June 2011
54 posts
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May 2011
64 posts
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Hidden Egyptian pyramids found by infra-red... →
Seventeen lost pyramids are among the buildings identified in a new satellite survey of Egypt.
More than 1,000 tombs and 3,000 ancient settlements were also revealed by looking at infra-red images which show up underground buildings.
Sweet.
“Indiana Jones is old school, we’ve moved on from Indy. Sorry, Harrison Ford.”
‘Ili: I haven’t moved on from...
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How many ways can THQ’s Space Marine game rip off... →
The second I looked at THQ’s Warhammer 40,000: Space Marine video game, I figured I had seen it before. The sci-fi game may be set in the fabled Warhammer universe, but the style and game play look so much like Gears of War that it’s embarrassing.
This piece by Dean Takahashi at VentureBeat had me in stitches from start to finish. The obliviousness is astonishing. GEARS INVENTED SPACE MARINES
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Many People Confused Oprah & Opera -- Hilarity... →
nostrich:
Brenna Ehrlich for Mashable:
Apparently, maker of browsers, Opera, has been getting fan mail for Oprah Winfrey for years now due to the similarity between their monikers — and the woeful degradation of the English language that renders such disparate names identical in the eyes of some.
None of these people that are so convinced of the language’s decline are able to provide a...
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Every Episode of the 1992 X-Men Animated Series... →
So, since October of last year, Marvel has had the entire 1992 X-Men animated series online for free viewing. They started posting them in 2009, once a week, and the final episode went up on October 5, 2010.
Wait, why are you still here reading this?
It’s kind of hard to watch the episodes in order, because the overall category for the show somehow doesn’t contain all of the...
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Identify trees with your iPhone →
An app that uses image recognition to tell you what type of tree you’re looking at based on the shape of its leaves? So cool. And plus:
Users of Leafsnap will not only be learning about the trees in their communities and on their hikes—they will also be contributing to science. As people use Leafsnap, the free mobile app automatically shares their images, species identifications and the...
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The Reno Barons' latest soap opera →
Reno has a new football team that began playing this year: the Reno Barons. It’s an independent, professional, indoor football team which has so far played… any other team they can schedule. Which has resulted in routs of semi-pro teams and routs by the only other pro team they’ve played this season, the Stockton Wolves.
I haven’t seen them play, and based on this column by the...
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Legal reasoning called absurd in Nevada special... →
As you may have heard, one of the Senators from my state of Nevada, John Ensign, resigned earlier this month amid an affair and possible ethics violations. His seat was quickly filled by our governor through appointment of Dean Heller, one of our House members. Heller’s House seat was then to be filled by a special election, which our Secretary of State is organizing.
I haven’t really...
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Study: Whites Believe Declining Prejudice Against... →
Those who have privilege often mistakenly name the erosion of that privilege “discrimination” rather than “equality”.
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A formula that can graph itself →
I would have been the coolest kid in math class if I could have “discovered” this on my TI-89.
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Oak Ridge National Lab Hacked →
The attacker used an Internet Explorer zero-day vulnerability that Microsoft patched on April 12 to breach the lab’s network. The vulnerability, described as a critical remote-code execution vulnerability, allows an attacker to install malware on a user’s machine if he or she visits a malicious web site.
According to Zacharia, the intrusion came in the form of a spear-phishing email sent...
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US Supreme Court orders California prisoner... →
Breaking news from Reuters:
The Supreme Court Monday ordered California to release tens of thousands of inmates or take other steps to ease overcrowding in its prisons to prevent “needless suffering and death.”
By a 5-4 vote, the high court told the nation’s largest state prison system to sharply cut its inmate population in stages over two years in one of the biggest prison...
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In Vermont, draft horses used to lay fiber optic... →
Fred, the draft horse standing next to Desmarais, is unperturbed by the snake or much else. The muscled 1,700-pound cable-hauling Belgian is in full draft regalia. Studded leather flaps keep his eyes on the task at hand. A leather collar wraps around his neck, bearing the hames, or a frame from which the traces span Fred’s torso and connect to an iron whippletree trailing behind.
