This is amazing: Alan Taylor rounds up some homemade inventions from China, including DIY submarines, giant motorcycles, home-built robots, and can't-possibly-fly airplanes. I can't pick a favorite, but this homemade welding mask is outstanding:
Ok, and this giant motorcycle:
Oh, and this rickshaw-pulling robot:
And, and, and... (via @faketv)
Is this a photo of Billy the Kid, Doc Holliday, Jesse James? orig. from May 08, 2013
Under pressure orig. from May 08, 2013
Steven Soderbergh: The state of cinema orig. from May 07, 2013
* Q: Wha? A: These previously published entries have been updated with new information in the last 24 hours. You can find past updates here.
Marine scientist Cassandra Brooks narrates a time lapse video of her two-month journey on an Antarctic icebreaker. High points: the ice ramming at 2:35 and the fishing penguins at the end.
Brooks blogged her journey for National Geographic. If you want to fall down the rabbit hole of how icebreakers are designed and how they differ from usual ships, Wikipedia is a good place to start.
For a ship to be considered an icebreaker, it requires three traits most normal ships lack: a strengthened hull, an ice-clearing shape, and the power to push through sea ice.
This is purported to be a photo of (from l to r) Billy the Kid, Doc Holliday, Jesse James, and Charlie Bowdre.
The story goes that the photo was taken in 1879 in Las Vegas, New Mexico, at a time when each of the men may have been in town. It's entirely plausible that these men all met and posed for a photo, but as there doesn't appear to be any provenance for particular photo, we're left with trying to ID the long-dead from the very few authenticated photos that exist. So...maybe? But probably not? (via if charlie parker were a gunslinger...)
Update: Ah, here's an even better photo that's almost certainly mislabeled, purportedly featuring Wyatt Erp, Teddy Roosevelt, Doc Holliday, Bat Masterson, Butch Cassidy, and the Sundance Kid:
Contrast both of these photos with this (very real and accurately labeled) group photo of participants at the 1927 Solvay International Conference on Electrons and Photons:
Among those pictured are Albert Einstein, Marie Curie, Neils Bohr, Paul Dirac, Max Planck, Erwin Schrödinger, Wolfgang Pauli, Werner Heisenberg, Arthur Compton, and Hendrik Lorentz. (thx, mike)
Damn! Watch this railroad tanker car instantly implode:
I couldn't find too much information on the source of this clip, but it appears to be part of a safety training video on the perils of improperly steam cleaning tanker cars. In the clip, the tanker car is filled with steam and the safety valves are disabled. The steam cools, then condenses, the pressure inside drops, and the pressure difference is big enough to crumple that huge railcar like a napkin.
Update: See also "sun kink", when railroad tracks buckle in intense heat:
An explanation of the effect can be found here. (thx, will)
The national rates of gun violence and homicide in the US have fallen significantly in past 20 years, but most people are unaware. From a recently released Pew Research report:
Nearly all the decline in the firearm homicide rate took place in the 1990s; the downward trend stopped in 2001 and resumed slowly in 2007. The victimization rate for other gun crimes plunged in the 1990s, then declined more slowly from 2000 to 2008. The rate appears to be higher in 2011 compared with 2008, but the increase is not statistically significant. Violent non-fatal crime victimization overall also dropped in the 1990s before declining more slowly from 2000 to 2010, then ticked up in 2011.
Despite national attention to the issue of firearm violence, most Americans are unaware that gun crime is lower today than it was two decades ago. According to a new Pew Research Center survey, today 56% of Americans believe gun crime is higher than 20 years ago and only 12% think it is lower.
The whys behind the drop in gun violence (and in crime in general) are more difficult to come by:
There is consensus that demographics played some role: The outsized post-World War II baby boom, which produced a large number of people in the high-crime ages of 15 to 20 in the 1960s and 1970s, helped drive crime up in those years.
A review by the National Academy of Sciences of factors driving recent crime trends (Blumstein and Rosenfeld, 2008) cited a decline in rates in the early 1980s as the young boomers got older, then a flare-up by mid-decade in conjunction with a rising street market for crack cocaine, especially in big cities. It noted recruitment of a younger cohort of drug seller with greater willingness to use guns. By the early 1990s, crack markets withered in part because of lessened demand, and the vibrant national economy made it easier for even low-skilled young people to find jobs rather than get involved in crime.
At the same time, a rising number of people ages 30 and older were incarcerated, due in part to stricter laws, which helped restrain violence among this age group. It is less clear, researchers say, that innovative policing strategies and police crackdowns on use of guns by younger adults played a significant role in reducing crime.
(via hacker news)
Taking a page from Orwell, officials in Chengdu, China endeavored to prevent recent protests by moving the weekend and scheduling security exercises at the same time and place as the scheduled protest.
As text messages circulated calling for another protest, authorities decided to fiddle with the calendar: For many, Saturday became a workday, and the day of rest was moved to Monday, May 6. So as Saturday dawned, schoolchildren straggled reluctantly back to class, and employees at government-run work units discovered the day was taken up by urgent meetings.
