Typing on a one handed keyboard is surprisingly easy
Thursday, May 27, 2010
Wednesday, May 26, 2010
Gary Foshee, a collector and designer of puzzles from Issaquah near Seattle walked to the lectern to present his talk. It consisted of the following three sentences: "I have two children. One is a boy born on a Tuesday. What is the probability I have two boys?"
Friday, May 21, 2010
Thursday, May 20, 2010
Congress has made BP's oil leakage video feed public and is posting on GlobalWarming.House.gov (it's currently getting slammed, and may time out). BP had previously denied congress access to the feed, but was forced to do so.
Here's an especially ugly vid-cap from earlier in the month showing oil gushing into the gulf at the sea floor.
Meanwhile, Haliburton's CEO, whose company was also involved in the accident, announced to shareholders this morning that they wouldn't have to pay a dime to cover damages from the environmental catastrophe.
Here's an especially ugly vid-cap from earlier in the month showing oil gushing into the gulf at the sea floor.
Meanwhile, Haliburton's CEO, whose company was also involved in the accident, announced to shareholders this morning that they wouldn't have to pay a dime to cover damages from the environmental catastrophe.
Cyclist Floyd Landis, after years of maintaining his innocence against doping charges, now admits to having spent $90,000 per year on outlawed performance enhancing drugs. He's also dropping the dime on former teammates, including Lance Armstrong. LiveStrong, indeed.
Wednesday, May 19, 2010
Monday, May 17, 2010
Friday, May 14, 2010
Wednesday, May 12, 2010
Friday, May 07, 2010
Tuesday, May 04, 2010
Publishing meets crowdsourcing: 48 Hours Magazine is attempting to create, write, photograph, edit, and publish a magazine in 48 hours.
Here's how it works: Issue Zero begins May 7th. We'll unveil a theme and you'll have 24 hours to produce and submit your work. We'll take the next 24 to snip, mash and gild it. The end results will be a shiny website and a beautiful glossy paper magazine, delivered right to your old-fashioned mailbox. We promise it will be insane. Better yet, it might even work.
Here's how it works: Issue Zero begins May 7th. We'll unveil a theme and you'll have 24 hours to produce and submit your work. We'll take the next 24 to snip, mash and gild it. The end results will be a shiny website and a beautiful glossy paper magazine, delivered right to your old-fashioned mailbox. We promise it will be insane. Better yet, it might even work.
Thursday, April 29, 2010
Apple's Steve Jobs sends an open letter to Adobe on why his mobile products won't support Adobe Flash.
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While Job's has little room to crow on his own company's history in software openness, I agree with many of his points. With HTML5 coming, Flash may be at the end of it's useful life anyway.
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While Job's has little room to crow on his own company's history in software openness, I agree with many of his points. With HTML5 coming, Flash may be at the end of it's useful life anyway.
The Wind Man who Beat Cape Cod's Elite
Jim Gordon struggles to lift a book. It's 4,000 pages, more than a foot thick and one of the dozens of government reports over the last decade assessing the nation's first offshore wind farm.
"It's thicker than the health care bill," chuckles Gordon, the 56-year-old CEO of Cape Wind.
Jim Gordon struggles to lift a book. It's 4,000 pages, more than a foot thick and one of the dozens of government reports over the last decade assessing the nation's first offshore wind farm.
"It's thicker than the health care bill," chuckles Gordon, the 56-year-old CEO of Cape Wind.
Tuesday, April 27, 2010
Think Again: The Internet (ForeignPolicy)
They told us it would usher in a new era of freedom, political activism, and perpetual peace. They were wrong.
They told us it would usher in a new era of freedom, political activism, and perpetual peace. They were wrong.
Coastal Collapse (slate)
Titus, the Environmental Protection Agency's resident expert on sea-level rise, first happened on Maryland's disappearing beaches 15 years ago while looking for a place to windsurf. "Having the name 'beach,' " he discovered, "is not a very good predictor of having a beach."
Titus, the Environmental Protection Agency's resident expert on sea-level rise, first happened on Maryland's disappearing beaches 15 years ago while looking for a place to windsurf. "Having the name 'beach,' " he discovered, "is not a very good predictor of having a beach."
Monday, April 26, 2010
The Tea Party's Toxic Take on History (slate)
The media for the most part has shown itself afraid to challenge the insidious distortions of language and history Tea Partiers promote. In the last few weeks, several news outlets have been propagating the meme that Tea Partiers are "just regular folks." And certainly some are. But if you examined the ideology that shows its face, the one that is apparent in sign carriers and blog commenters and cable spokespersons, you find something disturbing.
