Cool slideshow of 221 years of mastheads from
Cool slideshow of 221 years of mastheads from the London Times. (via newsdesigner, who has more on the recent Times refresh)
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Entries for November 2006
How would Shakespeare do in Hollywood today?
How would Shakespeare do in Hollywood today? He’d be raking in the dough on royalties, but because most of his stories were based on previous work, he might not have been able to write them in the first place without being sued for copyright infringement.
Historical rankings of US presidents. Honest Abe
Historical rankings of US presidents. Honest Abe is number one with a…well, he’s just #1. George W. Bush comes in at a respectable 22nd, just behind Bill Clinton. (via fakeisthenewreal)
Director Robert Altman dead at 81. He will be missed.
Director Robert Altman dead at 81. He will be missed.
The Google 15
the fifteen pounds that new Google employees supposedly gain in their first year at Google from gorging on the omnipresent free food.
Some musings on the future of the
Some musings on the future of the newspaper in The Atlantic. “The barbarians, on the other hand, don’t seem to care; they’d rather get the news they want, not the news the mandarins say is good for them.”
Event at the 92nd St. Y on
Event at the 92nd St. Y on Dec 4: The Art of the Book: Behind the Covers with Dave Eggers, Chip Kidd and Milton Glaser. Tickets are only $10 if you’re 35 or younger.
If I Did It cancelled
Update: OJ Simpson’s “If I Did It” book and TV show cancelled; Fox called it “an ill-considered project”. Gosh, you think?
Physiologically, humans aren’t meant to drive fast
Physiologically, humans aren’t meant to drive fast in cars because our flicker fusion frequency isn’t high enough. Compared to birds (> 100 Hz versus 60 Hz for humans), at high speeds, everything kinda blurs together for us, leaving us ill-equipped to react quickly.
Circular argument
Tariffs on imported sugar and ethanol imposed by the US government keep our sugar expensive and is keeping the US from using more efficient methods of saving energy and, oh, by the way, helping the environment. This excerpt from the last two paragraphs of the piece is a succinct description of what’s wrong with contemporary American politics:
Tariffs and quotas are extremely hard to get rid of, once established, because they create a vicious circle of back-scratching-government largesse means that sugar producers get wealthy, giving them lots of cash to toss at members of Congress, who then have an incentive to insure that the largesse continues to flow. More important, protectionist rules flourish because the benefits are concentrated among a small number of easy-to-identify winners, while the costs are spread out across the entire population. It may be annoying to pay a few more cents for sugar or ethanol, but most of us are unlikely to lobby Congress about it.
Maybe we should, though. Our current policy is absurd even by Washington standards: Congress is paying billions in subsidies to get us to use more ethanol, while keeping in place tariffs and quotas that guarantee that we’ll use less. And while most of the time tariffs just mean higher prices and reduced competition, in the case of ethanol the negative effects are considerably greater, leaving us saddled with an inferior and less energy-efficient technology and as dependent as ever on oil-producing countries.
Maddening. Partisan politics is a not-very-elaborate smokescreen to distract us from this bullshit.
Psychology of the Wii and PS3
Of all the news over the past few days about the launches of Sony’s PS3 and Nintendo’s Wii, the most interesting has been the differing responses of the people waiting to purchase the different consoles. While the launch of the PS3 was marred by violence (people robbed of their PS3s in mall parking lots, crowds trampling people in a mad rush for games, police needing to quiet unruly crowds waiting to buy with pepper bullets, etc.), the launch of the Wii was peaceful, with no reports of violence that I can find. This comment on Digg is typical of the sentiment I’ve seen expressed online about the two groups of fans:
Try working at a Circuit City… went in for a 7am meeting and got badgered by the losers. I have to say the “wii-tards” were much more tame than the “ps three-tards.”
There are several obvious reasons for the PS3 violence: the PS3 was possibly more anticipated, their initial supply was more limited than that of the Wii, and the machine is more expensive. But the difference in reaction also has something to do with the goals of each company in regard to their respective systems and the types of people each system tends to attract. Nintendo is focused on play and fun: the Wii is the fun system…about people of all ages enjoying the process of playing games. The PS3 is more about competition, who wins, who loses, and who frags the most enemies in the most spectacular fashion; cutthroat survival of the fittest. These are generalizations of course, but I find it interesting that the Nintendo gamers, who are attracted to play and fun, didn’t cause as much trouble as the PS3 fans, who are more into competition.
