Cap'n Crunch's full name is Captain Horatio Magellan Crunch.
In order to minimize recovery time and scarring, doctors are attempting to make use of existing holes in the body for surgery instead of making new ones. "Much of the discomfort and recovery time after conventional surgery -- even keyhole surgery -- is due to the incisions made in the abdominal wall. However, because transgastric surgeons reach the abdominal cavity through the mouth, there is no need for an incision, so patients should be back up on their feet much faster."
Jamie reviews some online wake-up services. "when you select the secureawake feature, snoozester will attempt to call you every 3 minutes for 20 minutes until you answer the call and indicate that you are awake."
While working on a particle accelerator, Anatoli Bugorski accidentally put his head into the proton stream. "The left half of Bugorski's face swelled up beyond recognition, and over the next several days started peeling off, showing the path that the proton beam (moving near the speed of light) had burned through parts of his face, his bone, and the brain tissue underneath." Some photos here. (via cyn-c)
Photographs of novelist Will Self's writing room, seemingly wallpapered by Post-Its. (via moon river)
One meal at Per Se has as many calories as 4.5 Big Macs, about a whopping 2400 calories. (via eater)
Atul Gawande on the state of health care for the elderly. "Mainstream doctors are turned off by geriatrics, and that's because they do not have the faculties to cope with the Old Crock. The Old Crock is deaf. The Old Crock has poor vision. The Old Crock's memory might be somewhat impaired. With the Old Crock, you have to slow down, because he asks you to repeat what you are saying or asking. And the Old Crock doesn't just have a chief complaint -- the Old Crock has fifteen chief complaints. How in the world are you going to cope with all of them? You're overwhelmed." This article depressed the hell out of me.
Bread is dangerous. Here are some frightening stats: "More than 90 percent of violent crimes are committed within 24 hours of eating bread" and "Bread is made from a substance called 'dough.' It has been proven that as little as one pound of dough can be used to suffocate a mouse. The average American eats more bread than that in one month!"
This beta version of the AOL site looks a bit familar. (thx, skamptacular)
The NYC restaurant scene has peaked. I more or less agree.
Ways in which working on kottke.org is like gardening
- Pruning the list of RSS feeds I follow.
- Digging.
- Writing about hoes.
- Keeping deer out of the <p>s.
- Growing my traffic.
- Worrying about bees.
- (Com)posting links?
- Weeding out spam from comment threads.
- ^s.
- There's never enough thyme.
- Wondering about the weather.
Some lawyer is suing his dry-cleaner for $65 million because they lost his pants. God, I hate lawyers. (Not you, I like you.)
It's ok if you enjoy pretending to talk like a cat, but don't sucker yourself into thinking that it's anything more than April Fools' Day non-humor on every single day of the year.
Might be a little slow today on the ol' kottke.org. It's raining, some dude died and a bunch of techy/copyrighty blogs are sorta trying not to dance on his grave, and I'm wishing a long walk off a short pier to a bunch of alpha male, loudmouth, know-it-all bloggers who are calling the kettle black to a degree way past insanity (or is that inanity?). Isn't it time you all shipped off to the Grey Havens or something? Sometimes I really don't like this blogos-whatever that we've all built for ourselves...don't we deserve better? That and the internet appears to be completely empty today, devoid of any new information. Melodramatically yours,
The Onion: "Despite the existence of cinema classics such as Citizen Kane, The Godfather, and Seven Samurai, the 2004 film Garden State starring Zach Braff and Natalie Portman is some poor fuck's favorite movie."
Video of Rodrigo y Gabriela performing at PopTech. Here's my writeup from October. What isn't apparent from the video (at least through my puny laptop speakers) is how loud the bass was from them thumping their guitars.
The cashier at Barnes and Noble, she sure saw me coming. "You trying to catch up before Book 7 comes out?"
"Yes'm," I said, staring at my shoes. My vacation reading plan had gotten me hooked on the Potter series and I was now devouring the series at a work-shirking rate. Oh sugary literature, I can't resist you! The first three books were bit boring (I'd already seen the movies) and had I not been on vacation, I might have given up on the whole thing. I decided to press on, and, like my friend Adriana assured me, it started to get more interesting about halfway through Goblet of Fire when Rowling starts pulling back the curtain on an entire world of wizardry and backstory. I raced through Order of the Phoenix and Half-Blood Prince. Since I somehow hadn't heard any spoilers about the series, the end of HBP left me reeling, my mind racing, my body jonesing for another hit. _______ killed ____________!!!1!1ONE!
