May 2012
42 posts
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Why We Pay More for Walkable Neighborhoods →
‘Ili: Could it possibly be because cars are fucking expensive?????
Colin: Nope, cars are free just like rent and McDonald’s.
‘Ili: “Super size me.” ::that’s how SUVs were invented::
Colin: “No no like literally. I want to be super sized. Huge.”
‘Ili: “The SUV comes filled with fries.”
‘Ili: “SOLD”
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BBC News mistakes Halo UNSC logo for UN →
Tom Phillips, Eurogamer:
The blooper occured in the background of last Thursday’s One O’Clock News, in which presenter Sophie Raworth discussed the real-life United Nations.
But the logo shown on-sceen was for the UNSC - Halo’s fictitious United Nations Space Command.
The story has a screenshot and a video. This absolutely happened.
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Cracking The Egg Sprinkler Mystery →
If you spin a hard-boiled egg in a pool of milk, the milk will wick up the sides of the egg and spray off at the egg’s equator. Engineer Tadd Truscott, of Brigham Young University, along with Ken Langley and others, launched an investigation to figure out why this happens — complete with a custom-built spinning apparatus, billiard balls and high speed video cameras.
SCIENCE
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Asshole of the Week: David Pickup →
Steven DuBois for the Associated Press:
David Pickup, a Los Angeles-area counselor who specializes in reparative therapy, said he has helped many clients “maximize their heterosexual potential,” when they have come to him because they believe there is a cause-and-effect reason, such as sexual abuse, for their same-sex attraction.
“It’s a very tough, very emotional...
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Microsoft readies NUads: They watch you watching... →
Declan McCullagh, CNET:
“The innovation that we’re seeing is absolutely incredible,” [Lyn] Watts said. Kinect, he said, can allow advertisers to “go after that holy grail” — the living room.
Kinect’s unique capabilities to record and compile detailed biometric data raise some novel privacy issues. Kinect’s microphone array can record audio within...
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North Is Not Always Pointing Up – Orientation of... →
Calvin Chan:
In Japan, maps in public places such as train station and street, are oriented to the direction you are physically facing it, instead of always pointing North at the upper edge of the map.
I did not know this! Chan discusses some of technological consequences of this. He includes an iPhone Maps screenshot (mockup?) that is particularly sad.
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Archaeologists Discover Lost Language →
ScienceDaily:
Evidence for a forgotten ancient language which dates back more than 2,500 years, to the time of the Assyrian Empire, has been found by archaeologists working in Turkey.
Researchers working at Ziyaret Tepe, the probable site of the ancient Assyrian city of Tušhan, believe that the language may have been spoken by deportees originally from the Zagros Mountains, on the border of...
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The Loneliest Whale in the World →
Nicola Twilley, writing for Good:
According to a 2004 New York Times article on the subject, this particular baleen whale has apparently been tracked by NOAA since 1992, using a “classified array of hydrophones employed by the Navy to monitor enemy submarines.” It sings at 52 Hertz, which is roughly the same frequency as the lowest note on a tuba, and much higher than its fellow...
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Justice Breyer's D.C. home hit by burglary →
Bill Mears, CNN:
The Supreme Court confirms the 73-year-old justice’s Washington home was burglarized earlier this month. It follows a February incident in which Breyer, his wife and a guest were robbed in his Caribbean vacation home by a machete-wielding intruder.
I hadn’t heard about the machete incident until now. Poor guy.
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Iran threatens to sue Google for not labeling... →
Another one for the “Iran Is Crazy” files, courtesy of Josh Levs of CNN:
On state-run Press TV, the Iranian regime warns it may take legal action against Google for not labeling the Persian Gulf.
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“Toying with modern technologies in political issues is among the new measures by the enemies against Iran, (and) in this regard, Google has been treated as a plaything,”...
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Politics →
Laurie Kellman writing for the Associated Press on some silly shit happening in Congress right now:
The House voted 222-205 to reauthorize the 1994 Violence Against Women Act for five years, as the Senate already had done. But big differences remain: Obama, other Democrats and a long list of advocacy groups say the House bill doesn’t go far enough to protect abused immigrants, Native...
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Roofer saves co-worker who fell through roof into... →
The AP and the Daily News of New York:
Rob Nuckols, 51, was working on the ground floor Monday morning at Swepco Tube LLC when his colleague Martin Davis plunged through a roof and into the vat of diluted acid and became fully submerged, officials said.
He jumped into the vat and was waist-high while he and three others pulled Davis out, Clifton Fire Chief Vince Colavitti told The Record of...
