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Entries for September 2011 (October 2011 »    November 2011 »    December 2011 »    Archives)

 

The Innovator's Cookbook

posted by Jason Kottke Sep 30, 2011

The Innovator's Cookbook is a collection of texts on innovation collected by Steven Johnson. The video is a pretty good introduction (and illustration) of what to expect from the book.

From bestselling author and Internet pioneer Steven Johnson, The Innovator's Cookbook (on sale October 4, 2011) is an essential book for anyone interested in innovation: the key texts on the topic from a wide range of fields as well as interviews with successful, real-world innovators, prefaced with a new essay by Johnson that draws upon his own experiences as an entrepreneur and author.

Why is Sergey Brin so good at Angry Birds?

posted by Jason Kottke Sep 30, 2011

I spent perhaps too much time this morning pondering one of the mysteries of the internet: Sergey Brin's astronomically high scores on the Google+ version of Angry Birds. For instance, Brin's high score on the easiest level of the game is 36240. It's a legit score (here's a higher one) and he has impressive scores on several other levels. But in 15 minutes of playing this morning, I couldn't get within a thousand points of his score. (Hey, at least I beat Kevin Rose.)

Google+ Angry Birds

So does Brin actually spend time obsessively playing Angry Birds to get those high scores (instead of, say, running Google or his other ventures) or has he written a program of some sort to produce near-optimal scores or does he have a fleet of interns playing as him for hours on end? We need to know this vital info...if you're interviewing Sergey at an upcoming conference, please ask him about this!

Multi-touch finger paintings

posted by Jason Kottke Sep 30, 2011

Ha! Evan Roth is selling a series of "multi-touch finger paintings" called Open Twitter, Check Twitter, Close Twitter. The paintings are made by placing tracing paper over an iPhone screen while he checks Twitter with a painted finger.

Open Twitter, Check Twitter, Close Twitter

Star Trek: Hidden Frontier

posted by Jason Kottke Sep 29, 2011

I somehow have never heard of this...Star Trek: Hidden Frontier was a fan-produced Trek series that ran for 50 episodes.

The series is set during the era of the Star Trek: The Next Generation series. Episodes revolve around the starship USS Excelsior, and its home base, Deep Space 12, which is located in the Briar Patch, a region of space introduced in the film Star Trek: Insurrection. Hidden Frontier has produced 50 episodes, and focuses on character relationships, including gay and lesbian characters and subplots.

There are many clips and episodes available on YouTube. Special bonus: William Shatner singing Iron Man.

The Social Life of Small Urban Spaces

posted by Jason Kottke Sep 29, 2011

A couple years ago, I pointed to a 10-minute clip of a longer documentary called The Social Life of Small Urban Spaces. Some kind soul has put the whole thing up on Vimeo:

This witty and original film is about the open spaces of cities and why some of them work for people while others don't. Beginning at New York's Seagram Plaza, one of the most used open areas in the city, the film proceeds to analyze why this space is so popular and how other urban oases, both in New York and elsewhere, measure up. Based on direct observation of what people actually do, the film presents a remarkably engaging and informative tour of the urban landscape and looks at how it can be made more hospitable to those who live in it.

Piano quality and consumer technology regression

posted by Jason Kottke Sep 29, 2011

A piano technician reports that the best pianos were built around 1900 and we'll never again see their like...the quality of today's pianos just doesn't measure up.

The finest pianos in the world were built about a hundred years ago. Due to evolution in engineering, exhaustion of raw materials, and flagging business standards, we will never see their like again. Some people may build very good pianos; new forms of the instrument may exceed (in narrow ways) the magnificent machines built a few decades either side of the year 1900. But, from a musical perspective, there will never be a "better" piano than the typical concert grand of a century ago.

(via @kdawson)

Updates on previous entries for Sep 28, 2011*

posted by Jason Kottke Sep 29, 2011

Rare footage of live Nirvana concert orig. from Sep 28, 2011

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

The physics of the riderless bike

posted by Jason Kottke Sep 28, 2011

Why do riderless bicycles not fall over? Science Friday looks at the science behind bike self-steering.

(via robottke!)

Menger sponge built from Post-It notes

posted by Jason Kottke Sep 28, 2011

Nicholas Rougeux is building an approximation of a Menger sponge, a 3-D fractal shape with no volume and infinite surface area, out of Post-It notes.

Menger sponge Post It

It looks about 90% complete...but as a Menger sponge, can you ever really call it finished? (thx, zach)

Being Elmo trailer

posted by Jason Kottke Sep 28, 2011

Being Elmo is a documentary about the puppeteer who performs Sesame Street's Elmo. It looks fantastic.

(via unlikely words)

Rare footage of live Nirvana concert

posted by Jason Kottke Sep 28, 2011

YouTube has 45 minutes of previously unreleased footage of a Halloween concert Nirvana played in 1991 at the Paramount Theater in Seattle.

The DVD contains the full performance (there's also a Blu-ray version out in a few months). I think this might be one of my answers to "what would you do if you had a time machine?"... (via devour)

Update: The video seems to be down right now...not sure if it'll be back or not. Sorry...

Amazon's new Kindles

posted by Jason Kottke Sep 28, 2011

They look better, are way cheaper, and, well, let's just say that Amazon puts themselves in a very good position with these increasingly impressive portable media stores. From Tim Carmody:

The advantage traditional paper-based media has always had over electronic media is that the consumer doesn't have to bear the cost of the technology up front. If you buy a book or a magazine, the technology that enables its production and transmission is already built in.

The cost of the device can turn an electronic media gadget into a prestige device, like Apple's iPod or iPad. But it's nevertheless a hurdle for customers. $500 for an iPad or $400 for the first-generation Kindle is a lot of cash to drop for folks who want to read. It's also a levee bottling up a torrent of content that can be sold and delivered over those devices.

With Amazon's new $79 Kindle, $99 Kindle Touch, $149 Kindle Touch 3G, and $199 Kindle Fire, Amazon dynamites that levee. The devices aren't free, but they're so much cheaper than comparable products on the market that they will likely sell millions of copies and many more millions of books, television shows, movies, music and apps.

And more from Steven Levy.

Robottke = robot Kottke

posted by Jason Kottke Sep 28, 2011

As part of a series of articles about robots in the workplace, Farhad Manjoo has his colleague Chris Wilson build a robotic Jason Kottke to see if it could pick links as well as I can. Say hello to Robottke.

In computer science parlance, Kottke doesn't scale. That's a shame. While services that collect popular stuff online are useful, they lack any editorial sensibility. The links on Techmeme and Summify represent a horde's view of the Web. The material on Kottke represents one guy's indispensible take. The Web ought to have both kinds of aggregators, but I'd love to see more people starting link blogs that offer a clear editorial vision. But how do you get more of something so hard to do?