That was all a few weeks ago. The other day, I did a very bad thing. While in the bookstore on non-Potter-related business, I stopped by the kids section to see if they carried a book that my friend David had alerted me to, Mugglenet.Com's What Will Happen in Harry Potter 7 (warning: spoilers). When David told me about it, I was adamant about not wanting to know anything about Deathly Hallows before it comes out. But now that I was confronted with the thing in person, I was unable to resist taking a peek at the table of contents. Snape. RAB! Horcrux!! Are my pet theories true? I flipped through a couple of chapters, little kids flowing around me in the aisle, feeling exhilarated (and a little disappointed) that the authors' theories agreed with mine and ashamed at what I'd become, a 33-yo man with deeply held theories about future plot developments in a children's book series.
My willpower finally returned and I returned the book to its shelf, but I think I might go back for it. I just need to think of a good hiding place so that Meg doesn't catch me with it. I fear for the future of my marriage and, more importantly, the fates of Harry, Hermione, and Ron! Hurry July 21, you cannot come soon enough.
Michael Pollan blasts the current US farm bill, saying that all the subsudies for corn, soy, wheat, etc. drive down the price of unhealthy foods relative to healthful foods like carrots, making the bil responsible for the obesity and over-nutrition of the country's population, especially the poor. "A public-health researcher from Mars might legitimately wonder why a nation faced with what its surgeon general has called 'an epidemic' of obesity would at the same time be in the business of subsidizing the production of high-fructose corn syrup. But such is the perversity of the farm bill: the nation's agricultural policies operate at cross-purposes with its public-health objectives."
Andrew of Songs To Wear Pants To makes songs from suggestions you send him. You can even commission a song from him for a special occasion like a birthday or anniversary. Recent tracks include a Tetris rap and a song written for a guy who likes a girl but doesn't know how to express it (she's got "beautiful light blue eyes, long brown hair, and great athletic body" which Andrew translates as "I don't even care about her personality" in the song).
Arkansan blames liberal Congress for a particularly hot March, made so by daylight saving time. "You would think that members of Congress would have considered the warming effect that an extra hour of daylight would have on our climate." Who needs The Onion with Connie M. Meskimen around? (The headline seems to be misspelled as well..."warning" should be "warming", yeah?)
Update: Phew, we still need The Onion...the letter is probably a joke. (thx, stephen)
Designer Eddie Jabbour is on a mission to make a new NYC subway map. The NY Times recently had a piece of Jabbour's efforts. The new map reminds some of Massimo Vignelli's 1972 classic map: too abstract for its own good. Here's Vignelli talking about his map in an outtake from Helvetica and some background on the controversy surrounding it.
A personal experience with and a decision on the abortion issue. "I think about all those meddling politicians that would want to interject themselves into everything that just happened to me, interject themselves between me, my wife, and her doctors."
Confession: I collected stickers when I was a kid. Put them in books. I remember most of these scratch 'n sniffs. Now I collect links and ideas...I wish they scratched 'n sniffed. (via quipsologies)
If you want, you can use your inkjet printer to print out Super 8 of 16mm film strips. (via bb)
Due to problems off the field, defensive tackle Walter Thomas hasn't played a lot of college ball. But his stats -- 6-foot-5, 370 pounds, XXXXXXL jersey, runs the 40 in 4.9, can do backflips and handsprings, benches 475 pounds -- guarantee that he'll be drafted into the NFL this weekend. Shades of Michael Oher, Michael Lewis' subject in The Blind Side. Also, this may be the first NY Times article to use the phrase "dadgum Russian gymnast".
Meta-Free-Phor-All
Sean Penn and Stephen Colbert competing in a metaphor competition:
Good lord that's funny.
In praise of Wonder Bread and other pseudo-food delicacies. I have a weakness for white bread, Kraft singles, Hellmann's, and Snickers bars, among other things.
Some have advised Roger Ebert not to attend his yearly film festival because of his changed physical appearance due to recent cancer surgery. Ebert says nuts to that...he may look a little strange, but his brain still works, his thumbs still go up and down, and he can type his columns just fine. "We spend too much time hiding illness. There is an assumption that I must always look the same. I hope to look better than I look now. But I'm not going to miss my festival." I love Roger Ebert.
Shoulda, woulda, coulda
Last night, Ken Griffey Jr. hit the 564th home run of his career to move into 10th place on the all-time list. Reading about his accomplishment, I was surprised he was so far up on the list, given the number of injuries he's had since coming into the league in 1989. That got me wondering about what might have been had Griffey stayed healthy throughout his career...if he would have lived up to the promise of his youth when he was predicted to become one of the game's all-time greats.