See also how Georgia ended the country's drug problem:
But the more radical steps involved brutalizing the addicts themselves. Saakashvili mandated as aggressive a drug policy as any country has attempted since Mao Zedong threatened to execute all Chinese opium fiends and "cured" about five million of them overnight. If you think New York's stop-and-frisk rule is invasive, try Georgia's: Cops can stop anyone at any time for no reason and force him to urinate into a cup. Fifty-three thousand people were stopped on the street in 2007, or about one in 20 of the young men in Georgia. About a third of those passed dirty urine; first-offenders were levied a fine of several hundred dollars. One more dirty test amounted to a criminal offense.
"There was such an unprecedented drug war," Otiashvili says. "What was going on-and still goes on-in Georgia doesn't happen anywhere. No country puts people in the prison for a positive urine test."
(via @tylercowen)
Former Supreme Court Justice Sandra Day O'Connor now admits that taking on the Bush vs Gore case in 2000 was probably a mistake.
"It took the case and decided it at a time when it was still a big election issue," O'Connor said during a talk with the Chicago Tribune's Editorial Board on Friday. "Maybe the court should have said, 'We're not going to take it, goodbye.'"
The case, she said, "stirred up the public" and "gave the court a less than perfect reputation."
"Obviously the court did reach a decision and thought it had to reach a decision," she said. "It turned out the election authorities in Florida hadn't done a real good job there and kind of messed it up. And probably the Supreme Court added to the problem at the end of the day."
[Hair tearing-out noise]
At the recent San Francisco Internation Film Festival, Steven Soderbergh gave a keynote about the current state of cinema. It is worth reading if you enjoy movies or are engaged in any sort of creative work.
But before we talk about movies we should talk about art in general, if that's possible. Given all the incredible suffering in the world I wonder, what is art for, really? If the collected works of Shakespeare can't prevent genocide then really, what is it for? Shouldn't we be spending the time and resources alleviating suffering and helping other people instead of going to the movies and plays and art installations? When we did Ocean's Thirteen the casino set used $60,000 of electricity every week. How do you justify that? Do you justify that by saying, the people who could've had that electricity are going to watch the movie for two hours and be entertained - except they probably can't, because they don't have any electricity, because we used it. Then I think, what about all the resources spent on all the pieces of entertainment? What about the carbon footprint of getting me here? Then I think, why are you even thinking that way and worrying about how many miles per gallon my car gets, when we have NASCAR, and monster truck pulls on TV? So what I finally decided was, art is simply inevitable. It was on the wall of a cave in France 30,000 years ago, and it's because we are a species that's driven by narrative. Art is storytelling, and we need to tell stories to pass along ideas and information, and to try and make sense out of all this chaos. And sometimes when you get a really good artist and a compelling story, you can almost achieve that thing that's impossible which is entering the consciousness of another human being - literally seeing the world the way they see it. Then, if you have a really good piece of art and a really good artist, you are altered in some way, and so the experience is transformative and in the minute you're experiencing that piece of art, you're not alone. You're connected to the arts. So I feel like that can't be too bad.
Update: If you prefer to watch the speech, have at it:
(via @MikeShefferNJ)
NYC is set to introduce their bike-share program at the end of the month. I think it's a great idea and am interested to follow how it does in practice. Many have objected to the share program even before it starts (reminding me of the smoking ban protests, ultimately much ado about nothing) but Sommer Mathis does an admirable job heading them off.
Claim #3: The stations are too ugly for historic neighborhoods, and Citibank's sponsorship is too crassly commercial.
These are just some of the claims behind a series of lawsuits that are already in the works, brought by specific building owners who argue that docking stations don't belong next to their beautiful buildings. They're also worried that delivery truck access may be impeded by the presence of some stations. The lawsuits are being filed within the context of additional complaints that neighbors feel they weren't consulted on the location of some stations, despite the city's department of transportation having held nearly 400 meetings on station locations with community boards and other neighborhood groups. This is a classic NIMBY reaction, and by far the easiest one the city could have predicted. The idea that bike-share infrastructure is somehow uglier or more commercial than any other element of New York's streetscape is easy enough to debunk. But the truth is, one of the best things about the design of the Alta bike-share stations is how easy they are to install and, if need be, later remove. It's entirely possible that small problems with the specific locations of some stations will become apparent after the program launches, and they'll need to be moved around the corner or across the street to better serve users. This has happened here in Washington, D.C., and it'll happen for sure in New York. But that's all part of the bike-share roll-out process. If there's a legitimate problem with the location of a single station, that can actually be fixed within in a matter of hours or at worst, a day or two.
Our neighborhood newspaper went full-NIMBY about the bike-share this week and hit all the major points addressed in this article, including the ridiculous "bike racks are taking valuable parking spots" one. (via @jmseabrook)
Adam Davidson on the asinine and broken food truck/cart system in NYC. This short paragraph not only explains what's wrong with the food cart biz in NYC but also with American politics in general:
Economically speaking, the problem is a standard one, known as the J-curve, which represents a downslope on a graph followed by a steep rise. Some sensible changes to the current food-vendor system may have long-term benefits for everyone, but the immediate impact could spell short-term losses for those who now profit from the system. A small group of New Yorkers -- particularly owners of commissaries and physical restaurants -- are highly motivated to lobby politicians not to change things. And most of the potential beneficiaries don't realize they're missing out. Many of the rest of us would love to have more varied food trucks, but we don't care enough to pressure the City Council.