Enter Robottke. Over the last few weeks, Chris Wilson has been building a machine that aims to automatically generate links you might find on Kottke.org. Robottke isn't meant to replace flesh-and-blood Kottke; we just want to come up with a list of items that Jason Kottke might link to each day.

You can check out Robbotke here. How does it work? We began by crawling all the sources that Jason Kottke is likely to look at every day — we look at all the sites he links to, and all the stuff that people he follows on Twitter are sharing. The hard part is choosing the best, most Kottke-like links from Robottke's collection. It's helpful that the human Kottke meticulously tags all of his posts with keywords. When Robottke finds a link, it searches for topics that it knows Kottke likes — the more it finds, the higher the article ranks.

Hey, that riderless bike link at the top of Robottke actually looks pretty interesting...

Don Draper pitches Facebook Timeline

posted by Jason Kottke Sep 27, 2011

This is just flat-out fantastic.

(via ★interesting)

Browsing over the shoulder

posted by Jason Kottke Sep 27, 2011

Artist Jonus Lund is broadcasting what he's browsing in realtime. Each time he goes to a new site in his web browser, his site updates. When I visited earlier, he was looking at Lifehacker.

Glitch is a go

posted by Jason Kottke Sep 27, 2011

Glitch, the "massively multi-player game built in the spirit of the web" built by Stewart Butterfield and other ex-Flickrinos and ex-Game Neverendingarinos, is out of beta and ready for everyone to try. The Glitch blog has more.

Glitch launches today. Launch is an important milestone, but in most ways, this is just the beginning. The end of Beta means we have something stable enough and fun enough that we're happy to invite the world to play. But we want to create a game and world with the real possibility for infinite play, and that means Glitch will be continuing to grow, develop and evolve for many years to come.

Rap Genius

posted by Jason Kottke Sep 27, 2011

I am reminded this morning of that rarest of birds, the lyrics site that doesn't suck: Rap Genius. RG breaks down rap songs line-by-line and not only explains all the references but attempts to "critique rap as poetry". Here's Gotta Have It from Watch the Throne.

(Ain't that just like D. Wade? Wait)

Jay may be saying that Kanye and he are like LeBron and D-Wade. 1a and 1b. Great at what they do, hated because they brag about how good they are as a unit (and just because they ARE good). I guess that means Memphis Bleek is Jason Williams

The "wait" part may have been Jay giving pause to the LeBron/Wade reference after their epic fail during the 2011 NBA Finals. Jay is more likely to jab at LeBron now, because he was unhappy with the way his friend mishandled his "Decision" to go to Miami. He left Jay, a minority owner of the New Jersey Nets, in the dark with the rest of the NBA when he chose to take his talents to South Beach.

Happy birthday, big GOOG

posted by Jason Kottke Sep 27, 2011

Google is thirteen today...back in 1998 when the site was still hosted at http://google.stanford.edu, Keith Dawson gave the search engine its first online coverage in English on the fondly remembered Tasty Bits From the Technology Front.

This site, one of the few rigorous academic research projects on Web searching, presents a demonstration database — only 25M documents — that already blows past most of the existing search engines in returning relevant nuggets. Google employs a concept of Page Rank derived from academic citation literature. Page Rank equates roughly to a page's importance on the Web: the more inbound links a page has, and the higher the importance of the pages linking to it, the higher its Page Rank.

The new Delicious

posted by Jason Kottke Sep 27, 2011

Having been extricated from Yahoo by a pair of YouTube founders, a revamped Delicious goes live. Here's a bit of explanation:

Every day, people create boatloads of content on YouTube, Facebook, Twitter and across the entire web. It's getting increasingly difficult to cut through all the noise. If you know exactly what you're looking for, search works great, but what if you want to discover something new? Conversely, how can you easily organize the best websites around a topic you know a lot about?

We came up with a simple solution called stacks, which are collections of links that you can share. They're playlists for the web!

The stacks thing seems a lot like Pinterest but for more than images. (Also, it looks like my links — all three of them — didn't get pulled across from the old site/system even though I opted in to the data migration. Is this a common thing?)

North Korea tourist photos

posted by Jason Kottke Sep 26, 2011

Sam Gellman visited North Korea as a tourist earlier this month and returned with some nice photos. This shot is from the Mass Games but there are also many street scenes depicted.

Sam Gellman, North Korea

Wikipedia will eat itself

posted by Jason Kottke Sep 26, 2011

The disambiguation article on Wikipedia requires disambiguation.

The last bullfight in Barcelona

posted by Jason Kottke Sep 26, 2011

The Catalonia region of Spain celebrated the last bullfight with a pair of matador dispatching their bulls in front of a sell-out crowd in Barcelona.

After putting to death their respective bulls in front of a sell-out crowd in the 20,000-seat arena, Mr Tomas, along with another bullfighter Serafin Marin, were carried shoulder high from the ring into the streets by ecstatic fans. Others, meanwhile, invaded the ring to gather some of its sand as a souvenir of the final fight, which follows a vote last year by the Catalan regional Parliament to ban bullfighting.

Photos here.

More amazing street dancing

posted by Jason Kottke Sep 25, 2011

This gets crazy around a minute in.

(via stellar)

Won't You Be My Neighbor?

posted by Jason Kottke Sep 23, 2011

Watch Fred Rogers sing the opening theme from Mister Rogers' Neighborhood from 1967 to 2000.

(via ★aaroncohen)

Screenshots of the early World Wide Web

posted by Jason Kottke Sep 23, 2011

Inspired in part by my post on the original Twitter homepage, Serge Keller collected a bunch of screenshots of early web sites, including the very first web page, an early Microsoft design, and the White House's initial site. Some sites haven't changed all that much...Amazon and Craigslist in particular have retained much of the design DNA over the years.

An actual working mind probe

posted by Jason Kottke Sep 23, 2011

This is incredible...researchers at Berkeley have developed a system that reads people's minds while they watch a video and then roughly reconstructs what they were watching from thousands of hours of YouTube videos. This short demo shows how it works:

Nishimoto and two other research team members served as subjects for the experiment, because the procedure requires volunteers to remain still inside the MRI scanner for hours at a time.

They watched two separate sets of Hollywood movie trailers, while fMRI was used to measure blood flow through the visual cortex, the part of the brain that processes visual information. On the computer, the brain was divided into small, three-dimensional cubes known as volumetric pixels, or "voxels."

"We built a model for each voxel that describes how shape and motion information in the movie is mapped into brain activity," Nishimoto said.

The brain activity recorded while subjects viewed the first set of clips was fed into a computer program that learned, second by second, to associate visual patterns in the movie with the corresponding brain activity.

Brain activity evoked by the second set of clips was used to test the movie reconstruction algorithm. This was done by feeding 18 million seconds of random YouTube videos into the computer program so that it could predict the brain activity that each film clip would most likely evoke in each subject.

Finally, the 100 clips that the computer program decided were most similar to the clip that the subject had probably seen were merged to produce a blurry yet continuous reconstruction of the original movie.