Looking at his stats, I assumed a full season to be 155 games and extrapolated what his home run total would have been for each season after his rookie year in which he played under 155 games. Given that methodology, Griffey would have hit about 687 home runs up to this point. In two of those seasons, 1995 and 2002, his adjusted home run numbers were far below the usual because of injuries limiting his at-bats and effectiveness at the plate. Further adjusting those numbers brings the total up to 717 home runs, good for 3rd place on the all-time list and a race to the top with Barry Bonds.
Of course, if you're going to play what-if, Babe Ruth had a couple of seasons in which he missed a lot of games and also played in the era of the 154-game season. Willie Mays played a big chunk of his career in the 154-game season era as well. Ted Williams, while known more for hitting for average, missed a lot of games for WWII & the Korean War (almost 5 full seasons) and played in the 154-game season era...and still hit 521 home runs.
Scientists have found an Earth-like planet orbiting one of the closest stars to our solar system. "On the treasure map of the universe, one would be tempted to mark this planet with an X."
Mike Monteiro mocks up a cover for Post & Permalink, my suggested fake blogging magazine from last night's post about the should-be-fake Blogger & Podcaster.
Typographic map of London. That is, a map made of type (like Paula Scher's paintings) not a map of typography in London. (via moon river)
Now witness the firepower of this fully armed and operational battle encyclopedia. See also fully armed and operational battle Cuisinart, fully armed and operational battle shed, fully armed and operational battle blog, and fully armed and operational battle subwoofer.
List of the seven most overrated Hollywood actors, including Ben Kingsley, Kate Hudson, and Ben Stiller, a personal unfavorite of mine. (via house next door)
James Simons, hedge fund manager, earned $1.7 billion last year. $1.7 fucking billion! His company charges fees of 5% of assets and 44% of profits while the fund grossed 84% this year. Can one person add $1.7 billion of value to the economy? Something is wrong here.
Timeline of a 2003 Shabu party in Denver. Shabu is chemlab-pure methamphetamine. "The rush of Shabu itself is freakishly powerful. A single minuscule hit -- about one-tenth of a gram, vaporized and inhaled -- is enough to keep a weekend warrior like Nick riding the lightning for twelve hours. The statuette on Nick's coffee table, cut into tiny pieces and smoked, holds about 250 hits." (via tmn)
The Fat Duck, one of molecular gastronomy's main outposts, recently offered a course complete with its own soundtrack served up on iPods shuffle. "Heston Blumenthal, the chef, said he wanted to experiment with using sound to enhance a dining experience. Hence the iPod, playing the soothing sound of the sea breeze and waves gently caressing the seashore."
Coda
Panic has released Coda, a new web development app for OS X. Panic co-founder Cabel Sasser describes it thusly:
We build websites by hand, with code, and we've long since dreamed of streamlining the experience, bringing together all of the tools that we needed into a single, elegant window. While you can certainly pair up your favorite text editor with Transmit today, and then maybe have Safari open for previews, and maybe use Terminal for running queries directly or a CSS editor for editing your style sheets, we dreamed of a place where all of that can happen in one place.
Ever since I switched to a Mac, I've been seeking a suitable replacement/upgrade for Homesite. I limped along unsatisfied with BBEdit and am finally getting into the groove with TextMate, but the inter-app switching -- especially between the editor, FTP client, and the terminal -- was really getting me down. John Gruber has a nice preview/review of Coda:
Each of Coda's components offers decidedly fewer features than the leading standalone apps dedicated to those tasks. (With the possible exception of the terminal - I mean, come on, it's a terminal.) This isn't a dirty secret, or the unfortunate downside of Coda only being a 1.0. Surely Coda will sprout many new features in the future, but it's never going to pursue any of these individual apps in terms of feature parity.
The appeal of Coda cannot be expressed solely by any comparison of features. The point is not what it does, but it how it feels to use it. The essential aspects of Coda aren't features in its components, but rather the connections between components.
Panic's implicit argument with Coda is that there are limits to the experience of using a collection of separate apps; that they can offer a better experience - at least in certain regards - by writing a meta app comprising separate components than they could even by writing their own entire suite of standalone web apps. Ignore, for the moment, the time and resource limitations of a small company such as Panic, and imagine a Panic text editor app, a Panic CSS editor app, a Panic web browser, a Panic file transfer/file browser app - add them all together and you'd wind up with more features, but you'd miss the entire point.