(via @tylercowen)
PepsiCo is dropping Lil Wayne as a Mountain Dew spokesman because of "vulgar lyrics" referring to Emmett Till after the Till family put pressure on the beverage giant. What lyrics? Because of its ridiculous policy against including bad words in such an august publication, the NY Times doesn't even say what the lyrics are! Which makes the entire article worthless from a journalistic perspective. The lyrics are the entire story...without them, it's just a bunch of press release bullshit. FYI, because we are all adults here (and your kids already know the lyrics), here are the lyrics in question courtesy of Rap Genius:
Pop a lot of pain pills
Bout to put rims on my skateboard wheels
Beat that pussy up like Emmett Till
Yeah....
Two cell phones ringin' at the same time
That's your ho, callin' from two different phones
Tell that bitch "leave me the fuck alone!"
See, you fuck her wrong, and I fuck her long
I got a love-hate relationship with Molly
I'd rather pop an ollie, and my dick is a trolly
Boy, I'll bury you like Halle
How can people even discuss the artistic merit and/or offensiveness of the lyrics if you can't print them? The Times should either simply publish whatever it is they are talking about or not run the story at all. (via @bdeskin, who has been giving the Times shit about their profanity policy on Twitter)
In this series of illustrations created for a British TV show, historical figures are depicted as they might look today. Shakespeare becomes a Williamsburg hipster, Henry VIII is Richard Branson-esque, and Elizabeth I is a cross between Tina Brown and Tilda Swinton.
(via @DavidGrann)
Upstream Color is now available for viewing, buying, and downloading with a wide array of options. Among them, DRM-free digital download, Blu-ray/DVD from Amazon, rent/buy at Amazon, and buy on iTunes.
An amazing bit of camouflage from the orchid mantis:
Seeing it move around is eerie. See also the bee orchid. (via @faketv)
Heather Dewey-Hagborg collects hair, chewed gum, and smoked cigarettes, pulls the DNA out of them, and uses the genetic information to produce models of what the people who used those items might have looked like.
From this sequence, Dewey-Hagborg gathers information about the person's ancestry, gender, eye color, propensity to be overweight and other traits related to facial morphology, such as the space between one's eyes. "I have a list of about 40 or 50 different traits that I have either successfully analyzed or I am in the process of working on right now," she says.
Dewey-Hagborg then enters these parameters into a computer program to create a 3D model of the person's face." Ancestry gives you most of the generic picture of what someone is going to tend to look like. Then, the other traits point towards modifications on that kind of generic portrait," she explains. The artist ultimately sends a file of the 3D model to a 3D printer on the campus of her alma mater, New York University, so that it can be transformed into sculpture.
There are lots of reviews of Google Glass out there, but my favorite is Luke Wroblewski's concise and measured take.
My own audio: Glass has a bone transducer that amplifies audio only you can hear. In practice, it's imperfect. But the potential is clear.
Social interactions: I forced myself to wear Glass even if I felt uneasy about it, which was in a lot of places. I was downright nervous to have them on in airport security and the casino floor. But even when ordering a coffee at Starbucks, I felt like I was doing something wrong.
The Peregrine Falcon is the world's fastest animal1; it can reach speeds of more than 240 mph during dives. It uses that speed to kill other birds in mid-air. Here's a video of a Peregrine diving and killing a duck, shot with a camera mounted on the falcon's back.
It's cool watching her fly around, but the exciting part starts right around 2:45. The acceleration is incredible. The same bird does a longer and faster dive in this video (at ~0:55):
Here's what the Peregrine's dive looks like from an observer's point-of-view:
Our family had a lively discussion about Peregrine Falcons around the dinner table a couple of weeks ago...I can't wait to show the kids these videos when I get home tonight. (via @DavidGrann)
[1] Although Joseph Kittinger and Felix Baumgartner might quibble with that. ↩
All of Jerry's best girls orig. from May 03, 2013
* Q: Wha? A: These previously published entries have been updated with new information in the last 24 hours. You can find past updates here.
A list of the northernmost, southernmost, easternmost and westernmost cities/towns/villages in all 50 US states.
Vermont -- Northernmost: Derby Line. Southernmost: Vernon (specifically South Vernon area). Easternmost: Beecher Falls. Westernmost: Chimney Point.
California -- Northernmost: Tulelake (note: Fairport is more northerly but is considered a "former settlement") Southernmost: San Diego (San Ysidro District). Easternmost: Parker Dam. Westernmost: Ferndale.
New York -- Northernmost: Rouses Point. Southernmost: Staten Island-New York City (Tottenville Neighborhood) Easternmost: Montauk. Westernmost: Findley Lake.
(via @jessamyn)
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