The media for the most part has shown itself afraid to challenge the insidious distortions of language and history Tea Partiers promote. In the last few weeks, several news outlets have been propagating the meme that Tea Partiers are "just regular folks." And certainly some are. But if you examined the ideology that shows its face, the one that is apparent in sign carriers and blog commenters and cable spokespersons, you find something disturbing.
Friday, April 23, 2010
Thursday, April 22, 2010
Monday, April 19, 2010
Please do not change your password (boston globe)
Particularly dubious are the standard rules for creating and protecting website passwords, Herley found. For example, users are admonished to change passwords regularly, but redoing them is not an effective preventive step against online infiltration unless the cyber attacker (or evil colleague) who steals your sign-in sequence waits to employ it until after you’ve switched to a new one, Herley wrote. That’s about as likely as a crook lifting a house key and then waiting until the lock is changed before sticking it in the door.
Particularly dubious are the standard rules for creating and protecting website passwords, Herley found. For example, users are admonished to change passwords regularly, but redoing them is not an effective preventive step against online infiltration unless the cyber attacker (or evil colleague) who steals your sign-in sequence waits to employ it until after you’ve switched to a new one, Herley wrote. That’s about as likely as a crook lifting a house key and then waiting until the lock is changed before sticking it in the door.
Wednesday, April 14, 2010
Tuesday, April 13, 2010
Saturday, April 10, 2010
The materialistic and selfish quality of contemporary life is not inherent in the human condition. Much of what appears "natural" today dates from the 1980s: the obsession with wealth creation, the cult of privatization and the private sector, the growing disparities of rich and poor. And above all, the rhetoric that accompanies these: uncritical admiration for unfettered markets, disdain for the public sector, the delusion of endless growth.
Tony Judt's Ill Fares the Land (NYTimes Review of Books)
Tony Judt's Ill Fares the Land (NYTimes Review of Books)
Friday, April 09, 2010
Stealing Mona Lisa (vanity fair)
If anyone else noticed during the rest of the day that there were four bare hooks where the Mona Lisa usually hung, they kept it to themselves. Incredibly, not until Tuesday, when the Louvre again opened its doors to the public, did anyone express concern over the fact that the world’s most famous painting was missing from its usual place. When an artist set up his easel in the Salon Carré and noticed that the centerpiece of his intended work was absent, he complained to a guard, who merely shrugged. Like Picquet the day before, the guard assumed the Mona Lisa had been removed to the photographers’ studio. But the artist persisted. How soon would it be returned?
If anyone else noticed during the rest of the day that there were four bare hooks where the Mona Lisa usually hung, they kept it to themselves. Incredibly, not until Tuesday, when the Louvre again opened its doors to the public, did anyone express concern over the fact that the world’s most famous painting was missing from its usual place. When an artist set up his easel in the Salon Carré and noticed that the centerpiece of his intended work was absent, he complained to a guard, who merely shrugged. Like Picquet the day before, the guard assumed the Mona Lisa had been removed to the photographers’ studio. But the artist persisted. How soon would it be returned?
Tuesday, April 06, 2010
100 meter photo
To create We’re All Gonna Die – 100 meters of existence, Simon Hoegsburg stood on a railroad bridge in Berlin for 20 days, photographing strangers.
To create We’re All Gonna Die – 100 meters of existence, Simon Hoegsburg stood on a railroad bridge in Berlin for 20 days, photographing strangers.
Saturday, April 03, 2010
I'm not sure the world needs a bladeless fan, but it's pretty cool from an engineering perspective alone.
Friday, April 02, 2010
[Signs of the Coming Apocalypse XII] In what can only be described as meth-fueled insanity or marketing-to-fat-people-genius, KFC has decided to replace the bread in their bacon, glowing orange mayo, cheese, shit sandwich with 2 pieces of FRIED CHICKEN
Not a Yes-Men prank. Not an April Fools joke.
Not a Yes-Men prank. Not an April Fools joke.
Wednesday, March 31, 2010
A Grand Unified Theory of AI MIT News
In probabilistic AI, by contrast, a computer is fed lots of examples of something — like pictures of birds — and is left to infer, on its own, what those examples have in common. This approach works fairly well with concrete concepts like “bird,” but it has trouble with more abstract concepts — for example, flight, a capacity shared by birds, helicopters, kites and superheroes. You could show a probabilistic system lots of pictures of things in flight, but even if it figured out what they all had in common, it would be very likely to misidentify clouds, or the sun, or the antennas on top of buildings as instances of flight. And even flight is a concrete concept compared to, say, “grammar,” or “motherhood.”