Panic co-founders Steven Frank and Cabel Sasser both weigh in on the launch. Has anyone given Coda a shot yet? How do you find it? I'm hoping to find some time later today to check it out and will attempt to report back.
Is Spiderman 3 the most expensive movie ever made? "With marketing and promotion factored in, the total price tag will approach half a billion dollars -- positioning Spider-Man 3 as the most expensive movie of all time."
The NY Times has an excerpt of the first chapter of The Black Swan by Nassim Taleb. Accompanying the excerpt is a review by Gregg Easterbrook. "History, he writes, proceeds by 'jumps,' controlled by 'the tyranny of the singular, the accidental, the unseen and the unpredicted.'" Sounds like punctuated equilibrium.
I'm still recovering from the shock upon learning last week that Blogger & Podcaster magazine is in fact real. I thought it was a not-so-clever parody. I mean, look at that cover, it's just so over the top! (If I were to start a fictional magazine about blogging, I'd call it Post & Permalink in homage to Field & Stream).
The international trailer for Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix. I am officially as hooked on Harry as everyone else.
Update: And here's the US trailer...slightly different footage.
I've had this photo up in my browser for a few hours now and every so often, I'll sneak away from what I'm doing and take a peek at it. I love the feeling of motion and its capture: the boy and the pigeon captured by the camera, the pigeon's shadow captured by the sidewalk, the momentum of an unseen car captured by the now-bent steel of the firebox.
The long-term success of films isn't always determined by how they did at the box office. Traffic made $124 million at the box office in 2000 while Requiem for a Dream made only $3.6 million ($9.50 of which was mine), but Requiem gets rented 33 percent more from Netflix than Traffic. 'It's almost impossible to go onto someone's MySpace page now and not find a reference to [the Coen brothers'] "The Big Lebowski" or [Terry Gilliam's] "Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas"' - two movies that caused barely a ripple in the theaters."
Time to lower the drinking age? "The age at highest risk for an alcohol-related auto fatality is 21, followed by 22 and 23, an indication that delaying first exposure to alcohol until young adults are away from home may not be the best way to introduce them to drink."
Great interview with Hendrik Hertzberg, who writes about politics for the New Yorker. "The quality of our members of Congress is lower than similar bodies in Europe. I don't think the moral qualities are lower, but in terms of experience and expertise and knowledge of the world, they're much lower. And it's lower because the geographic basis for advancement is qualitatively different than any other field. Imagine if our music industry were geographically based, if hits were proportioned by district. Or literature or business..."
In addition to a just-launched redesign, outside.in took a look at their data for the past six months and came up with a list of the "bloggiest neightborhoods" in the US. "The results below are based on a number of variables: total number of posts, total number of local bloggers, number of comments and Technorati ranking for the bloggers." Interestingly (but upon reflection, not surprisingly), most of the places listed are in the process of gentrifying. Disclosure: I am an advisor to outside.in.
A letter from the Paleoanthropology Division of the Smithsonian Institute: "We have given this specimen a careful and detailed examination, and regret to inform you that we disagree with your theory that it represents 'conclusive proof of the presence of Early Man in Charleston County two million years ago.' Rather, it appears that what you have found is the head of a Barbie doll, of the variety one of our staff, who has small children, believes to be the 'Malibu Barbie.'"
Update: Not that there was any doubt that this isn't a real letter, here's the confirmation. (thx, sam & sheldon)
Listeningtowords looks like the beginning of a nice resource for sharing/discussing freely available audio files of lectures. Lots of stuff here I've never seen before.
I'm not going to lie to you...I didn't read this whole thing, but I found the sprinkled-in UI redesigns of Amazon's book listings and other online retail interfaces interesting. (thx, drew)
Results of the The Word-Lovers' Boot Camp held by Erin McKean at Gel 2007. Boot campers were encouraged to create a new word of their choosing. The winning word was "crappyjack", meaning "any kind of empty, snacky junk food". David Yee's ubiquinpotaqueous means "the state of water in which it is everywhere, and yet there is not a drop of it to drink". Matt Haughey didn't attend the boot camp but contributes this late entry: "decursivication. n. The process of losing one's penmanship, thanks to automatic billing and an increasingly electronic world."
