March 25, 2009
1-4 now, c'mon 1-4, lookin' good 1-4, come on 4, 4 is not lookin good, 4 is running out of gas at the wire, 1 is not lookin good either, and thats a wrap: 3-5, get 'em next time 1-4.
Granted, a quick glance at the tacky vintage table and its 25-cent entry fee turns off many “serious gamblers,” but anyone that’s playing Sigma Derby couldn’t care less: it’s just that much fun. The snickers and wise-cracks roll off our backs the moment those five jumpy mechanical equines hit the tracks (which happens about once every 90 seconds).
One thing is for certain however, you just gotta bet the 200:1 shot.
5BX: When wishing is not good enough
Bill Orban developed the "Five Basic Exercises" or 5BX program for the Royal Canadian Air force in the late 50s. Apart from the primary aim of getting people into shape it was designed to be simple to perform, to work on all the body, to require nothing in terms of special equipment or large spaces, to accommodate enough progression to cater for reformed couch potato and budding athlete alike and to fit into a time slot of 11 minutes including warm up. [Women, for whatever reason, were prescribed 10 exercises in 12 minutes with XBX]. The book of the exercises was translated into 13 languages and sold 23 million copies around the world before falling into obscurity in the 80s. [more inside]
Orwellian, eh?
In what has been described as "a major blow to online free speech in Canada", an Ontario court has ordered the owners of FreeDominion.ca to disclose all personal information on eight anonymous posters to the chat site - including email and IP addresses. [more inside]
I'll be back... again and again
Wired.com is really pimping the Terminator franchise right now. With the success of the television series and the upcoming fourth installment hitting the big screens at the end of May, is the continuing appeal simply science fiction geekdom or is the concept really a deep philosophical metaphor? [more inside]
Internet Archive's new data center in a box
Internet Archive - probably the single largest depository of Open Source content (and the Wayback Machine) - has transitioned its data center from racks of Linux machines to a Sun MD, basically a 3 petabyte data center housed in a liquid cooled shipping container, currently sitting in Sun's Santa Clara campus court yard. Sun and IA have put together an interesting interactive tour of how it works and what it looks like. [more inside]
Historian John Hope Franklin Dies
American historian John Hope Franklin died today at the age of 94. Among his many achievements: authoring From Slavery to Freedom: a History of African Americans. Originally published in 1947, it remains the standard work on African American history. Franklin also did research for the appellants in the historic Brown vs. Board of Education Supreme Court Case. [more inside]
I see your Great Recession, climate change, asteroid collision and super-volcano, and raise you a space storm!
Sick of worrying about the global financial crisis? Got global warming fatigue? Here's a whole new threat to worry about: NASA is warning that the world is ill-prepared for a Carrington event that wil melt electricity grids world-wide with 90 seconds notice.
If it's any consolation, it's going to look real pretty
"High-tech forensic perfection is a television fantasy, not a courtroom reality"
The American National Academy of Sciences recently released a report that punched a few holes in the credibility of the forensic sciences: often seen (and portrayed) as infallible, in practice they're non-standardized, subjective (warning: pdf with gory image), accepted without rigorous testing (pdf), and lousy with dilettantes. A Canadian inquiry into the work of a pathologist whose testimony wrongly convicted a man of anally raping his four-year-niece to death says that forensic science is useful, but that we're doing it wrong. It's beginning to dawn that what we used to think of as a few bad apples may actually be symptoms of a deep rot in the field itself. [more inside]
The Compleat Musical Lovecraft
Innsmouth: The Musical. Carol of the Old Ones. Shoggoth, Shoggoth, Shoggoth. If I Were A Deep One. I Saw My Mommy Kissing Yog-Sothoth. Away In A Madhouse. Freddy the Red Brained Mi-Go. I'm Dreaming of a Dead City. Awake Ye Scary Great Old Ones. The Cultist Song. Byakhee, Byakhee. [more inside]
They're coming to life
He'll have to scrub it off when he gets back...
60-foot penis painted on roof Sorry. I tried to resist posting this, I really did. But you don't see that headline every day. And then I discovered it was not the first. And then I stopped laughing when I read what this "Christian" blogger thought about it. Then I read the subsequent comments and also this page and felt better again. And as a headline it beats all of these.
Storm chase from the comfort of your own home
On March 7, 2009, TornadoVideos.net (TVN) launched the beta version of their Live Streaming system. It's an interactive map that tracks each member of the TVN team as they criss-cross the country chasing storms, complete with live video. You can sign up (main page, top left: "Chase notifications") to be alerted when a chase is in progress. [more inside]
Cat Shit One: The animated series Trailer
Time-lapse plants
So bored you could watch plants grow? Okay, start with Corn [0:35] and Radishes [0:46]. [more inside]
Open For Questions
Open For Questions. Metafilter's Own™ box and klangklangston "skim the White House's Open For Questions, posting the best and brightest queries the American public can manage." [via mefi projects] [more inside]
Visual review of art history
Are you looking to review your art history knowledge but find google too chaotic, and Prof. Christopher L. C. E. Witcombe's site is overwhelming and has a few too many dead links? Maybe wikipedia lacks the visuals you associate with an art history review, and Art cyclopedia could be a bit more straight-forward? Then The Art Browser might be the thing for you. The site combines brief descriptions of movements and artists from wikipedia, classifications from Art cyclopedia, and large images from Art.com for compact visual overview of art history. [via mefi projects] [more inside]
He fills his head with culture. He gives himself an ulcer.
Are we living in an age of "Mass Intelligence" or "Commodified Intelligence"? The Economist's Intelligent Life spin-off debates whether the masses are "wising up" rather than "dumbing down" or if, in fact, we have ended up consuming rather than appreciating culture.
this is going to be a regular thing? i just wasted 5 minutes of my life.
We Got The Tweet: The Week's 50 Best Rock Star Twitters. I think it is safe to say that all of us unreservedly love three things: indie rock, twitter and Ryan Adams. That's a given. Well this Stereogum post has them all! The weeks best tweets from all your favorite indie rock stars, including Ryan Adams hijacking his new wife Mandy Moore's (no I can't let that go) twitter account to make a bunch of tweets until she has to take the computer away from him. lol! [more inside]
How Do We Know What We Know?
For most of us, science arrives in our lives packaged neatly as fact. But how did it get that way? Science is an active process of observation and investigation. Evidence: How Do We Know What We Know? [HTML version, Flash version also available] examines that process, revealing the ways in which ideas and information become knowledge and understanding. In this case study in human origins, the folks from the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology explore how scientific evidence is being used to shape our current understanding of ourselves: What makes us human—and how did we get this way?
Letter from an AIG bonus recipient
Letter from an AIG bonus recipient - The resignation letter of an AIG executive explaining his point of view on the bonus furor. The proverbial other side of the story.
There is nothing scary or monstrous about an imperative to dance
Full Commanding Denial
There have been a lot of descriptions of our new president, but being in "full commanding denial" is a new and, sadly, insightful one. Clusterf*ck Nation's Jim Kunstler observes that the bailout "is predicated on the idea that the mechanisms of wealth production -- even of illusory wealth, such as the fortunes created by trading securitized unpayable debt -- can keep chugging along, spinning off limitless additional suburban villas, chain stores, car trips, and deep-fried snacks." For a different view, the folks over at the excellent Baseline Scenario have been doing some interesting thinking about The Cultural Costs of Bailout Nation. For an even bigger big picture view, Dmitry Orlov's original analysis of the USSR vs. USA collapse in Superpower Collapse Best Practices seems to be even more resonant in his recent appearances. Maybe it's time to give Full Commanding Denial another chance ....
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