Sunday, January 30, 2005

Sunday, January 30, 2005
10:55 PM

Star Wars fun: "What Star Wars SHOULD be. Because parody is GOOD."



(Via metafilter.com.)

Thursday, January 27, 2005

Thursday, January 27, 2005
09:20 PM

Mac mini: “a Slick Little Budget Computer”: "Edward Baig writes for USA Today, ‘It [Mac mini] resembles a coaster on steroids — or a container for Wonder Bread. The familiar Apple logo is the only obvious sign that the handsome 2-inch-tall, white-with-silver-trim, square box on my desk is a different sort of wonder.’ [Jan 27, 2005]"



(Via Apple Hot News.)

Thursday, January 27, 2005
09:03 PM
arrrrrrr

Pirate Pirates of the Caribbean script: "Cory Doctorow:
Someone has produced a fan-script for the Pirates of the Caribbean movie:


Elizabeth : Wait! You have to take me to shore. According to the Code of the Order of the Brethren -


Barbossa: First, your return to shore was not part of our negotiations nor our agreement so I must do nothing. And secondly, you must be a pirate for the pirate’s code to apply and you’re not. And thirdly, the code is more what you'd call 'guidelines' than actual rules. Welcome aboard the Black Pearl , Miss Turner .



Link

(via The Disney Blog)"



(Via Boing Boing.)

Thursday, January 27, 2005
08:54 PM
but are they on itunes

Top 100 Soundtracks: "David Pescovitz:
 Album Images S134402
MOJO music magazine's list of the Top 100 Soundtracks of All Time is phenomenal. Out of the top 10, the only one I have is Number 4, Miles Davis's 'Ascenseur pour l'échafaud,' and it's one of my favorite jazz albums of all time. I want every one of the rest! Vinyl would be preferable, especially since so many of the albums have stunning cover art.
Link (via MetaFilter)
"



(Via Boing Boing.)

Thursday, January 27, 2005
ahha
08:53 PM

Business 2.0's 101 dumbest moments in business: "Mark Frauenfelder:
This year's Business 2.0's annual '101 dumbest moments in business' package has plenty of ironic gems in it.

What's the problem? We love a guy who stands behind his product.
James Joseph Minder, chairman of gunmaker Smith & Wesson, is forced to resign when newspaper reporters discover that, before becoming a corporate exec, he'd spent 15 years behind bars for a string of armed robberies and an attempted prison escape.

Do as I say, not as I...hey, get a load of those!
After joining the Bank of Ireland as CEO, Michael Soden issues a dictate: No porn surfing on the job. His next dictate: The IT department is to be outsourced to Hewlett-Packard. Shortly after the outsourcing deal goes through, IT staffers, now employed by HP, discover porn on Soden's computer. Soden resigns, leaving the bank and HP scrapping over who should pay his severance, estimated at $5 million.



Link
"



(Via Boing Boing.)

Thursday, January 27, 2005
08:52 PM

I'm picking something up on sonar captain...

Submarine hits underwater mountain: "Mark Frauenfelder:
 Management Photodb Thumbnails Thumb 050127-N-4658L-015
Todd Lappin sez: 'A few weeks ago, my city's namesake submarine, the USS San Francisco, struck an uncharted undersea mountain while traveling in the South Pacific at a depth of 500 feet. At the time, apparently, the sub was traveling at almost full speed. One sailor died in the accident, and 20 more were injured. The Navy has released some photos of the San Francisco, now that she's been hauled into drydock. Wow.' Link (WashPost backgrounder on the accident, and the uncharted mountain. Nice lil' gif of the ship's logo)
"



(Via Boing Boing.)

Thursday, January 27, 2005
08:48 PM
but its de prez

A pronounced deficiency in IQ: "Redneck ebonics triumphs. Merriam-Webster online now gives 'nu-kyu-lar' as an alternative pronunication of 'nuclear.' While dictionaries have become more descriptive and less prescriptive over the years, shouldn't they at least list it as [idiotic variant]?"



(Via metafilter.com.)