The kicker: "the breakthrough paves the way for reproducing the movies inside our heads that no one else sees, such as dreams and memories". First time travelling neutrinos and now this...what a time to be alive. (via ★essl)

That's faster than the speed of light, you idiot!

posted by Jason Kottke Sep 23, 2011

Physicists at CERN believe they have observed neutrinos moving at speeds faster than the speed of light, a feat previously assumed to be impossible.

Thousands of experiments have been undertaken to measure it ever more precisely, and no result has ever spotted a particle breaking the limit.

But Dr Ereditato and his colleagues have been carrying out an experiment for the last three years that seems to suggest neutrinos have done just that.

Neutrinos come in a number of types, and have recently been seen to switch spontaneously from one type to another.

The team prepares a beam of just one type, muon neutrinos, sending them from Cern to an underground laboratory at Gran Sasso in Italy to see how many show up as a different type, tau neutrinos.

In the course of doing the experiments, the researchers noticed that the particles showed up 60 billionths of a second sooner than light would over the same distance.

This is a tiny fractional change, but one that occurs consistently.

The team measured the travel times of neutrino bunches some 15,000 times, and have reached a level of statistical significance that in scientific circles would count as a formal discovery.

If true, saying this is a significant discovery is a doubly significant understatement.

Chris Ware iPad app

posted by Jason Kottke Sep 22, 2011

Could there be a more perfect topic for kottke.org than Chris Ware's hand-crafted olde-tyme goodness on Apple's magical piece of technology?

In the briefest of flirtations with non-corporeality in this, his first (and likely final) iPad-only comic strip, our otherwise normally corporeal cartoonist and former McSweeney's guest-editor Chris Ware attempts to address how, in some relationships, the act of touching seems to shift over time from that of affection to aggression. Chock full of his trademark constipated drawings and strained, overwrought text, the reader will also be pleased not to afterwards find him- or herself laden with a pamphlet or book to discard the next time he or she changes apartments, homes or relationships; like the 99 cents that instantly vanishes from one's bank account upon purchase, all 14 speedily-swipable digital "pages" with their tucked-away animations and mildly disorienting transitions may easily be wiped from one's computer's memory with precisely the opposite degree of difficulty which one simply cannot forget that night of screamed obscenities at one's (now ex-) girl- or boyfriend. (Please note, however, that all 99 cents and the rights attendant thereto remain, in perpetuity, the sole property of McSweeney's and its satellite concerns.)

Touch Sensitive is a comic and unlike the other e-books in this store. It was crafted specifically for the McSweeney's app and is available only in iPad format.

Get it on the app store.

The average font

posted by Jason Kottke Sep 22, 2011

Moritz Resl took all of the fonts installed on his computer and averaged them together to make a new font: the average font.

Average font

The full alphabet is available on Flickr. (via stellar)

Christopher Hitchens on capital punishment

posted by Jason Kottke Sep 22, 2011

From Lapham's Quarterly, Christopher Hitchens on capital punishment in America.

Since then no country has been allowed to apply for membership or association with the European Union without, as a precondition, dismantling its apparatus of execution. This has led states like Turkey to forego what was once a sort of national staple. The United Nations condemns capital punishment-especially for those who have not yet reached adulthood-and the Vatican has come close to forbidding if not actually anathematizing the business. This leaves the United States of America as the only nation in what one might call the West, that does not just continue with the infliction of the death penalty but has in the recent past expanded its reach. More American states have restored it in theory and carried it out in practice, and the last time the Supreme Court heard argument on the question it was to determine whether capital punishment should be inflicted for a crime other than first-degree murder (the rape of a child being the suggested pretext for extension).

Hitchens, as you may have guessed, pins much of the blame on religion...after all, the US is the most (or only?) fundamentalist country in the West. (via ★interesting-links)

The world's rudest hand gestures

posted by Jason Kottke Sep 22, 2011

The middle finger and the British "up yours" don't make the abbreviated list, but if you want to know how to piss people off in their native land without talking, this is a nice little guide. From a book called Rude Hand Gestures of the World.

Report card stories

posted by Jason Kottke Sep 21, 2011

Paul Lukas came into possession of hundreds of report cards from the Manhattan Trade School for Girls from the 1920s but never knew what to do with them.

1920 Report Card

Recently, he started trying to track down the families of the women they belonged to in a series for Slate.

I discovered the cards in 1996 (more on that in a minute). I found them fascinating, but I didn't have a good sense of what to do with them, so for a long time I just kept them as curios and occasionally showed them to friends. Eventually, though, I decided to track down some of the students' families (including Marie's). Even after doing it numerous times, I still find it a bit surreal to call a stranger on the phone and hear myself saying, "Hi, you don't know me, but I have your mother's report card from 1929. Would you like to see it?"

Super freaky realtime facial substitution

posted by Jason Kottke Sep 21, 2011

That shit cray! Puts this system to shame. See also Tom Selleck's Moustache. (via ★interesting)

Tom Selleck's moustache makes every movie better

posted by Jason Kottke Sep 21, 2011

(via ★interesting)

How Many Really?

posted by Jason Kottke Sep 21, 2011

New from BERG and the BBC: How Many Really?. Background here.

You can probably guess what it does from the URL — it compares the numbers of people who experienced an event with a number you can relate to: the size of your social network.

Examples: How many of your Twitter friends would have been eligible to vote in Classical Athens? How many of your Facebook friends would have sunk with the Titanic? How many of your friends would have returned from WWI?

Things that Apple is worth more than

posted by Jason Kottke Sep 21, 2011

New Tumblr: Things Apple is Worth More Than. Such as: the GDP of Singapore, every single home in Atlanta, Georgia, and all the illegal drugs in the world.

Samuel L. Ipsum

posted by Jason Kottke Sep 21, 2011

I don't know if Samuel L. Ipsum is better than Hipster Ipsum, but the name is great.

Well, the way they make shows is, they make one show. That show's called a pilot. Then they show that show to the people who make shows, and on the strength of that one show they decide if they're going to make more shows. Some pilots get picked and become television programs. Some don't, become nothing. She starred in one of the ones that became nothing.

Who else has a good lorem ipsum name? Lorem Bacall? Buddy Ipsum? Anthony Lorem Hall? Lorem Fishburne? Loremington Steele?

NYC etiquette

posted by Jason Kottke Sep 20, 2011

From Quora, some good answers to the question What are some cultural faux pas in New York?

This one is absolutely vital — don't interfere with others' privacy. New York is a very crowded place. The way people deal with it is to create their own space. Thus, what outsiders often see as aloofness and isolation is, in fact, a sign of community; there is a shared ethos that everyone respects others' privacy and expects others to respect his own. This is chiefly communicated through eye contact. If you stare at someone on the subway: if you linger in looking out your window into someone else's bedroom; if you react to or interrupt a celebrity; or if you seem to be intentionally listening in to another's conversation, you are violating one of New York's most sacred unwritten rules. Keep yourself to yourself, buddy, and let others do the same.