Tomorrow's New Yorker today
I might be shooting myself in the foot by posting this, but the table of contents for the newest issue of the New Yorker is usually available on Sunday on newyorker.com, the day before the issue hits the newsstands and arrives in subscriber mailboxes. All you need to do is hack the URL of the TOC from the previous Monday. Here's the URL for the April 23 TOC:
http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/toc/2007/04/23/toc_20070416
"2007/04/23" is the date of the issue and "toc_20070416" refers to the date of the posting. This then is the URL for the April 30 issue:
http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/toc/2007/04/30/toc_20070423
At right is the cover for tomorrow's issue, which includes Adam Gopnik's piece on the Virginia Tech shooting, a new piece by Atul Gawande, and Anthony Lane's review of Hot Fuzz. Monday's New Yorker on Sunday is usually only available to the select few of the Manhattan media elite who are sped their new issues hot off the presses. Now everyone can have a similar experience on the web.
Enjoy.
What kind of art is film? High art? Mass art? Photographic art? Narrative art?
A pair of NYC photographs from Shorpy today: Penn Station in 1910 and a scene from outside Grand Central Terminal in 1908.
Jake's featuring a photo today of some NYC street art by Bloke, who does paper-plane pieces. I'm a sucker for dashed lines.
Update: More stuff by Bloke here. (thx, daniel)
Big Box Watch is a map that displays future big box store openings in the US. The site currently tracks Best Buy, Home Depot, Ikea, JCPenney, Kohl's, Lowe's, Target, and Wal-Mart.
WorldChanging: make this Earth Day the last one. "Earth Day accomplished its mission; the environment is now near the top of the global agenda. By making this Earth Day our last, we can signal that the time for mere awareness is over, and the time for real transformation has arrived."
Cynical-C is keeping track of what the media is blaming for the Virginia Tech murders. So far, the list runs to more than 30 items, including South Korea, Bill Gates, the second amendment, violent video games, and cowardly students.
Following up on my post about gender diversity at web conferences, Jeffrey Zeldman of An Event Apart commissioned a study by hiring "researchers at The New York Public Library to find out everything that is actually known about the percentage of women in our field, and their positions relative to their male colleagues". "There is no data on web design and web designers. Web design is twelve years old, employs hundreds of thousands (if not millions), and generates billions, so you'd think there would be some basic research data available on it, but there ain't." I found the same thing when poking around for a bit back in February. They do have stats for IT workers in general...men outnumber women by over 3-to-1 and that gap is growing.
Update: NY Times: "Yet even as [undergraduate women] approach or exceed enrollment parity in mathematics, biology and other fields, there is one area in which their presence relative to men is static or even shrinking: computer science." (thx, meg)
Children 8-12 years old view an average of 21 TV commercials for food. 2-7 year-olds view about 12 ads per day. (via 3qd)
The first rough sketch of what became Twitter (previously called stat.us and twttr). (via preoccupations)
Comparison between food pictured in fast food advertising and how the food looks when you actually get it from the restaurant. The Whopper is particularly beauty and the beast.
Pagination and Page-View Juicing are Evil. "The realistic ones at least admit that it's a cheap way to boost stats. The disingenuous (or naive) ones actually posit that they are improving readability and usability for their audiences by reducing scrolling. Because scrolling is so hard." See also my pagination tantrum.
Dave Chappelle recently performed a set at a comedy club lasting more than 6 hours. Most of the audience stayed the whole time, until 4:43 am. (via tumbledry)
Last 100 posts, part 7
It's been awhile since I've done one of these. Here are some updates on some of the topics, links, ideas, posts, people, etc. that have appeared on kottke.org recently:
Two counterexamples to the assertion that cities != organisms or ecosystems: cancer and coral reefs. (thx, neville and david)
In pointing to the story about Ken Thompson's C compiler back door, I forgot to note that the backdoor was theoretical, not real. But it could have easily been implemented, which was Thompson's whole point. A transcript of his original talk is available on the ACM web site. (thx, eric)
ChangeThis has a "manifesto" by Nassim Taleb about his black swan idea. But reader Jean-Paul says that Taleb's idea is not that new or unique. In particular, he mentions Alain Badiou's Being and Event, Jacques Derrida, and Gilles Deleuze. (thx, paul & jean-paul)
When I linked The Onion's 'Most E-Mailed' List Tearing New York Times' Newsroom Apart, I said "I'd rather read a real article on the effect the most popular lists have on the decisions made by the editorial staff at the Times, the New Yorker, and other such publications". American Journalism Review published one such story last summer, as did the Chicago Tribune's Hypertext blog and the LA Times (abstract only). (thx, gene & adam)
Related to Kate Spicer's attempt to slim down to a size zero in 6 weeks: Female Body Shape in the 20th Century. (thx, energy fiend)
Got the following query from a reader:
are those twitter updates on your blog updated automatically when you update your twitter? if so, how did you do it?
