03/23/08

Michael Chabon on why real-life superhero costumes don't work. This sad outcome even in the wake of thousands of dollars spent and months of hard work given to sewing and to packing foam rubber into helmets has an obvious, an unavoidable, explanatio ...

Steve Nash directed his own Nike commercial. Nash's original concept for the commercial is clever: At first, the idea was to shoot on different mediums -- camera phone, 8-millimeter, 16-millimeter (the eventual choice), security footage. My idea was ...

How do you describe a smell or a taste? John Lanchester discusses that and a recent book of perfume reviews in this recent New Yorker article. The language of taste has, therefore, reached something of an impasse. On the one hand, we have the Romant ...

Photos of people in their beds by Thierry Bouet. Dumb Flash interface alert: click on "au lit" to see the beds. (thx, juliette) (link)

The opera Tristan and Isolde has had more than its fair share of mishaps over the years. The current engagement of the opera at the Met has been through 4 Tristans already. (link)

jcgregorio : The Thin Skin of Apple Fans - New York Times - Apple zealots scorned in the NYTimes.

deusx : leah buechley - LilyPad Arduino - introduction - "The LilyPad Arduino is a set of sewable electronic components that let you build your own soft, interactive fashion." Tags : arduino diy electronics gadgets hacks hardware lilypad

43folders : Apple - Downloads - Dashboard Widgets - HostsWidget - "Allows you to manipulate your / etc/ hosts file quickly and easily." via deli/ siliconmeadow

Simon Willison : views.py for wikinear.com - views.py for wikinear.com. I've published the views.py file from wikinear.com as an example of simple Fire Eagle integration with a Django application.

Linkorama : GeoTwitterous - Where Are Your Twitter Friends? Find Out With GeoTwitterous Tags : location mashup pipes twitter wired yahoo

"I still don’t see what adding video brings to Flickr."

so pine is now alpine... sort of.

come work with Rasmus!

more is more!

"20+ years later the Unix shell is still the fastest way to get work done on a bunch of files." You learn a new trick every day, I tell ya...

The Sorting Algorithm Demo (495)

Easy Photo Wall on a Shoestringwire Budget » Curbly | DIY Design Community « Keywords: photos, home, decoration, wall (226)

Lifehacker, the Productivity and Software Guide (221)

Steve Souders is Yahoo’s “front end engineer.” He’s the guy who wrote the article we discussed a few months back which brought us back to all those old “tricks” that make your Web site load faster. Consider this: ...

I’ll admit that I thought economists really dealt with just, well, the economy. But they don’t. To be an economist really means you kind of just figure stuff out. Steven Levitt is such a guy. He teaches at the University of Chicago, a ...

President Bush tap-dances and stumbles around the war in Iraq, malaria, and diplomacy with the Czech Republic.

It seems like not too long ago The Sims 2 came out. I loved the series back in The Sims 1, but The Sims 2 never really felt the same.

Chroniton writes with news of a Silicon Valley company, Luxim, that has developed a tiny, full-spectrum light bulb, based on a plasma of argon gas, that gives off as much light as a streetlight while using less power. The Tic Tac-sized bulb operates ...

Wired has an article on the national fusion centers in the US, which were created to aid intelligence-sharing in the fight against terrorism but are increasingly being used to look at other sorts of crimes. The keynote of these centers is "all hazard ...

trogador writes "Researchers from Imperial College London are improving the Da Vinci surgical robot by installing an eye-tracker, which allows surgeons to control the robot's knife simply by looking at the patient's tissues on a screen. Tracking the ...

harsha_c sends in a local Indian perspective on the vote against Microsoft's OOXML ahead of the March 29 deadline. Of 19 companies participating, only 5 voted in favor of OOXML. "It was the ultimate battle for control over global IT standard for docu ...

hairyfeet writes "Do you use iTunes on Windows? If so you may be getting the gift of Safari from Apple whether you want it or not, and Mozilla CEO John Lilly is not happy about it. After his daughter was offered Safari as a 'bonus update' with a rece ...

theodp writes "A newly-issued Google patent for Rendering Advertisements With Documents Having One or More Topics Using User Topic Interest describes how to detect the presence of children by 'using evidence of sophistication determined using user ac ...