Crazy audiovisual illusion

posted by Jason Kottke Sep 20, 2011

The McGurk effect: the same sound plus two different mouth movements produces two different sounds.

Read more about the McGurk effect. (via ★interesting-links)

Updates on previous entries for Sep 19, 2011*

posted by Jason Kottke Sep 20, 2011

Netflix explodes into two companies orig. from Sep 19, 2011

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

Not looking good for the Higgs boson

posted by Jason Kottke Sep 19, 2011

Most of the possible masses for the Higgs boson (aka the God particle) have been eliminated with at a 95% confidence level by physicists at CERN. They're checking the other masses and will likely have an answer one way or the other in December.

"We are now entering a very exciting phase in the hunt for the Higgs boson," Sharma said. "If the Higgs boson exists between 114-145 GeV, we should start seeing statistically significant excesses over estimated backgrounds, and if it does not then we hope to rule it out over the entire mass range. One way or the other we are poised for a major discovery, likely by the end of this year."

(via @daveg)

The amazing lyrebird can mimic anything

posted by Jason Kottke Sep 19, 2011

I knew the male lyrebird is an amazing mimic (other birds, camera shutters, car alarms, chainsaws):

but I didn't know he could sing the Seinfeld theme song:

Seriously though, that chainsaw noise is amazing. (via ★aaroncohen)

Earth orbit time lapse

posted by Jason Kottke Sep 19, 2011

Time lapse movie composed of photographs taken from the International Space Station as it orbits the Earth at night.

This movie begins over the Pacific Ocean and continues over North and South America before entering daylight near Antarctica. Visible cities, countries and landmarks include (in order) Vancouver Island, Victoria, Vancouver, Seattle, Portland, San Fransisco, Los Angeles. Phoenix. Multiple cities in Texas, New Mexico and Mexico. Mexico City, the Gulf of Mexico, the Yucatan Peninsula, Lightning in the Pacific Ocean, Guatemala, Panama, Columbia, Ecuador, Peru, Chile, and the Amazon. Also visible is the earths ionosphere (thin yellow line) and the stars of our galaxy.

(via stellar)

Netflix explodes into two companies

posted by Jason Kottke Sep 19, 2011

Qwikster will rent you DVDs and Netflix will rent you streaming movies. Two separate sites/companies, no interop, you have to sub to both separately, etc. Here's the explanation from Netflix CEO Reed Hastings. This seems amazingly dumb at first blush. (ps. Qwikster?!!)

Update: This is an excellent level-headed analysis of the deal from Dan Frommer.

Netflix's holy grail is to get each person, not each household, to have a separate streaming subscription, the way everyone also has a separate Facebook account. Separating a per-household service like DVD rentals-by-mail helps simplify that eventual transition.

Prohibition by Ken Burns

posted by Jason Kottke Sep 16, 2011

Documentary film by Ken Burns about Prohibition? As Aaron Cohen said, "twist my arm".

PROHIBITION is a three-part, five-and-a-half-hour documentary film series directed by Ken Burns and Lynn Novick that tells the story of the rise, rule, and fall of the Eighteenth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution and the entire era it encompassed. Prohibition was intended to improve, even to ennoble, the lives of all Americans, to protect individuals, families, and society at large from the devastating effects of alcohol abuse. But the enshrining of a faith-driven moral code in the Constitution paradoxically caused millions of Americans to rethink their definition of morality.

First part premieres October 2 on PBS.

Extreme schooling

posted by Jason Kottke Sep 16, 2011

A NY Times foreign correspondent formerly stationed in Russia tells the story of placing his three kids into an unusual school in Moscow where all the instruction is done in Russian.

My three children once were among the coddled offspring of Park Slope, Brooklyn. But when I became a foreign correspondent for The New York Times, my wife and I decided that we wanted to immerse them in life abroad. No international schools where the instruction is in English. Ours would go to a local one, with real Russians. When we told friends in Brooklyn of our plans, they tended to say things like, Wow, you're so brave. But we knew what they were really thinking: What are you, crazy? It was bad enough that we were abandoning beloved Park Slope, with its brownstones and organic coffee bars, for a country still often seen in the American imagination as callous and forbidding. To throw our kids into a Russian school — that seemed like child abuse.

Be sure to watch the video.

Sending children through the post

posted by Jason Kottke Sep 16, 2011

This is one of my favorite Flickr photos:

Child by mail

This city letter carrier posed for a humorous photograph with a young boy in his mailbag. After parcel post service was introduced in 1913, at least two children were sent by the service. With stamps attached to their clothing, the children rode with railway and city carriers to their destination. The Postmaster General quickly issued a regulation forbidding the sending of children in the mail after hearing of those examples.

Primed to shop

posted by Jason Kottke Sep 16, 2011

Using Whole Foods as an example, Martin Lindstrom shows how retail stores use subtle tactics to get people to buy more than they might have otherwise.

Speaking of fruit, you may think a banana is just a banana, but it's not. Dole and other banana growers have turned the creation of a banana into a science, in part to manipulate perceptions of freshness. In fact, they've issued a banana guide to greengrocers, illustrating the various color stages a banana can attain during its life cycle. Each color represents the sales potential for the banana in question. For example, sales records show that bananas with Pantone color 13-0858 (otherwise known as Vibrant Yellow) are less likely to sell than bananas with Pantone color 12-0752 (also called Buttercup), which is one grade warmer, visually, and seems to imply a riper, fresher fruit. Companies like Dole have analyzed the sales effects of all varieties of color and, as a result, plant their crops under conditions most ideal to creating the right 'color.'

(via @daveg)

The world's funniest analogies

posted by Jason Kottke Sep 15, 2011

Well, I don't know about that, but as an analogy enthusiast, I did enjoy reading through this list. Some favorites:

Her vocabulary was as bad as, like, whatever.

From the attic came an unearthly howl. The whole scene had an eerie, surreal quality, like when you're on vacation in another city and Jeopardy comes on at 7:00 p.m. instead of 7:30.

He was as tall as a six-foot, three-inch tree.

John and Mary had never met. They were like two hummingbirds who had also never met.

That first one...I can't decide if it's bad or the best analogy ever.

The Artist is Present video game

posted by Jason Kottke Sep 15, 2011

This is ... well, I don't really know what to say about it. It's a video game version of Marina Abramović's The Artist is Present. You buy a ticket, walk into the museum, look at some art, and then you wait in line. (via waxy)

NFL TV maps for the 2011-2012 season

posted by Jason Kottke Sep 15, 2011

These maps are updated every week and they tell you which games are on TV in which parts of the country. Not an issue if you have DirectTV or whatever, but for the rest of us... (thx, joshua)

Dinosaur feathers found!

posted by Jason Kottke Sep 15, 2011

Dinosaur feathers have been found preserved in amber, Jurassic Park-style.