In probabilistic AI, by contrast, a computer is fed lots of examples of something — like pictures of birds — and is left to infer, on its own, what those examples have in common. This approach works fairly well with concrete concepts like “bird,” but it has trouble with more abstract concepts — for example, flight, a capacity shared by birds, helicopters, kites and superheroes. You could show a probabilistic system lots of pictures of things in flight, but even if it figured out what they all had in common, it would be very likely to misidentify clouds, or the sun, or the antennas on top of buildings as instances of flight. And even flight is a concrete concept compared to, say, “grammar,” or “motherhood.”
Monday, March 29, 2010
Toyota accelerating? Maybe blame cosmic rays.
If this is anywhere near possible, a little redundancy with parity-checking should be in order on those single-bit operations. I'm surprised that single-bit operations even exist in high-level automotive control functions.
If this is anywhere near possible, a little redundancy with parity-checking should be in order on those single-bit operations. I'm surprised that single-bit operations even exist in high-level automotive control functions.
Friday, March 26, 2010
Tuesday, March 23, 2010
Last Supper helpings have grown (via /.)
Over the course of the millennium, the Wansinks found that the entrees depicted on the plates laid before Jesus' followers grew by about 70%, and the bread by 23%.
Any advance word on the Old Country Buffet version?
Over the course of the millennium, the Wansinks found that the entrees depicted on the plates laid before Jesus' followers grew by about 70%, and the bread by 23%.
Any advance word on the Old Country Buffet version?
Tea Party scumbags mock and torment a Parkinsons Disease sufferer at a Rally.
Bob Herbert NYTimes mentions the incident in his article 'An Absence of Class'
The American Conservative movement is showing its true stripes once again.
With a freer hand, the Republicans would have done more damage. George W. Bush tried to undermine Social Security. John McCain was willing to put Sarah Palin a heartbeat away from the Oval Office and thought Phil Gramm would have made a crackerjack Treasury secretary. (For those who may not remember, Mr. Gramm was a deregulation zealot who told us during the presidential campaign that we were suffering from a “mental recession.”)
A party that promotes ignorance (“Just say no to global warming”) and provides a safe house for bigotry cannot serve the best interests of our country. Back in the 1960s, John Lewis risked his life and endured savage beatings to secure fundamental rights for black Americans while right-wing Republicans like Barry Goldwater and Ronald Reagan were lining up with segregationist Democrats to oppose landmark civil rights legislation.
Since then, the right-wingers have taken over the G.O.P. and Mr. Lewis, now a congressman, must still endure the garbage they have wrought.
Friday, March 19, 2010
A year on from its brush with Armageddon, the financial services industry has resumed its reckless, self-serving ways It isn’t hard to see why this has aroused simmering rage in normally complacent, pro-capitalist Main Street America. The budget commitments to salvaging the financial sector come to nearly $3 trillion, equivalent to more than $20,000 per federal income tax payer. To add insult to injury, the miscreants have also availed themselves of more welfare programs in the form of lending facilities and guarantees, totaling nearly $12 trillion, not all of which will prove to be money well spent.
Wall Street just looted the public on a massive scale. Having found this to be a wondrously lucrative exercise, it looks set to do it all over again.
Indefensible Men, by Yves Smith
Wall Street just looted the public on a massive scale. Having found this to be a wondrously lucrative exercise, it looks set to do it all over again.
Indefensible Men, by Yves Smith
Wednesday, March 17, 2010
Monday, March 15, 2010
Saturday, March 13, 2010
Wednesday, March 10, 2010
Signs: The Most Useful Things You Pay No Attention To (slate)
Most people, when they think about it, can point to signs that have failed them: the hospital complex that felt like a labyrinth or the exit they always almost miss. But the truth is that signage today is far better than it's been at any other point in history. A century ago, sign design wasn't a profession to speak of; the signs that guided riders and pedestrians (there weren't many drivers yet) tended to be informal and ad hoc. As the automobile took off, the world found it needed traffic engineers, and it was these men and women who were the first to think seriously about sign systems. America put national standards for road signs in place in 1935.
Most people, when they think about it, can point to signs that have failed them: the hospital complex that felt like a labyrinth or the exit they always almost miss. But the truth is that signage today is far better than it's been at any other point in history. A century ago, sign design wasn't a profession to speak of; the signs that guided riders and pedestrians (there weren't many drivers yet) tended to be informal and ad hoc. As the automobile took off, the world found it needed traffic engineers, and it was these men and women who were the first to think seriously about sign systems. America put national standards for road signs in place in 1935.
Thursday, March 04, 2010
Sunday, February 28, 2010
We Can't Wish Away Climate Change (Gore, NYTimes)
I, for one, genuinely wish that the climate crisis were an illusion. But unfortunately, the reality of the danger we are courting has not been changed by the discovery of at least two mistakes in the thousands of pages of careful scientific work over the last 22 years by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. In fact, the crisis is still growing because we are continuing to dump 90 million tons of global-warming pollution every 24 hours into the atmosphere — as if it were an open sewer.