Saturday, January 22, 2005

Saturday, January 22, 2005
06:52 PM

The madness of King George: "Xeni Jardin:


An anonymous inauguration coronation day gift from a friend of BoingBoing.


Link to full-size."



(Via Boing Boing.)

Saturday, January 22, 2005
06:52 PM

Scary looking home-theater receiver: "Mark Frauenfelder:
Picture 2-2The back of Onkyo’s TX-NR1000 home-theater receiver looks like something from a stress-induced nightmare. Why so many jacks? Onkyo said it's to 'future proof' the thing. My idea of the future doesn't involve cables.

Link (Via Endgadet)
"



(Via Boing Boing.)

Saturday, January 22, 2005
06:50 PM

More on big dead SoCal squids: "Xeni Jardin:


Following up on this Boing Boing post about the disturbing appearance of large, dying squids on California shores, reader John Jensen says, 'Isn't it funny how sometimes you can hear about something in the media, and then just go right outside your house and see it? For me, this was a drive across town.'




Link to full-size snapshot."



(Via Boing Boing.)

Saturday, January 22, 2005
06:46 PM
oh you betcha

Do these toilet paper rolls make my ass look big?: "Xeni Jardin:

Caption this, please. More from designer Jefferson Kulig at today's installment of Sao Paulo Fashion Week.
Link (Thanks Susannah)"



(Via Boing Boing.)

Saturday, January 22, 2005
06:46 PM

Difference between male and female brains: "David Pescovitz:
UC Irvine researchers have found that men and women have very different brain designs. Women have more much white matter and men more gray matter related to intelligence. Still, there are no real differences in general intelligence between the two sexes. From the UCI press release about the study:

 Image Library Press Release 050120Haier Fig1 LgGray matter represents information processing centers in the brain, and white matter represents the networking of – or connections between – these processing centers.



This, according to Rex Jung, a UNM neuropsychologist and co-author of the study, may help to explain why men tend to excel in tasks requiring more local processing (like mathematics), while women tend to excel at integrating and assimilating information from distributed gray-matter regions in the brain, such as required for language facility. These two very different neurological pathways and activity centers, however, result in equivalent overall performance on broad measures of cognitive ability, such as those found on intelligence tests.



Link"



(Via Boing Boing.)

Saturday, January 22, 2005
06:39 PM
Us jugglers understand

Claude Shannon, master juggler and juggling robot builder: "Mark Frauenfelder:

Picture 5-2
The late Claude Shannon is recognized as the father of information theory, but he was also a juggling enthusiast (he liked to juggle and ride his unicycle up and down the halls of Bell Labs), as well as an animatronic maker. My mind is reeling after watching this movie clip of his juggling robots. It's my pick for 'Wonderful Thing' of the week. Link
"



(Via Boing Boing.)

Saturday, January 22, 2005
06:38 PM

Bon Anniversaire!: "David Pescovitz:
Cimg0453
At the end of a perfect night out with our dearest Parisian friends, DMD presented me with this in celebration of Boing Boing's fifth anniversary. I was touched. As he said, it seemed very Boing Boing to use trick candles. Thank you buddy! And thank you all!
"



(Via Boing Boing.)

Friday, January 21, 2005

Friday, January 21, 2005
06:40 PM

Bunny Suicides: "Bunny Suicides"



(Via metafilter.com.)

Sunday, January 16, 2005

Sunday, January 16, 2005
10:41 PM

Sutro Baths: "Diving into the past"



(Via Interesting Thing of the Day.)

Saturday, January 15, 2005

Saturday, January 15, 2005
10:03 PM

Neuroeconomics: Biotech Meets Economics: "grimiore1 writes 'The Economist has a story today introducing the concept of Neuroeconomics, which uses brain scanning technology and neuroscience to create new economic models and theories.'"



(Via Slashdot.)