A roadside bomb killed three American soldiers north of Baghdad on Saturday, pushing the U.S. death toll in the five-year conflict to nearly 4,000.

With restive Tibetan areas swarming with troops and closed to scrutiny from the outside world, China's government turned up efforts Saturday to put its own version of the unrest before the international public.

Vice President Dick Cheney said Saturday the U.S. has an "enduring and unshakable" commitment to Israel's security and its right to defend itself against those bent on destroying the Jewish state.

Gibson Guitar Corp. has widened its attack on the video game industry with a second patent infringement lawsuit.

Satellite-television provider DirecTV Group Inc. spent more than $1.2 million in 2007 to lobby on the nation's switch next year from an analog to a digital TV format.

Scientists who conducted the most comprehensive survey to date of New Zealand's Antarctic waters were surprised by the size of some specimens found, including jellyfish with 12-foot tentacles and 2-foot-wide starfish.

When shooting suspect Christopher Williams acted up in prison, he was given nutraloaf — a mixture of cubed whole wheat bread, nondairy cheese, raw carrots, spinach, seedless raisins, beans, vegetable oil, tomato paste, powdered milk and dehydrated p ...

Two sisters from Virginia sold their Illinois-shaped corn flake on eBay Friday night for $1,350.

A Colorado man is accused of stealing an Army veteran's identity and using it for 24 years to get married, obtain free medical treatment and even serve as president of a VFW post.

JERUSALEM (Reuters) - Vice President Dick Cheney, starting a visit on Saturday to try to push forward Israeli-Palestinian peace talks, said Washington would never pressure Israel to take steps that threaten its security.

Last year, I expressed my displeasure with the expected Democratic nominee for president. Now we have a good news/ bad news scenario: The good news is that Lurleen has a less than even shot at the nomination; The bad news is that her competitor is al ...

Benazir Bhutto's party puts forward the candidate it expects to become PM after last month's poll win.

I’m delighted to say that online bookstores are shipping copies of Here Comes Everybody today, and that it has gotten several terrific notices in the blogosphere: Cory Doctorow:Clay’s book makes sense of the way that groups are using the ...

A look back at the week that was ... · It's always fun to speculate about what celebrities are really like in private, but we prefer to just imagine whatever we want. · This is the longest free look you will ever get with a high-priced ...

The new gadget feature of Google Spreadsheets makes it easy to add heat maps. This can be used to create a world map illustrating the Googleshare for a given keyword across different countries; now-Google employee Douwe Osinga called this "Land Geist ...

Just few years into the technology, it's naturally still a wild web out there. Here's some of the stuff you might be repeatedly doing in your browser in 2008: registering for a website account, and entering user name and passwords waiting for t ...

Michael Chabon on why real-life superhero costumes don't work. This sad outcome even in the wake of thousands of dollars spent and months of hard work given to sewing and to packing foam rubber into helmets has an obvious, an unavoidable, explanatio ...

The second in my series of Internet Videos from the VHS Era was contributed by James Burke. Here's what he said about it: "I enjoyed the Internet Power VHS tape and dug up an old VHS tape from my old school district. It's a 20 video from June 1995 ...

Hitler Speaks — — Using advanced speech recognition technology, researchers and voice-over actors have been able to put a soundtrack to long-silent video relics of Adolf Hitler: Eva Braun's infamous home movies filmed at the Berghof, pr ...

Gorgeous images, selected solely for their artistic appeal, from the pages of Physical Review B.

Ilike2learn.com has a series of simply-wrought yet wonderfully mind-bending Map quizzes: check out North America if you're looking for a confidence booster, relive forth-grade geography by going through state capitals or impress friends with your kno ...