Update: On the other hand, a report from last night in line at the Nintendo store in Manhattan:
After we had waited in line for almost two hours, Nintendo World closed the store early (at 5:30) and instead of making the announcement themselves, the Nintendo World employees sent Rockefeller Center security out to intimidate the crowd into dispersing. It was surreal - on what should have been Nintendo World’s finest day, they were closing early and sending out fake police to scare away their customers.
Nintendo not managing their own store = stupid.
This week’s New Yorker features 4 different Thanksgiving-themed
This week’s New Yorker features 4 different Thanksgiving-themed covered by Chris Ware. Collect them all! This one’s my favorite.
Discover magazine picks the 25 greatest science books
Discover magazine picks the 25 greatest science books of all time. Darwin, Newton, and Galileo top the list.
Why blogs suck. “i am afraid of
Why blogs suck. “i am afraid of the analagous phenonena happening: blog as signifier for experience, rather than experience itself.”
An Inconvenient Truth is out on DVD
An Inconvenient Truth is out on DVD tomorrow, Here’s what I wrote about the film when I saw it back in May.
Wii wordplay
Nintendo released the Wii at midnight today. Predictably, bloggers and media outlets are having a bit of fun with the gaming console’s name. Here’s a sampling of headlines from newspaper stories and blog posts with Wii wordplay:
Gone with the Wii
Gamers Wii bit excited
Are Wii Ready?
Playtesters say ‘Wii’ to console war question
Wii Won’t Rock You
And away Wii go
Gamers Go Wii Wii Wii All the Way Home
The things Wii do for love
‘Wii’kend So Far
No Wii for Mii… for now :(
Wii were successful (barely)
Wii Are The World: War Of The “Hard To Resist” Game Consoles
Wii Will, Wii Will Rock You.
Oh Wii Oh…
A Wii bit of gougery
Come On Over and Wii’ll Play!
Wii-lcome to the Twilight Zone
Wii would like to play!
What Wii can do
Only a Wii Bit of Excitement
PS3 Fans: “Wii are a bunch of idiots”
Wii Wish You an Early Christmas (If You’re Famous Enough)
Be Kind to the Wii Folk
Wii Love It! All about Nintendo’s new gaming console
A Wii-bit too late
Are Wii ready?
Wii Want to Play
Wii for Yoo and Mee
To Wii or not to Wii, that is the question!
A Wii Bit More
Oh, the humani’wii’. (Apologies…I’m so’wii’. (No, ‘wii’lly. (I can’t stop, send help! Hurr’wii’!)))
For the next fours years, any film
For the next fours years, any film released by Weinstein Co. will only be available for rental at Blockbuster (and especially not Netflix). What a stupid deal. I wonder what the filmmakers think of this, which will effectively limit the reach of their films (despite the positive spin Blockbuster and the Weinsteins want to put on this).
Marriage is like a wrestling match…
M: Ack, what are you doing?
J: I’m putting you in a wrestling hold. It’s called a full nelson, I believe.
M: Well, that’s not nice. This is how you treat your wife? How about a hug instead?
J: No, no, I am being nice…it’s a love nelson.
Despite the sentiment, the love nelson remains an illegal hold of endearment in our household.
Surprising factoid from an article on legalizing
Surprising factoid from an article on legalizing kidney sales: “America already lets people buy babies from surrogate mothers, and the risk of dying from renting out your womb is six times higher than from selling your kidney”. (via mr)
Hypothesis: people live in cities so that
Hypothesis: people live in cities so that they can have casual or anonymous sex. “[In the suburbs,] MapQuest is not immediately handy for good directions, there are two cars in play, at least one of the persons may be drunk, and there is a trust issue of being trapped in some weird suburban cul-de-sac, surrounded only by sleeping, catatonic soccer moms with no one to hear you scream for help.”
Meg reports some sad news that I
Meg reports some sad news that I already suspected: Hellmann’s Mayonnaise has changed its recipe. I’m a bit of a sandwich and mayonnaise fanatic, so when something started tasting a little off with the new jar, I figured something was up. Tastes like they added a little mustard to me.
Physicists at the University of Washington are
Physicists at the University of Washington are hoping to use entangled photons to send information back in time. “Here’s where it gets weird.”