A couple of weeks ago, I added my Twitter updates and recent music (via last.fm) into the front page flow (they're not in the RSS feed, for now). Check out the front page and scroll down a bit if you want to check them out. The Twitter post is updated three times a week (MWF) and includes my previous four Twitter posts. I use cron to grab the RSS file from Twitter, some PHP to get the recent posts, and some more PHP to stick it into the flow. The last.fm post works much the same way, although it's only updated once a week and needs a splash of something to liven it up a bit.
The guy who played Spaulding in Caddyshack is a real estate broker in the Boston area. (thx, ivan)
Two reading recommendations regarding the Jonestown documentary: a story by Tim Cahill in A Wolverine Is Eating My Leg and Seductive Poison by former People's Temple member Deborah Layton. (thx, garret and andrea)
In case someone in the back didn't hear it, this map is not from Dungeons and Dragons but from Zork/Dungeon. (via a surprising amount of people in a short period of time)
When reading about how low NYC's greenhouse gas emissions are relative to the rest of the US, keep in mind the area surrounding NYC (kottke.org link). "Think of Manhattan as a place which outsources its pollution, simply because land there is so valuable." (thx, bob)
NPR did a report on the Nickelback potential self-plagiarism. (thx, roman)
After posting about the web site for Miranda July's new book, several people reminded me that Jeff Bridges' site has a similar lo-fi, hand-drawn, narrative-driven feel.
In the wake of linking to the IMDB page for Back to the Future trivia, several people reminded me of the Back to the Future timeline, which I linked to back in December. A true Wikipedia gem.
I'm ashamed to say I'm still hooked on DesktopTD. The problem is that the creator of the game keeps updating the damn thing, adding new challenges just as you've finally convinced yourself that you've wrung all of the stimulation out of the game. As Robin notes, it's a brilliant strategy, the continual incremental sequel. Version 1.21 introduced a 10K gold fun mode...you get 10,000 gold pieces at the beginning to build a maze. Try building one where you can send all 50 levels at the same time and not lose any lives. Fun, indeed.
Regarding the low wattage color palette, reader Jonathan notes that you should use that palette in conjunction with a print stylesheet that optimizes the colors for printing so that you're not wasting a lot of ink on those dark background colors. He also sent along an OS X trick I'd never seen before: to invert the colors on your monitor, press ctrl-option-cmd-8. (thx, jonathan)
Dorothea Lange's iconic Migrant Mother photograph was modified for publication...a thumb was removed from the lower right hand corner of the photo. Joerg Colberg wonders if that case could inform our opinions about more recent cases of photo alteration.
In reviewing all of this, the following seem related in an interesting way: Nickelback's self-plagiarism, continual incremental sequels, digital photo alteration, Tarantino and Rodriquez's Grindhouse, and the recent appropriation of SimpleBits' logo by LogoMaid.
Apr 19, 2007 • 
{5 comments} • tags: cities kottkedotorg kenthompson securitynassimtaleb nytimes journalism katespicer food twitter music lastfm movies caddyshack jonestown maps videogames games globalwarming nyc nickelback mirandajuly noonebelongsheremorethanyou backtothefuture desktoptd energy dorothealange photography This article on commuting is from last week's New Yorker, but I read it while commuting -- my commute is a relatively short 15 minutes door-to-door -- so it took until today to finish it. Anyway, well worth the read...in some ways, the long commute is one of the USA's defining characteristics. People like Judy Rossi, who commutes 6.5 hours a day, are increasing in number. "[Rossi's] alarm goes off at 4:30 A.M. She's out of the house by six-fifteen and at her desk at nine-thirty. She gets home each evening at around eight-forty-five. The first thing Rossi said to me, when we met during her lunch break one day, was 'I am not insane.'"
60 Things Worth Shortening Your Life For. I've done a few of these things...I don't really drink or smoke enough to have accomplished a lot of them. Surfing Teahupoo in Tahiti is #3...the waves generated there are short lived but insane (photo, more photos, video). (via megnut)
Video of a two-song Arcade Fire show, one of which is sung in a freight elevator and the other in the middle of a Parisian crowd through a megaphone.
