October 20, 2009
Sequoia Voting Systems
Sequoia Voting Systems seem to have inadvertently released SQL code from their voting machines. And people are saying that the code is incriminating. People who have analyzed the code claim that it contained code designed to control or influence the outcome of an election. [more inside]
Invasive Species
What do Kudzu,
the
Northern Snakehead,
St.
Johnswort, and the
Air
Potato
have in common? They're all invasive species. USDA's
National Invasive
Species Information Center and the
Center for
Invasive Species and Ecosystem Health have got you covered. [more inside]
Getting burned by packing heat
Does carrying a gun protect you from physical harm? Research by epidemiologists at the University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine suggests that carrying a gun makes one 4.5 times more likely to be shot in an assault, than someone not possessing a gun. Resisting increases one's odds of suffering harm even greater. [more inside]
It's not over yet?
State of the debate filter: Harry Reid is looking like a giant waffle iron. Congress is getting crushed with phone calls. A G.E. healthcare exec, says "Shit or get off the pot already." The insurance industry says, "Back up off a deez!" And people aren't wavering in their support of a public option. [more inside]
The Warning
Tonight on PBS, Frontline airs a new investigative report entitled The Warning (sneak peaks 1 & 2), which profiles Brooksley Born, who (as head of the CFTC from '96-'99) was almost alone among regulators in warning of the potential dangers of derivatives.
He Too
Pablo Pineda holds a teacher diploma and a BA in educational psychology. He also recently won a Best Actor Award in the San Sebastián International Film Festival for his role in the semi-autobiographical film "Yo También" ("Me Too"). He has Down's Syndrome.
Pop-up LEGO Temple
On the Division of Our Three Score & Ten
Does your insurance cover llama visits?
We have known almost since we first got him that Rojo was "different" from many other llamas we have been around.
Rojo is a therapy llama. [more inside]
The Allied Merchant Navy
The 30,000 men of the British Merchant Navy (one-fifth of its pre-war strength) who fell victim to the U-boats between 1939 and 1945, the majority drowned or killed by exposure on the cruel North Atlantic sea*, were quite as certainly front-line warriors as the guardsmen and fighter pilots to whom they ferried the necessities of combat. Neither they nor their American, Dutch, Norwegian, or Greek fellow mariners wore uniform and few have any memorial. They stood nevertheless between the Wehrmacht and the domination of the world. - John Keegan
Ludovic Kennedy, 1919-2009
Sir Ludovic Kennedy has died at the age of 89.
Kennedy was a journalist, broadcaster and long standing campaigner against miscarriages of justice and the death penalty and for euthanasia. [more inside]
The degree of civilization in a society can be judged by entering its prisons
Prison food is bad but it is getting better in some places, at least nutritionally. Other places, it is just getting cheaper. Who serves this stuff? Recently, Slate took a look at the Association of Correctional Food Service Affiliates Annual Conference. But there is food beyond 'prison food bad': Nutraloaf. It is so bad it is almost unconstitutionally bad.
A Whole New World
You know who's been busy? Nick Pitera. Previously posted to MeFi, the animator/YouTube star sings his Michael Jackson tribute, his Poker Face, his Glee duet, his Whitney, his Mariah, his Over the Rainbow.
Making it easier to swim the Tiber
The Vatican announced today that it would create a new structure that would allow former Anglicans to join the Roman Catholic Church while preserving elements of Anglican spirituality and liturgy. [more inside]
Art by Alasdair Gray
Alasdair Gray is best known as a novelist but his illustrations of his own books have long fascinated and delighted. Here you can see hundreds of artworks by Alasdair Gray, including some book illustrations, from 1950 through 2009. Here are a few of his works that I like: unfinished Scottish Society of Playwrights poster, Nina Watching the Simpsons, Erics Watching Television, Ice Age and Babylonian Science, theatre poster for A Clockwork Orange and the Scots Hippo series. Also on the website there are a lot of articles about and by Alasdair Gray reposted from various publications. And finally, here's a podcast of a talk Alasdair Gray gave called The First Pictures I Enjoyed.
Martin has turned thousands of children into mathematicians, and thousands of mathematicians into children.