Dinosaur and bird feathers preserved in amber from a Late Cretaceous site in Canada reveal new insights into the structure, function, and color of animals that date back to about 78 million years ago.

Researchers led by University of Alberta paleontologist Ryan McKellar say these specimens represent distinct stages of feather evolution, from early-stage, single filament protofeathers to much more complex structures associated with modern diving birds. After analyzing the preserved pigment cells, the authors add that these feathered creatures may have also had a range of transparent, mottled, and diffused colors, similar to birds today. They can't determine which feathers belonged to birds or dinosaurs yet, but they did observe filament structures that are similar to those seen in other non-avian dinosaur fossils. Their findings appear in the current issue of the journal Science.

Click through for a slideshow of photos.

Peyton Manning, best QB of his era?

posted by Jason Kottke Sep 15, 2011

I like Peyton Manning, but I found this whole article to be a little weird.

And in the most the most important single passing statistic, the one that correlates best with winning, yards per throw, Manning has an edge, 7.6 to 7.4 [for Tom Brady].

The most important stat? Is 0.2 yards really much of a difference? Correlates best with winning? Let's look at the stats. That lists Brady being slightly *ahead* of Manning...and Tony Romo and Philip Rivers ahead of both of them. I call shenanigans. For me, it's a toss-up between Manning and Brady...you'd have to flip a coin to find the winner. Both are really fun to watch and I hope Manning does make it back from his injury.

What are young Chinese thinking?

posted by Jason Kottke Sep 15, 2011

Adrian Fisk recently traveled through China asking the young people there to write anything they wanted down on a piece of paper. The results are interesting.

"After watching television I have many ideas, but am unable to realize them." Yunnan, Luo Zheng Chui, 30 years old, farmer.

"I'd like to see any supernatural thing such as alien, UFO, mysterious thing." Chan Jie Fang, 28 years old, supervisor in bag making company in Guangdong province but learning English in Guangxi province.

"We are the lost generation. I'm confused about the world." Guangxi, Avril Lui, 22-years-old, post-grad student.

More are available on Fisk's site (click on New Stories and then Ispeak China). (via @bryce)

Original Twitter homepage

posted by Jason Kottke Sep 14, 2011

original Twitter design

Or at least a very early version. From humble beginnings...

ps. Here's an early Facebook screenshot, an early Google homepage, and Yahoo's homepage circa 1994, and an early screencap of Tumblr's dashboard.

Update: If you look at the screenshot closely, there's a familiar name at the top of the "What your friends..." box: Instagram co-founder Kevin Systrom (his Twitter user id is 380...meaning that he was one of the first 400 people to sign up for the service).

Emigre type specimen catalogs

posted by Jason Kottke Sep 14, 2011

Emigre has made their type specimen catalogs available in PDF format.

Emigre type specimens

Energy efficiency in computing

posted by Jason Kottke Sep 14, 2011

Moore's law states that "the number of transistors that can be placed inexpensively on an integrated circuit doubles approximately every two years". In the IEEE Annals of the History of Computing Jonathan Koomey states what you could refer to as Koomey's law: "the electrical efficiency of computation has doubled roughly every year and a half"...which results in crazy stuff like:

Imagine you've got a shiny computer that is identical to a Macbook Air, except that it has the energy efficiency of a machine from 20 years ago. That computer would use so much power that you'd get a mere 2.5 seconds of battery life out of the Air's 50 watt-hour battery instead of the seven hours that the Air actually gets. That is to say, you'd need 10,000 Air batteries to run our hypothetical machine for seven hours.

Re-engineering human cells to attack cancer

posted by Jason Kottke Sep 13, 2011

This crazy-experimental therapy uses a modified HIV virus to attack cancer cells in humans. Only three people have tried this therapy for chronic lymphocytic leukemia; two are in complete remission and one showed improvement.

Doctors removed a billion of his T-cells — a type of white blood cell that fights viruses and tumors — and gave them new genes that would program the cells to attack his cancer. Then the altered cells were dripped back into Mr. Ludwig's veins.

At first, nothing happened. But after 10 days, hell broke loose in his hospital room. He began shaking with chills. His temperature shot up. His blood pressure shot down. He became so ill that doctors moved him into intensive care and warned that he might die. His family gathered at the hospital, fearing the worst.

A few weeks later, the fevers were gone. And so was the leukemia.

There was no trace of it anywhere — no leukemic cells in his blood or bone marrow, no more bulging lymph nodes on his CT scan. His doctors calculated that the treatment had killed off two pounds of cancer cells.

A year later, Mr. Ludwig is still in complete remission. Before, there were days when he could barely get out of bed; now, he plays golf and does yard work.

(via @marcprecipice)

Vladimir Putin, man of action

posted by Jason Kottke Sep 13, 2011

Watch as Vladimir Putin rides a horse, drives a race car, tags a tiger, does judo, goes on archeological dives, looks at leopards, stands on a boat, arm wrestles, attempts to bend a frying pan, rides a snowmobile, flies a plane, hugs a dog, rides a motorcycle, looks at a bear, swims the butterfly, signs autographs, shoots a whale with a crossbow, plays the piano, feeds a moose, talks with a biker gang, steers a boat, walks through brush with a gun, sits in a tank, blacksmiths, plays hockey, hugs a horse, dives almost a mile in a submersible, and adjusts sunglasses.

He has made many more important posts on In Focus and Big Picture over the years, but Alan Taylor has really outdone himself with this one...each photo is somehow more wonderfully unlikely than the previous one. See also Kim Jong-il Looking at Things.

Bill Cunningham New York DVD

posted by Jason Kottke Sep 13, 2011

Bill Cunningham New York, a documentary film about the unassuming king of street fashion photography, is out on DVD today.

"We all get dressed for Bill," says Vogue editor Anna Wintour. The Bill in question is 80+ New York Times photographer Bill Cunningham. For decades, this Schwinn-riding cultural anthropologist has been obsessively and inventively chronicling fashion trends he spots emerging from Manhattan sidewalks and high society charity soirees for his beloved Style section columns On The Street and Evening Hours.

Cunningham's enormous body of work is more reliable than any catwalk as an expression of time, place and individual flair. The range of people he snaps uptown fixtures like Wintour, Brooke Astor, Tom Wolfe and Annette de la Renta (who appear in the film out of their love for Bill), downtown eccentrics and everyone in between reveals a delirious and delicious romp through New York. But rarely has anyone embodied contradictions as happily and harmoniously as Bill, who lived a monk-like existence in the same Carnegie Hall studio at for fifty years, never eats in restaurants and gets around solely on bike number 29 (28 having been stolen).

It got great reviews...currently 98% on Rotten Tomatoes.