Predictions for the year 2000 made in The Ladies Home Journal in 1900. Two of the really interesting predicitons: "Cities, therefore, will be free from all noises." and "Automobiles will be cheaper than horses are today. Farmers will own automobile hay-wagons, automobile truck-wagons, plows, harrows and hay-rakes. A one-pound motor in one of these vehicles will do the work of a pair of horses or more. Children will ride in automobile sleighs in winter. Automobiles will have been substituted for every horse vehicle now known. There will be, as already exist today, automobile hearses, automobile police patrols, automobile ambulances, automobile street sweepers. The horse in harness will be as scarce, if, indeed, not even scarcer, then as the yoked ox is today." (via long now blog)
A low wattage color palette for web designers. The palette is based on the Energy Star wattage ratings for colors. (via migurski)
WindMaker adds motion to a web site based on the current wind conditions at a place of your choosing. Here's kottke.org with NYC wind and with Chicago wind. (thx, jim)
Visualization from the WWF of how much exhaust a car gives off during the course of the day. Details here. (via wider angle)
A Japanese temple building company goes out of business after 1428 years. Kongo Gumi was founded in 578 and was the "world's oldest continuously operating family business".
Not quite sure what this indicates, but I found this statistic interesting: "Among moviegoers who see an average of 10.5 films in theaters each year, 46% of them are Netflix subscribers and 68% have a home theater. Among those who see just 7.1 movies in theaters each year, 16% subscribe to Netflix and 16% have home theaters."
Digital filmmaking may be responsible for a new type of acting where actors and directors don't need to worry so much about getting the shot *right this instant* while expensive film is rolling through the camera but can instead find the right performance out of many. "Digital removes those constraints. There's no such thing as rehearsal. You can shoot anything you want. You don't have to say 'cut.' You don't have to say 'action.'" Definitely a parallel here to how digital camera changed photography.
Humans are the animal world's best distance runners...we can run long distances relatively fast without overheating. "Once humans start running, it only takes a bit more energy for us to run faster, Lieberman said. Other animals, on the other hand, expend a lot more energy as they speed up, particularly when they switch from a trot to a gallop, which most animals cannot maintain over long distances." (via beebo)
Map of the cracks in the Guggenheim's facade. "Since the Guggenheim Museum opened in 1959, Frank Lloyd Wright's massive spiral facade has been showing signs of cracking, mainly from seasonal temperature fluctuations that cause the concrete walls, built without expansion joints, to contract and expand."
I don't know if this is the whole article or if the Discover site is just really bad at indicating that the rest of the article is for paying customers only, but either way, I want to read more on what happened to the hype about chaos theory.
Cities are often thought of as organisms or ecosystems, but the authors of a new study find that metaphor lacking. "The one thing that we know about organisms whether it be elephants or sharks or frogs, is that as they get large, they slow down. They use less energy, they don't move as fast. That is a very important point for biological scaling. In the case of cities, it is actually the opposite. As cities get larger they create more wealth and they are more innovative at a faster rate. There is no counterpart to that in biology."
World map of where Wal-Mart gets its products. China dominates, Russia and most of Africa doesn't exist, and Europe is tiny. (via fakeisthenewreal)
Armed America: Portraits of Americans and their Guns. "I got a gun here because we live in kind of a rough neighborhood and I take the subway home from work. I figured that since the bad-guys had guns, I should have one too."
Compared with Snapple, whiteout, and Pepto Bismol ($123.20/gallon), gasoline is surprisingly inexpensive. "$21.19 for WATER - and the buyers don't even know the source. No wonder Evian spelled backwards is Naive."
Update: Rob Cockerham did a more extensive analysis of liquid pricing a few years ago.
I really like those UPS whiteboard commercials. Turns out the actor is the creative director for the campaign, Errol Morris directed them, and the music in the ads is by The Postal Service.
Video demonstration and explanation of the Kaye effect. AKA, watch shampoo do weird things in slow motion.
Some back-of-the-envelope calculations about the embodied energy of bottled water: "the cost to produce and deliver a bottle of imported water is $0.22, leaving $1.28 per bottle profit for the manufacturer and the retail store".
Crushpad lets you make your own wine from the comfort of your own home. "Crushpad offers a web-based system called MyCrushpad that allows you to monitor and manage your wine remotely.You'll be able to create your winemaking plan online, see pictures of your grapes while they're still on the vine, access the dozens of statistics (like sugar, acids, fermentation temperatures, etc.) our winemakers use to make decisions about handling the fruit. You'll be able to check on your wine at every stage from the vineyard to the barrel to the bottle no matter where you are."