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Exoplanets without a star: galaxy teems with... →
Christopher Dombrowski, writing for Ars Technica:
[T]his week astronomers are announcing a truly unique and new class of exoplanets: Jupiter sized planets that are in extremely large orbits or completely unbound from a host star altogether. And there appear to be a lot of them, as these planets seem to be more common than main sequence stars.
I really wonder what it would be like to live on...
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Mahmoud Ahmadinejad says Europe 'stealing Iran's... →
Barney Henderson of The Telegraph, reporting on Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s remarks at the inauguration of a dam:
“Western countries have designed plans to cause drought in certain areas of the world, including Iran,” Mr Ahmadinejad said in the city of Arak in Markazi province.
“According to reports on climate, whose accuracy has been verified, European...
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Two automated Amazon sellers create a ridiculous... →
Michael Eisen:
A few weeks ago a postdoc in my lab logged on to Amazon to buy the lab an extra copy of Peter Lawrence’s The Making of a Fly – a classic work in developmental biology that we – and most other Drosophila developmental biologists – consult regularly. The book, published in 1992, is out of print. But Amazon listed 17 copies for sale: 15 used from $35.54, and 2 new from...
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Interactive Portal turret plushie built with... →
Features:
Authentic game dialogue
Motion detector, so it knows when you’re there and when you’ve left
Pressure sensor, so it knows when you’ve picked it up
Tilt sensor, so it knows when you’ve knocked it over
LED light-up eye
Exaggerated features for extra adorableness
Just adorable.
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Kill Math →
Speaking of alternative Math education:
Kill Math is my umbrella project for techniques that enable people to model and solve meaningful problems of quantity using concrete representations and intuition-guided exploration. In the long term, I hope to develop a widely-usable, insight-generating alternative to symbolic math.
My favorite bit:
I went on to college, and grad school, and an...
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Composing for Independent Games - 3rd Annual Group... →
Game Developers Conference is a meeting for cool kids in the game industry: designers, programmers, musicians, all them folks. Droves descend upon the unsuspecting sleepy town of San Francisco, bringing with them the mortal sin of networking.
At the past three GDCs, a few musicians have convened for an informal round table discussion about composing for indie games. This year’s discussion...
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X FILES: THE MUSICAL →
“X Files: The Musical” is the seventh production and third backyard musical by The Colonel Mustard Amateur Attic Theatre Company in Lincoln, Nebraska. Millions of people worldwide love The X-Files, and our audacious vision is to transform the show into a full-length theatrical spectacle.
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After cramming over 100 people into the attic for a play, we knew it was time to move to a...
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Sugar Violin Plays Music →
Sugar Violin Plays Music
CONSTRUCTED entirely of sugar by Adolph Hubner, a San Francisco confectioner and sculptor, the novel violin shown above produces excellent music. The instrument was first modeled in cardboard, and finally modeled in sugar with gum tragacanth. A number of famous- violinists have pronounced the instrument excellent in tone.
Modern Mechanix posted this blurb from the...
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SEGA of Europe announces English localization of... →
In 1994, the Genesis game Monster World IV came out. Part of the Wonder Boy/Monster World metaseries, it was only released in Japan. The game is bright and colorful and beautiful, with large sprites and great animations. It’s quite an enjoyable romp.
The internet game news blogodrome was abuzz in February because the game was rated by several overseas rating boards for console download...
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Donald Trump not running for president →
Hey guys! Guess what?
Donald Trump ended his months-long public flirtation with a 2012 presidential run Monday, saying that he will not seek the Republican nomination — even though he could have won the election.
I can’t believe people actually thought he was going to run. (Well, I guess I can, but really.)
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Mexico town's mutant pointy boots create a craze →
Here’s a story from the Associated Press about a bizarre trend in the Mexican city of Matehuala: cowboy boots with long, curved, pointed toes.
The next thing Calderon knew, it seemed like everyone wanted the bizarre, half-Aladdin, all-Vegas pointy boots, from little boys attending church ceremonies to teenagers at the discos.
Calderon fashioned the elongated toes from plastic foam and...
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Gabe Newell on Valve →
The magazine Develop published an interview with Valve co-founder Gabe Newell on Friday. There was an interesting tidbit about how Newell feels the current pricing model for video games, that everyone pays the same price for the same thing, is outdated:
The industry has this broken model, which is one price for everyone. That’s actually a bug, and it’s something that we want to solve through our...