I, for one, genuinely wish that the climate crisis were an illusion. But unfortunately, the reality of the danger we are courting has not been changed by the discovery of at least two mistakes in the thousands of pages of careful scientific work over the last 22 years by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. In fact, the crisis is still growing because we are continuing to dump 90 million tons of global-warming pollution every 24 hours into the atmosphere — as if it were an open sewer.
Thursday, February 25, 2010
Tuesday, February 23, 2010
Far Out: Heimo's Arctic Refuge
An online doc about one of the last people living off of the land in Alaska's interior Wildlife Refuge, originally established by the Carter administration in 1980.
(via boingboing)
An online doc about one of the last people living off of the land in Alaska's interior Wildlife Refuge, originally established by the Carter administration in 1980.
(via boingboing)
The Bankruptcy Boys
Paul Krugman on the GOP strategy of doubling down on their 'starve the beast' bet, inviting fiscal catastrophe.
At this point, then, Republicans insist that the deficit must be eliminated, but they’re not willing either to raise taxes or to support cuts in any major government programs. And they’re not willing to participate in serious bipartisan discussions, either, because that might force them to explain their plan — and there isn’t any plan, except to regain power.
Paul Krugman on the GOP strategy of doubling down on their 'starve the beast' bet, inviting fiscal catastrophe.
At this point, then, Republicans insist that the deficit must be eliminated, but they’re not willing either to raise taxes or to support cuts in any major government programs. And they’re not willing to participate in serious bipartisan discussions, either, because that might force them to explain their plan — and there isn’t any plan, except to regain power.
Monday, February 22, 2010
RAMPANT: no other word comes close to capturing the mood of America’s conservatives as several thousand of them gathered in Washington, DC, on February 18th-20th for the annual meeting of the Conservative Political Action Conference.
(the economist)
(the economist)
Wall Street's Bailout Hustle (Rollingstone)
There's even a term in con-man lingo for what some of the banks are doing right now, with all their cosmetic gestures of scaling back bonuses and giving to charities. In the grifter world, calming down a mark so he doesn't call the cops is known as the "Cool Off."
There's even a term in con-man lingo for what some of the banks are doing right now, with all their cosmetic gestures of scaling back bonuses and giving to charities. In the grifter world, calming down a mark so he doesn't call the cops is known as the "Cool Off."
Friday, February 19, 2010
Tuesday, February 16, 2010
How a New Jobless Era will Transform America (Atlantic)
If it persists much longer, this era of high joblessness will likely change the life course and character of a generation of young adults—and quite possibly those of the children behind them as well. It will leave an indelible imprint on many blue-collar white men—and on white culture. It could change the nature of modern marriage, and also cripple marriage as an institution in many communities. It may already be plunging many inner cities into a kind of despair and dysfunction not seen for decades. Ultimately, it is likely to warp our politics, our culture, and the character of our society for years.
If it persists much longer, this era of high joblessness will likely change the life course and character of a generation of young adults—and quite possibly those of the children behind them as well. It will leave an indelible imprint on many blue-collar white men—and on white culture. It could change the nature of modern marriage, and also cripple marriage as an institution in many communities. It may already be plunging many inner cities into a kind of despair and dysfunction not seen for decades. Ultimately, it is likely to warp our politics, our culture, and the character of our society for years.
Friday, February 12, 2010
How Christian Were the Founders? (NYTimes)
A longish article on the Founders intentions on church-state separation, School-board archconservative activists, and re-writing history to serve an ideological agenda.
A longish article on the Founders intentions on church-state separation, School-board archconservative activists, and re-writing history to serve an ideological agenda.
Citigroup is planning crisis derivatives, which would pay out in time of crisis or collapse (provided, that is, that Citi would continue to exist to make the payout)
Thursday, February 04, 2010
Wednesday, February 03, 2010
Monday, February 01, 2010
The NYTimes is starting a column on math today. They start with the basics of number theory. Now's the time to get in.
Saturday, January 30, 2010
Buddy Holly recorded a phone call with his record company trying to get a release on songs that weren't going to be released. Record company acts like greedy jerks.
Monday, January 25, 2010
Thursday, January 21, 2010
"I made this. You play this. We are enemies"
yep, that's the title. Odd online game.
If it's your bag, there are more art games of this nature on the site.
yep, that's the title. Odd online game.
If it's your bag, there are more art games of this nature on the site.
Wednesday, January 20, 2010
Sunday, January 17, 2010
A great set of Popular Mechanics space-age cover illustrations from the 50's. Some of them, amazingly impractical.
Saturday, January 16, 2010
Saturday, January 09, 2010
Not sure why I love this short film, but I do. Maybe because none of the architectural spaces so carefully filmed actually exist.