"The Middle East peace process may well be the most spectacular deception in modern diplomatic history." Henry Siegman, the former executive director of the American Jewish Congress and more recently the director of the CFR's US/ Middle East Project, ...

The internets have been with us for quite awhile now, and still there are people who think that the generous use of capital letters is an effective debating tactic.

I believe the YouTube era begins the age when it is impossible to tell parody/ irony/ performance art from completely sincere product.

Something Awful eschews humor in this week's Comedy Goldmine for gibbering madness. "I know you were coming here expecting to laugh at the Comedy Goldmine this week. Well, you're screwed....

"It's the Bizaro Ethel Merman." "She's like a garbage bag full of fighting Muppets back from the dentist." "It's like the little exorcist girl stung by bees." "The first time...

A short film in which a Paris Hilton-esque socialite is revealed to be the architect of her own loopy attempts at notoriety, and who will go as far as she...

Michael Markman sent a pointer to another Wright sermon video, which I watched. The one that ends with God Damn America. — — I was born here, I love this country, it gave sanctuary to my parents and grandparents. I am a product of Jewish ...

Anonymous people writing with supposed authority about living people. Too easily (and often) gamed. — —

.... Weeks, in Summation" I like how you are balancing your academic and social life at Cornell. I like how you were creative with your post on this one. I hope you are enjoying your last semester at Cornell. Good luck! Authored by smajoros. Hos ...

....Automatically shipped by LoudTwitter....

You're about to see the mother of all flamewars on internet groups where web developers hang out. It'll make the Battle of Stalingrad look like that time your sister-in-law stormed out of afternoon tea at your grandmother's and wrapped the Must ...

The summer internships at Fog Creek are already full, but Seth Godin, my marketing rebbe, has marketing internships. Paid! “The idea is to find a diverse group of motivated young people who want to join together to create a few really neat proj ...

demonstrates Fire Eagle and OAuth, mixed with Wikipedia, GeoNames, and the new Google Maps Static API  

Andrew Keen is the new Stoll, getting press for contrarian, but short-sighted, views  

big companies and junk food both scale, but they're unhealthy in similar ways  

that's incredibly awesome; take that, Urban Outfitters  

the first person to be fired because of tweets?  

Alf is my co-pilot; I love that Mena's back  

free filmic album and book, both interesting and worth experiencing  

Boy, I feel safer already...United States Patent 6,933,851 Hahne , et al. August 23, 2005 Air travel security method, system and device Abstract A method of providing air travel security for passengers traveling via an aircraft comprises situa ...

From Politico:Journalists have become partners with the Clinton campaign in pretending that the contest is closer than it really is. Most coverage breathlessly portrays the race as a down-to-the-wire sprint between two well-matched candidates, one on ...

It's a shame my summer is already booked up, because there's a couple of events I'd really like to be able to hit. The Games, Learning & Society Conference in Madison, Wisconsin (10-11 July) is one of those. According to their blurb, the conference ...

Jay is Games' Casual Gameplay Design Competition #5 is now up with twenty one entries. I always like spending some time with the contest entries when they're finally up; even though there's always an overarching theme (this go around, it's 'upgrade' ...

Red, yellow and blue cars are on their way in a hurry to the Brooklyn side of the bridge.

AFP

A photograph taken on May 30, 1868 shows barren trees in a New England cemetery. In a photo taken on the same spot in 2005, everything is in bloom. The visual evidence is compelling, biologists say. Originally pos ...

Heather Klein crisscrosses the campus of Rowan University, from the College of Engineering to the townhouses, the dining hall to the Rec Center, on a blue Huffy 26-inch beach cruiser bicycle. She’s hoping a clone of the bike, picked up at the ...

After a final inspection of Endeavour's thermal shield, astronauts aboard the linked shuttle-station complex begin to prepare for a spacewalk to store the laser-tipped boom they use to search for damage.