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1,152 Congolese raped daily, study finds →
DAKAR, Senegal — The central African nation of the Democratic Republic of Congo has been called the worst place on earth to be a woman. A study released yesterday by the American Journal of Public Health shows it is even worse than previously thought: 1,152 women are raped every day, a rate equal to 48 per hour.
That rate is equal to 420,480 rapes per year, 26 times more than the previous...
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Hobbes and Bacon →
Because I can’t resist linking to anything Calvin and Hobbes related, here’s Dan & Tom Heyerman’s wonderful Calvin & Hobbes homage. (They nailed the Calvin look in the last panel.)
(It seems to be down right now — here’s an imgur link that works.)
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“People often assume I find computers and software interesting in themselves. I...”
– William Gibson, today on Twitter
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Second Hasidic newspaper drops Hillary Clinton and... →
Di Voch, a weekly Brooklyn Hasidic magazine, has dropped Hillary Clinton and Audrey Tomason from its pages, much as the Di Tzeitung newspaper did. The magazine does leave somewhat blurry lines to suggest the photo was altered, as if a ghost Clinton still lingers, but the females are nevertheless scrubbed from the room[.]
In a statement, Di Tzeitung said, “Because of laws of modesty, we are not...
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Lady Gaga will stream songs from 'Born This Way'... →
The 46 million people who play FarmVille every month are getting an eccentric new neighbor. This morning, social gaming company Zynga announced a partnership with Lady Gaga, which will allow users to stream songs from Gaga’s forthcoming Born This Way before the album is released on May 23. Players will visit a neighboring farm, “GagaVille,” where they can undertake lightweight tasks to unlock...
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Charles Wesley Smith on Libraries and the Spirit...
Have you heard of Charles Wesley Smith? Neither have I. He was some obscure librarian in Seattle around the 1900s. He contributed a piece to the Papers and Proceedings of the Twenty-Seventh General Meeting of the American Library Association titled ”Library Conditions in the Northwest.” The meeting was held in Portland, Oregon on July 4–7, 1905.
He talks, predictably, about libraries...
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Troy Public Library History: Letters to the... →
In early 1971, Hart wrote to dozens of actors, authors, artists, musicians, playwrights, librarians, and politicians of the day. She asked them to write a letter to the children of Troy about the importance of libraries, and their memories of reading and of books.
Hart received 97 letters addressed to Troy’s young people from individuals who spanned the arts, sciences, and politics across...
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A Gay Former N.B.A. Player Responds to Kobe Bryant →
Last month Kobe Bryant called a ref a “fucking fag” on the court. (No censors out here in Internetland.) The NBA did the right thing and gave him a technical foul and a $100K fine. Kobe responded with a non-apology apology and stated he would fight the fine. John Amaechi, the first openly gay former NBA player, responded with an op-ed in the New York Times:
A young man from a Los Angeles...
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Allie Brosh of "Hyperbole and a Half" Is Writing a... →
Touchstone (a division of Simon & Schuster) will tentatively release my book in Fall 2012, which sounds like it’s a long time away, but really, it’s only the gestation period of two slightly premature babies. And if you’re a time-traveler, then it can be as soon as you want it to be. It can be now!
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The book will contain roughly 50% new material. The other 50% will be...
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CNN Poll: Majority in U.S. say bin Laden in hell →
So do Americans think that the founder and leader of the al Qaeda terrorist network is now in hell?
According to a CNN/Opinion Research Corporation poll released Tuesday, 61 percent of the public says yes, with one in ten saying no and nearly a quarter unsure.
“Not all Americans believe in hell - a point of view reflected in the relatively large number of ‘don’t know’...
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Q. Why did it take Obama two and a half years to... →
Chris Espinosa:
What the birthers see is The Other. They look in the cedar chest and see their calligraphic Birth Certificate with flourishes and footprints and gold seals and doctor names, and take that as What A Birth Certificate Is. It’s ceremonial, official-looking, and old-fashioned, traits that they associate with authority. When they see a cold, austere, government-generated...
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