Finally! An answer to the question “if
Finally! An answer to the question “if a thousand monkeys robots type at a thousand typewriters for one thousand years, will they produce Shakespeare?” The answer is “police undies”.
Steven Johnson has a new blog over
Steven Johnson has a new blog over at the NY Times on “the perils and promise of increasing urban density” but it’s TimesSelect which sucks both generally and for me specifically.
It’s fun Fotoshop Friday! (Phun Photoshop Phriday?)
It’s fun Fotoshop Friday! (Phun Photoshop Phriday?) Anyway, here’s a bunch of pictures of celebrities Photoshopped to look like Star Wars characters. I’m surprised there weren’t more celebrities frozen in carbonite. (via fandumb)
Donella Meadows came up with a list
Donella Meadows came up with a list of 12 leverage points, places in complex systems (like cities, companies, environments, etc.) where making small changes can result in big shifts. The Wikipedia page contains a summary of her points. Aside from the obvious usage in city planning and environmental policymaking, I wonder if game designers (like Will Wright) have utilized Meadows’ list in constructing their virutal complex systems. (via migurski)
Craigslist desperately needs something like Listpic…simple
Craigslist desperately needs something like Listpic…simple pages of thumbnails from CL ads by category. Here’s the page for NYC furniture.
Buzzfeed launches
Jonah Peretti, late of Eyebeam and currently of Huffington Post, and his fine team have launched Buzzfeed. From the about page:
BuzzFeed distinguishes what is actually interesting from what is merely hyped. We only feature movies, music, fashion, ideas, technology, and culture that are on the rise and worth your time.
The content territory that Buzzfeed aims to fill is an interesting one. The site is not Digg with 125 new items to read on the front page every day. Neither is it an historical record of what people thought was interesting at a certain point in time. It’s more like a water cooler conversation with velocity, a moving snapshot of what the media and blogosphere is talking about. As a result, the stuff you see on Buzzfeed is not the absolute newest, freshest thing…there’s no truly breaking news on the site because to have buzz around something, people already need to be talking about it somewhere. But unless you’re completely obsessive about keeping up with everything going on in all corners of the world, it’s likely that Buzzfeed will show you something new and interesting every day, especially if it’s in an area you don’t normally pay attention to. That’s the goal, anyway.
I think it’s a great approach, an attempt to cut through a bit of the hype and look past the memes you might chuckle at and then completely forget about and instead, as the about page says, “aggregate authentic excitement that captures what real people are saying about the things they find most interesting”. The Borat trend is an example of something that really works with this approach. Unlike most films released these days, there’s a surprising number of different things around Borat to talk about. There’s the movie itself. There’s the surprise popularity of it. And the almost universal great reviews. Then came the lawsuits. Now there’s a bit of a backlash. And there’s the Snakes on a Plane angle…Borat is a movie that succeeded through viral marketing where SoaP largely failed. A bit of something for everyone there, even for the hardcare Borat fan.
Warning Disclosure: I am an advisor to Buzzfeed.
As part of their 50th anniversary celebration,
As part of their 50th anniversary celebration, New Scientist asked “70 of the world’s most brilliant scientists” what their forecasts are for the next 50 years. As Steven Pinker says, this is a sucker’s bet, but enjoyable reading nonetheless.
Why the functionality of MsgFiler isn’t automatically
Why the functionality of MsgFiler isn’t automatically built into Mail.app, I don’t know, but I’m definitely coughing up the $8 on this because my life primarily consists of moving email from one folder to another. (via df)
Update: See also Mail Act-On. (thx, brandon)
Gelf Magazine finds that the critics think
Gelf Magazine finds that the critics think that a new TV show, Day Break, is a lot like Groundhog Day meets 24 meets The Shield meets The Fugitive meets Kafka meets Law & Order.
An imperfect metaphor many of you probably won’t get
Driving on the Interstate through the metropolitan tri-state area during a 1.5 hour downpour is like playing 700 continuous laps of Baby Park against 7 other players. I’m beat. (ps. It’s a simile anyway.)
Geological features called chevrons could be evidence
Geological features called chevrons could be evidence of violent comet/asteroid impacts as recently as 1000 years ago. The chevrons are formed by massive tsunamis; scientists believe one such tsunami occurred in the Indian Ocean 4,800 years ago and was 600 feet high. These impact-caused tsunamis may also be responsible for the various flood myths found in world religions. (thx, matt)
Little People is a series of photographs
Little People is a series of photographs of tiny handpainted people depicted in different situations around London. Reminds me of the tiny people with food photos of Akiko Ida and Pierre Javelle. It would be neat to monkey with the depth of field in these photos so that somehow both the little people and the background were in focus, making it seem more like the people weren’t little.