Saturday, January 15, 2005
10:04 PM

Titan Photos and Sounds: "ahsile writes 'NASA and the ESA have released the first images from Titan. The ESA also has available sounds from the surface.' Reader ZZip writes: 'Apparently a bunch of enthusiasts has compiled the first mosaics from the raw data delivered by the Huygens probe. Meanwhile space.com has more coverage and pictures from NASA/ESA.' Say a silent thank-you to the persistent troubleshooters of the world, without whom none of this would be possible."



(Via Slashdot.)

Saturday, January 15, 2005
09:33 PM

Analyst: iPod reaching iconic status: "With the iPod leading the way for Apple Computer Inc.'s charge into the consumer market, NPD Group analyst Ross Rubin said the iPod is reaching iconic status. While the iPod Shuffle aims to openly compete with many other players in the MP3 market, the upcoming release of iLife '05 may quietly threaten products of third-party developers."



(Via MacCentral.)

Saturday, January 15, 2005
09:28 PM

Web Zen: Album Cover Zen: "Xeni Jardin:


punk + new wave 8-tracks |

10 worst covers of all time |

museum of bad album covers |

album cover challenge |

knockoff project |

bollywood |

cover heaven |

unusual cover art |

bizarre records




Image: cover from of an old 8-track tapes. web zen home, web zen store, (Thanks, Frank)."



(Via Boing Boing.)

Saturday, January 15, 2005
09:26 PM
maybe tis a toye

Saturn's moon looks like hollow plastic toy: "Mark Frauenfelder:


Iapetus, one of Saturn's moons, has a 'topographic ridge that coincides almost exactly with the geographic equator,' giving it the look of a cheap plastic toy with mold flash.

Picture 4-1The ridge is conspicuous in the picture as an approximately 20-kilometer wide (12 miles) band that extends from the western (left) side of the disc almost to the day/night boundary on the right. On the left horizon, the peak of the ridge reaches at least 13 kilometers (8 miles) above the surrounding terrain. Along the roughly 1,300 kilometer (800 mile) length over which it can be traced in this picture, it remains almost exactly parallel to the equator within a couple of degrees.'




Link"



(Via Boing Boing.)

Saturday, January 15, 2005
09:26 PM

Robot quilts by Kathy Weaver: "Xeni Jardin:


Fancifully folksy quilts that depict robots in an array of odd situations. Shown here, Robot Visits The Farm.






Artist Kathy Weaver says, 'In my work,the robot's setting is that of a tilted stage or shadow box and in this environment the robot is central as a translator of events, an alter ego, a doppelganger. The robot can also be an observer, a soothsayer, a malcontent or a destructor.'


Me, I'm partial to the destructor kind. What say ye now, great oracle of gingham, googly eyes, and cute li'l buttons?



Link. See also Ms. Weaver's 'Guns Are Us' quilt series.
(Thanks, Rob)."



(Via Boing Boing.)

Saturday, January 15, 2005
09:22 PM
its come to this

Darth Tater: Mr Vader Potatohead: "Cory Doctorow:


Hasbro's latest Star Wars toy is total genius: a Darth Vader version of Mr Potatohead called Darth Tater! BAHAHAAHAHAHAA.

Link

(via Wonderland)

"



(Via Boing Boing.)

Friday, January 14, 2005

Friday, January 14, 2005
11:06 PM

Serialized eBooks via RSS: "Russell Beattie: ‘Many of us are too busy to read classic books out there, instead choosing ‘page turners’ or books that are more applicable to our every day lives (like a some new marketing book). But we do have time to zip through our aggregator daily, right? So by taking a 500 page novel and distributing it, a few pages at a time, via RSS, we could read a new book in a month or so without even trying.’"



(Via Ranchero.)

Friday, January 14, 2005
10:55 PM
my ten gig seems so...quaint

My New Favorite Gadget: The iPod shuffle: "Just 12 short hours after purchasing an iPod shuffle, I'm in love..."



(Via MacDevCenter.)

Friday, January 14, 2005
10:29 PM
well well

U.S. gives up on WMD search: "The BBC is reporting that the United States has stopped their search in Iraq for weapons of mass destruction."



(Via Kuro5hin.org.)