Pruney fingers for better gripping

posted by Jason Kottke Sep 13, 2011

You know how your hands and feet get all wrinkly when they're immersed in water for a long time? There's speculation the wrinkles might be an adaptation that allows for better gripping in wet conditions.

Now a paper in the journal Brain, Behavior and Evolution offers more evidence that wet wrinkles serve a purpose. Much like the tread on a tire, they improve traction.

In the study, an evolutionary neurobiologist and his co-authors examined 28 fingers wrinkled by water. They found that they all had the same pattern of unconnected channels diverging away from one another as they got more distant from the fingertips.

The wrinkles allow water to drain away as fingertips are pressed to wet surfaces, creating more contact and a better grip.

(via stellar)

Fun food facts

posted by Jason Kottke Sep 13, 2011

From the current issue of Lapham's Quarterly, a collection of facts and anecdotes about food. I can't pick a favorite, so here are three:

Paul Newman's character amazingly eats fifty hard-boiled eggs in one hour in Cool Hand Luke. Sixty-five hard-boiled eggs eaten in sixty minutes and forty seconds is the actual world record, held by Sonya Thomas.

As to why he didn't drink water, an inebriated W. C. Fields purportedly responded, "Fish fuck in it."

"As if I swallowed a baby," said William Makepeace Thackeray about eating his first oyster.

(via @claytoncubitt)

Solar eclipse...by Saturn

posted by Jason Kottke Sep 12, 2011

The Cassini spacecraft caught this remarkable photo of Saturn eclipsing the Sun in 2006.

Saturn eclipse

Click through for the big image and the massive image. If you look close can see the Earth in the image, for reals!

Not so inspirational quotes

posted by Jason Kottke Sep 12, 2011

"First they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then they fight you." — Gandhi

"Give me death." — Patrick Henry

"The world is more dangerous than sincere." — Martin Luther King Jr.

"People will forget what you said, people will forget what you did." — Maya Angelou

"To err is human." — Alexander Pope

Dubya and me

posted by Jason Kottke Sep 12, 2011

Journalist Walt Harrington has known George W. Bush for more than twenty-five years and wrote an article for The American Scholar about his conversations with the former President over the years.

President Bush — and he was, no doubt, by then a real president — talked expansively about Afghanistan, Iraq, Iran, China, Korea, Russia. He talked about his reelection strategies, Iran's nuclear ambitions, WMD and how he still believed they would be found, Colin Powell and Condoleezza Rice, Vladimir Putin. He talked about his aides and how tough their lives were, the long hours and stress and time away from their families, about how difficult it was for his daughters. He said that compared with everyone around a president, the president had the easiest job. He was the same confident, brash man I had met years ago, but I no longer sensed any hint of the old anger or the need for self-aggrandizement.

(via ★bryce)

"Zuck's gonna write code"

posted by Jason Kottke Sep 12, 2011

From a New York magazine profile of some young Stanford hackers, a fun Mark Zuckerberg anecdote:

Zuckerberg doesn't code much for Facebook anymore, the same way that Steve Jobs never hand-coded software for the iPhone. But, as the Groups team was adding the finishing touches to its product, Zuckerberg said he wanted to write a few lines. "Everybody was like, Ohhhh, Zuck's gonna write code," says Feross. Someone set up an easy bug for him to fix-adding a link to a picture, or something-and he went to work. Five minutes passed. Twenty minutes. An hour. "It took him like two hours to do something that would take one of us who's an engineer like five minutes," says Feross. It was like a retired slugger coming back for one last at-bat, for old time's sake, and finding he'd lost more of his game than he'd reckoned. Still, he got props from Feross & Co. for getting his hands dirty.

More Mister Rogers

posted by Jason Kottke Sep 12, 2011

1. Amazon has every single episode available on Instant Video. (thx, matthew)

2. PBS Kids has a bunch of episodes available with a kid-friendly video player. (thx, chris)

3. Episode guides and more at The Neighborhood Archive Blog. (thx, jeff)

Back to school with Mister Rogers

posted by Jason Kottke Sep 09, 2011

After reading the fantastic Tom Junod piece on Fred Rogers earlier in the week, I poked around on YouTube for some Mister Rogers clips and shows. There are only a few full episodes on there but two of them are particularly relevant as kids across the nation go back to school for the fall:

I watched the first episode with Ollie yesterday (he was a big fan of the trolley, which was always my favorite part of the show too) and then we watched how crayons are made and how people make trumpets.

After our YouTube supply is exhausted, we'll move on to DVDs (here's a music compilation and episodes from the first week of the show), Netflix, or Amazon Instant Video, which has a bunch of episodes available for free (!!) for Prime subscribers.

Laughs!

posted by Jason Kottke Sep 09, 2011

Two minutes of laughing. If this doesn't make you smile, YOU'RE A MONSTER!

(via stellar)

As the book business changes, so do the bookshelves

posted by Jason Kottke Sep 09, 2011

Ikea is modifying their popular Billy bookcase to hold more than just books.

TO SEE how profoundly the book business is changing, watch the shelves. Next month IKEA will introduce a new, deeper version of its ubiquitous "BILLY" bookcase. The flat-pack furniture giant is already promoting glass doors for its bookshelves. The firm reckons customers will increasingly use them for ornaments, tchotchkes and the odd coffee-table tome-anything, that is, except books that are actually read.

In the first five months of this year sales of consumer e-books in America overtook those from adult hardback books. Just a year earlier hardbacks had been worth more than three times as much as e-books, according to the Association of American Publishers. Amazon now sells more copies of e-books than paper books. The drift to digits will speed up as bookshops close. Borders, once a retail behemoth, is liquidating all of its American stores.

As the bookshelf industry scrambles to retool, a Kindle cozy industry rises. (via @austinkleon)

Cigar cross-section portraits

posted by Jason Kottke Sep 09, 2011

Cigars each have their own unique fingerprint of sorts as these cross-sectional photos attest.

Cigar portrait

(thx, frank)

Job misunderstandings

posted by Jason Kottke Sep 09, 2011

The Atlantic asked their readers to tell them what other people don't get or appreciate about their jobs. Here's what they said, from Army Soldier to Zookeeper.

What people don't understand about my job [as an IRS employee] is that chances are you are not the person I'm examining. I examine doctors who expense three Cadillacs, insurance brokers who claim jet skis for business use only, and real estate agents who haven't paid taxes in eight years. The public doesn't realize that tax auditors are the only people between a balanced effective tax rate among all social classes and the bourgeoisie stealing what isn't bolted down. Don't kid yourself; these people are stealing from you. This money helps pay for schools, roads and with any luck can keep mortgage interest deduction alive for a few more years. I read a report on NPR that Italy has 40% of its population evading taxes. Imagine our debt crisis if we had the same problem. (Our tax evasion rate is estimated between 8-18%).

So if you're one of those "Joe the Plumber" people who take time out of work to throw teabags at me on my way into the office in the morning: You are the middle class! I'm helping you!

