March 2009
58 posts
Miss Universe Visits Guantánamo Bay →
Dayana Mendoza, aka Miss Universe, was invited by the USO to visit Guantanamo Bay. From her blog:
We also met the Military dogs, and they did a very nice demonstration of their skills. All the guys from the Army were amazing with us.
I just learned from Twitter that there was an earthquake in SF. Did I mention that I’m in SF? Should I duck? Is the earthquake still coming?
Chrome tip: Because it pulls in I’m Feeling Lucky results, you can make it do math. eg: Type in (5/10) * 2^2 and 2 shows up in the drop-down
Would someone tell me the name of this typeface, please? Thanks! http://is.gd/oHva
Would someone tell me what typeface this is? →
I’ve seen this New York Times ad with this nice sans serif typeface all over the Web. Do you know the name of the font?
Stop whining about Facebook’s redesign. (You’ll probably learn to like it soon enough.) http://is.gd/oDgH
Paul Krugman: Thumbs down on the bank rescue →
Paul Krugman isn’t down with the new bank rescue plan:
The Geithner plan has now been leaked in detail. It’s exactly the plan that was widely analyzed — and found wanting — a couple of weeks ago. The zombie ideas have won.
BusinessWeek in 2000: “But how will Google ever make money? There’s the rub.” http://is.gd/oie1
Obama gift Fail. DVDs he gave to PM Gordon Brown only work in American DVD players. http://is.gd/o2GM
Yay, Obama’s plant a White House vegetable garden. http://is.gd/o6nE
Obamas plant a White House vegetable garden →
They took Michael Pollan’s suggestion (as well as that of The White House Organic Farm Project and The White House Organic Garden Campaign. From the Times:
In an interview in her office, Mrs. Obama said, “My hope is that through children, they will begin to educate their families and that will, in turn, begin to educate our communities.”
Twenty-three fifth graders from Bancroft...
You can tell if that guy's a bad credit risk by... →
Researchers asked people on Amazon’s Mechanical Turk to look at pictures of loan applicants on the peer-to-peer lending site Prosper.com. The Mechanical Turkers rated whether the faces looked trustworthy. The ratings, it turned out, correlated with the loan applicants’ credit histories.
Here’s a snip from The Economist’s story:
The team recruited 25 Mechanical Turk...
Jason Segel and Paul Rudd make fart sounds →
Obama’s NCAA bracket. He picks UNC. http://is.gd/nSMM
Hybrids aren't selling →
The L.A. Times:
Americans have cut back on buying vehicles of all types as the economy continues its slide. But the slowdown has been particularly brutal for hybrids, which use electricity and gasoline as power sources. They were the industry’s darling just last summer, but sales have collapsed as consumers refuse to pay a premium for a fuel-efficient vehicle now that the average price...
The globalized business of college essay mills →
The Chronicle of Higher Ed has a great story on a shady business.
The writers for essay mills are anonymous and often poorly paid. Some of them crank out 10 or more essays a week, hundreds over the course of a year. They earn anywhere from a few dollars to $40 per page, depending on the company and the subject. Some of the freelancers have graduate degrees and can write smooth, A-level prose....
Computer programmer loses finger. Replaces it with finger-like USB drive. http://is.gd/nGAQ
Bush's risque Putin story →
In an on-stage interview in Canada, George W. Bush told this story about Vladimir Putin’s dog:
“So I had [Russian then-President Vladimir] Putin to Camp David one time, and I introduced him to Barney. And he kind of looked at Barney like, ‘Oh, man, he looks like a Monopoly piece. I’m crazy about Barney, by the way. I love the little guy. …
“So fast forward to a visit to...
Google Voice is the slowest Google product I’ve ever used. I chalked it up to them being overloaded, but it’s been a nearly a week.
Did you just IM me? If so, I accidentally closed the chat window.
I Love You, Man. The last time I was this excited for a movie, it starred Jason Bourne. 4 more days!
I’m not going to the Apple event today — if you are and they allow a Q&A, would you please ask about the headphone DRM chip? Thanks!
Is a Wikipedia article about itself notable enough... →
From the Wikipedia page for the User:Diikiw/Wiikid:
User:Diikiw/Wiikid, formerly Wikiid, is an article that was created on the web site Wikipedia in 2008. It is notable in its attempt to become the first Wikipedia page to gain notoriety solely for the fact that it was a page on Wikipedia; this was intended to spark a debate as to whether or not Wikipedia could be considered a source notable...
Opposing-team fan shoots and kills Iraqi soccer player just as he attempts to make a goal that would have tied the game. http://is.gd/nA2Y
Video of the "American's Next Top Model" stampede →
Someone yelled “bomb” in the NYC audition line. Things got rough. (via BuzzFeed)
Ratio of men to women at Phish concert: 100 to 1 →
Todd Levy and his readers counted every lady face they could find in the above photo of the March 6 Phish show in Hampton, Virginia (click on it for the high-res version). They found 46 women, out of 4,000 men—about 1 woman for every 100 men.