Are you ready? I said, ARE YOU
Are you ready? I said, ARE YOU READY? End-of-the-year list season has begun!! Woo! Let’s get it started with Information Leafblower’s list of the top 40 bands in America as chosen by a bunch of music bloggers. Lots of guitar music that the indie rock kids like so much.
Entertainment Weekly found someone who had never
Entertainment Weekly found someone who had never seen any of the Star Wars movies and sat him down to watch all six of them in order. His verdict? “I would be lying if I said that I wasn’t sucked into this Galaxy Far, Far Away.”
Ben Saunders points up towards the two
Ben Saunders points up towards the two craziest people in the world, Francois Bon and Antoine Montant, and their speedflying videos, in which videos they half-ski half-parachute down a rocky mountain. “Undoubtedly the most hardcore thing I’ve seen for a long time.”
I mentioned earlier the new paperback version
I mentioned earlier the new paperback version of Infinite Jest; here’s Dave Egger’s introduction to the new edition. “[Wallace] was already known as a very smart and challenging and funny and preternaturally gifted writer when Infinite Jest was released in 1996, and thereafter his reputation included all the adjectives mentioned just now, and also this one: Holy shit.” (thx, nick)
OJ Simpson has written a book
OJ Simpson has written a book detailing how he would have killed his wife and Ron Goldman if he were the person that did it. That and a TV special (during sweeps!) on Fox are both being distributed courtesy of News Corp. My mind, it is BOGGLED.
Photo of Beavis, a homeless man living
Photo of Beavis, a homeless man living in San Francisco, shooting up (perhaps NSFW). He was previously photographed in 1994 as a street kid in LA for Time magazine. “he picks his scabs to find a good spot; and tries a few locations before he gets a vein.”
NFL TV distribution maps: where in the
NFL TV distribution maps: where in the US certain football games are broadcast…a visual representation of why you’ll almost never see a Vikings game in Maine. (via fakeisthenewreal)
Paddy Johnson wrote a nice feature on
Paddy Johnson wrote a nice feature on Teri Horton’s $5 thrift store Jackson Pollock and the movie about her struggle to authenticate and sell the painting. Johnson also published part of her interview with Horton on Art Fag City.
I’m sure native Bostonians will find much
I’m sure native Bostonians will find much to argue about in this list of Boston slang. (via cyn-c)
A special bachelorette party menu from a
A special bachelorette party menu from a French restaurant. “Steak Frites with Bearnaise drizzle slowly administered tableside by young, handsome, patient male waiter.”
List of fictional diseases. See also: an
List of fictional diseases. See also: an exensive list of fictional things.
Related to the rules for calling shotgun
Related to the rules for calling shotgun is the five-second rule, referring to the foods that fall on the ground or chair-claiming rules at parties and not the obsolete ice dancing rule or estimating the distance of a lightning strike. “The five second rule is sometimes called the three-second rule, seven-second rule, 10-second rule, or the 15-second rule, to some extent depending on locale, the quality of the food involved or the intoxication level of the individual quoting the rule.” See also cooties: “Other than avoiding those with the fictional disease, there are a variety of ways to cure or prevent cooties. A ‘cootie shot’ can be administered in a variety of ways. The most common is to draw two circles and two dots with a finger on one’s arm, while saying the rhyme ‘Circle circle, dot dot, now you have a Cootie shot.’”
Air France, Continental, Delta, Emirates, KLM, and
Air France, Continental, Delta, Emirates, KLM, and United are integrating the iPod into their airplanes, so that you can plug in to charge and view movies on the seatback video screens. How about some standard 120V AC power outlets instead?
Update: KLM and Air France say that there’s no formal deal between them and Apple. (thx, maaike)
The Cupertino effect: a term for incorrect
The Cupertino effect: a term for incorrect spellcheck suggestions that make it into finalized documents. The term comes from the appearance of the word “Cupertino” in several European Union documents in the place of “cooperation”. “The fact that Secretary General Robertson is going to join this session this afternoon in the European Union headquarters gives you already an idea of how close and co-ordinated this Cupertino is and this action will be.”
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