October 2011
68 posts
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Taking iPads into battle →
W.J. Hennigan wrote a pretty nice piece for the Los Angeles Times about the use of smartphone and tablet technology by the U.S. military:
Frustrated that he had to flip through dozens of maps stuffed inside his chopper, Carlson, 31, loaded the documents onto his personal iPad, enabling him to zoom in, zoom out and quickly move from one map to another.
Carlson’s brainstorm shortened the...
September 2011
51 posts
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Economists say adult circumcision not best... →
Oren Dorell, USA Today:
A group of top world economists said Wednesday that adult male circumcision, a global priority for preventing HIV infection, is not nearly as cost-effective as other methods of prevention.
A successful adult male circumcision effort would require “a large public campaign to get people into the clinic,” said Bjorn Lomborg, director of the Copenhagen Consensus...
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"Space Precinct" (1994) →
‘Ili and I have been watching Gerry Anderson’s Space Precinct on Netflix Watch Instantly the past few days.1 We’re two episodes in and I’m not 100% sure how to describe it. Wikipedia:
American broadcasters were uncertain what to make of this series that looked on the surface to be aimed at children, yet actually featured adult-oriented storylines and was usually played...
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Hercules [1983]: in which Lou Ferrigno, Lasers, &... →
Tenebrous Kate:
Have you ever watched a movie and been disappointed that no one throws a man in a bear suit into space? After watching Luigi Cozzi’s “Hercules,” I realized that I’ll forever be disappointed in movies that don’t include a man in a bear suit being thrown into space. It’s rare that a movie embodies the mercurial beauty of “So Bad It’s...
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'The Bippolo Seed': The 'Lost' Dr. Seuss Stories →
Lynn Neary, NPR:
Every now and then a treasure-trove of seemingly “lost” literature is discovered. The latest such find is a collection of stories by Theodor Geisel, better known as Dr. Seuss. Seuss scholars and collectors have known about these stories for a while, but fans will have the chance to read them in a new book to be released by Random House next fall[, The Bippolo Seed...
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Quora: What is the origin of the distinctive NPR... →
Nice answer by Andy Carvin of NPR:
We also offer training to on-air staff so they can work on their delivery. There’s even a book called Sound Reporting, by longtime NPR producer Jonathan Kern, that talks about on-air delivery, including how reporters and hosts make notations on paper copies of their scripts to specify when they want to emphasize a word or syllable, pause for a beat,...
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Overdone: Why are restaurant websites so... →
Farhad Manjoo for Slate:
The first thing that pops up when you visit the website of the San Francisco restaurant Fleur de Lys is a nearly full-screen animation of celebrity chef Hubert Keller’s autograph. That makes sense—when I’m choosing a restaurant, the first thing I want to know is, Can the chef sign his name?
He gives a few more examples of questionable site design too....
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SEVEN LITTLE MEN HELP A GIRL →
When, in early-1986, Disney executives decided to change the title of their upcoming animated feature from ‘Basil of Baker Street’ to the less ambiguous ‘The Great Mouse Detective’, its production team were less than pleased. One animator in particular, Ed Gombert, harnessed his displeasure to comical effect by creating, and circulating, the following: a fake memo...
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Tiny neutrinos may have broken cosmic speed limit →
Dennis Overbye, NY Times:
The physics world is abuzz with news that a group of European physicists plans to announce Friday that it has clocked a burst of subatomic particles known as neutrinos breaking the cosmic speed limit — the speed of light — that was set by Albert Einstein in 1905.
If true, it is a result that would change the world. But that “if” is enormous.
Even before the...
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Scientists use brain imaging to reveal the movies... →
Yasmin Anwar, UC Berkeley:
Using functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging (fMRI) and computational models, UC Berkeley researchers have succeeded in decoding and reconstructing people’s dynamic visual experiences – in this case, watching Hollywood movie trailers.
As yet, the technology can only reconstruct movie clips people have already viewed. However, the breakthrough paves the way for...
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Controversy over the discovery of Haumea →
Wikipedia time. This article’s about the dwarf planet Haumea.
On December 28, 2004, Mike Brown and his team discovered Haumea on images they had taken with the 1.3 m SMARTS Telescope at the Palomar Observatory in the United States on May 6, 2004, while looking for what he hoped would be the tenth planet. … However, it was clearly too small to be a planet as it was significantly...
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Gunmen dump 35 bodies on busy street in Mexicos →
Fucked up news out of Mexico from E. Eduardo Castillo of the AP:
Masked gunmen blocked traffic on a busy avenue in a Gulf of Mexico coastal city Tuesday and dumped the bodies of 35 slaying victims as horrified motorists watched, authorities said.
Veracruz state Attorney General Reynaldo Escobar Perez said the bodies were left piled in two trucks and on the ground of an underpass near a shopping...
