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November 15, 2011
How Salman Rushdie Used Twitter to Defeat Facebook On Monday, world-famous author
Salman Rushdie, who won the “Booker of Booker” prize for his novel Midnight’s Children, revealed that Facebook had deleted his account at the weekend — and then, when he sent the company a copy of his passport to prove who he said he was, denied him the right to use “Salman” as his first name. (The author’s full given name, which he never uses, is Ahmed Salman Rushdie.)
posted by sweetkid at 9:52 PM PST - 68 comments
Today marks the 10th birthday of the Xbox. VentureBeat takes an in-depth
look back at its history, from its rocky inception to the Kinect.
Part 2.
[more inside]
posted by kyp at 6:17 PM PST - 25 comments
From Colossal:
It never ceases to amaze me: just when I think I’ve seen every possible permutation of an artform or technique—be it figurative sculpture, stop motion animation, or in this case, high speed photography—somebody comes along and manages to do something radically different. His
photostream. His
set up. (flickr)
posted by elemenopee at 4:33 PM PST - 10 comments
Daniel Yergin was recently interviewed on NPR's always informative
Planet Money podcast. Yergin—most famous for his 1992 Pulitzer-winning opus on 20th century petroleum development,
The Prize—has penned a
sequel, of sorts, examining the modern quest for sustainable energy amidst the looming threat of climate change. If
The Prize was an epic glorification of the quest for money, oil and power,
The Quest is a look at those who might have to clean up the whole mess. "The heroes are the engineers and scientists of the energy world — the geeks, in other words."
[more inside]
posted by hamandcheese at 1:45 PM PST - 11 comments
Solyndra used to make thin-film solar cells, but they could not make any money. The Department of Energy tried to help with a $535 million “Green” loan guarantee but the DOE missed the memo that says
EBITDA needs to be in the black if they expect to keep taxpayers out of the red. Private investors kicked in another
$70 million eventually but only after the DOE
primed itself. As White House economic advisor
Larry Summers noted, “…[government] is
a crappy vc [venture capitalist]…" Thanks to the DOE though, 40 employees and 150 contractors got to keep their jobs for an extra week last year according to the
WaPo.
posted by otto42 at 12:47 PM PST - 46 comments
Jane Austen 'died from arsenic poisoning'. [The Guardian] Crime writer Lindsay Ashford bases claim on reading of author's letters and claims murder cannot be ruled out. Almost 200 years after she died, Jane Austen's early death at the age of just 41 has been attributed to many things, from cancer to Addison's disease. Now sleuthing from a crime novelist has uncovered a new possibility: arsenic poisoning.
posted by Fizz at 12:18 PM PST - 37 comments
Yesterday, the Supreme court granted
certiorari to several of the challenges to the constitutionality of the Affordable Care Act.
Here's a great roundup of several news stories. I like the
NPR story for a quick summary of the issues. The Court will hear a total of 5.5 hours of oral argument, and a decision is expected by the end of the current term, in June.
posted by insectosaurus at 12:05 PM PST - 77 comments
Princeton's 5th annual Art of Science Competition "The Art of Science exhibition explores the interplay between science and art. These practices both involve the pursuit of those moments of discovery when what you perceive suddenly becomes more than the sum of its parts. Each piece in this exhibition is, in its own way, a record of such a moment."
posted by dhruva at 10:15 AM PST - 8 comments
Bruce Wayne's medical history, from Gotham City General Hospital. "These recent maladies appear to be in keeping with the pattern that has emerged over the past several years, in which significant medical problems are associated with odd or incongruous explanations." ... "By far the greatest contributor to patient’s ongoing morbidity are his multiple and seemingly ceaseless musculoskeletal injuries."
posted by Cool Papa Bell at 8:59 AM PST - 63 comments
Gullah—the African-influenced dialect of Georgia’s Sea Islands—has undergone few changes since the first slave ships landed 300 years ago, and provides a clear window into the shaping of African-American English.
This classic PBS program traces that story from the west coast of Africa through the American South, then to large northern cities in the 1920s. Studying the origins of West African pidgin English and creole speech—along with the tendency of 19th-century white Southerners to pick up speech habits from their black nursemaids—the program highlights the impact of WWI-era industrialization and the migration of jazz musicians to New York and Chicago.
posted by cthuljew at 7:42 AM PST - 12 comments