Friday, January 14, 2005
10:27 PM
they look almost alchemical

Nature illustrations of Ernst Haeckel: "Mark Frauenfelder:

 Stueber Haeckel Kunstformen Icons Tafel 017 Medium
I had dinner with Bruce Stewart and Shawn Connally at their home tonight. Bruce is O'Reilly's editorial director and Shawn is Make's managing editor. I noticed a couple of amazing framed prints on the wall in their library, and Bruce told me he took them from a book by Ernst Haeckel (1834-1919), a German biologist who drew fantastic illustrations of animals, plants, and micro-organisms.

Apparently, Haeckel sort of made up certain details in his illustrations to bolster his wacky theories about evolution (he pushed the idea that 'ontogeny recapitulates phylogeny,' that is, as na unborn animal develops in the egg or womb, it goes through all the evolutionary stages that its ancestors went through). The book Bruce showed me is called Art Forms in Nature, first published in 1904. I was knocked out by the beautiful drawings of sea creatures and other weird animals, and the way Haeckel arranged several life forms on the page is wonderful. Here's a page with a bunch of Haeckel drawings (There's also a link on the page to a 261 MB PDF file, which I assume contains a bunch of his work.) Thanks for letting me know about this incredible artist, Bruce!
Link"



(Via Boing Boing.)

Tuesday, January 11, 2005

Tuesday, January 11, 2005
09:33 PM
whens the last time you made one

Quote of the day: pyramid scheme: "Xeni Jardin:
'Don't cheerleaders all over America make pyramids every day? It's not torture.' -- Defense lawyer Guy Womack speaking about alleged abuse of Iraqi prisoners at Abu Ghraib, during the trial of accused military personnel. Link"



(Via Boing Boing.)

Tuesday, January 11, 2005
09:26 PM

Art of Andrew Brandou: "Mark Frauenfelder:
Brandou23Andrew Brandou's beautiful paintings of animals are on exhibition at La Luz de Jesus gallery in Los Angeles. Link
"



(Via Boing Boing.)

Monday, January 10, 2005

Monday, January 10, 2005
09:14 PM

The Dhammapada: "'Travel only with thy equals or thy betters; if there are none, travel alone.'"



(Via Motivational Quotes of the Day.)

Monday, January 10, 2005
08:50 PM

Predictions for 2005: "If idle hands are the devil's tools, then boredom at work must be his machine gun. In that spirit, here is this years (embarrassingly early) entry to a continuing K5 tradition, Predictions 2005, plus a look back at least years predictions."



(Via Kuro5hin.org.)

Monday, January 10, 2005
08:38 PM
amazing

Surfing a Tsunami: "Mark Frauenfelder:
Rogier sez: 'Most people would do anything to get out of the way of a tsunami. But daredevils with a death wish would like to RIDE one, and they're keeping their surf boards ready. Officials in Hawaii are still a bit freaked out by the memory of 400-plus surf enthusiasts showing up on the beaches of Oahu ten years ago, trying to catch a killer wave. To prevent a repeat, a public-safety DVD has been distributed through Hawaiian surf shops this fall.

'The message is sure to get lost on this guy, who was caught on film riding a monster wave that would give mere mortals heart attacks (though from the looks of it, it isn't nearly on the magnitude of the walls of waters that wiped out tens of thousands of people in South East Asia yesterday). Link

UPDATE: Peter Orosz sez: 'Professional big wave surfers can ride waves that are taller than normal tsunami waves (the biggest wave ever ridden was in Hawaii on January 28, 1998, when Ken Bradshaw rode a wave with an 85-foot face on the North Shore of Oahu at Outside Log Cabins). Natural big wave spots like Waimea Bay in Hawaii, Teahupoo in Tahiti or Mavericks in California can produce waves 50-80 feet high, while yesterday's tsunamis were no higher than 30 feet (as far as I recall from CNN's report). The destructive power of tsunamis result from the immense amount of water in motion: the earthquake sets the entire ocean moving. In many places, a tsunami is not an actual wave but a rapidly rising tide that surges inland.