(thx, jonathan)

Updates on previous entries for Sep 8, 2011*

posted by Jason Kottke Sep 09, 2011

Ten photography lessons learned from Henri Cartier-Bresson orig. from Sep 07, 2011

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

Time lapse squared

posted by Jason Kottke Sep 08, 2011

Watch a time lapse video of an animator making a stop-motion video.

Inception horn!

Freeman, Feynman, and Hawking, autotuned

posted by Jason Kottke Sep 08, 2011

The giants of physics (and Morgan Freeman, who can be a giant of anything he wants) explain quantum mechanics using relatively simple terms and autotune.

(via devour)

Confessions of a "Rape Cop" Juror

posted by Jason Kottke Sep 08, 2011

Gothamist is trying something new: long-form articles available for a small fee ($2-3) on the Kindle or as a PDF. The first one in the series is a real corker...Confessions of a "Rape Cop" Juror, a piece written by a member of the jury that acquitted two NYPD officers charged with raping a young woman in her East Village apartment.

The former cop sprang from his chair and rushed toward me, and before I could step back, the stocky arms of the ex-boxer were curled around my shoulders. To my left, I saw a crowd of faces; to my right, a place setting. One knife, one fork, and one dull spoon wrapped in a white cloth napkin — not much help if he started strangling me. The arms tightened, and then the high-pitched, soft-spoken voice I recognized from the witness stand whispered, "Thank you."

My chest sank with a long exhale, and a whirlwind of high-powered suits and smiles rose from their glasses of Cabernet. They floated toward me with outstretched hands and watery eyes, the aroma of freshly baked focaccia robiolas mixing with their cologne. One floor below, diners in this Murray Hill Italian restaurant chattered away ignorant of the strange encounter at the top of the back staircase. The man hugging me was supposed to be the monster I had spent seven weeks analyzing and seven days judging. This was Kenneth Moreno, Rape Cop.

I haven't read the piece but The Awl's Choire Sicha has:

It's a fascinating read, and I mean that in a very honest sense. In large part it's about how unbelievably important jury service is in America, and about how we treat those accused of crimes. Whether you like the verdict or not, or whether you like the case presented by prosecutors or not (SIGH), this view into the thinking and process of the jurors is really valuable.

The speed and density of language

posted by Jason Kottke Sep 08, 2011

Different languages are spoken at varying speeds but thanks to correlated differences in data-density, the same amount of information is conveyed within a given time period.

For all of the other languages, the researchers discovered, the more data-dense the average syllable is, the fewer of those syllables had to be spoken per second — and the slower the speech thus was. English, with a high information density of .91, is spoken at an average rate of 6.19 syllables per second. Mandarin, which topped the density list at .94, was the spoken slowpoke at 5.18 syllables per second. Spanish, with a low-density .63, rips along at a syllable-per-second velocity of 7.82. The true speed demon of the group, however, was Japanese, which edges past Spanish at 7.84, thanks to its low density of .49. Despite those differences, at the end of, say, a minute of speech, all of the languages would have conveyed more or less identical amounts of information.

(via @mulegirl)

Ten photography lessons learned from Henri Cartier-Bresson

posted by Jason Kottke Sep 07, 2011

A few things you might learn about photography by following Henri Cartier-Bresson's example.

4. Stick to one lens
Although Henri Cartier-Bresson shot with several different lenses while on-assignment working for Magnum, he would only shoot with a 50mm if he was shooting for himself. By being faithful to that lens for decades, the camera truly became "an extension of his eye".

Update: That link is having some trouble so here's the cached copy from Google.

An Economist Gets Lunch

posted by Jason Kottke Sep 07, 2011

A forthcoming book from Tyler Cowen: An Economist Gets Lunch: New Rules for Everyday Foodies. No description yet, but if you're a regular reader of Marginal Revolution (the Food and Drink stuff in particular), you can probably figure out what it'll entail.

Fred Rogers, man of steel and prayer

posted by Jason Kottke Sep 07, 2011

I absolutely loved this 1998 Esquire profile of Mister Rogers by Tom Junod. I was a big Mister Rogers fan...loved him even more than Sesame Street. One my favorite things I've read all year.

Once upon a time, a long time ago, a man took off his jacket and put on a sweater. Then he took off his shoes and put on a pair of sneakers. His name was Fred Rogers. He was starting a television program, aimed at children, called Mister Rogers' Neighborhood. He had been on television before, but only as the voices and movements of puppets, on a program called The Children's Corner. Now he was stepping in front of the camera as Mister Rogers, and he wanted to do things right, and whatever he did right, he wanted to repeat. And so, once upon a time, Fred Rogers took off his jacket and put on a sweater his mother had made him, a cardigan with a zipper. Then he took off his shoes and put on a pair of navy-blue canvas boating sneakers. He did the same thing the next day, and then the next ... until he had done the same things, those things, 865 times, at the beginning of 865 television programs, over a span of thirty-one years. The first time I met Mister Rogers, he told me a story of how deeply his simple gestures had been felt, and received. He had just come back from visiting Koko, the gorilla who has learned — or who has been taught — American Sign Language. Koko watches television. Koko watches Mister Rogers' Neighborhood, and when Mister Rogers, in his sweater and sneakers, entered the place where she lives, Koko immediately folded him in her long, black arms, as though he were a child, and then ... "She took my shoes off, Tom," Mister Rogers said.

Koko was much bigger than Mister Rogers. She weighed 280 pounds, and Mister Rogers weighed 143. Koko weighed 280 pounds because she is a gorilla, and Mister Rogers weighed 143 pounds because he has weighed 143 pounds as long as he has been Mister Rogers, because once upon a time, around thirty-one years ago, Mister Rogers stepped on a scale, and the scale told him that Mister Rogers weighs 143 pounds. No, not that he weighed 143 pounds, but that he weighs 143 pounds. ... And so, every day, Mister Rogers refuses to do anything that would make his weight change — he neither drinks, nor smokes, nor eats flesh of any kind, nor goes to bed late at night, nor sleeps late in the morning, nor even watches television — and every morning, when he swims, he steps on a scale in his bathing suit and his bathing cap and his goggles, and the scale tells him that he weighs 143 pounds. This has happened so many times that Mister Rogers has come to see that number as a gift, as a destiny fulfilled, because, as he says, "the number 143 means 'I love you.' It takes one letter to say 'I' and four letters to say 'love' and three letters to say 'you.' One hundred and forty-three. 'I love you.' Isn't that wonderful?"

Here's the Emmy speech mentioned in the piece:

an NPR piece on Rogers' death with Junod as a guest, and a eulogy by Junod for Rogers.

All of Kanye's "HUH"s

posted by Jason Kottke Sep 07, 2011

The other day while listening to Watch the Throne I wondered if someone had made a supercut of all of Kanye's "HUH"s, "HANH"s, and "UHH"s...and of course someone has.