A polymath and a mathemagician without a math degree, Martin Gardner turns 95 tomorrow, and he is celebrating by publishing a new book of essays, which joins over 100 he has written on math, philosophy, literature, magic, and skeptical thinking. A wonderful documentary covering the overlapping circles of math, magic, and science in which he travels is available from Encyclopedia Britannica [mp4 version here]. His thousands of puzzles and mathematical diversions included building a learning machine out of matchboxes that could beat you in a simple game, science fiction puzzle tales (can you solve the first couple?), many mathematical tricks, and the first general introduction to the Game of Life. A fascinating interview with the man is available from Cambridge University Press. [more inside]
Step 1. Make an utterly fantastic game. Step 3. Profit!
2D BOY made around $100,000 in a week. That’s $50,000 each for writing a blog post about a game they finished a year ago. By letting people pay whatever they wanted. 2D Boy stirred up a lot of discussion (previously) about game piracy when they used online scoreboard data to estimate an 82% piracy rate for their fantastic indie game World of Goo (previously).
For World of Goo's first birthday, they decided to try the Radiohead model and let people buy the game for any price they choose. Now they've released extensive data about the results. Short version? "A huge success," even though the most commonly chosen price was only a penny. [more inside]
Cellphone users and clowns
This is just getting embarassing!
iDon't
Verizon takes iPhone head-on. Will Android finally become something to people outside the nerd set? Will all those people still waiting for the iPhone to come to Verizon actually buy in? Personally, I'm not giving up my iPhone, but I was amused by the commercial.
Blood sucking leeches
Leeches, horror film staples, medicinal wonders, and now crime fighters. Police cracked the case of a home invasion and safe robbery when they found one of the suspects' blood inside a leech on the floor and matched his dna.
Living Life to the Full - a free, guided introduction to Cognitive Behavioural Therapy
A free website that helps you learn to diagnose and work through negative though patterns. Having seen so many posts on AskMeFi about depression, anxiety and related topics, it seemed almost a duty to share this.
It's a free website (well, you have to register but it's anonymous and no cash changes hands) that's run by the health service here in the UK. [more inside]
Eroge for All Seasons
Japan has a flourishing market for video games featuring adult content, or Eroge. Unfortunately, the sole exposure of some westerners to this wide genre may be through the controversy surrounding the irredeemably disgusting Rapelay (previously). That's a shame, because there is wide variation in content and gameplay focus in even the small subset of Eroge games translated and released for the western market by specialty publishers like Peach Princess and G-Collections. [more inside]
Bill Cosby's Rap Album
Bill Cosby Presents the Cosnarati: State of Emergency The project includes songs about frustration, incarceration and .... [more inside]
A Pregnant Ballerina Dancing on the Beach.
No ordinary informant
The movie adaptation of Mark Whitacre's story, Steven Soderbergh's The Informant, based on the book by Kurt Eichenwald was released last month. Whitacre's life belies easy explanation: a hugely important corporate whistleblower, at some point during the five years he spent informing on agribusiness behemoth Archer Daniels Midland Whitacre embarked on a massive embezzlement scheme that would see him imprisoned for nearly eight and a half years. To this day, the FBI remain divided on whether he is more hero or villain. [more inside]
Voca People...
aliens, planet Voca, music The Voca people are 8 friendly aliens from the planet Voca, a musical planet that has no verbal communication but use vocal expressions only. They have heard the music from earth for decades now and with their imitation abilities they have decided to pay a one evening tribute to humanity and to perform the songs they love as musical- gratitude. And, for your continued enjoyment, a more....
because, sometimes we take things way too seriously around here!
Synesthesia
Synesthesia. (SLYT, 4 minutes.)
No Census, No Feeling
Time was, even the Three Stooges didn't fear the Census. But now, turbulent political and economic times roiling the nation are expected to diminish initial participation by households in next year's Census. To counteract this, the Census will spend an unprecedented $326 million in marketing, including a Super Bowl ad, and will appear in a Spanish-language telenovela. [more inside]
“Watching him light is like watching two monkeys fuck a football.”
“I try to do my testosterone movie and it’s a chick flick. That’s how it is for me.” The New Yorker profiles James Cameron
A short film about Kanye West by Spike Jonze
Kanye West and Spike Jonze follow up Flashing Lights with. Something. After the success of Flashing Lights it seemed perfectly reasonable that Spike Jonze and Kanye West would team up for another music video. [more inside]
« Previous day | Next day »