'Apparently, it's quite difficult to measure waves and there are several methods. According to Surfline, Bradshaw's 1998 wave was 'a 45-foot wave with an 85-foot face', whatever that means. Billabong has a contest called XXL with a cash award going to the person who rides the biggest wave of the season, and according to their site, the world record holder is Pete Cabrinha with a 70-foot wave ridden at Peahi/Jaws on Maui this April. This page gives a guide to estimating wave height and describes the different methods used.'

Nick sez: 'I think (though I'm not 100%) that this is referring to the fact that
waves have both crests and troughs. The 'height' of a wave should be
defined as how high the crest reaches above the standard ocean level,
while the 'face' of a wave should be what one sees when one looks directly
at it, namely the entire distance from trough to crest. If ocean waves
were shaped like perfect sine waves then one would expect the trough to be
as deep as the crest is high, so a 45-foot wave would have a 90-foot face.
Of course they're not but a 45-foot wave with 85-foot face would seem to
make sense.'

Christian Anthony (Video Editor, Surfline) sez: 'The link you have under the 'Surfing a Tsunami' story to the big wave video is misleading.

'It's labeled as 'Surfing Hurricane Ivan Waves' but Hurricane Ivan was on the East Coast and did not produce waves of that height, nor are there spots on the East Coast that break like that. That video on the site has been ripped off from the Billabong Odyssey movie and is from Hawaii, specifically a break called Peahi (or Jaws).

'Last week there was a really big swell that hit Peahi and all the professional big wave riders were on it. You can see the video here.'

Alberto sez: 'You know about Laird Hamilton, cross-board virtuoso? He's invented the foilboard, which he uses to surf the huge swells that cross the oceans for miles. Although at the reported 450 mph of the Sumatra 2004 tsunami, I'm not too sure even he'd be able to catch-up. (He also surfs monster waves once they break on shore, but with a more-conventional surfboard.) He has a bare-bones website that offers a couple of DVDs of his jaw-dropping exploits (Flash interface alert, with and unkillable soundtrack of wave sounds).'"



(Via Boing Boing.)

Monday, January 10, 2005
08:27 PM
ahh those disneyites

Lemmings' suicide myths started by Disney nature photogs: "Cory Doctorow:
Lemmings are widely considered to be suicidal beasts, throwing themselves en masse off cliffs. It turns out that this isn't true, but rather a legend begun through some unethical trick photography executed by Disney nature photos in the fifties.


The myth of mass lemming suicide began when the Walt Disney movie, Wild Wilderness was released in 1958. It was filmed in Alberta, Canada, far from the sea and not a native home to lemmings. So the filmmakers imported lemmings, by buying them from Inuit children. The migration sequence was filmed by placing the lemmings on a spinning turntable that was covered with snow, and then shooting it from many different angles. The cliff-death-plunge sequence was done by herding the lemmings over a small cliff into a river. It's easy to understand why the filmmakers did this - wild animals are notoriously uncooperative, and a migration-of-doom followed by a cliff-of-death sequence is far more dramatic to show than the lemmings' self-implemented population-density management plan.


So lemmings do not commit mass suicide. Indeed, animals live to thrive and survive. Consider a company like Disney, where one rodent, namely Mickey Mouse, was Royalty. It's rather odd to think that Disney could be so unkind to another rodent, the lemming..



Link

(via The Disney Blog)"



(Via Boing Boing.)

Thursday, January 6, 2005

Thursday, January 06, 2005
10:39 PM

iMac G5: “Worth Switch from PCs”: "‘If a new desktop computer is the object of your holiday hopes this season, look no further than the new G5 iMac from Apple,’ writes Mike Wendland for Billings Gazette. ‘I said it when I first tested it and I’ll say it again after two months of use: This is the finest personal computer I’ve ever used, hands down. Nothing comes close. If you have ever thought of switching from a Windows-based PC to a Mac, this is the deal-clincher. It is a stunning machine to look at and to use.’ [Dec 21, 2004]"



(Via Apple Hot News.)