HENH??!

Fifty must-see documentaries

posted by Jason Kottke Sep 06, 2011

Current TV has compiled a list of the fifty contemporary documentaries that you must see before you die. Lots of familiar names on the list...here are my personal favorites:

The Kid Stays in the Picture
When We Were Kings
Dogtown and Z-Boys
Man on Wire
Capturing the Friedmans
Touching the Void
The Fog of War
Grizzly Man
The Thin Blue Line
Hoop Dreams

A fond farewell to The Obscure Store

posted by Jason Kottke Sep 06, 2011

Jim Romenesko is shutting down The Obscure Store and Reading Room after thirteen years. TOS&RR was an early blog that helped shape many that came after it...it was one of my favorites back in the day.

Romenesko was also one of the first, if not the first, full-time bloggers...the Poynter Institute brought him on in 2000 to write the MediaNews blog. Romenesko is stepping away from Poynter (he'll continue as a part-time staffer) and will launch a site on his own domain soon.

(Fun fact: I did the design for TOS&RR back in, what, 2002? 2003? I was amazed (and somewhat embarrassed) to discover that the logo survived until the present day.)

Gorgeous typography on fire insurance maps

posted by Jason Kottke Sep 06, 2011

Absolutely beeeeeyooootiful typography on these Sanborn fire insurance maps.

Sanborn Maps

Sanborn's fire insurance enterprise produced not only excellent and detailed urban maps, but they also maintained an elegant aesthetic in the headings and legends on the maps themselves, and in the title pages of the (larger) city volumes. The ornamental flair is diverse — I don't think any of the examples above repeat type styles — and lends an air of individuality and refinement to each of the towns surveyed.

Although this sort of artistic embellishment was unlikely to have increased map sales on its own, it's a charming addition which will have perhaps made the purchasers feel a sense of pride and a little more secure about their own unique town. And it's certainly in keeping with the cartographic tradition of decorative trimmings.

Chris Ware must have a stack of these babies near his drawing table from which to crib.

Instagram filters applied to famous photos

posted by Jason Kottke Sep 06, 2011

Mastergram takes photos from well-regarded photographers (Capa, Burtynksy, Weegee, etc.) and runs them through Instagram filters.

Capa Instagrammed

If the Instagram effect can make mundane images appear to be works of art, what happens when we apply the same filters to images that have historically been held in high regard? Is the imagery degraded or enhanced as a result?

Updates on previous entries for Sep 2, 2011*

posted by Jason Kottke Sep 03, 2011

Kurt Vonnegut explains the shapes of stories orig. from Sep 02, 2011

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

Searching Vonnegut's story shapes

posted by Jason Kottke Sep 02, 2011

Austin Kleon explicitly tied the last two posts together and fed Kurt Vonnegut's story shape graphs into Google Correlate's search by drawing feature. This is SO GOOD.

Vonnegut correlate

Google's search by drawing feature

posted by Jason Kottke Sep 02, 2011

This is kind of amazing...you draw a graph and Google Correlate finds query terms whose popularity matches the drawn curve. I drew a bell curve, a very rough one peaking in 2007, and it matches a bunch of searches for "myspace".

Google Correlate

This fits beautifully with the previous post about Vonnegut's story shape graphs.

Kurt Vonnegut explains the shapes of stories

posted by Jason Kottke Sep 02, 2011

Using a chalkboard and a simple graphical axis, watch as Kurt Vonnegut explains the different shapes that stories can take.

(via @coudal)

Update: This is part of a longer talk that Vonnegut gave...a transcript is here.

I want to share with you something I've learned. I'll draw it on the blackboard behind me so you can follow more easily [draws a vertical line on the blackboard]. This is the G-I axis: good fortune-ill fortune. Death and terrible poverty, sickness down here-great prosperity, wonderful health up there. Your average state of affairs here in the middle [points to bottom, top, and middle of line respectively].

(thx, clifford)

The first digital 3-D rendered film, circa 1972

posted by Jason Kottke Sep 02, 2011

This short film of a 3-D rendered hand made by Ed Cattmull (Pixar founder) and Fred Parke in 1972 might be the first digital 3-D rendered film ever.

This is kind of amazing...from 1972! The story that goes along with the film is worth a read as well.

The best part of this film is not even the 3D rendering itself, but the outtakes and "making of" footage that has been interwoven throughout, including footage of a plaster replica of Ed's hand onto which he is meticulously mapping the polygon vertices that make up the three dimensional model (around 1:30). That's really remarkable. The math that we take for granted for rendering 3D was being invented, real time, to create this video. (Ed's credited for having working out that math to handle things like texture mapping, 3D anti-aliasing and z-buffering.)

See also Vol Libre, a film from 1980 that, for the first time, used fractals to generate graphics. (via @beep)

How old is your globe?

posted by Jason Kottke Sep 01, 2011

This handy chart of defunct country names can help you determine the age of your globe.

globe age chart

When you find the FORMER place name on your globe instead of the NEW name, you have confimed the age of your globe.

Update: XKCD's sliiiiiightly fictitious Guide to Figuring Out the Age of an Undated World Map would be a good way to present the chart above.

Monsters of Grok

posted by Jason Kottke Sep 01, 2011

Monsters of Grok offers "fake band t-shirts for history's greatest minds". The Tesla/Edison send-up of AC/DC is nearly genius, but I like the Machiavelli/Metallica one better for some reason.

Monsters Of Grok

These remind me of IFC's Cinemetal shirts. (via many different vectors)

The Art of Clean Up

posted by Jason Kottke Sep 01, 2011

Ursus Wehrli is coming out with a new book, The Art of Clean Up, which features pairs of photographs of different objects, in disorder and then sorted. Here's my favorite pair:

Ursus Wehrli

Ursus Wehrli

Photos from the book are disappearing from various sites around the web as takedown notices are sent out, but you can get the gist of the book by watching this video by Wehrli about how one of the photos was made:

The Waffle House Index

posted by Jason Kottke Sep 01, 2011

How do you know a natural disaster is really bad? The Waffle House is closed.

When a hurricane makes landfall, the head of the Federal Emergency Management Agency relies on a couple of metrics to assess its destructive power.

First, there is the well-known Saffir-Simpson Wind Scale. Then there is what he calls the "Waffle House Index."

Green means the restaurant is serving a full menu, a signal that damage in an area is limited and the lights are on. Yellow means a limited menu, indicating power from a generator, at best, and low food supplies. Red means the restaurant is closed, a sign of severe damage in the area or unsafe conditions.

"If you get there and the Waffle House is closed?" FEMA Administrator Craig Fugate has said. "That's really bad. That's where you go to work."

(via @buzz)

Updates on previous entries for Aug 31, 2011*

posted by Jason Kottke Sep 01, 2011

Washing machine self-destructs orig. from Aug 31, 2011

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

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