A tale of two hoes
Snoop Dogg recently explained the difference between the language used by old, white radio announcers and rappers:
It's a completely different scenario. [Rappers] are not talking about no collegiate basketball girls who have made it to the next level in education and sports. We're talking about hos that's in the 'hood that ain't doing shit, that's trying to get a nigga for his money. These are two separate things. First of all, we ain't no old-ass white men that sit up on MSNBC going hard on black girls. We are rappers that have these songs coming from our minds and our souls that are relevant to what we feel. I will not let them muthafuckas say we in the same league as him.
What Mr. Dogg is arguing here is that it's ok to refer to actual hoes as hoes in the service of artistic expression but it is not ok to refer to college basketball players as such for the purpose of demeaning people. As we're currently engaged in another go-round on the issue of speech, political correctness, and its potential enforcement, it's not hard to imagine that someday an argument like Snoop Dogg's will be deployed in a court of law. I wonder if anyone will buy it?
Video of two peacekeeping poultry breaking up a fight between two rabbits. Not animated. (via cyn-c)
Flickr's national sport: Faceball. Re: that first photo, see also the guy getting hit in the stomach with a cannonball.
Translation From PR-Speak to English of Selected Portions of Rails Developer David Heinemeier Hansson's Response to Alex Payne's Interview. A little inside-baseball, but it's a good game.
Dave Curry won the kottke.org Celebrity Mii contest back in December with a brilliant Zach Braff...he finally got the Zach Braff statuette from Fabjectory. Looks nice!
How not to write a science book. "6. Avoid mentioning scientists or experiments. You're a journalist, so it's your job to explain things to people in ways they can understand. You always found science class difficult, and that class was taught by a scientist and involved experiments. Therefore no one can understand scientists and experiments."
Amusing Super Mario Bros mod. Like the post says, the invisible coin blocks are surprisingly funny. (via waxy)
The city of Sao Paulo has banned billboard advertising...the results are a bit eerie. (via bb)
Ken Graney's Roomba has broken the three laws of Roombotics. "The first law states that the device 'must not suck up jewelry or other valuables, or through inaction, allow valuables to be sucked up.' The second law prescribes that Roomba 'must obey vacuuming orders given to it by humans except when such orders would conflict with the first law.' The third and final law authorizes a Roomba to 'protect its own ability to suction dust and debris as long as such protection does not conflict with the first or second law.'"
Regarding the recent Google news (YouTube, DoubleClick, Dodgeball), Fred Wilson tells us it's time to pour a little malt liquor on the ground and say goodbye to the old Google, the Google that we all know and love, and welcome the new Google, a big company, for better or worse. "Google's lawyers are going to become their most important asset and when lawyers are more important than engineers to a company, you lose."
Feast your eyes on the new design for the US passport. "They'll never go for this...it's too over-the-top." "Perfect!"
The Back to the Future IMDB page sure has a lot of trivia. And I have a feeling that's not even the half of it.
Kate Spicer writes about her experience with an extreme diet in an attempt to drop to size zero in six weeks. "The next day I get up and run for an hour and feel really fat. The truth is, the more weight I lose, the fatter I feel and the more I want to lose weight. I lie in bed in the mornings feeling my hipbones and wanting to feel them more. I want them to jut out." A documentary featuring Spicer and other female journalists is showing on Channel 4 in the UK on April 22. Spicer previously ran the 150-mile, seven-day Marathon des Sables across the Sahara in 2006.
Update: UK singer and TV presenter Louise Redknapp recently went on a similar diet for another TV program. (thx, leanne)
Dodgeball founders leave Google and that leaves Dodgeball probably dead. Then why did Google buy Dodgeball exactly? Not for the founders...they left. Not for the tech. To build it up into a profitable company? (Nope, they didn't put any resources into it.) To kill it before some other company (Yahoo, Microsoft) got their mitts on it? For the PR value? Why did they even bother?
Update: Official thumbs-down announcement here. "It's no real secret that Google wasn't supporting dodgeball the way we expected. The whole experience was incredibly frustrating for us - especially as we couldn't convince them that dodgeball was worth engineering resources, leaving us to watch as other startups got to innovate in the mobile + social space. And while it was a tough decision (and really disappointing) to walk away from dodgeball, I'm actually looking forward to getting to work on other projects again."
Duncan Watts on the results of a study which show that a cultural product's popularity is partially determined by inital social adoption patterns. "This means that if one object happens to be slightly more popular than another at just the right point, it will tend to become more popular still. As a result, even tiny, random fluctuations can blow up, generating potentially enormous long-run differences among even indistinguishable competitors -- a phenomenon that is similar in some ways to the famous 'butterfly effe