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Claims of assassination plot hidden in crossword... →
The Associated Press:
Government critics, and even some supporters, are ridiculing a state TV host’s allegation that a newspaper crossword puzzle may have had a hidden call for a plot to kill President Hugo Chavez’s elder brother.
Intelligence agents questioned the author of the puzzle after state TV presenter Miguel Perez Pirela pointed out that Wednesday’s crossword...
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Modern Mechanix: "SEX in Advertising" →
Modern Mechanix is usually good for a lark. This week’s recommendation comes from the march 1964 issue of Sexology.
On the plus side, it makes me feel good that this was being acknowledged and discussed as early as the 1960s.
However:
“Today,” said Justice J. Erwin Shapiro in what may be a historic censorship case, “skirts are shorter and the outlined erogenous areas of...
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Blond hair evolved separately in Europe and the... →
Karen Kaplan for the Los Angeles Times’s Booster Shots blog:
Though the indigenous people of the Solomon Islands all have dark skin, about 5% to 10% also have naturally blond hair – and a new study finds that the genetic quirk responsible for this is different from the one that produces blond hair in people of European ancestry.
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Many Westerners had assumed that encounters with European...
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Ohio deputy fired for making inmates dance →
Kantele Franko, Associated Press:
A northeast Ohio sheriff fired a deputy for ordering five jail inmates to dance to a song by Usher in exchange for privileges such as using a phone or microwave, the sheriff’s office said Thursday.
AAAAAARGH
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Court: No 1st Amendment protection for Facebook... →
The AP:
Exactly what a “like” means — if anything — played a part in a case in Virginia involving six people who say Hampton Sheriff B.J. Roberts fired them for supporting an opponent in his 2009 re-election bid, which he won. The workers sued, saying their First Amendment rights were violated.
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While public employees are allowed to speak as citizens on matters of public concern,...
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Washington Post writer turns Benedict Cumberbatch... →
Yes, on purpose. Really, this reads like something from Thing I Didn’t Click. Take a drink or three, everyone.
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Biden (mostly) endorses same-sex marriage →
Nice to see the Obama camp coming out swinging like this. My hope is that this is to draw a strong contrast between Obama and Romney — basically campaign on social issues and not let Romney make the election a referendum on the economy.
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Students' racist tweets about Boston hockey game... →
James Eng, msnbc.com:
Hordes of angry hockey fans – presumably Boston Bruins fans — unleashed a barrage of racist rants on Twitter and other social-networking sites after the Washington Capitals beat the defending champion Bruins a week ago Wednesday on an overtime goal by Joel Ward, the Capitals’ 31-year-old left wing. Ward is one of just a handful of black players in the NHL.
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The Hobbit at 48fps: Too Much Information and the... →
If you haven’t heard, Peter Jackson’s upcoming The Hobbit films are being filmed and will be shown in 48 frames per second (fps), twice the usual rate of 24 fps. Anthony Wing Kosner put together a piece on Forbes collecting Peter Sciretta’s reaction to ten minutes shown at CinemaCon and some of the technology and anatomy behind it.
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Bin Laden letter: Kill Obama, leave ‘totally... →
Olivier Knox for Yahoo! News’s The Ticket blog:
Osama bin Laden aimed to assassinate President Barack Obama but directed fellow al-Qaida fighters to leave Vice President Joe Biden alone, describing him as “totally unprepared” to take over and predicting a “crisis” in America if that happened, according to a newly declassified letter from the terrorist mastermind.
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Lincoln High School in Walla Walla, WA, tries new... →
handbecomesclaw:
Weird, a school starts trying to actually help their children and finds it works. Life is strange.
I’ll say it once, and I’ll say it again: treat children and teens like people, and they’ll act like people.
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Wife Of NC Amendment One Supporter: Husband Wrote... →
Tom Kludt writing for TPM:
According to the alternative Yes! Weekly, which picked up the remarks from freelance journalist and activist Chad Nance, Jodie Brunstetter told a poll worker in Winston-Salem, N.C. Monday that the reason her husband “wrote Amendment 1 was because the Caucasian race is diminishing and we need to uh, reproduce.”
You’re uh, crazy.
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How a book about fish nearly sank Isaac Newton's... →
Ian Sample wrote a piece for The Guardian on how a book about fish nearly bankrupted the Royal Society, nearly resulting in Isaac Newton’s hugely important Philosophiæ Naturalis Principia Mathematica, which stated Newton’s laws of motion and gravitation, never being published.
Though Ray and Willughby’s masterpiece delayed the publication of Newton’s Principia, it was...
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