy on Twitter)

Tags: journalism Lil Wayne music NY Times PepsiCo

How much would it cost to store every phone call in the USA?

Mon, 06 May 2013 21:22 GMT

Neil ran the numbers and guesses around 130 TB/day

Guillotine simulator for Oculus Rift

Mon, 06 May 2013 21:21 GMT

are we in Black Mirror territory yet?

How one EVE Online player nearly crashed the market with a single useless item

Mon, 06 May 2013 20:39 GMT

they're planning a TV series based on player stories

Dan Kaminsky on Bitcoin

Mon, 06 May 2013 20:31 GMT

"It would take a massive, society-rending effort against general purpose computing to really keep Bitcoin down." [via]

Quotes from Silk Road's anonymous founder

Mon, 06 May 2013 20:27 GMT

more communicative than Bitcoin's elusive creator

Geometee

Mon, 06 May 2013 20:26 GMT

procedurally-generated t-shirt designs

Spelunky Dance

Mon, 06 May 2013 18:23 GMT

an interpretive dance based on Spelunky, inspired by my tweet, with a cameo by Spelunky creator Derek Yu; the leaked cam

NYT Magazine profile on Y Combinator and demo day

Fri, 03 May 2013 20:01 GMT

funny that "organically" is a curse word in the valley

Tender moments caught on Russian dashcams

Fri, 03 May 2013 19:20 GMT

patiently waiting for a compilation of interesting moments captured by Scoble's glasses

Jason Collins isn't the first openly gay male in pro sports

Fri, 03 May 2013 19:09 GMT

the story of baseball's Glenn Burke, who co-invented the high five