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In Deficit Plan, Obama Drops Compromise for... →
Binyamin Applebaum, writing for the NY Times:
The key points of the plan read like a mirror image of the priorities espoused by House Republicans. The president proposed raising taxes by $1.5 trillion, mostly on the wealthy, while making only modest cuts in Medicare and Medicaid, and walling off Social Security from any changes. The plan also would reduce military spending by more than $1...
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Message to 12,000 A.D. →
Oh this is classic Nullary Sources fare — exactly the kind of content that prompted us to start this blog.1 I present excerpts from Expert Judgement on Markers to Deter Inadvertent Human Intrusion into the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant.2 From the conclusion:
To design a marker system that, left alone, will survive for 10,000 years is not a difficult engineering task.
It is quite...
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Atom splitting in my kitchen was a hobby, man... →
The AP:
A Swedish man arrested on charges of unauthorised possession of nuclear material after trying to split atoms in his kitchen says he was only doing it as a hobby.
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Handl kept a blog about his experiments, describing how he created a small meltdown on his stove.
Only later did he realise it might not be legal and sent a question to Sweden’s radiation authority, which sent the...
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Scotland Yard attempts to force The Guardian to... →
The Guardian:
The Metropolitan police are seeking a court order under the Official Secrets Act to make Guardian reporters disclose their confidential sources about the phone-hacking scandal.
In an unprecedented legal attack on journalists’ sources, Scotland Yard officers claim the act, which has special powers usually aimed at espionage, could have been breached in July when...
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Space station to be crewed for SpaceX docking →
This article on TPM’s IdeaLab blog (which is relatively new and has been doing a great job covering tech and science news) is mostly about how the ISS is doing after an August crash of an unmanned Soyuz rocket. But this caught my eye. Carl Franzen:
In any case, the decision is great news for the private spaceflight company SpaceX, which planned to make history by docking its Dragon...
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US Gets Chance To Catch Up On Credit Card Security →
Peter Svensson of the AP on the slow move toward EMV credit card technology (probably more commonly known as chip and PIN) in the U.S.:
The U.S.’s status as a holdout has also started to cause problems for travelers. While most European stores and restaurants still accept magnetic-stripe cards, Americans are finding that their credit cards don’t work in European automated kiosks,...
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'Empire Strikes Back' deleted scene →
Christian Blauvelt, EW.com:
”I’d just as soon kiss a Wookiee”/”I can arrange that… You could use a good kiss!” wasn’t the original parting-shot in Han and Leia’s Echo Base lovers’ quarrel. In an early cut of the film, their squabble lasted much longer, and while that never-before-glimpsed deleted scene will be included on the Star Wars: The Complete Saga Blu-ray (out Sept. 16), EW’s got it for...
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Survivors recall doomed Zanzibar ferry →
MSNBC.com, with contributions from Reuters and the AP:
Passengers on the aging, crowded boat headed for one of Tanzania’s top tourist destinations said they realized something was wrong when the overnight ferry began to list from side to side.
Then water rushed through and killed the engines, sending the M.V. Spice Islanders upside down and pitching hundreds of people into the deep sea...
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Newspaper Chain Drops Righthaven — ‘It Was a Dumb... →
David Kravets, Wired’s Threat Level blog:
The new chief executive of MediaNews Group, publisher of the Denver Post and 50 other newspapers, said it was “a dumb idea” for the nation’s second-largest newspaper chain to sign up with copyright troll Righthaven.
The Denver-based publisher’s year-long copyright infringement litigation deal with Righthaven is terminating at month’s end, said...
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In unlikely place, the human face of 9/11 →
Here’s a feel-good story about 8/11/01 that I’d never heard before. Rob Gillies, AP:
To hear something nice about 9/11, talk to “the plane people,” the passengers who wound up on the island of Newfoundland that day because U.S. airspace was shut.
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Of the hundreds of flights blocked that day, more than 200 were diverted to Canada, with no warning, recalls David...
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'Twitter terrorists' face 30 years after being... →
Jo Adetunji for The Guardian, with contributions from news agencies:
A man and a woman are facing 30-year prison terms in Mexico for allegedly using Twitter to spread panic over a series of child kidnappings.
Gilberto Martinez Vera, 48, a private school teacher, and Maria de Jesus Bravo Pagola, a radio presenter, were accused of spreading false reports that gunmen were attacking schools in the...
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Steven Seagal 'Will Not Accept Role' of Animal... →
The International Business Times:
A Phoenix man says Steven Seagal is responsible for the death of his dog, who was shot and killed after the “Under Siege” actor drove a tank into the man’s home while filming a scene in the reality show “Steven Seagal: Lawman.”
Jesus Sanchez Llovera was the subject of a raid filmed for the show, an A&E series that chonicles...
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Nevada 'scrappers' hit new low of stealing metal... →
Jaclyn O’Malley for the Reno Gazette-Journal, with contributions from the AP:
In July, a 35-year-old man allegedly pillaged Our Mother of Sorrows Cemetery in Reno and stole more than 150 bronze vases that were meant to hold flowers for the deceased, Reno police said. Brett Taylor Allen, who has been charged with burglary and possession of stolen property, told investigators during an...
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