Someone should do this for an Ani DiFranco show.
(via Digg)
How to write like an architect →
(via Kottke via rebecca’s pocket)
The harsh reality:Age-related cognitive decline begins at 27. Peak performance is at 22. http://is.gd/nrQQ
Man converts the MacBook Apple logo into a second... →
A pretty cool mod:
The Saudi Arabia of lithium →
If we start driving cars that run on batteries rather than gasoline, we’ll need a lot of lithium. It turns out that, just like crude oil, a lot of the world’s lithium is tied up in a single region — Bolivia:
“We know that Bolivia can become the Saudi Arabia of lithium,” said Francisco Quisbert, 64, the leader of Frutcas, a group of salt gatherers and quinoa farmers on...
A cure for peanut allergies? →
Researchers have found a way to treat peanut allergies — feed people small amounts of peanuts, increasing the amount daily:
The new treatment uses doses of peanuts that start as small as one-thousandth of a peanut and eventually increase to about 15 peanuts a day. In a pilot study at Duke University and Arkansas Children’s Hospital in Little Rock, 33 children with documented peanut...
Today is Pi Day: 3.14. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pi_Day
Juror Twitters how much he hates defendant during trial. Seems like an automatic appeal. http://is.gd/ne26
Kids mistakenly drink wiper fluid at Ark. day care →
LITTLE ROCK, Ark. – Ten children at an Arkansas day-care center drank windshield wiper fluid after the owner served it from a container mistaken for Kool-Aid and placed in a refrigerator, authorities said Friday. The day-care owner voluntarily surrendered her state license Friday.
Doctors estimate the children, ages 2 to 7, drank about an ounce of the blue fluid late Thursday afternoon...
New iPod Shuffle requires "authentication chip" in... →
This is ridiculous. Fred von Lohmann writes:
Even as it attacks DRM on music, Apple is continuing to add more DRM to its own hardware (we recently documented all of Apple’s various hardware DRM restrictions). The latest example is the new iPod Shuffle. According to the careful reviewers at iLounge, third-party headphone makers will have to use yet-another Apple “authentication...
Sears Tower to be renamed Willis Tower. Why does that make me want to ask, Whatchoo talkin’ bout? http://tinyurl.com/cyzmhc
Why goats make awesome pets →
Goat Versus Dog
(Via BuzzFeed.)
Addendum to the NYT: Here’s what’s “grass-mud horse” means in Chinese. (It’s not nice.) http://is.gd/n3k7
What "grass-mud horse" means in Chinese →
The New York Times reports that videos showing the “grass-mud horse” have become hugely popular in China as a kind of subversive protest against censorship.
That’s because, as the paper says, the horse is a “a mythical creature whose name, in Chinese, sounds very much like an especially vile obscenity. Which is precisely the point.”
The irony is that the...
What does Arlo Weiner, son of Mad Men creator Matt Weiner, look like? Pretty much exactly as you’d expect. http://is.gd/mXXO
What does $1 trillion look like? →
This guy used Google Sketchup to draw what $1 trillion dollars looks like.
First, look at $10,000:
Now, $1 million:
And $1 trillion:
(He adds: “Notice those pallets are double stacked.”)
Do you hate the compressed hiss of MP3s compared to CDs and vinyl? You must be old! Young people like that sound. http://is.gd/mNXy
Computers can finally play Go well enough to beat humans, and soon they’ll be unbeatable. But can they talk trash? http://is.gd/mNHt
Humans No Match for Go Bot Overlords →
From Wired.com:
Just a few years ago, the best Go programs were routinely beaten by skilled children, even when given a head start. Artificial intelligence researchers routinely said that computers capable of beating our best were literally unthinkable. And so it was. Until now.
“It’s a silly human conceit that such a domain would exist, that there’s something only we...
Evil rock-throwing chimp proves chimps can plan... →
From the Guardian:
The loutish behaviour of a stone-throwing chimpanzee at a zoo near the Arctic circle has challenged scientists’ beliefs about human beings.
Santino, a 31-year-old male at Furuvik zoo in Sweden, may be the first animal to exhibit an unambiguous ability to plan for the future, a behaviour many scientists argue is unique to humans. Forward planning takes...
Are you looking for a job using Facebook, Twitter, or LinkedIn? Do you know someone who is? How’s that going for you? Let me know!
This Youtube playlist of 20 videos of people doing Beyonce’s “Single Ladies” is a good way to spend a Friday afternoon. http://is.gd/mbU8
“Wassup Youtubes? Right now I’m gonna teach ya how to smoke Smarties. First thing you do: you need to get you Smarties.” http://is.gd/lZcy
Michelle Obama totally snubs UK by giving first... →
Sarah Vine of the London Times says that British First Lady Sarah Brown gave the Obama kids awesome gifts on a recent visit — dresses and books by English authors — but that Michelle Obama cheaped out by giving the Brown boys toy models of Marine One.
Vine sees it as a major international affair, a first-class, deliberate snub.
I don’t get it, though. I’d love a toy...